Like All the Great Airplane Disaster Movies

Somewhere just before we over the truly deep open water, the five year old across the aisle from me began to experience the joys of a tender stomach. Funny how well the sound of a five year old retching fills an airplane at 11:12 at night. He probably had the fish.

It was then that I realized I'd left my journal at home.

The trip was not going particularly well so far. On the way to the airport, someone wasn't thinking about how public transport tends to lurch and, so, grabbed the pull handle on my luggage to steady themselves. They broke it. There's not really an easy way to address this on the way to an airport: you can start to have the argument, but everyone knows you're on a deadline. And worse, they can always jump off with a shrug and a sorry at the next stop. What're you going to do? Miss your transatlantic flight?

Because of the drama at home, I was already operating from behind. I have two conferences to hit, and two presentations to give, plus a panel to moderate, and I've got very little done on most of that (okay, I've got a PowerPoint mostly put together for one of them).

Still, I'm here now, and it's much cooler than being back in my apartment, plus my family can't reach me except by e-mail (which I'll only have sporadically) for the better part of two weeks. It is, as they say, sweet bliss. Except of course for having forgotten my journal, being unable to actually pull my giant piece of luggage through one of the largest airports in the world, and having to listen to four hours of a five year old hollowing himself out into a bag at 37,000 feet.