Say hello wave goodbye...

So, it's now 7.32 on a Wednesday morning and my plane leaves in about 5 hours and 20 minutes. I haven't slept since Monday night, so hopefully the hideous Detroit-Tokyo leg of the journey will come and go without me being conscious for very much of it. I really do hate that part of the trip home- there's no personal TV, it's always a full flight (Narita is Nothwest's hub in Asia), and the lousy Northwest service gets progressively worse with every hour we gain in time zone... I came this close to taking two Nyquils with me to knock me out just in case sleep deprivation doesn't do it enough.

Anyways, a sneak into my satchel to see how I'm planning on surviving the 21 hour trip across the world:
1) A fully-charged iPod;
2) The latest TIME magazine (I can't seem to read books on the plane. Magazines work way better for me...);
3) Last Sunday's New York Times Magazine which I haven't finished reading;
4) My notebook;
5) A black pen for writing in my notebook;
6) Gum;
7) 13 final papers to grade. I have 25 students but with each of them submitting a 15-pager, only half could fit in my bag; the rest are going to be checked in. I told myself I'd try grading them now instead of sleeping so I won't have to worry about them when I get home, but as we all know, self-discipline is something Serene has very little of and even less control over;
8) A green pen for grading;
9) My water bottle. The one thing I compromise on plane rides (apart from my sanity and general good cheer) is coffee. I never drink coffee on the plane. We know that coffee on flights is not really coffee right? Think of the worst coffee you've ever tasted; now think of a distant cousin to that coffee; airline coffee is a sad excuse of that distant cousin. That's how bad I think it is. But more importantly, coffee really dries me up on plane rides and I get these really massive headaches. So I literally drown myself in water instead, and hence the water bottle.

So there, my modest survival kit. The next time I post, I will be on a tiny island nation two degrees north of the equator where playing "White Christmas" even in December makes about as much sense as the idea of good airplane coffee. Till later!