My flight out of Louisville was delayed due to the apocalyptic weather in the Midwest. It was 95 and sunny in Louisville, so they decided that the shiny metal airplane with no AC was a good place to store about 100 people until it was ok for them to take off. I was scrunched between two complete strangers who smelled ok at the get-go but then got a little funky as time went by. Kitty-corner from me was a woman about my age. The steward had said hello to her special, mentioning that her mom asked him to keep a "special eye" on her. She didn't appear to have Down's Syndrome, but I figured she must have some sort of mental impairment. (I'm also ashamed to admit that I had earlier tagged her as retarded because she was wearing bright raspberry elastic waist pants. I know, I am not a good person. But I digress...)

There was no AC on the plane and it was about 120 degrees. There was a faint air recirculation system going on though; throw the blowers. The possibly mentally impaired woman kept patting the announcement speaker above her head. I reasoned that she was doing this because she was looking for some air. Her blowers were completely closed and no one was sitting next to her. The steward was no where to be seen (probably in the terminal were it was air conditioned).

So there I was, looking straight at someone who was in need, someone I should help. I knew that I should step over the man seated to my left and go talk to her. But what would I say? "Hi, would you like the fan turned on?" or "You must be really hot, want some air?".

What if she wasn't retarded though? How would I deal with that? Or worse, what if she yelled at me? She kept running her hand over the speaker. She was also fanning herself with the safety information. She was too hot, I knew that, anyone here would be too hot. And I was pretty sure that she did not know how to turn the blowers on. But how would she handle someone approaching her on the subject? I mean, she easily could have asked someone for help if she needed it.

I went back and forth over whether or not I should get up and help her or maybe she was just fine as she was or maybe she'd just yell at me and cause a big scene and I'd get kicked off the plane and I'd never see Leo again. This went on for over an hour. I was seriously conflicted. By the time we took off (and the AC turned on), I still hadn't decided what to do.

Leo took me to a new sushi restaurant downtown for dinner on Friday. The food was really excellent, they even had *real* wasabi. The service however, left a little to be desired. She forgot to order Leo's entree with the kitchen. That's a simple enough mistake, I guess, as most people don't order a full shrimp tempura dinner with a side of $50 worth of sushi. But that's Leo. And then we had this conversation:

Me: "How did this restaurant get it's name? Oslo is a pretty weird name choice for a sushi restaurant".

Waitress: "The owners just like how the word sounds. I think it means something in Scandinavian".

Me: "You mean Oslo, Norway?"

Waitress: "Uh, yeah. That's a city, right?" (I kid you not, this was our conversation)

Me: (wondering if this is some sort of candid camera type stunt) "Yeah....the capital."

OK, it's one thing for the waitress to not know that. But what about the owners? I mean, who in their right mind would name a sushi restaurant "Oslo"? Would they also name a taco joint "Mumbai"? And why do people who do not know that Oslo is the capital of Norway have enough money to start a restaurant? Would they know how to use the air blowers on an airplane?

I haven't cooked in weeks. So I went a little nuts this weekend. I cooked some ribs for 5 hours for dinner on Saturday. We had gone to Eastern Market Saturday morning and I bought some green tomatoes to fry up and some corn on the cob that I turned into a roasted red pepper and corn salad with cilantro and chipotles. Then I made some spaetzle last night with smoked duck breast, ramps and fiddlehead ferns. Leo made some shortcakes, so we had those with strawberries macerated with a little bit of balsamic vinegar and sugar and whipped cream of course. Tonight I have some lamb shanks, I'm thinking that I'll do something Persian with them.