A few mundane thoughts that damn near everybody has in airports, but which I can’t help writing about while I’m airblogging.

We take this miracle a bit too much for granted. I’m flying to Boston; the neighboring gates were going to Tampa and Seoul. Boston, Tampa, Seoul. Those don’t seem to belong in the same sentence. The excitement experienced by the waiting passengers didn’t seem to correlate with the destination.

My neighbor across the aisle is a young teenager who barely looked out the window when we took off. This strikes me as unnatural for adults, let alone for children.

We are asked to fasten our seat belts whenever the sign is lit, or whenever we are seated. Therefore, we should fasten our seats belts when we are not seated because the sign is lit.

Note this sign at Dulles, directing you to a Starbucks. You approach it from the entrance to Terminal B, and if you follow the sign immediately and turn right, you will not look to your left and find there is another Starbucks immediately behind you. Luckily, I already had my venti coffee from the third Starbucks in the kiosk that was just past security.

Prior to takeoff, I was told to shut off my electronic devices, but I could still use my cell phone until they shut the doors. My electronic device is also a cell phone; if a cell phone is not dangerous, then clearly my smartphone is less so when not being used for a call. And yet it does not fall into the set of all electronic devices.

Further evidence that I am an idiot: I have six movies to watch on my laptop. I have the complete works of Mark Twain on my cell phone. And yet, when they told me to shut off my gizmos, I realized that I had brought nothing to read that was not battery-powered.

While I was in the bathroom, they handed out mints on the plane. The mints were strong enough that the actual cabin turned minty fresh; I could tell what the flight attendant was handing me without asking. And when they brought around the hot towels (a very nice touch on a no-frills fare), they had dropped some dry ice in water to give the tray the proper steaming presentation.