Back to life

As I've been properly chastised by my favorite pharmacist for not taking any time off after my trip to the UK, I figure that means, I'm home and back in the swing of things.

Well, mostly.

Looks like I'll have to hit the hard stuff (herbal tea) in order to convince my body that sleeping 6 - 8 hours in a row is a good idea.

So yeah, here I am. The laundry has been done; the dogs have been walked; and the pictures are uploaded. I guess all that means is now I'm ready to start the England recap. I know, try to contain your excitement. It might be a bit much considering election day is tomorrow.

Nonetheless, let us begin at the beginning....

Saturday, October 18, 2008, I needed to get from Los Angeles to Heathrow carrying the following:

1. Wedding Dress

2. Work Laptop

3. Camera

4. Medications

5. Bridesmaid Dress

6. Purse

7. Jewelry

8. Knitting

9. Reading Material

10. Velvet wrap for above Bridesmaid dress

As you can imagine, this would, er, exceed the usual carry-on allowance. But shout "I'm carrying a wedding dress to England and its not mine!" gets you all sorts of sympathy and help from airline crews. All of that gear flying in both coach (from L.A. to Minneapolis) and first class (from Minneapolis to Heathrow) was accepted and stowed by the crews. I was shocked by how nice everyone was to me.

Sunday, October 19, 2008 - I'd be happy to tell you all about flying overseas in first class. But, when I've done that during conversation, I get the overwhelming sense they want to hit me when I describe the fully reclining chairs, the warm towels and such. So, we'll skip all that and get to England....We made it to London where the future bride was kind enough to meet us. Back at Barton House (seriously, that's how you address letters to their house), we were met by the welcoming committee.

After proper introductions, we we walked a bit, ate a bit, and the bride did her song & dance to try to keep us up as late as possible to aid in our time adjustment. She always does this for me, which is sweet, but by 8pm I was more than ready to snooze. If I was up at 4am the next day, so be it, but I needed sleep.

Monday, October 20, 2008 - As amazing as it was to fly 4,000 miles in first class, I will warn you of one thing that crosses coach/business/first class lines...drink lots and lots and lots and lots of water when you fly, especially if you're flying for a long time, like 8 or more hours. Really. Trust me on this. You want to drink HUGE amounts of water. I slept too much and did not drink lots and lots and lots of water and yeah, I had a bit of a rough start on Monday. But, I will tell you that Motilium 10 is the best stuff ever.

After my recovery from dehydration (ironic that you can't keep water down when you're dehydrated) and a croissant, we jumped onto a tour of Cambridge. If you're looking for a low impact way to see the city, this is a good way to go. You don't have to worry about your guide being good or crappy or funny or whatever...they hand you some headphones, you plug in, choose a language and off you go. Considering my rocky start and my guilt from keeping Todd from seeing the city, this worked quite well. And, we saw stuff that we wouldn't have on foot like the American WWII Memorial, and some of the colleges that are on the outskirts of town. (Did you know it takes 6 years to get a veterinary degree at Cambridge? Its the longest undergraduate degree program at the university.) I was also able to point out which school the bride went to (Churchill) as I wouldn't have been able to otherwise as it was on the opposite side of town from where we were staying.

We only hopped off the tour once, per Todd's request, to examine more closely one of the local attractions:

Yup, Staples. Though, sadly, the easy button did not have an accent. We were disappointed. Defeated, we jumped onto the next bus to enjoy the rest of the tour. Dinner followed by email brought Monday to a close.