5/25 - Day 1

For those who haven't heard, I've just started an exciting trip to Israel to visit the other employees at the company I work for (Seeking Alpha). I'm really looking forward to it and know it's going to be a wonderful life experience, as well as allowing me to actually see the people I work with on a daily basis in the flesh.

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Our trip started today with Monnie (and Howie) escorting Rob and I to the airport in Madison. Our flight out of Madison was delayed about 45 minutes but we had a cushion built in at Newark (better safe than sorry - we really didn't want to miss this connection!).

Shortly after arriving at Newark we heard an announcement for all passengers on flight 90 ("hey, that's us") to head to the gate right away for extra security screening. We were mid-discussion about how it was already 9PM and we hadn't eaten yet at the time... we probably should have thought "hey, we should get food quick and then go", but instead we erred on the safe-side at reported immediately. -- It turned out to just be an extra 1 minute of carry on searching, metal detecting, and rub downs (that must be why it costs $1300 to fly to Tel Aviv).

So, here we sit - the last time that I plan on taking the laptop out before Tel Aviv as it seems like it would just be way more hassle to take it out and use it than it's worth... oh, that reminds me - we found out when we got to Madison that we both had middle seats on this flight. I guess that extra email I sent to Continental to make sure that we were either together or both windows really paid off! The guy had told me that it was taken care of but apparently he meant "for the return flight".... oh well.

That's it for now. See you in Israel.