You know, just when you think you have it all figured out... the schedule gods go and muck everything up. With a flight to the East Coast set at 1:45, we thought it made good sense to have plenty of time to check in, go through security (with baggage including two laptops), and still have some clearance for catching my breath before the flight. But I didn't expect it would go so quickly! There was no line to check in, I whipped through security (only 3 ahead of me), and made it to the flight gate by 12:05, a full hour-plus before they begin boarding! I guess being too early is much preferred over being too late, but this is clearly not an exact science.

One upside to getting in early is finding a remote chair with easy access to power. That's a good thing. Let's hope that this kind of luck continues, in the unexpected chance one could find power plugs below the seat during the flight... but that's probably too much to ask for.

One of the first things I do every morning is pop open the laptop, check e-mail and catch up on news and anything I may have missed in the six or so hours I was asleep. I'm not as rigid as to have a set order of sites or time allotted to each, but the routine is fairly... routine. That's why when I woke up this morning and opened the laptop, only to learn there was no Web access, that was a little over the threshold for annoying.

Was it the Airport base station? Was it the cable modem? Was it the Comcast service itself causing the issue? Too many choices! Of course, I reset the base station. Nothing. I unplugged the cable from the base station and connected directly to the laptop. Nothing. I reset the cable modem. Nothing. I unplugged each and let sit for a while, and then plugged back in. Nothing. Grrr...

So I set back to my original spot and connected the laptop to power. I tried to ping Yahoo!. Nothing. A bit later I tried to ping Google... and after some delay it came through... slowly. But then it was as if everything else fired to life. Mail reported I had messages. WeatherPop kindly informed me it was 36 in Boston, where I'll be headed later. No good reason for the Internet being down, and no good reason for it coming back up. I hate that.

Tomorrow afternoon, we fly out to the East Coast to Boston for two days, and then on to New York. For some, that would mean tonight would feature mad scrambling and packing, tidying up, and checking of the Weather Channel multiple times an hour. For me, the sense of insecure panic hasn't taken over. It usually doesn't - at least unless I think I'm in danger of missing the flight (which usually means I'm only 20 minutes early). In fact, I don't even like to pack for a trip until the morning of, just so I can put that part of a trip off as long as possible.

Besides, the sooner I get the carry-on luggage out and start going through the closet for things, the dog tends to get suspicious, and from what I understand, she gets incredibly needy when I'm away. I don't know why that is particularly, especially as she lived here before I did, but that's what I've been told. The longer I can keep the fact I'm leaving a secret from her, the better off we'll all be.

Last year I tacked on more than 25,000 miles with United, flying out not only to Boston and New York, but to Orlando, Seattle, Chicago, Phoenix, Los Angeles, and Baltimore, to name a few places. Unfortunately, this week's trips are on American, and I don't have any kind of frequent traveler plan with those guys yet, so I'm basically screwed. That probably means I'll be in the middle seat of the middle row of the middle plane - and the cardboard I'll be passed as a substitute for food will have holes in it... and ... okay, I lied a little. I've already checked the weather, and it is going to be frickin' cold. We think it's cold here, just over 50 degrees, but Boston's a balmy 35 degrees now, on the way down to 28, and we don't get in until after 10 tomorrow night. Yuck. And no good excuses to go either. No Red Sox. No Fenway Park. Just business.

What's the difference between an occasional feature and a regular feature? Consistency. So here's the first of what I expect will be an irregularly occasional feature - Morning Notes, when things are too interesting to ignore, but time is limited.

Last night was the first night the NBA's made a good fight to stay relevant in the face of playoff football, and baseball's Hot Stove League. If I wasn't a half-hearted Sacramento Kings fan, one would hardly know the season was on, if we didn't have news of players entering the stands or demanding trades... but last night, rapist turned ballplayer Kobe Bryant put on a show, scoring 81 points, the second most in league history, behind only Wilt Chamberlain. On the same night, the Phoenix Suns and Seattle Supersonics combined for more than 300 points in a 152-149 double overtime thriller, capped by a 30-foot buzzer beater at the end of second overtime.

In non-sports news, rumors are still flying fast and thick about Disney buying Pixar, or was that Steve Jobs buying Disney? It's all so confusing! Oh yeah, and the Republicans keep proving themselves incapable of avoiding scandal. (here, here and here).

Enjoy!