Interesting First day.

After a teary goodbye to my children on the 13th, of course I had to catch my flight. It was very eventful, and really cast a shadow on this deployment, but I won't get into that.

I was trying to sleep on the plane, after only about an hours sleep the night before, I wasn't having the easiest time of it as my ears kept popping and popping. I regretted putting the gum my children gave me as part of a going away present in my carry-on bag instead of my pocket, because everyone knows chewing gum helps to alleviate ear pops on a plane. Anyway, I was dozing in and out when a very non-ear related pop startled me awake. I open my eyes to see the oxygen masks had all dropped down. Fortunately no one panicked, but I'm sure it was probably comical to an outsider, as everyone was looking around at everyone else, very wide-eyed. After several minutes of silence the flight attendant asked us all to don the masks. I realized, as several other passengers did, that we don't pay as much attention to the safety briefings as we should, as many of us had difficulty in getting the dumb thing to stay put. Shortly after putting the mask on, the plane did a fairly sharp nose dive! As you can imagine more wide-eyed looks, and still nothing from the cockpit as to what the problem was. Eventually the plane leveled out and the pilot finally announced we could remove the masks and explained that there was a malfunction with the pressurization system. He dropped the plane to a lower altitude the equalize the pressure. The picture is what it looks like on a plane with those silly yellow cups. Oh and I did note, my bag did in fact, inflate with the air flowing through it.