Back on terra firma, I am once again in New Jersey. It was an excellent flight, except for two things. The first occurrence was that an elderly woman was taken ill on board the plane; I got up to use the toilets and saw three flight attendants kneeling around this woman as she was stretched out on the floor of the cabin; she was conscious but they were administering oxygen to her. The attendants did a great job of keeping it all very low-key and I think half the passengers had no idea there was any problem at all; they were extremely professional about it, there was no commotion whatsoever. When we landed they took the woman and her family off first and when I deboarded I saw the woman standing up talking to some medical people on the jetway, so it has a happy ending. Awful way to spend a flight, poor woman, but good to know there are people on board who are trained to handle it.
The other "thing" was the young couple seated next to me. Very nice people, friendly and quiet. The only thing was, they couldn't keep their LIPS off each other. He was constantly leaning over to kiss her and he was a loud "smacking" kind of kisser. So I spent 8 hours with that "smack, smack, smack" sound. I'm no prude but geez, get a room already!
For all the stories I've heard about security, immigration and customs, I must have really lucked out on this trip because both going and coming, not one person looked inside my purse or any of my luggage for anything. To be politically incorrect about it, I'm sure it has something (a lot?) to do with my being a white American woman; I'm not the "type" they're watching closely even though they always insist there is no racial profiling. So I pretty much breezed into France and then breezed back into America with no trouble. The longest wait I had was waiting for my luggage at baggage claim where it was practically the last off the conveyor belt.
After a nice long chatty drive home with my best friend, who picked me up at the airport, and later a family reunion dinner of pizza and Ladurée macarons (after which a lively political discussion ensued, me being the token non-Republican in the family, and the family wanting to know what people abroad say about our government and Americans in general), I finally crashed into bed at 8:30pm local time. I had essentially been awake for over 20 hours (I only doze lightly on the plane, I never really sleep, at least not in coach) and last night was NOT the night for me to be defending my anti-Bush administration point-of-view.
I woke up at 5am this morning but lolled in bed watching a movie to pass the time. Now I'm up and am going for a much needed haircut -- driving my very own CAR (no Métro where I live!) And then will go get some Christmas wrapping paper and generally get myself resettled so I can get some work done tomorrow.
The interesting thing is, my family all thought I looked thinner although I didn't think I had lost any weight, and might even have gained a pound or two. But my jeans have felt loose (these are the new size 16 DKNY's I bought before I went to Paris). So this morning I got on the scale and sure enough, I did gain about 2-2.5 pounds. But my body fat percentage dropped by a whopping 2.5%, something that hadn't happened even with all the weight I lost during the fall. No wonder my pants are fitting better!
So the walking in Paris did me good! Now I just have to stop eating macarons and hot chocolate when I'm there and let the built-in exercise of city living do its job.
