Inception

Amazingly and surprisingly, one of the movies available on the flight from Heathrow to Houston was the fairly recent release, Inception. A reeeeealy weird mind warping movie. I didn't exactly follow 99% of it, but it was interesting -- something about being able to enter other people's dreams and implant an idea into their sub-conscious, and oh yeah (this is important) you can build anything for your dream world: houses, cities, whatever. You can create things from memories or imagination. And you can plan to have a dream within a dream, or even another level down, a dream within a dream, within a dream. Although, the deeper you go, the more unstable things are.

I mention this only because I think maybe this flight is in the middle of an Inception thingy.

Sitting in an isle seat, in the center section, there was an empty seat between me and the other isle seat of the three-seat section. A stewardess stopped by and said, there's an empty row behind you if you want more room. I thought "Great!" and moved back one row. While watching the movie I noticed that the people to the left and right of me also had a row to themselves. OK, that happens. Not too often, but not unheard of. I dozed off during the movie, but woke up (I think) in time to see the last half and the ending.

Later I got up to walk back to the lavatories, hoping they wouldn't all be occupied. That's when I realized the plane was nearly empty. Empty, at least, by any normal expectations. Other London flights I've been on were always stuffed full. I haven't been on a flight with this percentage of empty seats since flying on Southwest Airlines in the early 70s, when that airline first started flying and they were sending nearly empty flights to Austin and San Antonio several times a day.

Hey, it's a pretty nice way to wrap up a great two week visit to London with Robin.

Oops, gotta go. I think I just saw Leonardo DiCaprio and Ellen Little walking up the isle and now I have to figure out if they're in my dream or if I'm in theirs. We're over Nova Scotia and I've just got 4 hours and 45 minutes to figure it out. Aargh!