Observations at 30,000 feet

For Your Consideration is a pretty good movie--sweet, with moments of tragedy and laugh-out-loud humor--though of course nothing compares to Guffman or Best in Show. But it's worth seeing for Fred Willard's hair alone.

Casino Royale has some jaw-dropping moments, especially the parkour sequence at the beginning. Unfortunately, the stews switched off the video system halfway through the climactic action sequence, despite our attempts to get the captain to circle a couple extra times.

Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport looks like any other airport, except that they have vending machines selling Crocky.

Schiphol also seems to have some kind of Bermuda Triangle effect. In the half-hour we were waiting for our connecting flight, there were a half-dozen announcements for passengers who had apparently disappeared somewhere between check-in and the gate. Unlike the passive, polite American messages, this was both threatening and guilt-inducing:

"Would passengers Smith and Jones please go to their plane now, as you are delaying the flight, and we will have to offload your luggage."

The Dutch accent is mostly clear and understandable, but we're both pretty sure we heard announcements for "Passenger Malzombie" and "Passenger Daffy Duck."

My first realization that my nationality had changed: on the flight to Teesside, we had to fill out landing cards because we were coming in from a non-EU country. So I fill out my name, date of birth, gender, etc--and then I got to "nationality."

My instinct (and reasoning) was to put "UK"; that's what I've always been, and that's how I think of myself. So I asked The Boy for verification, and he said, yes, I should say I'm a US citizen.

Very strange: like having to start saying my eyes are no longer green; they're blue.