Jet Lag

At this point, Dale and I had been awake for about 18 hours. 5:45am Salt Lake time wake up, to 3:00pm New York time (1:00pm SLC) landing, to 7:00am London landing (midnight SLC). I had tried to sleep on the plane, but thanks to the usual uncomfortable airport chairs and the very interesting games Delta also supplied to each passenger, I had only gotten about 75 minutes of REM before just trying to watch another movie. The games involved the woman behind me tapping the back of my head every 60 seconds--as that's where her touch screen was located--and the woman in front of me having manic fingernail tap sounds emitting from her touch screen for 30 second stretches every 2 minutes. It was an amazingly orchestrated situation. Even so, my exhaustion didn't hit me until our plane's wheels hit the ground. It was at that moment that the adrenaline produced by knowing that at any moment I was minutes away from plunging to my death stopped pumping and I finally felt like I could sleep through all the tapping my seat neighbors could produce.

Lana--Dale's sister--came to pick us up a bit tired herself. She had awoken at 5:30am her time to pick us up from the airport. It was just barely 1am my time, so I was still functional.

It was foggy and I was groggy, so my first exposure to London wasn't too exciting. Beautiful countryside, cars that drive like seats in a Disneyland ride, yellow liscence plates, some funny accents... I was ready to sleep.
By the time we got to my sister-in-law's home, there were still four hours left until church began, and at least two hours after that until I could go to sleep. I think I presented myself as a human being to my nieces and brother-in-law, even played some games before taking my second shower of this long day and feeling eerily like 'I shouldn't be doing this right now.'. Something inside my body was demanding it, but Dale insisted that if we just push through this first day with no sleep, it would make the rest of the week infinitely better.
Whoever thought up 2 pm Sacrament meeting should be shot.
I have never understood people who claim that they fall asleep at church. There is always something that an adult can focus on to keep interested. I remember a teenager talking of seminary, and a man who--strangely enough--had been introduced as the former bishop claiming he had calculated the length to our premortal existence to 13,000 years using verses from the book of Revelation. Other than that I had fallen asleep sitting up at least a dozen times. I had brought a blanket with me, as I had been shivering violently in my sleep-deprived state. My husband looked sincerely worried about me. This was my first experience staying up for 24 hours straight.
That night was 'Cake Fest,' a birthday party for my brother-in-law that was actually really fun! Lana had made four separate cakes from scratch--all gormet and exotic--and the guests were so friendly and jovial! At this point, I really wanted to stay up, but perhaps a bi-product of sleep-deprivation, perhaps a natural reaction to my drinking milk, perhaps my body trying to communicate with my mind in a way I couldn't ignore, but my body started producing noxious smelling gas which I could not contain within my person.
It was at this point that I exited the party and went to bed. 9 pm England time, 2 pm Salt Lake time, and 33 hours after I had woken up the previous morning.