In flight Dinner

We were served a lovely little dinner of pasta, potato salad and carrot cake.  The bread was something from ______ and I don’t want to go there again.  It was Rye (which I don’t mind) but it was moist and flat, completely un-leavened and cold!  All in all, I think it was great, except I can tell I’m going to need more Carafate on the trip than I thought.  I wonder what they have in Germany that is equal to that?

After Dinner we settled in.  There was a movie on, but I couldn’t get to my headphones easily.  Note to self…….practice pulling things out of your carry on bag with your eyes closed while sitting in one of your kitchen cupboards.  It’s like a sick game of twister!  The couple seated in front of us is nice, but are taking way too much of their purchased space on the plane.  The wife keeps having her husband adjust her 2 normal sized pillows from home, which are slipping through the side of the seat an invading 4 inches of my 8 inches of room.  I’ve politely asked her to move her pillow so I could adjust my tray, and she was resistant.  I really hoped she would notice it was shoved clear back into my space, but within about 20 seconds, she asked in a hurried voice, “are you done yet so I can put my pillow back?”  Oh well, hopefully she doesn’t have something awful since I’m going to be very close to her pillow for several hours.

After all the work to get out my head set, I got them plugged in and…….you guessed it, the movie was in GERMAN.  RATS!!!!  I flipped though the channels and settled on some soothing classical music.  Within a few minutes, I was in my own “LITTLE” world and sleeping……sort of.  I was surprised at what woke me up.  Sensing any shift in speed or attitude reminded my ears and stomach we were actually moving.  I slept on and off till about midnight (home time) and then got out the trusty iPad, played all my lives of candy crush and any  bingo game that didn’t require the internet.  Then I decided I could catch up on some conference talks.  The one that stood out to me was from L Tom Perry titled Obedience to the Law is Liberty.  I LOVED THAT TALK.  I got much more out of it studying it along with some of my original notes.  It was a good reminder that we are here to exercise our use of agency, and the choice is really ours.  How we act or react is completely up to us. 

The kiddos on the flight were all sound asleep until several hours later when the youngest (probably 6 months) woke up very unhappy.  Her poor mama.  After some soothing and help from the flight attendants, she was back asleep and the mom breathed a sigh of relief.  I got up to use the bathroom and was a little confused as the information on the door is in German and there were no pictures.  I finally just guess and sure enough it was the toilet.  I practiced a little German while I was in there; soap, flush etc. are all very important words. 

The sun came up early, and it was bright!  I was annoyed that while the majority of the plane was still asleep, passengers kept opening their shades.  It was like blinding someone at the movies with a mag light……..PLEASE PEOPLE!!!!  After a while I noticed that the cabin lights were being adjusted very slowly, and over about 30 minutes the lights were back up.  How nice of them not to just turn them on.  Can you imagine if they did that?

They started serving breakfast and I was really excited.  I could see the trays they were passing out and it looked delicious.  OOPS, forgot that the row in front of us turns from premium economy to just economy.  Our economy breakfast consisted of a very yummy hot roll, a meat and cheese slice and a small plate of fruit.  Luckily for me, it was all melon, so David wouldn’t eat it.  It was pretty good.  Maybe we will consider upgrading our meals for the flight home.  There are many who have and there is a stark difference!

The cabin TV’s show us on a map every so often.  We flew up over Canada and Greenland, over the ocean across Ireland and England and now we are almost in Germany.  It puts up our speed, altitude, temperature etc.  It’s pretty cool what technology can provide now a day.  Most of our flight has been at 36,000 feet and we go anywhere from 540-560 miles an hour.  The outside air temperature up here is stated to be -70 Fahrenheit.  No wonder the bags are cold when you pick them up.  We are scheduled to land in Frankfurt 90 minutes ahead of schedule and I’m grateful for a slightly shorter flight. 

Hopefully customs will go well and our bags will arrive and be in one piece. 

PS  I’m grateful that working 20 years of nights has prepared me so well for JET LAG.  You should see how bad the people look on the plane……..I wonder if that’s how I look after working????  But after just sitting here and catching multiple naps……I feel pretty darn good.