There and Back Again.

The evening of December 22nd was the EchoXmas party and I stumbled home around 2:00am. (More on that shindig later.) I got up and started packing, shoving clothes and toys and goodies in 2 suitcases in plenty of time to get my Shinkansen to Tokyo. 3/4 of the way downtown, I asked the cabbie to turn around and head back to my apartment so I could retrieve my Shinkansen ticket. Not a very auspicious beginning to my 2-week Canadian sojourn. But after that, all went pretty much hitch-free. (OK, I was 4 hours early for my flight and dicked around the airport and almost missed my flight and had to run to the terminal and was the last person on board and everyone knew my name because they must have announced me several times. But other than that, no hitches.) So I got the last seat on the plane and lo & behold, I'm sitting next to the next female Sumo champ. 1/4 of my seat was taken up with her rather large caboose, we couldn't even put the arm-divider between us, it wouldn't fit. But she was a charming lass from Cape Breton and boyohboy did she know how to chat. She was quiet maybe a total of 1 hour out of the 13 hour flight. I learned all about her heritage, her upbringing, her tastes and distastes, her shoe size, her need to spawn and that Japanese men are not up to the task. I was my typically charming self and was very polite throughout the flight and, NO, I did not attempt to join the mile-high club with her to aid her in her spawning desire.

But I arrived in Toronto and was shortly met by my friend Phil and we went back to his place, my new home away from home. We the proceeded to get cheerily pissed together and I eventually fell asleep after being awake for about 4 hours in the last 36.

The back again portion of my Air Canada flight was much less eventful, a relatively peaceful trip. This flight was only half-full, yet, the sumo-queen was also on this flight, but fortunately she didn't sit next to me. The women who did sit next to me was an extremely gorgeous Japanese lass who works in Taiwan. Alas, she managed to sleep for 12/13 hours of the flight, so my time wasn't spent chatting.

I did get to see several movies and crappy CBC programming during my flights. I saw "My Super Ex-Girlfriend" (Pretty funny, mindless fluff), "Funny Face" (a Audrey Hepburn-Fred Astaire vehicle that had a great Gershwin tunes and a plot that is probably a precursor to "The Devil Wears Prada") and "Toy Story" en route and my mind draws a blank for the movies back! Part of the reason for the lack of memorability is Air Canada's policy of having a 6-inch TV for every 8 rows of passengers. Since I can't ever sleep on a flight, I like to watch movies and inevitably I always manage to get the headphones that only work intermittently. On the other hand, it's better than having to talk to Sumo-girl!