Knocking on Wood: It's my air-o-plane

Our flights to and from our recent travels were not my favorite things. We flew out of Baltimore and the older woman sitting in the row behind me and L felt it necessary to hum randomly from the time she was seated until we were safely in the air. If she'd been humming an actual song, this might not have been so annoying because then at least I could sing along in my head, but I would equate this to a little kid humming away while coloring: no rhyme or reason to the tune, just something to do. This woman was definitely a nervous flyer and humming was her nervous tick. Once L and I focused in on the humming, we couldn't not hearing it. She finally put a cork in it when we were safely in the air and her husband told her we were safely on our way to heaven. That's the part that really had me wondering. To me, heaven means death. I found his wording very strange for someone who is clearly nervous about flying, but whatever. It silenced her, which was all L and I cared about.

Other than that, our flights to NO were just fine. We had a layover in Dallas and the flight from Dallas to NO was probably the best flight I've been on in a long time- super smooth take-off and landing and not one hint of turbulence the entire time.

Our flight from New Orleans to Dallas was mysteriously cancelled, so American put us on a flight that left 3 hours later. We were annoyed at first, but it gave us more time to gamble and as previously disclosed, L did very well, so we ended up happy about that. L, Nolly, Flad and I were hanging out in a bar at the airport and who did we see three seats down?

Yes, that would be Kyan from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. My picture is from a terrible angle, though, so you can't really tell. Here's Nolly's pic:

Better, right? Right. Anyway, we got seats in the bulk head row (loved the extra room!) but not together, so I got to sit in between two larger gentlemen, But they were very nice. After three months of reading (I wasn't terribly diligent), I finally finished Gone With the Wind on that flight and I was so sad for it to end. Yes, it's long (my copy is just shy of 1100 pages, but some copies have text that's laid out differently so they have fewer pages), but it is SO WORTH THE READ if you are ever looking for a good book.

The flight home... wow. L has priority status so we boarded with the special groups that get to board first and then waited for everyone else to take their seats. Then we hung out and waited. It was hot in Dallas that day and in an effort to keep the plane cool, all the shades were drawn. After waiting for a good 15 minutes for the plane to back out, the pilot announced that the crew that had flown in on the previous flight had had problems with the auto-pilot, so the computer was being replaced. We had the option to de-plane if we didn't think we'd be comfortable in the plane for an extended period of time without air conditioning (and he nicely informed us that he expected the interior temperature of plane to reach the 90s or possibly go as high as 100 degrees- awesome). So then we all start getting prepared to de-plane. And of course people can't be courteous about this. We were on row 10 and people from the back of the plane were barreling down the aisle like the plane was on fire. This gave us both a good idea of how people would behave if there was ever a real emergency on a plane. FYI- it'll be every man for himself. Don't wait for someone to let you out of your seat; apparently manners won't matter.

Anyway, the plane was finally repaired and cooled about 3 hours later. We re-boarded, and, just like before, we sat and waited for the plane to pull away from the terminal, and just like before, it didn't happen. Also just like before: the shades were still drawn shut to keep the internal temperature down. I'm not a bad flyer. A long, long time ago, I used to be mildly concerned about take-offs (I didn't understand how the back of the plane didn't slam into the ground), but I got over it several years ago. About 2-3 years ago, I discovered that what will make me lose it on a plane is if I'm on a plane too long and I can't see out a window. I have no idea what to call that. I've been on flights that I knew were close to landing and felt nauseous and light-headed for this very reason (we were sitting on a weird aisle that didn't have a window next to us). I've had a fainting issue since about second grade, but I can usually stop it from happening if I can get cold air, cold water, or lay down. I came very close to losing it as we sat there on this plane, just waiting to pull away from the gate (apparently our ground crew was off helping other flights because we were already supposed to be airborne). I definitely started imagining (hallucinating?) that the plane was pulling back, except it wasn't moving at all. And then once it was moving, I was very disoriented and couldn't tell if were going forward or backward. This is not a good, sane feeling. Luckily, ginger ale helped calm my stomach and made my head level out and the rest of the flight was very smooth.

We landed, took the Metro to Rosslyn, and then grabbed a cab for the rest of the way because we didn't care to wait 18 minutes for the next train. We got home and discovered that some kind of storm (described to us by our landlord as, "a strange weather phenomenon similar to a tornado, except not") had hit our street while we were gone. Our house was fine, just missing a couple shingles on one side of the roof (literally, just a couple) and a bush in the backyard was no more, but this is what the rest of the street looked like:

That's the house across the street from us. There were piles up and down the street in front of every. single. house. just like that.

Our next door neighbor's house. I have no idea how they got those tree trunk pieces to the street because they were HUGE. I'm guessing a crane or some sort of heavy machinery was involved.