So, recently I was visiting with Russell and Karen Buchanan, the talented husband and wife team behind Buchanan Architecture. They’re located here in Dallas and they just moved into office space that they created when they repurposed a small mid-century modern building in what used to be a light industrial part of town.

Karen was giving me a tour of their new place.  We were talking about some of their projects, and she mentioned that they did an update of a Dallas landmark, the house designed by Edward Durell Stone.  The house is known to many around town as the Bob Crandall house.

Edward Durell Stone was the noted architect that designed the house in 1957.  He was the chief designer of Radio City Music Hall at Rockefeller Center, and his other famous works include the New York Museum of Modern Art, the first international modern building in New York, and the iconic General Motors Building in New York City.

Mr. Crandall is the former CEO of American Airlines, and he bought the house in the 1970s when American relocated to Dallas and lived there until he sold it a few years ago.

One of the most recognizable features of the house was in the indoor pool of water that surrounded the dining area.    Douglas Newby blogs about architecturally significant homes in Dallas:

This home has been the focus of world attention. Stone featured it, along with the New Delhi Embassy, on the cover of his book. The home has been the place of memorable parties and great civic events. Until the water around the floating dining room and swimming pool were filled in, guests routinely fell in. The home fell in great disrepair and was saved by the renovation of Jan and Robert Crandall.

Here’s how the house looked back when Mr. Crandall lived in it.

When the new owners bought the house they hired Russell to update it.   One of the things he did was restore the moat around the dining area.  Here’s how it looks today.

Russell received the National Trust for Historic Preservation Award in 2008 for the work he did on the house.  He certainly deserved it, the house looks amazing!

Boarding Area is being migrated, so no posts from me until Monday.  Comments won’t work until Sunday.   If you’re wondering what to do with all your extra time this weekend, go to Netflix, and click on the “House of Cards” graphic.  That will pretty much waste an entire day (sadly, I know this from experience)!

Have you seen these three American Airlines ‘commercials” featuring Guillermo the security guard from Jimmy Kimmel Live? They’re hilarious!

Flagship Check In

Here’s a video of Guillermo using American’s Flagship Check In at LAX

The new 777-300ER

In this ‘commercial’ he’s talking about American’s new 777-300ER having “a lot of great new features like universal outlets and USB ports at every Business Class seat”.

Lie Flat Seats

And here Guillermo brags that the new 777-300ER Business Class seat is “so cozy that I like to bring it with me wherever I go”.

Some final thoughts

Well, if 2012 was a flight, then this is the time to turn off all your electronic devices, to return your seat backs and tray tables are in their full upright position, and to make sure that your carry-on luggage is stowed in the overhead bins or underneath the seat in front of you.

Before we touch-down in the new year, I’d like to offers a few words of appreciation: thanks for taking the time to stop by and read the blog and for sharing your comments, thoughts, and tips.  I hope you have a happy and healthy New Year!

I’ve been in holiday mode since the end of last week, and unless American announces a new livery, you probably won’t hear from me much this week.

But, I didn’t want today to go by without offering you a holiday greeting.  Wherever you are and however you celebrate the season, I wish you the best!  I hope you’re having great time!

Here’s a fun video  of an American Airlines flight attendant delivering a special holiday style safety demonstration on a 2012 holiday season flight from Chicago to San Francisco.

It was uploaded to YouTube by FSProduction154 back in January.  I came across it several months ago and I’ve been saving it for today.  I thought you might like it.

The announcement starts about 1 minute and 57 seconds into the video.

Enjoy!

Merry Christmas!

“Ever since Man first observed the smooth, graceful soaring of a Boeing 707, he has had an unquenchable desire to fly.”

Hope you’re having a great Thanksgiving!

oneworld member airberlin has partnered with AirEvents, a company that organizes flights and tours for aviation enthusiasts, to offer a flight to the North Pole.  From the press release:

On 27th April 2013 it will be that time of year again: the “Deutsche Polarflug” (German Polar Flight) will take off at 8:00 a.m. on airberlin flight number AB1111 to fly to the North Pole.

It’s a 12 hour round-trip flight from Berlin onboard an Airbus A330-200.

During the flight, experts on the Arctic region will explain the special features of the Arctic landscape from the cockpit.

The airberlin long-haul Airbus will repeatedly descend from its cruising altitude during the journey, to give the passengers a better view of the snow-covered mountains, ice floes and fjords.

At the North Pole the Airbus A330-200 will circle the earth twice, by crossing all 360 lines of longitude in just a few minutes.

On the way back the aircraft will follow the rugged eastern coast of Greenland, and then fly over Iceland and Scotland to return to Berlin. During the flight the airberlin cabin crew will serve meals inspired by Nordic influence, which have been created especially for this expeditionary flight.

The cost is 499 euros (which is about $650 and still cheaper than an Arctic cruise), and even though you won’t earn any AAdvantage Miles, the flight is eligible to earn miles in airberlin’s topbonus frequent flyer program.

Though it seems like it would be a lot of fun to take the flight even if didn’t earn any miles (gasp!).

Go here to read all about it.

This is the weekend that fans from the University of Oklahoma and the University of Texas meet in Dallas for the annual Red River Rivalry football game.

(A little trivia: almost nobody actually refers to the game as the Red River Rivalry. The correct name is the OU-Texas game.)

It’s a really big deal: the city is awash in red and orange, stores decorate for the game, the restaurants fill up, hotel rooms become hard to find.  It’s almost like a holiday.

I’m part of the Oklahoma expat community here in Dallas, so this weekend I’m busy with the game and playing host to friends from the Motherland.

This means that there won’t be the usual AAdvantage or AA related post, and instead, I’m having a Reader Giveaway!

Here’s your chance to win an either an American Airlines or a Cathay Pacific amenity kit. The Cathay Pacific kit was donated by a generous reader (and UT Longhorn fan). Thanks Mike H!

I’m making it easy to win the American Airlines kit, all you have to do is guess who will win the football game: OU (likely) or Texas (yeah right).

• I’ll have a random drawing on Monday to pick a winner.
• You don’t have to guess the correct answer to win, all you have to do is leave a guess in the comments section.

To win the Cathay Pacific amenity kit, I’m making it a little more difficult:

• Place your guess with a winner  (just like above) and both teams’ score in the comments section.
• The closest to the actual score of the game wins.
• If we have a tie, whoever comes closest to guessing Oklahoma’s actual score, closest without going over, and then first received will be the tie breaking order.

The game will begin tomorrow (Saturday, October 13) at 11 AM Central, so you’ll have to enter by kickoff.  One entry per person.

Good luck and have a great weekend!

Go Sooners!

Photo: OU-Texas Game Day at the Cotton Bowl
Credit: cybertoad on Flickr

This isn’t an AAdvantage Miles or travel related post, but most of us that travel do it because we’re curious about other people and other places, so I thought I’d share a link to an interesting site about the North Korean tech industry.

I learned about it from a friend who lives and teaches in South Korea. He’s grew up in Dallas and came back for a few months to visit his family; while he was here we managed to get together on occasion for dinner.

Last week we were having a conversation about how they teach computer science in South Korea, native Asian programming languages, and Korean web design. He told me that he had learned that the North Korean text character set was designed so that the names of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il always display 20 percent larger than surronding text.

My question to my friend was “So are you working on a web project for the Dear Leader?” He laughed and then explained that he had read about it on a blog the covers the technology “industry” in North Korea.

Martyn Williams writes the North Korea Tech blog. Not all the topics are as geeky as North Korean text encoding, there are lots of interesting and less technical articles like this photo tour of a DPRK tablet PC “factory“.

I enjoyed Rapid Travel Chai’s travel posts about his trip to North Korea. Not sure that I’ll ever visit, but it’s seems such a strange and forbidding country that I’m kind of fascinated by the place.

Would you go if you had the chance?

This is unrelated to earning AAdvantage Miles, but I thought it was interesting and figured you would feel that way too.

Writer Scott Edelman came across this infographic, ““When We All Take to the Air: Post-War Propositions for Commercial Aeronautics”, in the July 7, 1917 edition of The Graphic.

Lord Montagu was an advocate for the development of both military and commercial aviation and was one of the founding members of the Aerial League of the British Empire when it was established in 1909.

It explains “Lord Montagu’s conception of the conditions to govern aerial traffic in the near future”.

Check out Scott Edelman’s blog for the full version.

A man traveling from Orlando to Indianapolis with a sealed jar containing his Grandfather’s cremated remains says that a TSA agent opened the container and spilled the ashes on the floor, and then laughed at the man after he scrambled to collect the remains.

According to the Indianapolis TV station that reported the story, TSA agents are not supposed to open human remains and are supposed to run them through the x-ray machine.

Read the rest of the story here.

This is a little off topic, but I’m traveling this weekend with my five year old nephew (just call me Uncle Points). We’ll be joining the family for a beach vacation.

His mom and dad are going out ahead of us to get things ready, to go to the grocery store, to buy some supplies. My nephew and I are flying out Monday to join them.

He and I have traveled together before, but always with his parents. This is our first time fly together without them.

Keeping him entertained in the air should be easy (it’s good to be alive in the age of iPad and Angry Birds), he enjoys riding in an airplane, and he’s a great litte traveler so everything should go pretty smoothly.

Of course, it never hurts to be prepared or to “know before you go”, so for this weekend’s Reader Giveaway, I’m asking for your tips.

Share you best advice for traveling with a child. And if you don’t have any, just make something up.

I’m giving away 1,000 Free AAdvantage Miles and this cool AAdvantage tin of airplane shaped paper clips – they have an unpainted metal finish, so they even look like AA planes! (Both items are courtesy of American Airlines – thanks AA!)

Just leave your advice in the comments section, I’ll have a random drawing on Monday. One entry per person. The deadline to enter is Sunday, June 10 at 11:59 PM Pacific Time.

Good luck and have a great weekend!