Not To Be Trusted With Knives

Random Thoughts on the Plane (From Many Days Ago, Which I Appear Not to Have Posted)

June 9, 2016 by Beth

I wrote this on the plane on June 3, when I had no Internets to post, totally thought I’d posted it the next day, but I just discovered that I did not, so I’m posting now (after adding in a few links).

• As I waited for the plane to get going (our pilot was late coming from his previous flight, so we boarded and then had to wait for like 20 minutes), I flipped through Facebook on my phone. Facebook has this thing now where they go “Hey, remember this thing that happened on this date in the past?” and then show you stuff you posted on this date over the years. The first thing it showed me was a posting I made cheering on the Canucks in the Stanley Cup finals in 2011 ((Not something I wanted to be reminded of, Facebook, given the spectacular game 7 loss and the ensuing riot and the fact that we didn’t even make the playoffs this year!)). That reminded me that just about 5 years ago I got on a plane to go to a family reunion in Ontario (as I was bitter about leaving Vancouver the day before game 7 (the trip had been booked long before I knew the Canucks would still be playing in June!), as I was sure they’d win the Cup and I’d miss the big party the city would have… oh how wrong I was on that!). That trip would be the second last time I saw my dad alive – and the last time I would see him before we found out that he had a massive brain tumour and needed surgery. It’s his birthday next week. I really miss him.
• I remember on that flight in 2011 that I sat next to a guy who was on his way to start his residency as an anesthesiologist – he told me that I had nice veins in my arm that looked like they’d be easy to get a needle in. June is that time of year – my friend Martha is soon to be moving to Winnipeg to start her residency as a pediatrician. I can’t imagine her telling a stranger on a plane that they have nice veins though!
• People always complain about being seated near crying babies on a plane. There’s a baby in the row ahead of me that’s crying and I don’t find it annoying at all. All I can think is “Poor baby! I bet his ears are hurting him and he doesn’t understand why and he doesn’t know how to fix it!” I find more grown ups on the plane way to be annoying. Especially the ones who try to cut into the lineup to get on the plane – get to the back of the line, lady!
• I really hope that the half hour delay in getting going doesn’t make me miss my connection in Toronto to St. John’s! [Spoiler alert: It didn’t]
• I mentioned the other day that I often choose new things to bake based on ingredients that I have and want to use up. Yesterday I choose something to bake based on an ingredient that I didn’t have. I wanted to bake something for my cat sitter – I figure that it’s the least I can do to thank the friend who is watching my babies for me! – and I was going to bake chocolate chip cookies because (a) really, who doesn’t like chocolate chip cookies? and (b) I needed something I could bake quickly and easily since I also had to pack and work on my conference presentations and organize my herb garden into my bathtub ((The plants were all in my office with door closed the previous day, because I needed to be abe to use my shower, but I didn’t want the poor kitties locked out of the office for the week I’m gone. My condo isn’t that big of a place for them to roam so I don’t like cutting off a whole room.)). But then I remembered I had run out of white sugar and I was too lazy to run to the store ((See previous list of other things I needed to do last night.)), so I googled around to find a recipe for easy cookies that don’t require white sugar and discovered that “brown sugar cookies” are a thing and I made them and they were delicious! Plus I get to add another new item to my list of “new things I baked in 2016“, which I wouldn’t have if I had just baked chocolate chip cookies.
• Speaking of chocolate chip cookies, have you seen this commercial?I freaking love that commercial.
• I’m glad I actually got done everything that I can possibly do on my workshop slides on the plane (to finish them off, I need a bit of time on the Internet and then I need to work with my co-presenter/sister, which I can do tomorrow when we are both in St. John’s), so now I can just write blog postings. I feel like I have a whole bunch of blog postings sitting in my brain that have been wanting to pour out, but I haven’t gotten to them because I’ve been too busy with so many other thing lately. [Spoiler alert: I did write some stuff
• The number of times I’ve thought “I should Google…” or “I should email…” or “I should do some other thing that requires the Internet” ((Like adding something to my Google calendar, adding something to my to do list on Trello, etc.)) on this flight before remembering that I’m too cheap to pay for the wifi is shocking. And I’ve only been out of range of the Internet for 2 hours so far. It really goes to show how integrated Internet access is with my daily life.
• Having an empty seat next to you on a flight might just be one of the greatest luxuries of modern life. My window seat is sans power outlet – but I’m plugged into the one in the vacant middle seat. The inhabitant of the aisle seat and I have an unspoken agreement to share the middle seat’s tray to store our drinks as we both are using our own trays for our laptops. This is living, people! This is living! [Spoiler alert: On my next flight, which was Toronto to St. John’s, I got an empty middle seat AGAIN. Truly, it was a miracle of epics proportions for this to happen on two flights in a row.]

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