February 21, 2006 - page 2

Returning home the next day, that whole jet lag thing… yeah it kicked my butt. Seriously. I thought I was going to conquer it like I conquered the 4th grade soccer tournament – Go Piranhas!  Boy was I wrong. It was more like the time in gym class when I wrestled Matt Cheatam.  A quick armpit to the face and I was a goner! I was so proud before the fact too, I had pretty much made a flow chart on the flight from the South Island to the North Island. I wrote the New Zealand times in one column, the LA times in the next, and the Home times in the last. I decided I would get to sleep based on the home time column, so I found the times I would want to get to bed if at home and stayed awake until that time.  And if that wasn't enough, and it wasn't, I even accounted for the films that would be showing on the flight. For example, Wallace and Grommit had two showings, one their full feature film and the other their 30-45 minute episode, The Wrong Trousers.  So I wrote in a new column with the times that these would be screened and made sure that my sleeping time would not cause me to miss them. Thankfully they only crossed into the Sleep Zone by thirty minutes and thus I was able to watch them and still maximize my getting-over-jet-lag...ness. 

Morning came and I was off the flight and thought I was great -- key word being thought.  And being up until three that night wasn’t the worst of it. No, I think I hit a home run, better yet, a grand slam when I fell asleep standing up at Home Depot with my mom and grandpa the next afternoon.