Vernacular

The brown girl is back from all her travels. And the reason you didn't hear from her sooner is because C, the slave driver, got her to "help" with his basement work. OK, this post is beginning to sound racist and even my not-so-strong conscience won't let this go. No no, a bunch of things have kept me occupied, the foremost of which is inertia. I seem to have given up regular blogging a while ago and I just couldn't get myself to get my laptop out after dinner, etc to write about something uninspired and uninformative. Not that such things bothered me when I was on the blog train.

Anyhoo, to start things off, here's something from recent history.

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It's 2:16 AM and I am eating a lemon-orange mini muffin that I am only minimally interested in. My right knee feels weird and I'm wondering if I am suffering anaphalactic shock and how one spells anaphalactic. This is what life has come to. Maybe I should back up a little.

I had planned things perfectly. Rescheduled my flight a day early to avoid the snow storm, arrived at the airport more than 3 hours ahead of time, had a healthy early dinner of a veggie sandwich. I was chilling listening to my music when I realized that one side of my throat felt like it was filling up and hurt. But then I saw Y(who I hadn't seen in ages) also waiting for a flight and we had a good quick-catch up session. After a couple of other distractions - and we know that for my ADD mind the world is full of them - I wasn't thinking about my throat anymore. Boarded the flight, settled down and we took off after 9:30 PM. I was pretty sleepy and figured that it was an auspicious start as I'd get to catch up on some sleep lost during the past 2 weeks. It seemed like right when I hit that sweet cusp of deep sleep, all the lights went on and there was a lady screaming "Chicken or Pasta?" every 3s. In between there were screams for "Red wine or White?". I ignored them, hoping she would move on quickly on noticing that I was trying to sleep. The screams continued but there was no rough shaking me awake, at least. I tried to reclaim lost ground but there was no going back. I moved around in the seat, fidgeted and kept trying to fall asleep - all in vain. Maybe I did fall asleep for short periods. At some point, in one of those periods, I saw the 100W light in my face and opened one eye to find an attendant pressing some button on my arm rest - I must have hit the wonderfully placed call button by mistake as I fidgeted. I mumbled "Sorry!".  I have no idea why he needed to turn on that darned big light when he had a perfectly capable super bright LED flashlight he was also shining in my face. Oh well. And then, the incident reoccurred about 4 times with a lady a couple of seats away from me and a guy in the row just ahead of me. Each time the bright lights. At this point, my throat started occupying my thoughts again. "Was there a kiwi in that veggie sandwich? Was I allergic to anything else? Is this an allergic reaction or just impending cold? How long does an allergic reaction last?" All the while trying to find a convenient position to fall asleep in. Finally I decided that it was probably close to arrival time in UK and it was 1:40 AM. What. The. Crap? WTC. We don't get there until like 3:30 or 4:00 AM! Being the rallying warrior that I am, I was about to reattempt sleep when I heard familiar screams and saw the lights come on again. This time it was "Coffee or Tea?" and "MUFFIN?". Now I know why I've never heard of British hospitality. Anyways, that's how I came to be eating a muffin at 2:15 AM and wondering about anaphalactic shock. 45 mins to landing says captain. And then ~4.5 hrs of layover before a 9.5 hour flight. This should be fun.

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And for those of you interested, it's anaphylactic.

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