Outbound

American Airlines, Flight 169. It's a brand new Boeing 777 and still smells good. The seats are larger, too. There are nine seats in a row where there are normally ten, though you can tell by the cabin dividers that the aircraft itself is being made for the old ten-in-a-row configuration. Thank you, American Airlines!

The bummer is no free booze and Barbie doll-sized meals. Funny how the meal sizes on flights have shrunk in reverse proportion to restaurant meals. Domestic flights no longer serve (free) meals and their boxed offerings are horrible, chemical laden atrocities that I would only eat on Day 3 of stranded starvation after a plane wreck. (That's probably the WORST time to eat something like that, too!) I took a plastic bag of apples and pears and ate them all. The lady across the aisle had something that looked like a kind of yogurt drink. How she was able to smuggle that in, I don't know, but shame on the security staff at LAX! It could have been poison gas!

I decided to let them take away my plastic or Styrofoam cup after each serving. Normally, I have to insist on reusing it and then hear flight attendants say, in the patronizing way of day care staff and nurses, "It's okay, hon, we'll bring you a fresh cup" and then you have to start arguing about the atrocious amount of trash generated with every flight. As if the fuel consumption weren't bad enough. But this time, I was too tired and decided early in the flight that I'm just not going to push it this time. I found that I could actually push aside thoughts of ecological disaster and just chill out, but then, I started feeling guilty that I was such a wimp. Big Dog is never weak that way. He'll stand up for what he believes is right. I back down too easily because most things aren't worth the aggravation. I seem to be super sensitive to aggravation these days. It makes my stomach ache.

Will there be much aggravation at the end of this flight? We'll see.