Wow. Am I ever tired.
Took a plane into Toronto from Edmonton, Alberta yesterday night. I had a wonderful weekend with Larissa and her sisters out west (wonderful for many reasons, some of which I’ll share soon, and some of which I’ll share later), and I’m paying the price for the lateness of our return flight and the time zone change this morning. But I’m getting ahead of myself. I wanted to talk about the the plane-ride home.
Our flight left Edmonton at about 3:30pm without any problems – The airport was not busy, we had no baggage to check (only carry-on), and the security staff were so nice that I’m surprised they didn’t ask me “Would you like fries with that?” on the way through. The only issue (before we boarded the plane) was the weight of my backpack (or “packsack”, as they supposedly say in northern Ontario, right Julie?). Why did my backpack weigh so much? I’m so glad you asked!
It weighed in at somewhere around 30 lbs, because I had made a wonderful discovery and purchase at a local Super Store in Edmonton. The discovery was a three volume set
of hardcover books, reproducing every single Calvin and Hobbes comic ever printed. It regularly costs about $200, but it was on sale for $120, and on TOP of that, there’s no sales tax in Alberta, making it a deal that I couldn’t pass up. This set of books, however, weighed almost 23 lbs and took up most of my entire backpack (which was my only piece of luggage).
Let me digress from this digression to interject this comment, before returning to the topic of the plane-ride home: Calvin and Hobbes is by far the best comic strip ever made; Not just because it was thoughtful and imaginative, not just because it was drawn with a level of artwork that exceeds anything else produced either before or after it, not just because it was created by a man of depth and intelligence, who refused to “sell out” his characters to corporate merchandising schemes, but mainly because it was actually funny, which is more than most comic strips can claim these days. Now, back to my earlier digression:
My backpack was easily 8 lbs over the legal limit for carry-on luggage, and I’m lucky that I don’t require intense chiropractic treatment and 3 months of physiotherapy to recover from slugging my Calvin and Hobbes books and dirty laundry on my back from the airport entrance to our boarding area. Back to the plane ride.
Larissa and I were lucky to have a row of 3 seats to ourselves – It’s always nice to have an extra seat for jackets or stretching, and to not have to step on a stranger’s foot while sticking your butt in their face as you try to get out to use the bathroom.
Not long after we were seated, we noticed a gentleman in his early 30s with a very “animated” personality, talking to some people a few rows in front of us. I guess he figured that seat numbers were fairly arbitrary, so he sat wherever he felt like, and the people he was talking to wanted to sit in their actual seat, which he was occupying.
What do you think happened? Did it turn into a fistfight? No. He moved to a different seat. And what seat did he move into? Was it the one beside Larissa and I? No! It was across the aisle from his previous seat. And what did I mean by “animated”? I meant drunk. But he could have been an idiot as well. He was either someone who acted like an idiot when he was drunk, or he was a drunken idiot. He also looked a lot like a younger Will Ferrell.
My point in bringing this up is that he eventually did move to a seat right behind us, so we got an earful of his drunken thoughts as he related them to the person sitting beside him. He punctuated each sentence with “Fuck!” – sometimes at the end of the sentence, sometimes at the start, and sometimes as a sort of comma in the middle of a sentence. He called the airline stewards “dude”, complained that he couldn’t get a beer during takeoff procedures, and went on and on about how scared he was of planes. I could tell he was nervous by the way he was stomping his foot on the floor and occasionally kicking Larissa’s seat.
When one of the stewards mentioned that he was from Italy, the drunken Will Ferrell look-alike asked him if he’d ever seen “those whores in the red-light district in Amsterdam”.
At one point, after drunk-guy had walked up and down the aisle a couple times, talking to people he may or may not have known, Larissa accidentally made eye-contact with him, which caused him to ask her “Hey there… come here often?” Larissa ignored him and pretended to be engaged in watching the movie (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), which was not hard to pull off, since she was wearing her in-flight headphones. I gripped her hand a little harder, and tried to figure out if I could take drunk-guy in a fight, if his drunkenness would help or hinder him, and how many of the other passengers would hold him down for me.
Eventually, one of the stewards somehow managed to get drunk-guy to settle down, and I believe he spent a good portion of the flight sitting in a special area at the back of the plane. He moved back up to his seat behind us during landing procedures, and actually helped me get my overweight luggage out of the overhead compartment as we were disembarking. What’s the moral to this story? Who knows. Something about not bothering people on airplanes, and how even drunken idiots are nice sometimes. But mainly that first part.
Larissa and I made it back to my apartment by midnight (consider that we had to get something to eat, and the two hour time zone change), with Calvin and Hobbes (and my back) intact. The real killer was getting Larissa up at 5:30 this morning (that’s 3:30am Edmonton-time) so that she could get to her apartment in St. Catharines in time to get ready for work.
That’s why I’m tired. And that was the point of this blog entry.
Here are some highlights of the past weekend. This list may be updated periodically, as I remember more things to add:
Most of this past weekend was spent in the company of Larissa’s niece and nephew, 
My car is in a ditch, and I have to be home in time to pack for a flight to Edmonton tonight. It’s not the absolute end of the world – my boss, Jeff, is on his way with his 4×4 
As an addendum to my previous post, I mentioned that I was fairly well bundled-up for work today. At one point, I had two neck-warmers on: One to cover my neck, and the other pulled up around my mouth, covering my face and nose up to my eyes. I thought I looked a bit like a ninja. At least I would, if I were Asian.
I have a hole in my work-pants. This is not unusual, since I’ve been wearing these pants every day to work for the past 4 years (with the exception of warm days, when I wear shorts). The hole is in the crotch area – Not out in front where anyone could see it, but at the very bottom where the seams all meet.
Ever since I was a kid, I have always wished that I had super powers of some sort. The only question was, exactly what kind of powers would I want to have? For a long time, my top choice was being able to shoot lightning, like the 
I stepped in someone’s homemade pond today. I was walking across their lawn to read their electric meter, and what looked like a pile of random leaves was actually a 1-foot deep hole filled with water. As soon as I realized that my left foot had left dry land, and was now being immersed, I pulled it out. Then I swore.
