I'm here!

I am wandering around in London a bit today, not much time to see things, but it's good to not be in the airport! I walked farther in Heathrow today than I ever have in any airport...including O'Hare. It's so crowded in the airport; everyone seems to be leaving for vacation right now.

The flight was good; I am officially a fan of Virgin Atlantic. Very comfy, cool seat-back screens with on-demand movies (I watched Night at the Museum), games (Tetris! Need I say more?), a little bag with toothbrush/paste, socks, eye shades...and the food was pretty good, too. One nice discovery was that the drink carts actually have a full-service bar--even for those in the economy seats. So I had a cute little glass of white wine with dinner.

Will: I think Ralph Wiggum (or someone that sounds just like him) was sitting behind me. !!

Brett: I agree, it's really great to fall asleep on an overnight flight and wake up in another country. Definitely the way to go. Though I'm rather tired right now.

I took a few photos when we were approaching the airport; I'll try to upload shortly.

Credit Card Fraud

Well, just like in the funny Citibank commercials, someone has been using my credit card number to purchase thousands of dollars' worth of stuff at Harley Davidson stores around the country. Lovely. I've bought and reserved quite a few things for my Europe trip with that credit card; so now I have to go through and figure out who needs the new number. Arrrgh. At least I'll get a new card by tomorrow. (Kudos to Citibank for noticing this and calling us!) 24 hours without a credit card...what on earth will I do?? :)

I wonder how that happened? I've made so many online purchases in the last week, it's hard to say. I'm hyper-vigilant about checking for the "secure" symbol on webpages. Now I just have to hope and pray that they don't have any other information. And I'm changing every password I can think of, and putting fraud alerts on my accounts and credit files.

I just want to get on that plane and fly away!!! This is nuts.

This time next week I will be here:

(Vernazza, Italy)

Hooray for elected officials!?!

This post may turn out to be premature, but we'll see. I leave for Europe in 7 days, and still do not have my passport (I sent in for a renewal almost 4 months ago, not thinking I needed "expedited" service.) The passport agency won't even talk to you if you're not going somewhere in the next 14 days. Well, I called a week ago, and after several hours (not exaggerating) finally got through. They upgraded it to "expedited" which did absolutely nothing. At 9 days from travel day, I started to panic and called to schedule an appointment at the Chicago passport agency. The automated appointment system, groaning under the weight of the excessive call volume, took 35 minutes to tell me that there aren't any appointments until July 25, and I leave on the 20th. Out of desperation I called our Senator's office. Which must have worked, because today I talked to someone at the passport agency, and she mentioned a note in my file that there had been a congressional call requesting a 24-hour passport issuance. It should be sent via Fedex later today.

So, hooray for democracy. Or something like that. (Never thought I'd be so grateful for a politician.) I'll have to remember to send his office staff a postcard from Europe.

When it rains...

...it pours. Literally, around here. Last night we noticed a weird section of our dining room wall near the ceiling that looked like it was inflated like a balloon. It turned out that it was filled with water. We punctured it, drained, it, and water continued to spurt out of the drywall. The paint basically peeled off of a 3-foot by 1-foot section of wall. We soaked up as much as we could, and pointed a fan at it to help it dry. Then we went and talked to our upstairs neighbor to find the source of the leak. Today they had a plumber come, and he thought he fixed it, but wasn't sure. So, we have to wait a week or so before we can fix the wall. It looks so bad, but I guess I'll just have to deal with it.

Tonight, I went into the other room to turn off the desktop computer, and it wouldn't turn off. Then it started making a clicking noise and I knew--hard drive failure. Bummer. All of my music files are on there, but hopefully nothing else important is. Hmmm, more stuff to do. Oh, well!

Sandwich heaven

There's a street corner near my office where you can see 3 sub shops within a block of each other--Subway, Quiznos and Jimmy Johns. Somebody needs to call Blimpie and tell them they missed the party.

My Last Birthday

It just hit me that I'm turning 29 this weekend, and this is my last year as a twentysomething, so I have decided that I am not going to have any more birthdays after that. I'm just going to stay 29 until further notice. The only other "age milestone" left is retirement age, 65, but what are the odds that Social Security is going to exist then to pay out for me, anyway?

On second thought, I do enjoy birthday gifts. Hmm....maybe I could just celebrate my birthday every year, but keep telling people that I'm 29. What should I do?

It's official...I have to check my luggage

This is going to make me sound like a nut, but last night I weighed a bunch of stuff on a digital postage scale to see if it's even possible to go to Europe with just one bag. I got to the 13-pound limit pretty easily, without any clothing (thanks in large part to my camera). So, guess I'll have to check something. Oh, well. (And no, mom, I'm not going to wear all of my clothes at once on the plane. Thanks for the suggestion, though.)

At least if they lose my bag, I get to go on a shopping spree in London. Granted, a self-funded one. :)

Defective String Cheese

As I thought of what I was going to write, it occurred to me that my daily life is boring. Really boring. (I have one brother living in Alaska and one in Spain...infinitely more interesting than my long days of staring at a computer screen.) But here goes, anyway.

The string cheese I brought with me for lunch today is defective. It's not stringy. It's crumbly. Still tastes fine (not exactly gourmet, but just fine for string cheese), but there's something so satisfying about peeling apart the layers of cheese before eating them. All of my attempts with this batch of cheese, though, have failed, and I end up with just a torn off chunk. Oh, the tragedy. How ever will I be able to move on?

Carryon Luggage

I was optimistic when I found out that there's a carryon weight limit on Virgin Atlantic for my flight to Europe of thirteen pounds. Yes, only 13 pounds. But I had really wanted to fly without checking any bags. I do it all the time for business travel, and I can easily pack for a week in the smallest rolling carryon size. But my hopes were dashed today when I used the postal scale at my office to weigh my purse and found out it's 5 pounds. Unless I plan on only taking 1 change of clothes, I guess I'll have to check a bag. Oh, well.