The Weather Is Wonderful

hey kids.

happy belated thanksgiving to you all and welcome to december. i’m back in la after my extended trip to the east coast for some (extremely enjoyable) weddings in nyc and (also enjoyable) thanksgiving festivities in the f-l-a.

all in all good times. though, needless to say, the trips were not entirely without incident (i am really beginning to wonder if these things happen more often when i’m around, or if i’m just more prone to noticing).

anyways. the first such incident occurred on my flight from newark to ft. lauderdale shortly before thanksgiving. upon boarding the plane i noticed several passengers wearing surgical masks. now my initial thoughts were that these people were just germophobes and the notion of being trapped in a giant tomb of bacteria (an airplane) for several hours was too much to bear without the use of a filter (something which i could totally respect). however, this soon proved to be not entirely accurate, as shortly before departing the stewardess came over the intercom and spoke the following:

“good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, today several of our passengers onboard have an extremely severe allergy to peanuts and so we will only be able to serve potato chips or our dorito mix for snacking on, and we ask that if any passengers have packed a meal that may contain peanuts that you please refrain from eating it while onboard. we apologize for any inconvenience and should be on our way shortly. thank you.”

okay, first off, being that jetblue’s entire inflight meal service is built around the bring your own meal model this seems like information that might be worth mentioning to passengers before getting on to the plane. like, say, perhaps, in the terminal, when customers might (in theory) be deciding between buying a turkey sandwich or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to eat in an hour...or in the event that they had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with them they would have the time/ability to find an alternative/suitable substitute before boarding (no, i was not affected by either scenario — i had purchased a turkey sandwich in the first place. that said, i did consider the idea of making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich before leaving my parents' house only to decide in the end that i was too lazy to make a sandwich and would instead buy one once arriving at the airport. laziness 1 - frugality 0).

my point being i would have been (probably more than) slightly annoyed had i been stuck on a 3 hour flight with only potato chips and dorito mix as sustenance. however, my annoyance (probably) would have paled in comparison to someone who was dying from exposure to peanuts (i say probably because there's just no way of knowing how annoyed i would have been...a lot would have depended on how hungry i was).

so my next question is, if you have that great an allergy to peanuts (one that requires the use of surgical masks and pleas to fellow airline passengers to refrain from consuming peanuts or peanut based products less the particles become airborne and kill you in order to allow for group travel) don’t you think that perhaps you might want to rethink the method of transportation you're using in order to arrive at your holiday destination?

the next incident occurred the wednesday evening before thanksgiving. my family got some chinese food take in for dinner. upon finishing the meal i cracked open a fortune cookie and was graced with the following words of wisdom, “the weather is wonderful.”

what the fuck?

not only was this not a fortune, but it was patently false. it was really, really cold outside (esp. for south florida), and rainy. perhaps it was meant in a more metaphoric sense i.e. a gauge of my temperament. but again this would've been false, and nevermore so than after receiving a fortune stating the weather is wonderful.

the last thing that occurred happened on the flight back to los angeles. this one didn’t really affect me directly, but i think it deserves note nevertheless. in the middle of the flight the stewardess came over the intercom and asked for anyone on board who was a doctor or a physician to push their call button as there was a health emergency with one of the passengers.

generally speaking these words are probably the 2nd worst thing to hear from a stewardess in midflight (behind only, “if anyone on board is a pilot or has any flying experience please push the call button.”).

this is because health emergencies on long flights always raise the possibility of having to divert to another airport so that the sick person can be rushed to the hospital, or worse someone dying midflight and once again having to divert so that the dead body can be removed (and you thought being stuck onboard with the potential to breath in air circulating with peanut particles was hazardous to your health). thankfully, whatever the emergency was, we did not have to divert and therefore no serious delays occurred…though we did have to stay on the plane upon landing for several more minutes so that emt’s could get the sick person off first.

and that about sums up my last 3 weeks.