I flew to the UK for the annual gathering of the clans (pictures of the trip can be viewed here).
When trying to decide what seats to select, I now use SeatGuru, which has excellent diagrams of all of the major airlines' planes, showing which seats are good, which seats are bad, which have laptop power etc. Since I have a 35 inch inside leg, I avoid some seats like the plague, especially those with limited recline capability.
On the way back from the UK, I checked in at Gatwick for the return AA flight. When you check in at the AA counter in Gatwick, there are no kiosks available (unlike at DFW or other US domestic locations). Instead, you are first interviewed by a person asking the full collection of baggage questions ("is this your bag?" "did you pack it?" "did anybody give you something to put in it?" etc. etc. ) and a collection of journey questions ("did your journey originate here?" "is Dallas your final destination?"). The screeners appeared to be using a laptop computer to provide the questions and record the answers. All of this was accompanied by the usual examination of passports, green cards etc.
The challenge with this process was that the number of screeners was insufficient to balance the number of checkin counter personnel. There were 3 AA checkin agents with around 1.5 persons' worth of work, and a very long checkin queue in front of the screeners. There were 3 screeners, but there were 5 screening stations. They should have upped the number of screen questioners.
I felt rather sorry for the guy standing next to me at the adjacent screening station. He was a US military contractor. The Q&A started off as follows:

Screener: Did your journey originate here?
Guy: No. Dubai
Screener: Was that the start point of your journey?
Guy: No.
Screener: What was the start point of your journey?
Guy: Baghdad.
Screener: OK...sir...now...

Needless to say, the guy was detained far longer than I was...he was 1 ahead of me in the queue, but when I went through the security screening, he was a long way behind me...
I made an interesting discovery during the screening question process. I was checking a bag, and intending to take my "office in a bag" and my travel guitar as carry-ons. The screener initially told me that I would have to check one of the bags. When I pointed out that AA had let me march them onto the plane in DFW a week or so earlier, he responded "unfortunately the UK is one of the countries that still strictly enforces carry-on limits". He also warned me that my "office in a bag" might fall foul of the carry-on size limit, to which I responded that I would simply scrunch it up to make it fit. Then he said..."is that a musical insrument?", referring to the travel guitar. When I confirmed that it was, he told me that musical instruments are exempted from the carry-on limit. So, I breezed through check-in, inspection and the departure gate with 2 bags.
I must remember to pack the cello next time...