Call Me Doctor Jet-lag

So here I am, returned to Israel for a mere two weeks before I embark on yet another trip to good ole 'Merica and back again.  These trips are important - every blessed one of them thus far has involved some career-related advancements - but my body is taking a real beating.  I feel like one of those mushy, overripe pieces of fruit that you find at the bottom of your work satchel and you can't remember how long it's been down there (but you do know that that kind of fruit has loooong been out of season) and you wonder how it can remain a mostly-integrable object despite its deep bruising and squishiness.  That's me today. Just an enormous, sleepwalking mashed potato.

What's that you say? You'd like to see some statistics?  Since I'm having trouble focusing my incoherent brain on neo-Kantian philosophy of physics, I will oblige you with the math behind the travel madness.  Since October, then, here's what I've been up to:

Number of international flights (and counting...): 13

Number of flights exceeding 10 hours in length: 9

Number of flights exceeding 10 hours in length with > 1 screaming child: 8    
(This fact, I wager, would try even Jesus' temper.  Do they not believe in using freaking pacifiers in foreign countries? Because so far I've seen no evidence to the contrary.  I think I'm a good person.  I'm good people.  Usually.  I can be patient and understanding for a few hours of crying and noise.  But after that point, and especially when I have several days of back-to-back interviews, guest-teaching classes and giving intensive research lectures all for potentially lifelong jobs at the end of that flight, I do not have the patience or kindness of a mother - how can you expect that of everyone who is not?  I have been moments away from smacking complacent parents across the face on more than one occasion of late, and I am not sure I'm at all sorry about that. Judge me if you want - I don't care anymore, I really don't.)

Total number of flights (international + domestic) = 21

Number of airlines: 10

Number of international airlines: 5 (El Al, Royal Jordanian, Air Canada, Lufthansa, Transaero. For a minimal fee I am willing to provide the interested party with a list of airlines rated in order of spaciousness, cleanliness, food-consumable-ness, timeliness, and lack-of-rambunctious-businessmen-ness)

Number of emergency landings: 1

Number of airports: 11

Number of international airports: 4
Number of times setting off metal detectors at security: 0 (that's right, people.  It's not so hard to refrain from wearing bungles of metallic jewelry, thick-heeled boots, 5 layers of jackets or Texan-sized rodeo belt buckles when you fly.)

Number of flights during which the flight crew has asked over PA system whether or not "Anyone onboard was a doctor," and "If so, please make yourself known to the crew to help out with a situation": 3

Number of flights during which the flight crew has asked over PA system whether or not "Anyone onboard was a doctor" and I, with considerable self-restraint, withheld from answering "Yes!" followed by "Is it perchance an existential situation? Or, like, only a medical one?": 3  (be very proud of this accomplishment)

Total miles traveled (including road trips): 58,944
[which is comparable to ~  2.4 times circumnavigating the globe
                                 ~  4.5 times walking the length of the Great Wall of China
                                 ~ 13.8 times kayaking the full stretch of the Nile
                                 ~ 24 times road-tripping from Chicago to L.A. on Route 66
                                  ~ 1/4 the distance to the moon.  And NASA got people there and back using naught but slide-rulers (well, at first anyway.  Pretty sure they use computers now...)
The moral of this caveat is, as in most things, the following: NASA is cool.]  

Number of mileage programs in which I am enrolled: 0 (no single airline flies all the places I have needed to fly)

Percentage of those miles traveled with insufficient legroom for a person 6' in height: 92.9

That's all in 4.5 months, kids.  These statistics, I think, convey in part just how un-exotic and tiresome this kind of life can be.  There are serious costs, and these days I surely feel every mile of it deep in my bones.

But of course I should focus on the good things - of which there are uncountably many (darn you, jet-lag, for the unshakeable Eeyore-ish-ness you bring about in my countenance!).  So to get us all in a better mood,  here are some pictures I took of a concert the choir I sing in (Jerusalem Oratorio Chamber Choir) performed at the Mormon University near Mount of Olives last week.  Surely one of the most beautiful buildings - and greatest views of Jerusalem - I have yet seen, and designed by the uncle of one of our altos: 

The gardens were astounding - if only our concert had been earlier in the day I might have seen it all by the light of the sun!

On the positive side, we did get to begin our concert with a glorious sunset for our backdrop.  Not bad, Mormons -- not bad. I'll even forgive you the strictness with which you enforced your draconian dress policy (the women had to cover  all skin except hands and faces, lest the religious members of the audiences be scandalized by our -gasp! - ankles and elbows!)

View of the Old City from Mormon University on Mount Scopus - you can see the
Dome of the Rock if you look hard enough!

P.S. Dearest Grandparents: I live to drag my mushy self out of bed yet another day...