Boeing 747

I have returned from witnessing the blessed union of my sister, Emily Clare, with the great and huggable Chris Ritchey. Oh my goodness... she's not Emily Lewis anymore. Crazy pants. Emily Ritchey. That does have a good sound to it; it is a good name. Anyway, the wedding was lovely, and I will expound on it in due course. When I have half a brain to attend to it.

At present, I am full of travel woes, though they are over. I am full of them, because I am weary from them. The trip was rather monotonous in its delays. If you care to hear, I will account for the passage of the last two days. This is how it goes:

I woke at five a.m. on Monday in order to make a seven o'clock flight from Palm Springs to Edinburgh via Houston and Newark.
On the way to the airport, my brother gets a call saying that the flight has been delayed an hour. I let him drop me off anyway, and wait the extra hour in the airport.
The plane leaves, but the storms in Houston (which caused the original delay of the flight out of Palm Springs) do not allow us to land when we get there. We are diverted (heartily) to College Stop, a wee two-gate airport about twenty minutes from Houston. We wait there for a number of hours which I cannot recall, allowing ourselves to be deeply concerned by the sloggish pace of the snackbar worker who was quite overwhelmed with the sudden influx of impatient Californians. Morning moves well into afternoon, and we are finally liften back into the air and set down in Houston. Which is no blessing, because the airport is jam-packed with frustrated, impatient, tired, and confused passengers, most of whom have lost their flights, their gates, or their minds, because everything in Houston is a complete and utter wreck. (Not due to any fault in the Continental employees; all because of a storm.)
At one moment, while seated on an underground tram moving between terminals, I thought "I wouldn't be surprised if this thing just takes us round and round in circles." That is how non-functioning and confused everything was.
My first flight out of Houston is non-existent, but a helpful gentleman in Palm Springs alotted me a seat on the next one. I made it to the gate just in time to see the plane pull away from the jetway. I felt like crying. (Meanwhile, crowds run and stumble around me, yelling and panting, seething with mayhem.)
A great deal more boring confusion, and finally, a flight! That drops me in Newark around 2 a.m the following morning. The Continental people are really quite friendly and considerate. They gave me a suite at a nearby hotel (I was not, of course, surprised when a man with a nametag and radio said that the train to the shuttle to the hotel would be delayed because the police had stopped it to examine a stray piece of luggage. Of course it would be delayed. What wouldn't be delayed?), in which I indulged in five hours of sleep, a Continental breakfast, conversation with a fellow "distressed passenger," and a hot bath.
Having to be out of the hotel by noon, I returned to the airport to wait for my flight at 8 p.m. that evening, exactly 24 hours after I had originally been scheduled to leave the country. I ate lots of bad airport food, purchased with vouchers from the airline, hopped on the plane, landed in Edinburgh, and--would you believe it--made it to class at nine the next morning, suitcase in hand.

Class was good, and the shuttle to Kings Buildings was fabulous. I am, at last, safe and still within my flat. I will nap, go to the grocery store, read for class on Friday, and recover from the world,

so that I can do all this over again in three weeks for Stuart and Nicole's wedding.