Happy Birthday hermorrine

*smoooooches*

I'm off to Chicago for a long weekend with hermorrine, so I'll be offline for the next 5 days or so. Due to the restriction brought on by not actually paying for my flights, I'll be taking a less optimal route than usual. This involves me getting up in about six hours time to do a whistlestop tour of no less than four airports (LHR--JFK--LGA--ORD), but hey - I get to see New York, if only in passing (waves to the NYC t00bs). I should be crawling back online sometime on Wednesday.

This weekend saw me jetting off once more to the windy city to spend time with the lovely hermorrine. I managed to flee the office in a timely manner this time, and the trip was uneventful, although lunch was a disappointment - I needed to grab a bite after checking in and having a bit more time, I decided to hike over to the Wendy's in arrivals. Alas, this was a big mistake - apparently they were closing down in a week or so and were not running on their usual supplies (the burgers weren't even square!). I was extremely unimpressed (although not as much so as the gentleman who came up and demanded a refund while I was waiting for my burger to arrive).

We were staying at the same hotel we were in the very first time we met, but alas the room we had wasn't quite as nice as that time (no couch, alas). On the plus side, it does have all mod cons and there's free breakfast. The Breakfast Buffet Circus O'Doom, that is. On Saturday morning we had to cope with people who couldn't make waffles properly (leaving them all stuck to the iron - grrr), milk that wouldn't flow and strange staring children. So much fun. We ate our fill and retreated back to our room.

We spent much of the day watching movies, starting with Disney's Aladdin, which we've been trying (and failing) to watch for the last few trips - I'm sure that our sudden success has absolutely nothing to do with the recently announced DVD release. Next up, HBO brought us Ice Age, which we watched a few months back - not quite up to that standards of Pixar or PDI Dreamworks, but still good fun. After that was How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, which was actually more entertaining than expected, although rather hide-behind-the-sofa cringeworthy in places. Oh, and we somehow managed to catch most of a JKR biography which was interesting.

Dinner was supposed to be at Cheeseburger in Paradise, but we got there to discover it was a 90 minute wait for a table - rather longer than our stomachs were going to allow. It was the same story at a place across the road (we're not quite sure what sort of food they did, but it certainly smelled good). After driving up and down the road, we eventually ended up at a place we went to a couple of trips back, where they do some very nice burgers. After that, we watched the brain-melting Identity and most of SNL before heading to bed.

Breakfast on Sunday morning was slightly less of an ordeal - it seemed that people had figured out how to use the waffle irons properly - as Weird Lady (who was the worst culprit on Saturday, and who insisted on helping the staff fix the milk machine) felt the need to tell us. After that, it was off to the S00per Sekrit again for the afternoon, and then on to our Sunday-night hotel right by the airport.

For dinner, we went to Carlucci's - also the choice of the victorious Apprentice, as every news outlet later let us know. Thankfully, he was at the location we went to for Valentine's, so we didn't have to fight our way past the news crews. Alas, all too soon, morning came around and it was time for me to catch my flight home, but it should be only a few weeks until I'm off again...

As many of you have probably already read on hermorrine's journal, I was over in Chicago again last weekend. ( Collapse )

Thanks to the undocumented challenge, on this trip I achieved my AAdvantage Gold status - more miles and other benefits for me, huzzah!

In related news, I really ought to talk about what happened at New Year's. ( Collapse )

February the 14th is so much nicer when someone special to spend the day with.

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I really must write-up New Year's soon. Am bad boyfriend...

This weekend I had my first experience of Thanksgiving, thanks to the wonderful hermorrine. I flew out on Wednesday afternoon and caught the red-eye back on Sunday night, so it was a nice long stay. Thanksgiving itself involved a not inconsiderable amount of cooking - with me acting as sous-chef (making myself useful and trying not to get in the way too much) and turkey-chef (well, there's a first time for everything). Starvation was fended off with cheese (having completely forgot about it last time), as dinner was heading for around 6pm. We had roast turkey with stuffing, green bean casserole and sweet potatoes. The pumpkin pie we put off (for reasons of time and space) until after we got back from the cinema (Love Actually). Yum!

Friday had a much later start (not having turkey to contend with, and also having no great desire to catch the 6am start of the sales), so when we headed out, lunch was the first stop (at Steak 'n Shake, where we had ...er... Steakburgers 'n Shakes). After this, we went shopping for pants (that is, trousers) - hermorrine had heard about my difficulty finding trousers that fit and had selflessly volunteered to help out, in particular with getting me into a pair of jeans (something I haven't worn for many a long year). After that, it was the cinema again (The Haunted Mansion) and then to the store (to stock up on Dew and Reese's, plus getting more immediate necessities).

Saturday featured a Super Sekrit. After that, we had time to kill, and ended up in Starbucks (my first time, despite their omnipresence) before our final cinema trip of the weekend (Brother Bear). After that, we had some rather fine Italian food at Luigi's House (and yes, the Portillo name continues to amuse me). Sunday was a quiet day at home , watching some DVDs (X2, Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas and the final part of The 10th Kingdom). Alas, all to soon, it was time to head off to O'Hare to catch the last 'plane home.

It's been so long since I last did a big whopper of an RL update that I've almost forgotten how. Or perhaps not. Here follows a tale of two weekends and many movies.

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Sometimes Y!M conversations ramble across the strangest topics. An example is included below for your elucidation:

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So, in case you hadn't guessed from the above, I'm off to the windy city on Friday. Squeee!

I spent last weekend in Chicago, my last visit to the old chez hermorrine, hopefully I'll be visiting the new chez hermorrine sometime next month, time off and flights permitting. ( Collapse ) 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 ( Collapse ), 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.

Happy Birthday hermorrine!

*great big hugs'n'smooches*