On a jet plane

The sky is a frosty bright blue today, and has been for a couple of days, amazingly enough. It is accompanied by plummeting temperatures, temperatures that, of course, drop below zero on the days I have a nasty stuffy head cold (still, I'll take sun over rain any day). When I say zero, I mean celcius, that being the only temperature I know how to convert from farenheit to celcius. All the rest are vague relative sort of calculations when I see the temperature displayed somewhere. "Oh, it's 6 degrees! That's...warmer than yesterday?" I say to myself.

When I look up into the sky this morning, I imagine myself in it, in a few hours. That is, in it in a plane. (I think I need to say the word "in" a few more times.) In a few hours I will be in the sky in a plane.

I tend to think about people in planes on any given day, though, not just the ones where I am going to be on board myself. Am I the only one? When I see planes slide across my window pane, I imagine those little tiny people who are really as big as me eating their peanuts and looking out their oval windows at the tiny postage stamp rooftops of Brussels. I wonder if they are wondering if anyone is thinking about them, because that's what I wonder when I am on a plane. I wonder if anyone looking from the windows down below are wondering about me, up above.

No matter how often I do it, and despite the obviously negative things about air travel, I always look forward to being on a plane, to being suspended in time and space, somewhere between here and there, between then and now. I've written about this before, so the two of you who are vaguely interested in what I'm saying can click here, a blog post from just over a year ago in which I wax poetic about flying and airports. (Here's the "I'm-thankful-for" part: today, it's for airplanes and airports and the thrill of going somewhere.)

So, we will be winging our way to Barcelona shortly. If any of the security people open our suitcases, they will find some pretty random and maybe vaguely worrisome items. Instead of clothes, I will be bringing a wig, gold chains (explanation here), black spider Halloween decorations, large paper pumpkins, orange candy, two loafs of pumpkin bread, and some little wire bird decorations that I promised to buy for our niece. In his carry-on, the mister is toting a kitchen lighting fixture.

We have a full weekend plan: just for starters, the Mister's father will be bringing us directly from the airport to no less than three different stores so that we can buy a bathroom mirror, bathroom lights and towel holders, and a shelving unit for the office. And then there's the party, and a planned excursion to the annual aplec ("gathering"?) at the tiny church where the Mister's parents were married, Sant Iscle. What I'm saying is that blog posting might be light. But I will be posting, by hook or by crook, because of the November blog posting challenge.

Happy weekend!