hermorrine, hopefully I'll be visiting the new chez hermorrine sometime next month, time off and flights permitting. This time I took a chance on lastminute.com's Magical Mystery fare. Unlike Expedia's version (where you only get to pick the day), this guaranteed a direct flight, and gave me a bunch of flight options (hiding only the airline and the exact time, showing just AM or PM arrival and departure). A bit of investigation showed a remarkable similarity to the American Airlines schedule, and sure enough, it was revealed I was out on AA91 and back on AA98 - my ideal flights, and for a third less than the mystery-free fare. Plus I could then enter the flight on the AA website and juggle seats to my heart's content (the availability of extra-legroom seats seems to come and go, returning a couple of days later allowed me to switch to a better seat).On the way out, I had a nice selection of ground-based delays: the bus into Oxford got stuck in traffic forcing me to catch a later coach to Heathrow which had to skip the M25 and head through London's suburbia. This just left me enough time to check in and take a much delayed (and extended) lunch break before I was due at the gate. We then proceeded to get stuck in traffic on the taxiways for the best part of half an hour before take off. On the plus side, I was through immigration and customs and out front of the airport in less than ten minutes from arriving at the gate at O'Hare.
The weekend itself was mostly full of movies (Finding Nemo, Jerry Maguire, Shrek, Ice Age, The Princess Diaries and Y tu mamá también), strange (but good) American food and generally Quality Time - see
hermorrine's entry for more details. We also got to talk some things through on person rather than on the 'phone or via Y!M. The trip back was rather more straightforward, despite being laden down with several tons of Mountain Dew and Reese's. Spent the rest of Monday jet-lagged and resisting temptation to go to bed too early.Back to work yesterday (albeit from home in the morning as there were builders doing work who needed access to my flat), but clearly the jet lag is still at large - yesterday I went to run my bath to discover I'd forgotten to turn the immersion back on again after being away - and then failed to do so properly. Today I went to cook my dinner only to remember that I hadn't been able to get ingredients at Sainsbury's yesterday (they only had large packs of beef, pork and turkey mince, and using lamb mince in bolognese has unpleasant side effects). Fortunately, I actually had something other than ice-cream in my freezer for once.
