Vacation ramblings

I have no idea what time zone I'm in right now so I figured it would be a good opportunity to ramble.

I've flown more than 7500 miles the past week with another 3000 miles to go. On my return flight from Hawai'i, I rented a digE player from Alaska for $14 which kind sucks so I'm thinking about getting something that I could use to entertain myself while I fly. I'll be on the East Coast for the foreseeable future and will fly back to the West Coast at least once a year. I'm also close to Europe so I can hop over there as well.

I have trouble sleeping on the plane so I figured I'd like to watch movies. Some flights will have internet access so it would be good to be able to surf the web. I guess my choices are then some sort of tablet or a laptop. I've had my eye on a Macbook Air because they're wicked light and have a real keyboard, but they're more than $1k and don't have a DVD player. Even though I'm in a high tech field, I'm behind the times when it comes to this kind of stuff. How do people get movies on to their laptops or tablets? Do they buy them from iTunes or some other program? I just checked the iTunes site and it seems like you can rent movies there for roughly $4. Hmmm... I'd probably watch a couple of movies per trip so that would be $10. Worth it? Hard to say. I'll have to think about it some more.

It's really weird to be at my parents' house without Toby. I'm used to hearing his claws clicking on the wood floors as he investigates the activity. They're going to get another bichon later this month, but it won't be quite the same.