UA1182 IAH DEN 0645 0815 739 7D

Another hour at the club and then to the gate, where my upgrade
didn't clear. No matter, the restroom across from my seat was
pristine (I counted on this); I slept through the flight after
exacting my tribute of a can of Pringles and a Buffalo Trace
on the rocks.

UA 789 DEN BOS 1106 1700 739 7D

Another two hours at the club and then to the gate, where my
upgrade didn't clear. One difference - the gate was an overflow one
in the A concourse, so that meant a tram ride outside the familiar
United concourse into the frightening unknown, which turned out to
be pretty much the same, but the jetway was not at all insulated.

I exercised my preboard privilege for some reason - usually I do
this when I have a window seat; this time I had the aisle seat next
to the toilet again: this experience was not the clean and scentless
one of the previous leg.

A little Wellesley sophomore put herself in the window of my row,
and she was unexpectedly chatty. Turns out she's an East Asian
Studies major with a minor in French and is preparing to go to
Europe and Asia for the very first time this year and was ready to
pick any and all available brains, so we were having a jolly
chat when a gruff woman who appeared to be a bit older than me and
for whom the term matron seemed to have been coined plopped in between
us. I apologized for talking over her, and she said, no problem, I
am used to being a conduit, which was not the least friendly thing
she could have said, so I decided to draw her into the conversation,
which turned out to be a good thing, as she is the director of a
student exchange program that is the Spanish counterpart to the one
the Wellesley kid would be participating in for French, and they had
a lot of people in common - in fact, one of the girl's professors had
been on the most recent Spanish term, which had ended just a couple
weeks previously. I gladly handed over the reins to her, and that's great,cbecause then I wouldn't look so much like a dirty old man. When thatctopic was exhausted, the good doctor turned to me, and we talked
a bit, and it turns out she's in fact quite a bit younger than me, and
I almost was sorry that I'm not in the market (this happens all too
frequently these days). Turns out she grew up right near where Janis
used to live, and between upstate New York and language education and
Spanish and Asian food, we had a ton to chat about, so the trip went
really fast. Dr. Griffin hadn't had lunch, so I offered to give her my
free snack; she chose the cheese plate, which is pretty shameful for
the list price of $10 - it's under 3 oz of cheese with a handful of
dried cranberries and apple bits and a couple water crackers - the
cheeses are supposedly sharp Cheddar, some Goudaish substance, and
something called Grand Cru; I remarked to her that if the stuff calls
itself Grand Cru, it can't be much good, sort of like how you shouldn't
eat at place called Mother's (the New Orleans store by that name is no exception, despite what the TV shows say). I tried a bit of the Cheddar,
which was neither sharp nor Cheddar. I kept my Buffalo Trace to myself,
thanks very much. On the ground we said our goodbyes and promised to keep
in touch.
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