Back Again

Well, here I am again! Back home in my beloved California at last. Not that I didn't find North Carolina quite charming, because I did. But it's just not the same.

The flight back was mostly uneventful. I say "mostly" because there was a brief moment of drama on the Atlanta-LAX leg of the trip when, during the takeoff, the luggage compartment right across the aisle from me snapped open and all of us passengers in the immediate vicinity stared at it and wondered what on earth to do. Shutting the door would mean (gasp) unfastening a seat belt and as anyone who flies knows, this is a big no-no when the captain has turned the "fasten seat belt" light on. On the other hand, another big no-no is an open overhead bin during takeoff or landing.

Hmmm. What to do, what to do...

The plane was picking up speed, and I was imagining the two rather large carry-ons inside the compartment falling out onto someone's head (like mine, maybe), and trying to figure out if I would get fined or arrested for getting up and closing it. I finally decided that I'd prefer to risk the fine instead of a concussion. I jumped up and slammed the door shut. No one said anything. Whew.

Unfortunately, my heroism was rendered totally pointless during landing, when two other overhead bins popped open before we even hit the runway. Thankfully nothing fell out of them, but honestly, that's just ridiculous. I felt at that point that I needed to let the flight attendants know what had happened, because maybe the plane needed to be inspected or something. So on the way out of the plane, I mentioned the two incidents to one of them.

"Oh yes," she said, "sometimes that happens because, you know, the plane is really long and it kind of bends as we take off and land." And she made bending motions with her hands. I stared at her.

"But isn't that dangerous?" I asked.

"Yes, it is, so thank you for telling us," she said.

Yeah, whatever. A total waste of time.

Anyway, since being back home I've done very little. Still recovering from a nasty cold or flu that set in just before I left for the east coast last week. I spent yesterday mostly in bed. But today I coaxed the cowgirl into helping me tackle a task that I've been avoiding for something like two years; namely, cleaning and organizing my desk.

It took us all day, but I can now see my desk again. Talk about a miracle.

It's amazing the things you can find when you start cleaning out a desk, by the way. For example, I stumbled across many tiny metal parts of things that I couldn't recognize. Does this happen to anyone else when they clean? What are these little metal parts? Where on earth do they come from? No one ever seems to know.

Then there was the second draft of my undergraduate honors thesis, a soporific work entitled "Spinoza's Hidden Dualism?: The Problem of the Nature of Reason in Spinoza's Ethics". If you're ever having trouble going to sleep at night, just let me know and I'll pop a copy of this paper over to you. You'll be zzzzz-ing in no time, trust me.

I also discovered a folder full of old stories and poems that I wrote when I was in elementary school, which I am keeping because someday when I am a rich and famous Pulitzer prize winner, I want people to know that once upon a time I wrote a poem about sharks that goes like this:

Sharks come in all sizes,
And different kinds as well.
There are great whites and makos,
I think sharks are swell.

And that's the least embarrassing in the file. Yowzas.

Probably not surprisingly, I also dug up one of the (several) offers for a chance to win a free pre-paid cremation that I've received in the past couple years. I'm trying not to notice that I keep getting these, because it's a little disconcerting, considering my present condition. But obviously, I'm noticing. And noticing. And noticing again.

Sigh.

Oh, and I found an old fortune cookie fortune. It says, "Look to the next month for some pleasant surprises." Well, that's a relief. I could definitely use some pleasant surprises for a change...