so england.

getting there was a horrendously complicated experience, as it almost always is when i'm flying the airline my dad works for. see, i get discounted tickets ($318 round trip philly to london, purchased on the day of travel no less), but have to fly stand-by. now, 3 weeks ago, when we were planning this trip, the flights to england were wide open. but there was a sale or something in the mean time and all of america decided they'd rather leave the country for thanksgiving so the flights were full.

full flights meant that we had to get to atlanta to try all 4 flights to england (london, london, manchester, london) even though we really wanted to go to manchester. also, we had to leave philly at 5.30am to be sure we'd get to atlanta, since every flight leaving after 6am was full. bleh.

so we get to atlanta at like 7am, with an 11 hour layover, yip-fuckin-ee. we are not going to spend all that time in the airport, so we store our bags and head off on the subway downtown. first order of business at 5-points, our destination, is coffee. once caffeinated, we go to underground atlanta which we've been assured is going to entertain the bejeezus out of us. if you've been to underground atlanta before, you know that in reality, it's a cheesy tourist mall which they sucker you into by telling you that it's the remains of old (circa mid-1800s) atlanta. true true, there are what appear to be restored storefronts along a bricked over street, but puh-leez, you are not fooling me nuh-unh no way. so after that lovely 10 minutes, we putzed around at a bookstore for a while, then went to the world of coke. the world of coke consists mainly of 100+ years of coke advertising and history with the occasional period bottle on display. it is not worth the $7 admission, even when you factor in the tasting room, where you can taste many of the world-wide flavors of coke that we don't have here (e.g. britain's grapefruit/pineapple soda called lilt and italy's disgusting bitter apertif flavor). and this is all there is to see in 5-points. my advice to you, if you should ever have a long-ass layover in atlanta, is to Go Somewhere Else.

back at the airport, we were the last ones offered seats on the 6pm flight to london. we had to take them, even though they were in coach (oh yeah, another perk of my dad being a pilot is that we get to fly business class if there's room) and not together and middle seats, because the other flights that night were not guarantees. we probably would've gotten on the one to manchester, but you never know, so we had to take them. after 8 hours on the plane, sitting in one position, my legs and feet had swollen, and it was difficult to get my boots on. but i struggled through until we got into our rental car where i could take them off again for the 4.5 hour drive to liverpool, where karl's grandparents live.

we were in liverpool to see the everton-wolverhampton game (which everton won, thank goodness, 2-0). karl had bought tickets over the web from some everton fan in southern england. said guy wasn't himself coming to the game, but said he'd give them to his friend colin, and we could call colin and arrange to get them. colin says to karl "where do you drink before the game?" and of course karl has to say that he doesn't, mainly because he doesn't live in england and therefore doesn't get to many games. colin says, of the bottom-of-the-league team, "i can't watch them sober anymore." words to live by. so we meet colin at his favorite pub and what could have been a nasty situation, with us getting tickets from some random guy in some random pub, turns out ok. the tickets are even real.

after the game, and dinner, we drive to sheffield (2 hours) and spend 2 nights with karl's parents. we see little niece isabel, who is nearly walking at 11.5 months, and whose parents are 6 months from being parents a second time. this is oldest brother (age 32) and his girlfriend (age 18).

monday morning finds us driving to newcastle (2 hours north) where sunset is at 3.45pm. we see the sights, including the bridges of newcastle and the angel of the north, which bears a striking resemblance to an airplane. in newcastle, we were staying with karl's friend dave and his non-girlfriend-with-whom-he's-bought-a-house claire. claire, though in pain from her recent visit to the osteopath, had enough energy to tell us an amusing story about their friend jeff who drank too much vodka at a recent party of theirs and threw up the bolognese they'd had for dinner all over their new cream living room rug. he did, however, offer to replace it. he was so drunk because he was trying to forget his troubles which started a few days previous when the tax man showed up on his doorstep to tell him that he had a week to pay 1/2 million pounds in taxes or be thrown in jail.

once everyone stopped saying "1/2 *million* pounds?" jeff filled them in on the rest of the story, which is that his dad had stashed away his fortune in his 4 kids' names, unbeknownst to them, to hide it from his ex-wife, who was trying to get it in the divorce. as the older kids went off and got married, the fortune was consolidated in jeff's name. jeff's dad has even been in jail a couple of times for not paying taxes and not giving his ex-wife the money owed her in the divorce. so jeff goes off looking for the money, since he knows it's gotta be a lot. it is. �17 million. jeff's dad wants the 4 kids to be millionaires when he dies. but apparently not before, as he won't let any of the kids have any of the money right now. he's been having jeff watched by a private eye for the last 4 years to make sure he didn't know about the money and has said that if jeff spends any of the money, he'll have them killed. this is totally like a tv miniseries. so jeff's options seem to be (a) put his dad in jail for fraud (for illegally signing jeff's signature when he transfered the money to jeff's name), (b) sit tight til dad dies, or (c) take all the money and run. jury's still out on which option he'll choose, though claire thinks that jeff may have told them about these problems so that when he doesn't show up to work one day they'll know why.

mostly, in newcastle, we played burnout 2 on dave's xbox. have you played this game? first of all, the graphics are great--better than any other driving game i've played. second, they have this play option where instead of trying to drive around the course without crashing, you get a shorter, finite course where the object is to make the most damage possible in a crash. so you get up some speed, head down the track, and try to crash at some crowded intersection or something and make buses roll over and tractor-trailers jackknife. it's great. great i tell you. so great that i told karl he could get an xbox. not that he needed my permission (which i'd told him a zillion times), but that he already had a playstation 2 and a nintendo that he never played, and you know. but this game was so good, and he offered to get rid of the other 2 systems, so how could i say no?

on wednesday (day before thanksgiving) we drove from newcastle back down to sheffield and the day was marked by the great skies. fabulous cloud patterns, sunlit green fields against dark grey clouds, bands of orange and grey-blue lit clouds interspersed with blue sky...it was gorgeous. then at night the skies cleared and the stars were magnificent. clear and bright.

wednesday night we went for italian food with karl's parents, and it was pretty good. i had steak. karl had salmon. we got tipsy and laughed with karl's parents who are objectively way more fun than my parents. or at least my teetotaler dad.

thursday morning we had to run for the train, or rather, karl had to run for the train. he just made his 10.20 direct train to bristol to see a friend from college. i had a leisurely walk to my 10.43 train to doncaster (north of sheffield) which connected to a train to london's kings cross station, where i had to take two tube trains to get to charing cross station ('charing' is a degradation of "ch�re reine" meaning "dear queen". the charing cross is a monument to king edward I's queen eleanor, who died in 1290. her funeral procession stopped at the area that is now charing cross station to rest, so edward put up a monument), then take a final train to canterbury.

in canterbury, i put my things down in my small cold room, and we went out for thanksgiving dinner. i had steak and guinness pie with chips.

friday was graduation day. sis and i got up early to pick up her flemish boyfriend from the train station. she convinced me to go by promising i could drive home. since karl wouldn't let me drive, i took her up on the offer. we got the boyfriend, who is very tall, and cute, and seems like a good guy, and i didn't get us killed on the way home. once home, we had a short break, then had to head up to the university for sis to get robed. after robing we headed off to the cathedral for graduation. the graduands (those who are about to receive their degree) and faculty processed in, in their gaudy academic attire (oh how i lust after some of those academic robes--especially the red one with the orange-y lam� hood and velvet sleeve stripes!), the archbishop of canterbury spoke, one of the faculty members was "taken ill," prompting the archbishop to interrupt his address with the gloriously understated "perhaps i should pause a moment," graduands were admitted to their degrees (that's technically what happens, i found out), and we all left for dinner.

saturday morning we got up before dawn (though that's not hard in that part of the world at this time of year) to drive to gatwick for the trip home. we met karl there, who had not bothered going to bed, since he had a 3am bus to catch. there were 3 flights, 2 to atlanta and one to cincinnati. we all missed the first one to atlanta, along with a bunch of other stand-bys. the airport staff then made us choose which flight we were going to try for, the 10.37 to cincinnati or the 11am to atlanta. they wouldn't let us try for both, since the departure times were so close together, even though the gates were right next door, go figure. karl and i chose the cincinnati flight and mom and dad chose atlanta. dad had the jumpseat (extra seat in the cockpit, fyi) so he was guaranteed to get home. happy ending, we all got on, and got business class, so it was multiple glasses of wine and an ice cream sundae after lunch for me! in cincinnati, karl and i missed the first flight to philly, but got the second, and walked in the door to our apartment at about 9.30pm. after having been up since midnight philly time (me) and who-knows-when for karl, since he hadn't actually gone to bed the night before. s'ok, though, because jetlag in this direction (east-to-west) is not so bad--i've been waking up before the alarm for 2 days.

happy 6th birthday, miss fergusson!

01 December 2003 - 1:05 pm

today is miss fergusson's 6th birthday! yay for the piggy! she is the longest lived guinea pig i've ever had, what a sweetie. i was especially nervous about this birthday because it came right after a trip to england, and the last time (actually not the last time, but a recent time) i lost a piggy. but not this time, and fergie was very brave for having spent the week in the same apartment as a 10-week puppy, who doubtless was very scary smelling.