tales from an 8 hour flight

keeping in mind, 8 hours is cake compared to the 15 hour hauls from HK to TO and back, but this 8 hour flight was in the middle of the day, meaning the kids were awake the whole time. i still have a twitch in my eye.

the first major bummer was realizing that there was nowhere for me to plug in my laptop (i've been spoiled by the higher-end airlines, this one was barebones.) it would have been mildly irritating if i'd been planning on watching a movie or playing games on my computer, but i was actually hoping to write. i actually had the desire and the inspiration to do some real work, and i spent the whole time frantically checking how much battery i had left.

i'm currently re-writing scenes from my ms based on the critiques of several betas (when three separate sources with very different backgrounds--both in their lives and in their writing experience-- point out the same flaws in your work, you should probably listen). i'm now trying to work on the scenes again, but it feels like 1 am and my mojo ran away... feh.

so not being able to write, i defaulted to the next obvious thing- knitting. this led to one of the nicest things about the trip. a woman sitting across the aisle from us started to chat with me about my knitting. she noticed that i knit continental (yarn in the left hand), while most knitters from TO, in her experience, knit english style (yarn in the right hand) (for the record, she's english but she knits continental, so the labels clearly don't count for much)(believe it or not, this was quite an interesting discussion. i know some of you won't believe it. you know who you are. you can shush). in any case, i got to chat about yarn and stuff with a total stranger, and she turned out to be quite lovely. she even engaged my five year old in conversation for the last half-hour or so of the flight, which was a relief to my husband and i, to say the least.

oh, and speaking of the five year old, apparently the novelty of air-travel hasn't worn off for him. he squeals like he's on a roller coaster every time we hit a bit of turbulence, he whoops excitedly when we start to land. add this to the incessant chatter, the fighting with his brother about whose magazine was whose (yeah, the crappy duty free catalogues are apparently very interesting to these children) and the occasional whines tantamount to 'are we there yet?'
this incited some dirty looks from people around us, and while i can't really blame them (hell, i was shooting dirty looks at him too) i couldn't help but think 'you people have to deal with this for 8 hours. this is my life'. i couldn't feel too sympathetic.

this has been an especially rambly and pointless post. i'm blaming the jet lag, yet again. someday i'll spend more than three weeks in the same timezone, and then i'll be unstoppable...