Wait, we need step-by-step instructions for filling a spray bottle now? The people who designed the warning label for my hair dryer were right - we are a nation that can't find it's arse with both hands and a map.

At Thanksgiving, everyone had to take all electronic devices out of their bags (including DVD/MP3 players, which we'd never had to remove before), but not the cables. This happened at both National and Austin Bergstrom airports, so I figured it was a new "thing", but people who flew the same days at other airports didn't report it.

On the other hand, having just taken an X-Ray training, I sort of understand. EVERYTHING looks like a bomb. You go through their training packages, and you go, yeah, ok, that's a gun, that's an explosive, those are knives, that's stuff packed around an IED for shrapnel, that's an explosive wired to the handles of the briefcase, blah blah blah. Then you scan some actual packages that actually came in through UPS or whatever, and they look EXACTLY THE SAME. Since I'm pretty sure we're not receiving bombs in every package on a daily basis (the warehouse handles computer equipment, mostly), I've lost all faith in the ability of x-ray to protect us from anything. (Ok, maybe some guns, 'cause they're pretty distinctive, but at the rate they go, I'm not surprised they miss so many.)

My husband has intensely fond memories of these - his mom used to give them to him when he didn't want to eat whatever she'd made for dinner. (Space Food! It's nutritious!) He thought they weren't made any more, but I picked some up recently at the Nat'l Air & Space museum. Read the ingredients - it's a candy bar! (Actually, I think a Snickers might have more protein.)

This explains a lot about his eating habits, though.

I got one of these for a wedding present. It snapped the first time we used it. :( (For the record, snow was wet + heavy - great snowball snow, if you're actually making them yourself, not so great if you're trying to smush them with brittle plastic.)