Fieldnotes.

LAX, noon.

Allowed myself to be rerouted (thus courting rebooking pitfalls) to gain a voucher for free travel on United anywhere in US in next year. All good until I went to check in at Air Canada for LAX -- YYZ flight and discovered that United agent in Santa Barbara had given me a TICKET but had not booked me on flight. Much Clucking and Blaming from an oddly eyebrowed agent later, I'm at the gate.

And puzzling. So now you can bring liquids and gels in your carryon if they are "less than 3 oz each" and all packed together in a quart-size ziplock see through bag.

I had a ziplock freezer bag that had in it an almost empty thing of toothpaste (normal size) and one TINY tube of prescription cold sore ointment. Nothing else.

The guy at the SB security said my ziplock bag was too big -- it needed to be QUART size and mine was GALLON size.

I'm canadian. I don't know from quarts and gallons. And I pointed out that the idea was that I could have that MUCh, right, not what size the BAG actually was, and said bag was actually ALMOST EMPTY, and wasn't the whole point of the bags so everything was in one place, which mine was?

No. My choices: dump toothpaste and $90 tube of zovirax; put shoes on, retrieve computer and go to back to gift shop and BUY A SANDWICH BAG.

Luckily, I had in my purse a small sandwich bag I had ibuprofen, dramamine and advil cold in.

So I shoved my toothpaste in that and he allowed me through.