there's no place like...

Writing this in the plane - to be copier/coller'd later (full disclosure, quoi).

What is it with transports and having really icky flaky heads on seats in front of me this trip? I never told you guys about the guy in front of me on the way to Caen that first weekend. It's pretty hard to gross me out but after one glance at this guy's head (le pauvre - he must have had eczema or something - c'est pitoyable) and I have to close my eyes and turn the iPod on extra loud and force myself to sing along to distract myself. Anyway the guy here in the plane is not that bad but still...

Definitely on my way back to the U.S. The nice Air France/Delta flight that usually can be counted on to be almost luxurious, even in economy, BOTH ways, has let me down this year. Obviously AF decided just to let Delta deal with this particular flight - we have the smallest plane I've flown overseas since 1985 or so (2 seats on the sides, THREE in the middle [had to spell that out for effect] - it's pretty ridiculous).

The next part shows both how spoiled and addicted I've become re: visual media/stimuli. Since it's an older and smaller plane we don't get our little personal movie screens with the individualized channels; we have the (not-so-)old school big screen in front with the little ones hanging from the ceiling every so often. (On the bright side there were technical difficulties 15 minutes into a Paul Giamatti movie whose characters mumbled too much for me to be able to hear all the nitty gritty and now we're watching that Matt Damon/Emily Blunt movie - I missed the very beginning plus I'm old so I'm blanking on the title - which is turning out to be much better than the previews ever made me suspect; aside from being pretty good it has Terence Stamp and John Slattery, who has yet to realize he needs to marry me.)

Sidenote: a girl up ahead is wearing a purple béret.

Air France apparently did give Delta some food because the chicken dish we just had was ultra yummy (for airplane fare anyway). The things served with it were various degrees of icky-passable-ness, and nationalities. English cheddar (c-a-d almost white but so yummy - why do Americans make cheddar so orange? and don't get me started on Kraft mac and cheese), dreadful fruit salad (definitely American - when fruit has absolutely no flavor what does that mean nutrients-wise??) I seriously regret eating it... and ordering coffee when I KNEW it would be American-style, i.e. brown water and what little flavor was present was somewhere in between insupportably bitter and downright rancid.

So there. I'm going to pay attention to the movie now; promised myself I wouldn't sleep so that I can be on US time faster - the transition to FR time this year was much more work than usual and normally my US time change upon re-entry is even rougher.