Day 1...in which Meryl Streep Saves the Day

I'm torn about where to start my trip report. Should I begin where it began....in Hawaii, or even Fort Worth and Los Angeles? Or since this blog is about Australia, should I skip all that and begin with the Australian stuff?

Well, it seems American Online has decided for me. For the first few days of our holiday, I took notes and emailed them to myself. Well, it seems that AOL deletes emails after a certain amount of time. Oops.

I can remember a bit of what happened. Maybe if I sit here with my sleep deprived brain, memories will come back to me.

I don't remember the flight to Los Angeles. I do remember the Los Angeles airport. Some of you might remember that I considered leaving the airport for our four hour layover. Well, most of you talked me out of that. The crazy thing is at LAX you can't even really leave your terminal! You have to go through security each time you want to go to a new terminal, and you need a boarding pass for that particular terminal to do that. We wanted to eat at California Pizza Kitchen, but we couldn't because it wasn't in our terminal. We WERE allowed to go to the international terminal. We walked there, struggling to find food that appealed to us.

We ended up with Sushi.

Jack had this sudden fear that we'd be fed Fugu (the infamous poison blowfish). Now, we're talking about a fast food airport place. I tried to convince him that that you have to specifically ORDER Fugu, and it's not served in casual places. He wanted me to ask them just to make sure. The idea of doing such a thing embarrassed me way too much and I somehow got my way out of that one (Begged? Threatened? Bribed? I forget which parenting technique I used). Anyway, we ate Sushi and did not die tragically in LAX.

Before dinner, we had spent some time in American Airline's airport club. I thought maybe I saw Oliver Platt. But it was a quick glance so I can't say for sure. I guess I could have looked back to verify. But I didn't want to be a gawker. Plus, it's more fun being able to say maybe I saw Oliver Platt than I thought I saw Oliver Platt, but when I looked again I realized I had been mistaken.





With maybe-celebrity-sitings, complaining together about LAX, and fearing Fugo poisoning; time went by pretty fast. The four hours were over before we knew it. We boarded our flight to Hawaii.

I think I had read the newest Alison Debois book on the way to LAX. I can't remember if I finished it on that flight or finished it on the flight to Hawaii. I think maybe on the flight to Hawaii, I started reading one of the Hazel Green books by Odo Hirsh. I didn't like it much at first. I was bored and getting antsy. The movie they were showing was Nights in Rodanthe. It didn't pike my interest enough to drag out my earphones. But I watched some of it as a silent film, trying to figure out what was happening. The end of the movie kind of got my interest though and I sort of wished I had watched.

By this time, it was dark, and I hate flying at night. Tim and Jack were both asleep. I closed my eyes, but couldn't manage to sleep. I was bored and lonely. I opened my eyes and looked up on the screen. There was something playing with Pierce Bronson. After they show movies, American Airlines will often show TV show stuff. Most of it doesn't interest me. And this looked pretty dumb. Some young woman talking to three men.

But then Meryl Streep appeared. I figured if Meryl Streep is in it, there's a good chance we have something valuable here. And THEN she started to sing! Mamma Mia! I had wanted to see that movie. And an Abba musical would be the perfect cure for the airplane blahs. But I didn't let myself get too excited. I figured maybe they were just showing a clip from the movie. I grabbed my headphones and hoped for the best.

It turned out it wasn't just a clip. The airplane was showing the whole movie! It was a wonderful surprise because the entertainment guide hadn't mentioned that they'd be showing it.

I was so happy and Mamma Mia became one of my secondary obsessions. Yeah. Don't worry. Australia is still number one.

The last two hours of the flight flew by very fast for me.

We landed in Honolulu. I've heard many times that Honolulu is a big city. It still managed to surprise me. I guess despite what I knew, I still expected it all to look like 50 First Dates.  It doesn't, at least not the parts we saw that night. It looks like Los Angeles in Lost. During the cab ride, I asked Tim if it reminded him of Lost. He said no. Later, I learned he was thinking I meant to island scenes. But almost ALL of Lost is filmed on Oahu...the Sydney scenes, the Korea scenes, the Middle Eastern scenes, the Los Angeles scenes, etc. The whole world is within Oahu.

We got to our hotel. Tim had interest in getting dinner, but I talked him out of it. It was late and I didn't want us sitting up waiting for our food to digest. I figured it would be better to get to bed early so we'd wake up early and have a full day in Hawaii.

Well, this is good. I remembered more than I expected.

What would our world be like if we

knew for sure there 

was life after death, and 

we could easily talk to our 

dearly-departed on the Internet?

The Dead are Online a novel by Dina Roberts