Cream Cheese is Dangerous

I've been off-line for a while enjoying vacation in a house where the computer leaves and goes to work everyday. It was a bit frustrating at first, but actually being un-wired for ten days is probably good for your soul. Yesterday we flew home from the land of sun and arrived in the land of clouds, only there were no clouds. A nice welcome home.

Flying in, to, or from the United States means fun for the whole family lately. Between the plastic baggies for your 90ml or less of liquids or gels, taking off your shoes and hoping you're not wearing socks with holes, and the battle for storage space in a land where everyone seems determined to check no bags and carry the biggest carry-on possible, it's a hoot.

For our part, we try to make it as pleasant as possible. On our way to the airport we participated in the airport bagel ritual. The ritual is a stop at Breugger's for a dozen bagels, a tub of cream cheese, and coffee. After eating a couple in the shop including the incredibly messy and yummy cinnamon sugar bagel, we put a few bagels plus the remainder of the cream cheese in a backpack and headed to the airport. At the security check point, they stopped us to inspect said backpack. Turns out cream cheese is suspicious stuff. They tested it for nitrates (negative) and then threw the tub away. They confiscated our cream cheese.

This left us with the bagel-no-cream-cheese-dilemma. When we arrived at O'Hare, the situation became dire with a three hour lay-over and no alternative snacks. So, we did the only thing we could do. We found a shop that was selling bagels and explained to the girl at the counter that they had confiscated our bagels. She kindly gave us three little cream cheese containers, officially saving the day. The cream cheese we brought in was a forbidden substance. The cream cheese in individual serving size containers is free.

In the same bag as the bagel we had two plastic knives. They let us keep the knives.