On Travel

(Wrote this one on the plane yesterday. Looking back, I was extremely irritable right then.)

It’s interesting how just about everything seems worse when on a plane.
For those of you who haven’t been, you’re not missing anything. Trust me; you do not miss the seats that make your butt hurt, the wonderful odors of your neighbor, the constant jostling of your seat from the person behind you, the inconvenience of getting out of your seat, the barely noticeable, but constant physical discomfort either in the form of a headache or stomachache, the food I’m still too dumb not to eat, or the inability to actually focus on anything other than languishing in your predicament.
On the plus side, the chess program on the doohickey in front of me is pretty dumb. It’s the first time I’ve ever beat a computer on the hardest difficulty setting. Then again, that was only satisfying for about a moment. Now I wish it was a challenge. Put that in the right-hand column as well.
One particular conundrum I’ve found is the sleeping situation. As you likely know, one of the best ways to avoid the pains of flying is just to spend all of it in a fantasy land. In their kindness, the airlines give you pillows. Unfortunately, the seat already is designed to be flat, and therefore, as comfortable, in shape, as possible (though by no means actually comfortable). If you stick the pillow behind your head, the rest of your body is left unable to reach the back of your seat. You just kind of feel like your leaning forward. And don’t even think about sleeping on your side. I imagine that’s damn awkward for the person next to you. Hope for a window seat.

So I stayed up until we had to leave last night, in an attempt to get a jump on jet lag. Thanks to Mr. Foster, I had Call of Duty to entertain, which I did manage to beat before leaving. I did make the mistake of playing on the most difficult, uh, difficulty setting. For those of you who don’t know (which I really hope is the majority, or you’re a bigger loser than I thought), in CoD, the hardest difficulty is realistic, ie you can get hit about… twice before you go down, healing only between levels. Yup. Lots of saving my game, lots of reloading.

More to come when stuff actually happens.