Neck pillow not included

A few months ago, I came across this blog post, in which the writer shared her secret for serene air travel: before flying, she downloaded white noise onto her iPod to help her fall asleep. I remember going home, thinking I'd do the same; however when I searched iTunes, I either couldn't find it or decided I didn't need it. In actuality, I probably remembered that I can rarely sleep on airplanes anyway unless I'm medicated, at which point the application wouldn't be necessary. (Perhaps that's how I ended up with Ellen DeGeneres' audio book, instead.)

(Which, by the way, I do not recommend you fall asleep to, as it is distractingly funny. I also don't really recommend it for air travel unless you know the person sitting next to you or don't get embarrassed by seemingly spontaneous outbursts of laughter.)

For reasons completely unrelated to air travel, I did ultimately end up downloading this Sleep Stream application to my iPhone. There is a free version which I tried, and liked so much that I ultimately splurged on the $2.99 "upgraded" app. The premium version offers about 20 different sounds (Breaking Waves, Mountain Winds, and yes, White Noise), plus different binary beats for sleep, focus, energize, etc. It even has a timer so that I don't waste my phone battery keeping the sounds playing all night, long after I've fallen into slumber.

Last night, I was alerted that there was a free upgrade available for installation. I downloaded it, then browsed through, trying to discern what was different. Basically, there were a few new sounds added to the roster, and which do you think I noticed?

Airplane Cabin.

Naturally, I clicked on it to see if it had recorded screaming babies and the persistent on/off "ping" of the seat-belt sign, but mostly, it was just a high-pitched hum that sounded like - you guessed it - white noise. So, now, even if I don't want white noise to help me fall asleep on a plane, I can have the noise of a plane help me fall asleep at home. Which is, quite frankly, the last thing I would ever associate with "restful".