This is the puddle jumper terminal, a big round one with a few small shops in the center and a sammie place near the entrance. There was only one security line into it, and the men's room is downstairs.

I will have spent about seven hours here today, there are earlier flights, but I don't want to pay $75 to switch.

I've been reading a lot in the 1632 universe, it's like the linux of fantasy/science fiction. The first book, free on Amazon, is about a small West Virginia mining town that gets sent back in time 350 years to the middle of Germany, during the Thirty Years War. The science fiction part is that this is the result of alien technology, the fantasy part is that many of the good guys are union members, of United Mine Workers. Nary a word of decreased productivity and stifled job growth.

The concept struck a chord with a lot of readers, helped by an active online community, and there are now many sequels and short stories associated with the book. Eric Flint, the original author, keeps an eye on things, but as long as you can write well and avoid things like "an ex SEAL with a trunk full of reference material on paper and vaccines stored with dry ice stopped in the little West Virginia town of Grantville to admire the squadron of Harriers overhead, who were probably supported by the convoy he saw next to him when all of sudden there was a bright flash" sort of stuff, you can probably get
e-published. Many of the follow on stories are good, they even make Lutherism interesting.

I knew of this for a while, but I didn't start reading them until August. A shame, since I spent a few weeks in the middle of nowhere Germany in July, which ended up not too far where the story takes place. I was in Hesse, the story starts in Thuringia (and then expands to England, Sweden, Russia, Austria, Turkey, Egypt, Italy, France...).

I had always wanted to visit Germany, but I would have much preferred as a tourist. Ten hour days in a print room being available for install help is not a lot of fun, particularly in small town Germany where places would often close as we where finishing up. I was there for a week, home for a few days, and then was requested to go back for another week. The second week I had one day off, a Sunday. Gaming stores in Cassel where closed, so i had to chose where WWIII might start (Fulda Gap), or a WWII site. I chose KZ Mittelbau-Dora near Nordhausen, a work concentration camp where inmates helped make fighters and rockets in tunnels under the Harz mountains. It figured prominently in Gravity's Rainbow, and was an
interesting, if chilling place to visit. On the way back, I felt very disoriented when I drove by Rosa Luxemborg street, it's like the area wasn't capitalist for a while.

The same product took me for an abbreviated trip to Provence (abbreviated by the product that sent me to Tennessee and Quebec and Ontario blowing up in London), and a week south of Rome. There's been way too much travel for my liking since the fall of 2014.

Enough whinging. Fourteen_year_old went to her first con, a cosplay one at RIT. She had fun, it wore her out, and she's making friends with a cool bunch of nerdy cosplaying kids. Her grades are spectacular, too.

Nineteen_year_old is on her own car insurance, with her own car, the 98 Camry. I ended up with a black 2007 Impreza Outback Sport, it's like a second goat, but one that looks nice. I'm happy with it, even without the extreme weather package that the 2001 Forester has.

I'm going to a gaming con in January, in Niagara Falls. I don't feel guilty, since Mrs. Ha is going on a week long cruise with her sister the week after.