Positivity

Some good things about being back:

1. Being able to steal spoonfuls of vanilla Frosty from Rob.
2. Travis and Alias. And Victor Garber. And Ron Rifkin. And Kevin Weisman.
3. Ice cubes.
4. Thrift stores with Lauren.
5. Unlimited, uninterrupted wireless internet. Swoon.

Recap of my trip, anyone?

I kind of compromised on the sleeping thing and went to bed at 11:00 until Suzy came back at 2:30 and started packing, which reminded me that I still had a ton of stuff to put away. I did that until about 5:30, when I took a miserably short nap. After tying up every single loose end with the landlady who I am glad to be rid of, I then began the herculean task of not only getting three incredibly heavy, cumbersome suitcases down the stairs, but also putting them in motion to get all the way down to the Comedie. It was a somewhat creative endeavor, as I placed the ghetto Gambetta bag on top of my first huge suitcase, pushed them in front, and pulled my carry-on behind me. The Gambetta bag was so heavy that I actually saw my big suitcase start to buckle from the weight. There's this muscle group near my biceps that I had never used before that is still aching.

I saw both Steve and Mina at the airport, and found out that not only was Mina on the same flight as me to Paris, she was also on the same one to Philadelphia, coincidentally enough. I had the misfortune to get the cranky man on the baggage weigh-in who made me jettison about twenty pounds of books before he'd validate my carry-on.

I got the wing seat again (like always) so I had a perfect view of the baggage handlers. Note the red suitcase on the far left? That's mine. You can't tell how enormous it is because it's dwarfed by Mina's, the blue one behind it. Hers made mine look like a wheelie backpack.

You know how I always end up sitting next to an old person or a crying child? This flight was no exception. Crying child. He was cute, I suppose, but not when his ears hurt and he is shrieking unstoppably with pain. I was pleased when we landed.

We reached our terminal without incident, and were impressed by the stylish bathrooms.







True to form, the Paul bakery was marked up about a billion percent. Notice that apple pastry in the top right? That costs about four dollars. Sheesh. Mina got one of the salami sandwiches.


Fortune smiled upon me for putting up with that kid and I was rewarded with a ton of empty seats in the surrounding areas. For once, I was stuck in the middle section, but with no one on either side. There was some weird lady who kept talking to herself at the end of the row, but that was it.

Mina didn't have the luxury of all that space to stretch out in.






That geotravel screen is an addictive monster. There were about six hours where we saw nothing but the Atlantic Ocean and Greenland, but you had to keep checking with a compulsion every ten minutes or so just to make sure that the plane was still in the middle of nowhere.


What service! The flight attendants came around within twenty minutes of takeoff asking whether we wanted a refreshing beverage. I picked the wine since I couldn't find my nite-time softgels and really wanted to sleep. It even came with a packet of salted aperatif crackers. Classy.


I really want to write a complimentary letter to Air France admiring their meal services. What was included? For starters, a Tomato tarte Tatin and breadstick, then as a main course you had the option of chicken filets or salmon ravioli Florentine, which I chose. Then, a wedge of Camembert cheese, a Madeleine, and for desert, farmer's cheese entremets with mango. Delicious. The ravioli is looking a little green here but it was wonderful. I even got another bottle of wine. The flight attendants were probably talking about cutting me off.

We had a large selection of movies to choose from, and I picked Music and Lyrics which I liked well enough except for Drew Barrymore who overacted. Hugh Grant was superb, as always.

What do you do after the movie is over and the wine hasn't put you to sleep? Play lame in-flight games, of course. It was a matching game and for the life of me I couldn't get a lower score than 27.


You may think this is nothing more than a remote for the TV, but really it's an Enhanced Passenger Control Unit, or EPCU. At least that's what it said on the back. I liked the enhanced control.






The wine did nothing except make me have to pee a lot. Notice the incongruity here: a ton of no smoking signs, and then ... an ashtray built into the wall next to the toilet.






A couple hours later, we got yet another tiny meal, surprise! This was more like breakfast fare, with cups of yogurt and orange juice, a sandwichy slice, and a package of cookies. I chose Coca Light as my beverage because I didn't want to be gossiped about behind the curtain.

Here's an aeriel view right before I got another ... Ariel view (aha, aha, lame). Ariel and Alain (I always thought that it was weird that him and his brother have almost identical names to Arienne and I) had been waiting at the airport forever since the arrivals screen hadn't listed my flight as being late even though we got there forty minutes after the scheduled landing time. Luckily we found each other and hung out for a good while since my flight to Pittsburgh also ended up being delayed.


At first, it just said that we would have a 7:45 takeoff rather than 6:30. Lame, but not disastrous. What is disastrous? Taking off at 9:50 rather than 6:30. Yep. It was agonizingly boring. Apparently, the plane that we would be taking hadn't even radioed in yet from Houston, let alone unboarded. Then, all of our suitcases were taken to the wrong terminal, so we just sat on the plane. I had this annoying, annoying man behind me who would not stop talking. It would have been funny if I hadn't been awake for so long. Eventually, the nice old lady in the next seat turned towards me and rolled her eyes in irritation.

I put my iPod on to drown him out more than anything else and promptly fell asleep for the entirety of the trip, which was only forty-five minutes or so. When I woke up again, we were pretty close to landing so I took a picture, which encouraged Talky Man to joke "hey, no electronic devices allowed, I'm going to tell!" in a horrible singsongy voice. I wanted to turn around and yell, 'shut up! shut up! Stop talking! You're a grown man! I want to bludgeon you with my camera!'. But at that point I was so weary I just ignored him.