Musings on CX889, JFK-YVR

Flying over the Rocky Mountains, I'm writing this in the fourth hour of a six-hour flight, so that's my excuse.

So here we are again, my fourth trip on CX889 from New York to Vancouver, but I've managed to spot new things on my walkabout. Making my way to the back of the plane, amidst the aisles of stocking feet sticking out, I noticed that the last five rows of the middle section narrow to three seats from four-wide. Is that so the carts can go up the aisle without trapping people who are waiting to use the toilets at the back?? I don't recall seeing this on any of the other wide-body aircraft -- that's five less paying passengers, after all. I usually avoid the trolley times, but often see people get pinned up against the bulkhead to wait for the meal/drinks service to be over, or try to delicately manoeuvre their way over bodies to the next aisle to get ahead of the trolley on the other side.

The flight is about two-thirds full, so people are spreading out to catch some shut-eye on this 6-hour journey. Most of them are probably on their way to Hong Kong, so there's another 9 or so hours of flying after Vancouver. People are tired, so under these circumstances I pose my next question:

Why is it whenever I use the toilet, the lid is up?? (It sounds like I'm fixated on toilets, but really, on a plane, this is a rather important device, in quantity and condition.)

OK, this is the thing: if the toilet lid is up, chances are, the last person who used it flushed it with the lid up. Ewwww!!!!! Don't, people!!! Put the lid down!!! First of all, people should do that, anyway, even at home. There's always a bit of splash, and especially those toilets made for the public that use enough water and force to run a dishwasher. Sure, airplane toilets use incredible suction and relatively little fluid, but still -- think of a higher concentration of bacteria beneath you, hurtling at high speed.

Some random thoughts and observations since New York:

I haven't had an interesting seatmate since the explosives expert on the way back from London in May.

I think I may have watched my first episode of "CSI", but I don't know for sure because I've never seen the show. I recognize some of the actors but have never seen a commercial for it, and I didn't watch the very beginning, and it didn't even identify the show in the closing credits. I thought it was an OK plot, but here's another random thought I had a very long time ago regarding the proliferation of criminal investigation shows: if you were an alien from outer space who landed on earth and immediately plunked yourself down in front of prime time TV, you would be very, very scared at how many people were getting murdered in the United States. It is a miracle the entire population isn't killed off yet.

Channel-surfing around the programs on my personal monitor, I think I may also have watched my first few frames of this show I'd heard of: "Scrubs" -- it looks like an irreverent ER. (I've never seen ER, but it's been on so long its existence is not lost on me.) The only reason I concluded it was "Scrubs" was because Sarah Chalke is on it. She's from Vancouver -- I saw her years ago when I attended a Canadian entertainment awards show at the Sinclair Centre, right around the end of her stint as the replacement blonde daughter on the Roseanne show. (Yeah, that's how long ago that was, I think it was 1999.)

I watched most of an episode of "60 Minutes". Is it just me, but do some of those old geezers like Andy Rooney look like they're going to live out their last days in the studio? Is that written into their contracts: "I'm not leaving the show unless it's in a coffin!"

Random, see?