travel

Q: I'm going to L.A. next week for the first time. If I see a celebrity in a restaurant, is it OK to say hi? Can I ask for an autograph or photo?

Q: I fly for business much more than my boss does. Recently, we were on the same flight, and I got upgraded to first class because of my frequent-flier status. The next day, he told everyone what a miserable time he had in a middle seat in the back of the plane while I was "living it up in first class." Clearly, he expected me to offer him my seat. Should I have?

ABILENE, Kan. - The 1909 edition of the Abilene High School yearbook included a tradition of the age -- a class "prophecy," in which a member travels in time and writes of his classmates in years to come.

One classmate, in this prophecy, has made it to the very top.

"If Eisenhower is elected president this year, it will make his third term," the time traveler relates.

Along the Mason-Dixon Line, travelers can still see some of the gorgeous vistas Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon enjoyed in the 18th century.

At night, Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon studied the movement of stars and made endless, complex calculations. Their clever combination of astronomy and surveying resulted in the Mason-Dixon Line, a 325-mile border through the wilderness of West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware.

Q: I'm not a picky eater, but recently I was at a restaurant and my meal was inedible. There was way too much salt. I thought about sending it back, but it was a nice restaurant, and I didn't want to make a scene. When and how should you send food back?

Q: Recently, I've gotten quite overweight -- fitting into plane seats is now challenging. On my last flight, the guy next to me asked the flight attendant, loudly, what she was going to do about "This huge lady taking up half the space I paid for." They reseated him, but I was mortified. What can I do? Should I buy two seats?

Q: I need to take my 4-month-old baby on a cross-country flight to visit her grandparents. She'll undoubtedly cry, make bad smells, etc. What can I do to avoid the other passengers' wrath? Is it rude to even attempt this?

Big news about Orlando, Fla., theme parks, what with Disney in recent days announcing Star Tours updates and an expansion of Fantasyland, and Universal revealing that its theme park within a theme park, the enormous Wizarding World of Harry Potter, would open in spring 2010.

The old man appeared suddenly, strolling out of a line of terraced olive groves, answering our tentative chorus of "Buongiorno" with a rapid stream of Italian. Gesturing, cell phone in hand, he pointed up the path away from us to the coastal cliffs towering over the blue-green Mediterranean Sea.