Why does sleeping on an airplane suck?

Perhaps it was sleeping for three hours on the plane with a perpetual sunrise on the horizon and a perpetual crick in my neck or perhaps it was the hallucinogenic mushrooms in the late-night salad I ate at the airport in Montreal that has made this first day a might surreal. It’s not just driving on the wrong side of the road or being silently sneered at by the rest of the stiff-upper-lipped motorcoach passengers (“We haven’t seen each other in a year. It’s not just because we’re obnoxious Americans.” –Kris) or looking at sheep grazing on the side of a six lane highway. That’s just, “Hey, I’m not in America.” It’s also the enormous fog machine that whirred like a jet engine lodged directly in my cerebral cortex, apparently a special effect for the cinematic adaptation of one of Philip Pullman’s books. So they’ve lit up the Radcliffe Camera (which is a dome of some great import which I have yet to discover) but it’s too cold and windy to go outside and look at it, though, frankly, I would be very surprised if they didn’t light the thing on a regular basis (because isn’t that just what’s done with old buildings in quaint foreign towns?) and I would be equally surprised if Nicole Kidman and a tamarind monkey didn’t show up at breakfast tomorrow (which will, by the way, undoubtedly have heavy cream as a main ingredient). Furthermore, if the steps to my dorm don’t kill me (it’s like climbing the great pyramid at Teotihuacan. With luggage.) then the steps to Chrissy’s dorm room will because they are about two inches square and abutting each other at crazy angles. I’m pretty sure the steps to my room are from the thirteenth century, and the armoire is at least from the 1920s because it has drawers labeled “collars” and “handkerchiefs.” (None for ascots; I’ll have to improvise.)

But all in all, this little penthouse apartment affords lovely views of a quad on which people in suits played croquet in the few hours of sunshine we got today. There are flowers in the window boxes downstairs and huge peachy-orange roses growing on the rose bush. The lawn is cut in a precise crisscross pattern and everything feels delightfully historical.