Airport security rediculousness of the week:

My brother Jesse had a plane ticket friday morning to fly back to school from BWI through Pittsburg (eventually to Chicago I think). My grandfather died and his funeral was on thursday night in Pittsburg. So we tried to get the airline to let him simply pick up the second leg in Pittsburg, and considering it was a funeral and all thought that there would be some way to do this. After all, the airline is losing absolutely nothing by having him not sit in his seat from BWI to Pittsburg. However, we were informed that security regulations forbid them from changing anyone's itenerary once they've begun it (i.e. when he left from chicago to BWI in the first place) and that the bereavement exceptions had been gotten rid of. Now, perhaps I'm just missing something, but what on earth is so insecure about having him miss the first leg of his flight? What's the fear here? I don't understand why we consider security to be equivalent to inconvenience.

On the other hand, the brand new shiny international terminal at BWI is pretty cool. And my discovery of the week is that you can pronounce BWI not as B-W-I, but as "bweeeeee!"

Also airlines are not the only people who no longer make exceptions for bereavement. My grandmother and grandfather (the one who just died) had moved away from their home town near Pittsburg to an assisted living community several years ago. So they closed their account at their local bank at home. The funeral was near this bank and my grandmother needed some more cash and so she tried to go in to change her rolls of quarters into bills. The bank refused to do so because they did not have an account there. My mother explained to the teller that "[my grandmother] and her husband had an account at the bank for forty years and they were back in town for his funeral," but the teller still refused since it was possible that she had miscounted the quarters and the bank would be cheated out of a few cents since they couldn't take it out of their account.