What I learned on our travel day

MLA ended yesterday, so we went to the Field Museum & Adler Planetarium in the afternoon before catching a flight back to CT.  I learned the following things:

1. At the Field Museum, we caught the Darwin exhibit, which made us very happy (since we’d missed it in NYC).  It was well done, although if you teach Darwin regularly there’s not a *lot* of new stuff.  In fact, I’d say that the main reaction is affective–seeing an intellectual hero’s stuff up close.
2. The Adler Planetarium is a #@@^*%! rip-off operation.   On a day when 4 out of their 6 shows weren’t working, they still charged full freight for a super-lame constellation show featuring questions that even the Little Man was calling out the answers to.
3. United Airlines is an abomination before the Lord, and I wish it all ill-luck in the future.  I didn’t even mind the 90 minute delay at takeoff, but I *did* mind their inability to tell a consistent story about the reason for the delay.  I didn’t mind the fact that it took an hour to deplane (because they missed the plane with the jetway, thus breaking it, requiring a tug to another gate), but I *did* mind that they didn’t use that hour to offload our luggage, so that we had *another* 45 minute wait at the carousel.  We were at the airport for two hours before getting out–and so drove home at 1am.  (TLM was astonishingly patient and flexible through this whole thing.)
4. On Sunday, during A’s panel, TLM and I went to Orange for brunch.  He had jelly donut pancakes, and, as you’ll see here, watermelon juice: