Chris Hansen’s blog

We had a lovely dinner on Wednesday night–ham with raisin and pineapple glaze, potatoes, squash, carrots, homemade biscuits (American biscuits, of course), and ice cream to end. Thanks to my sister and uncle, we ate very well.

I managed to check in on Wednesday morning at 8:15 am, exactly 24 hours before the flight was scheduled to leave, and again got a front seat in cattle class, this time the “window” seat (there’s no window on that row). Printed out my boarding pass as well. When it works, this online check-in works well.

I packed on Wednesday afternoon and evening: I managed to get everything into the suitcase yet again. Vans sneakers/trainers, Lever 2000 soap and some Neutrogena products (for ), two iPods for me and HWMBO, some clothing, a gift from my brother’s girlfriend, my Masonic regalia, and so on and so forth. Then I turned in, after setting four alarms for 4:45 am, which was the time I had to get up, get washed and dressed, and set off for the airport.

At 3:20 am my cellphone (one of the four alarms) rang. I got up, turned on the light, and it was a friend texting me to see if I’d be around Thursday night. I was a bit annoyed, and didn’t respond. Of course, I couldn’t sleep either.

Got up and turned off the four alarms at 4:45 am. My sister’s friend Linda came to pick me up (bless you, Linda!) and we got to Logan in plenty of time. The Fast Drop Off line was still not that fast (because of a family with a very large number of members and suitcases to check) but was faster than Heathrow. I was starting to get a bit nervous about the fog situation at Heathrow, but no one said anything about the flight being delayed or cancelled, so I didn’t worry too much.

Security was a breeze, relatively speaking (one blessing of early flights is that security usually isn’t too crowded). The flight took off on time, and we got to Heathrow just a few minutes delayed. The cabin crew told us that there had been one moment when we might have been diverted to Glasgow, but blessedly, that didn’t happen. Of course, that meant that our luggage was delayed as the ground crew weren’t prepared for our arrival. Got through Immigration and Customs, and got on the Heathrow Express. There were “kids playing on the line” ahead, which meant that the train crawled out of the station and took 1/2 hour to get to Paddington rather than 15 minutes. Ho-hum and Rats! Taxi to the Elephant. I managed to unpack everything before falling into bed.

HWMBO has an 80GB iPod, and I got a 4 GB Nano (as my requirements are few). I decided that since the menu system on the Zen Neeon was so flaky, there was no point in using it anymore. However, discovering that you can’t normally have two iPods on one computer was traumatic, and getting used to iTunes on our iMac was even worse. But, eventually, we got there. The sound is really good, and the menus are very easy to navigate. Much less clumsy than the Zen Neeon.

Shopping for Christmas food yesterday was grim. I went to the Asda on the Old Kent Road, and it was a madhouse. I had to dodge more children than you can shake a stick at, and the shelf stackers were on duty, complicating navigation even more. Checkout was a disaster, managed only after waiting in the queue for 1/2 hour. Taxi home, exhausted (at 4 pm) and grumpy. But we’re now prepared for our guests on Monday: , Mark, and Rob.

So, Happy Christmas (or Season’s Greetings, if that’s what you prefer) to you all; we’ll be going out to an art gallery later and then cleaning tonight.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 23rd, 2006 at 10:23 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.