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shannon_aThen:
It feels like my knees are up at my throat, and I'm praying that the person in front of me doesn't lean his seat back, else he's likely to crack my kneecaps, break my MacBook Air, or both.
Meanwhile, the guy behind me is keeping up the monologue that he's been maintaining the whole trip from Oakland to Honolulu. Every once in a while his seating partner asks a question or makes a remark, and that's enough to send him off to the races again. He acts like he knows about everything, because he answers every question she asks for five long hours.
Meanwhile his wife is sitting across the aisle from him, even with me. Earlier in the flight she acknowledges that she never sits next to him on trips, and he laughingly says she might kill him if she did, then he launches off into some discussion of the relative prices of black tea and antiquities in the Pacific Rim.
I think the statement odd, but hours later I not only understand, but also agree.
The wife is coughing throughout the entire trip. Ahead of her another woman is full-out sneezing. Neither is very good about covering their mouths, though coughing-murder-wife remembers every once in a while.
I'm always befuddled by the huge amount of sickness on flights. I'd swear it's every third passenger (and they're all sitting next to me). It's like fliers are more likely to be sick than anyone else.
Then The Atlantic published an article on how toxoplasmosis bacteria can control your mind. So that's my new theory. Cold viruses control peoples' minds and encourage them to fly on planes.
And sit next to me.
Now:
We sit in church, and the seats are much more spacious and the company is less talkative and less sickly. Big improvements all around.
The service is all about the Lord's Supper, which is basically the Eucharist, which I had no idea it was a thing in non-Catholic churches. Except it's not communion because Pastor Larry is extremely clear that the whole body-and-blood-of-Christ thing is a metaphor. He uses the word metaphor several times, and he uses it correctly. And in the back of my mind I can here the criticism of churches that would claim it was transubstantiation instead.
Before he hands out the bread and wine, Pastor Larry has a big spiel about who should take the Eucharist, and it's obvious that I should not because I'm not a believer by his definition nor am I good with a church. I am simultaneously relieved that I don't need to partake in a ceremony that makes me uncomfortable, and uncomfortable because I now feel isolated from the rest of the congregation.
Because I'm ornery that way.
Afterward, I take communion of brownies instead.
On our way out, Pastor Larry massively impresses me by asking after Kimberly's eyes, which were an issue when we last saw him, two years ago.
Onward:
I buy a Pohaku T, I view Spouting Horn, I look at orchids at the Kiahuna Plantation, I am menaced by a cactus there, I swim at Poipu, I eat chocolate-and-marshmellow ice cream at Lappert's.
All of this has happened before and will happen again.
(Hopefully.)
My chronic problems are on the rise again today, particularly as I shift uncomfortably throughout the church service, but also late into the evening. A darned shame, but I do my best to ignore them.
It feels like my knees are up at my throat, and I'm praying that the person in front of me doesn't lean his seat back, else he's likely to crack my kneecaps, break my MacBook Air, or both.
Meanwhile, the guy behind me is keeping up the monologue that he's been maintaining the whole trip from Oakland to Honolulu. Every once in a while his seating partner asks a question or makes a remark, and that's enough to send him off to the races again. He acts like he knows about everything, because he answers every question she asks for five long hours.
Meanwhile his wife is sitting across the aisle from him, even with me. Earlier in the flight she acknowledges that she never sits next to him on trips, and he laughingly says she might kill him if she did, then he launches off into some discussion of the relative prices of black tea and antiquities in the Pacific Rim.
I think the statement odd, but hours later I not only understand, but also agree.
The wife is coughing throughout the entire trip. Ahead of her another woman is full-out sneezing. Neither is very good about covering their mouths, though coughing-murder-wife remembers every once in a while.
I'm always befuddled by the huge amount of sickness on flights. I'd swear it's every third passenger (and they're all sitting next to me). It's like fliers are more likely to be sick than anyone else.
Then The Atlantic published an article on how toxoplasmosis bacteria can control your mind. So that's my new theory. Cold viruses control peoples' minds and encourage them to fly on planes.
And sit next to me.
Now:
We sit in church, and the seats are much more spacious and the company is less talkative and less sickly. Big improvements all around.
The service is all about the Lord's Supper, which is basically the Eucharist, which I had no idea it was a thing in non-Catholic churches. Except it's not communion because Pastor Larry is extremely clear that the whole body-and-blood-of-Christ thing is a metaphor. He uses the word metaphor several times, and he uses it correctly. And in the back of my mind I can here the criticism of churches that would claim it was transubstantiation instead.
Before he hands out the bread and wine, Pastor Larry has a big spiel about who should take the Eucharist, and it's obvious that I should not because I'm not a believer by his definition nor am I good with a church. I am simultaneously relieved that I don't need to partake in a ceremony that makes me uncomfortable, and uncomfortable because I now feel isolated from the rest of the congregation.
Because I'm ornery that way.
Afterward, I take communion of brownies instead.
On our way out, Pastor Larry massively impresses me by asking after Kimberly's eyes, which were an issue when we last saw him, two years ago.
Onward:
I buy a Pohaku T, I view Spouting Horn, I look at orchids at the Kiahuna Plantation, I am menaced by a cactus there, I swim at Poipu, I eat chocolate-and-marshmellow ice cream at Lappert's.
All of this has happened before and will happen again.
(Hopefully.)
My chronic problems are on the rise again today, particularly as I shift uncomfortably throughout the church service, but also late into the evening. A darned shame, but I do my best to ignore them.