Painfully Conscious

They served the mid-flight snack about an hour ago. That means we have still 6 hours flying time, to cover the remaining 3300 miles. Unfortunately, I've been awake for all but a couple hours of the trip so far. Each Ambien worked for an hour, at which point I woke right up. Maybe the generic is shit, maybe my body chemistry rejects anything that lets me relax. Wouldn't that just figure?

It looks like we're somewhere over Russia, probably Siberia, just having crossed the Laptev Sea. Our route was north over Canada, across the Arctic Circle, and now south across Russia to Chinese airspace. We took off about an hour late due to some nonsense about another airplane being in our way to get to the deicing pad. Eventually, they decided to deice us where we stood, at which point we rolled on over to the runway. This is a Boeing 777, which apparently requires a lot of weather to ground. I'll tell you, the 94000 pounds of thrust (tsk tsk) put out by each of the 2 engines is pretty damned impressive and substantially more than a 757 or 737.

How's the flight? Not too bad. I have a seat with about 5 feet of open space in front of it; so I'm not cramped in that way. The seats are still coach seats, almost forcing one to be intimately acquainted with one's neighbor. My vegan meals have been quite tolerable and cause me to be served first, with the other special meals.

I am going to try to get a couple hours of sleep now. I'm going to dinner with friends tonight. More later, possums.