I'm in Chevy Chase, and you're not

I came "home" - and that word must be used fairly loosely when you consider that I've been to this house a previous total of two times for about a week combined - for the weekend; it's my mom's birthday tomorrow (which just reminded me that I have to go out in the morning and get her present, which I have forgotten to pick up prior to now). I also hadn't seen my niece yet - she's a totally adorable baby and she smiles all the time, and of course babies in general do so many cute things, so how can you not totally love them? But she's a great baby.

Two things that have sucked so far:

1) The trip out, hit with probably the second-worst example of the Flaxman travel jinx in my six-year career of making return trips to the east coast from Chicago (#1 being Thanksgiving freshman year, when the plane sat at the gate, with us on it, for two hours before they decided it had engine trouble, and we all had to stay at the airport hotel overnight and get up at about 5 am to catch the first flight out). In this case, the plane was about an hour late taking off, which isn't so bad in and of itself, except that they also changed the gate and managed to do so without telling anyone, unless they made the announcement only once and during the 30 seconds I was in the bathroom. But not only did the gate move, it moved to a completely different concourse! It started off being K16 and moved to H17, each gate being at the far end of their respective concourses, meaning that I had to walk most of the way back up K before I could finally cut over to H, and then had to walk all the way back down that one. "Fortunately," the plane was delayed further so I missed absolutely nothing and in fact had time to sit there doing nothing and finish a crossword puzzle and intrude comically on someone else's conversation before boarding.

2) I guess this hasn't "sucked," but it's been sort of annoying - listening to everyone complain about how cold it is. It's like, hey guys, it's barely below freezing and it probably won't get more than ten degrees colder all winter. I don't want to hear about it. Also, this week it's supposed to be 75 on Friday, which, while it is also supposed to be unseasonably warm in Chicago during that time, is a good 15-20 degrees warmer than it's going to be where I live any time between now and next April.

The expression "It's a small world" always strikes me as having been invented by someone who was easily impressed, since it in fact is not a small world. But I guess that sounds better than "It's a small country," which is really what people mean 999 times out of 1,000. In this case, the example was that we went to a vegetarian Indian restaurant called Udupi today that has three locations: Takoma Park, MD; Schaumburg, IL; and Chicago, right on Devon. I have no idea why those three places exactly (although the last one is not hard to guess at), but it's pretty funny to think that this restaurant has three locations and I've been to one and walked right past another.

I guess Borat is going to be popular, because tonight all the screenings were sold out for the whole night when I got to the theater at 7. Fortunately I had no intention of seeing Borat. I ended up seeing Flags of Our Fathers because I figured there was absolutely no chance of ending up in a theater crowded with teenagers, douchebags, or douchebag teenagers (redundant). And in fact I was probably the youngest person in the crowd by at least two decades, and so even though the theater was full (mostly because it held about 50 people to start with), everyone was very quiet and respectful. It's a fine movie because it's basically impossible to make a bad war movie, but it has a few very definite issues that prevent it from really being even in the ballpark with the great war movies. But it's certainly watchable, if nothing else. Full review will come soonish, maybe tomorrow. For now I should get to bed so I have time to get my mom's book before her birthday dinner.