Bouncing balls...
Colourful fun, courtesy of Eddy.
posted by Mary Celeste @ 10:43 pm
0 comments
Monday, December 19, 2005
Sunday, December 18, 2005
I am back, having survived the day of the devil
The day didn't start off too well. We'll ignore the Tim Rule for now and say that, since Midnight, Saturday was Saturday. Well, around Midnight, we were packing away those beer bottles from Nick's cabinet thing. Lotta work, somewhat somber mood in the room. And then we (Olli, Katie, Nick and I) sorta... sat around and talked. Olli went to sleep soon after the cleaning finished. So the three of us remaining folks sat around, talked, got our mind off of what the day really was. Waiting for the jokers to come back from the bop. First comes Sanjay, totally wasted, comes in and gives hugs. Then Amanda, Charlotte and Catherine come in and all hell breaks loose as Nick starts to break down. Managed to keep myself together. Rob comes in, too, after watching Pearl Harbour, and after some humourous ribbing about that music it gets all somber again as we bid him goodbye, too. People started trickling off to bed after that, but I stayed up and saw Katie and Nick off.
So I went to sleep at 4:30 AM, GMT. Not good. Woke up at 7, packed my computer, did a final run-through over my luggage, and lied there, on my packed bed, debating whether to sleep for another 15 mins or not. Ended up not. Walked downstairs and waited for the taxi.
Except it didn't come.
8:20 Olli grabbed a taxi and off we went, sans two of the people who were supposed to ride. Slept the entire ride. Got to Edinburgh Airport with 50 minutes left, and I squeaked through check-in and customs with 4 minutes before my gate close time. Except apparently this flight got delayed 20 minutes, making me go ARGH. But meh, that's fine, that just meant I had a buffer-zone of being late that I could have used if I needed. Slept through the entire one-hour flight.
Got to London Heathrow at 12:30 or so. Checked in, person forgot to give me my passport back (I was too sleepy to notice... but they sent someone else after me to give it back, so it's all good. First LHR bad luck, I got checked in by a guy who was more interesting in going on his break than making sure he gave me everything back). Took the terminal shuttle to terminal 4 (amidst the stench of gasoline that was giving me a migraine) and then wandered around the god-awfully large airport terminal until they announced the gate for my flight. I think that happened around 1:30. Plopped down in Gate 7 and sat there, listening to music, drinking vanilla coke and in general trying to stay awake. Didn't trust myself to wake up when the flight did roll about (3:05).
Except, come 3:05, it turns out that the captain for the flight was a fucking no-show. The hell? So they delayed it three hours for a 6:30 pm flight. Gave us eight-quid meal vouchers, but I'd have liked to get my sleep (and time) back. I literally wandered around and tried to sleep until like 4:30 or so, but I ended up just sitting in a chair and wandering around LHR until then. Shimmied on over to Garfunkles' and got a Spicy American Pizza and a bottle of sparkle water for the voucher plus 70p. Not a bad deal at all, especially because that pizza was mad good. American pizza-companies should learn from them.
Anyways, finished eating my "dinner" at 5pm, walked to Gate 7 and plopped down again, listening to music. Somehow managed to stare off into space for an hour without falling asleep, and we started boarding. Which got delayed because of a group of handicaps. Nothing against them, but the constant delays did start irritating a lot of the passengers, not just me. Furthermore, I'm operating on like four hours of sleep at this point, so not good.
Flight home itself wasn't too bad. Eight-hour flight, but I had an aisle seat, and my Dell DJ's long-ass battery life was a freakin' life-saver through the LHR experience as well as the flight home. The movies sucked, so I didn't watch them (War of the Worlds, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a football movie I don't recognize that had some big-name football player in it that I recognize but the name doesn't come to me, a movie that looked like a 3d-version of those old dinosaur kid movies, which I think was a trilogy), although the sports channel, with re-runs of the womens' world tennis championship of sorts and a commentary of the sailing FedCup did hold my attention for 30 minutes... there were two channels with TV shows (one was like a full Fox channel with House and Numbers and everything) and another with Cartoon Network, but all in all the map channel with the fluctuating arrival/speed numbers was more interesting. What drove me nuts was that I only could sleep for 3/4 hours, which is absurd, because I usually just get knocked out in airplanes (like that Edinburgh -> LHR flight), so there I was with four hours of sleep trying to get some damn sleep (it was a very quiet flight, too, so no excuses).
And then customs was like six rows long (of people) in terms of its line, and they only had two stations for about 10 minutes (they called in reinforcements). Gah.
Hellish day. But I managed to get through it in one piece. Very, very much appreciate my Dell DJ for that... although I wish I had put in newer music and had an assortment of all the artists I keep listening to rather than the random mishmash I put in in three months ago.
So I went to sleep at 4:30 AM, GMT. Not good. Woke up at 7, packed my computer, did a final run-through over my luggage, and lied there, on my packed bed, debating whether to sleep for another 15 mins or not. Ended up not. Walked downstairs and waited for the taxi.
Except it didn't come.
8:20 Olli grabbed a taxi and off we went, sans two of the people who were supposed to ride. Slept the entire ride. Got to Edinburgh Airport with 50 minutes left, and I squeaked through check-in and customs with 4 minutes before my gate close time. Except apparently this flight got delayed 20 minutes, making me go ARGH. But meh, that's fine, that just meant I had a buffer-zone of being late that I could have used if I needed. Slept through the entire one-hour flight.
Got to London Heathrow at 12:30 or so. Checked in, person forgot to give me my passport back (I was too sleepy to notice... but they sent someone else after me to give it back, so it's all good. First LHR bad luck, I got checked in by a guy who was more interesting in going on his break than making sure he gave me everything back). Took the terminal shuttle to terminal 4 (amidst the stench of gasoline that was giving me a migraine) and then wandered around the god-awfully large airport terminal until they announced the gate for my flight. I think that happened around 1:30. Plopped down in Gate 7 and sat there, listening to music, drinking vanilla coke and in general trying to stay awake. Didn't trust myself to wake up when the flight did roll about (3:05).
Except, come 3:05, it turns out that the captain for the flight was a fucking no-show. The hell? So they delayed it three hours for a 6:30 pm flight. Gave us eight-quid meal vouchers, but I'd have liked to get my sleep (and time) back. I literally wandered around and tried to sleep until like 4:30 or so, but I ended up just sitting in a chair and wandering around LHR until then. Shimmied on over to Garfunkles' and got a Spicy American Pizza and a bottle of sparkle water for the voucher plus 70p. Not a bad deal at all, especially because that pizza was mad good. American pizza-companies should learn from them.
Anyways, finished eating my "dinner" at 5pm, walked to Gate 7 and plopped down again, listening to music. Somehow managed to stare off into space for an hour without falling asleep, and we started boarding. Which got delayed because of a group of handicaps. Nothing against them, but the constant delays did start irritating a lot of the passengers, not just me. Furthermore, I'm operating on like four hours of sleep at this point, so not good.
Flight home itself wasn't too bad. Eight-hour flight, but I had an aisle seat, and my Dell DJ's long-ass battery life was a freakin' life-saver through the LHR experience as well as the flight home. The movies sucked, so I didn't watch them (War of the Worlds, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a football movie I don't recognize that had some big-name football player in it that I recognize but the name doesn't come to me, a movie that looked like a 3d-version of those old dinosaur kid movies, which I think was a trilogy), although the sports channel, with re-runs of the womens' world tennis championship of sorts and a commentary of the sailing FedCup did hold my attention for 30 minutes... there were two channels with TV shows (one was like a full Fox channel with House and Numbers and everything) and another with Cartoon Network, but all in all the map channel with the fluctuating arrival/speed numbers was more interesting. What drove me nuts was that I only could sleep for 3/4 hours, which is absurd, because I usually just get knocked out in airplanes (like that Edinburgh -> LHR flight), so there I was with four hours of sleep trying to get some damn sleep (it was a very quiet flight, too, so no excuses).
And then customs was like six rows long (of people) in terms of its line, and they only had two stations for about 10 minutes (they called in reinforcements). Gah.
Hellish day. But I managed to get through it in one piece. Very, very much appreciate my Dell DJ for that... although I wish I had put in newer music and had an assortment of all the artists I keep listening to rather than the random mishmash I put in in three months ago.
posted by Mary Celeste @ 6:37 am
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