How I spent my Christmas Vacation

written in journal on plane

4 hours 44 minutes until we land in London. 2,612 miles. I'm not tired, which isn't surprising considering it's not even midnight Chicago time, but it's 6:30 AM-ish in London and I'm fucked if I haven't slept. Ambivelant about spending quite this much time with the family. I love them, but they are crazy. My parents both get obscenely anxious on vacations. My dad becomes even more intense and type-A than usual while my mom simply won't exhale until we're home. She's also the queen of Jewish Mother Guilt--subtler than the average bear, but still it's a constant, "No, no, don't worry about me, do what you want, really, whatever makes the rest of the group happy." Then we're selfish ungrateful brats for never doing what she wants to do. My sister should be more of a fun travel peer than when we were younger. Mark doesn't want us ditching him for pubs, but I would like to go out with Lynn one night while we're abroad.

Airline lasagne is wreaking havvok or havoc or have-vuck on my tummy. I'm all crampy. This is why I shouldn't eat dairy, like, ever, but I do. It is too delicious. Damn you, cows.

This airplane is quite spiffy. Each seat has its own little tv with 10 channels playing 2 hour-ish cycles of movies and shows. The armrests contain remote controls for the tv, light, flight attendant call button, and the flip side of said remote is an AirFone with credit card swipey thing on the side, and if that weren't enough, the whole thing also has buttons so if you hold it horizontally it's a video game controller. Brilliant contraption, really, though I don't see any available video games.

Jesus. Fart burp fart fart cramp burp buzzy brain.

3 hours 33 minutes left. Odd I should flip back to the flight distance monitor thing right then. 1,886 miles. That's another option on the little tvs: our flight path with maps, times, miles, and temperatures of various shit. There are also a number of radio stations including a non-sucky classical station, an entire station of classic rock songs that in some way reference travel, and a ""nu jazz" station with both classic jazz greats and shitty awful smooth jazz assclowns.

We're apparently over the Atlantic Ocean south of Greenland, not that I can see outside. It's a two-aisle plane ((Boeing 777) and I'm on the inside of the middle chunk, though without a person in the seat to my right. AA's diagram here, my diagram:

posted by Jill @ Friday, December 23, 2005