Chicago

Made it far as O'Hare, after perhaps the most miserable 36 hours I can recall. Stuck here for the day since, thanks to Royal Jordanian's interminable delays and poor maintenance, I missed my connecting flight home by many hours, and nothing else was avialable until 24 hours from my original. Lovely, yeah?

Lest I seem too bitter, I'm not. It was VERY nice to finally sleep again in a large enough bed, with nice linens, get a decent breakfast from the hotel buffet, and just generally stretch out for a few hours here in Chi-town. On the minus side, I'm definitely not dressed for it- bitter cold.

Home soon

Well, a couple days of travel from now, I'll be home for the holidays. Fortuitously got nasty sick just before traveling, so maybe it'll just be a regular cold and not som nasty inter-continental traveler suprbug that knocks me down for my whole month of vacation.

What can I say? Hope springs eternal.

Like the deserts miss the rain

We had a few light sprinkles a few weeks back, but it's been dry as abone since. Last night was unusually warm, and kind of dark. The moon was a faint glow above the overcast layer of clouds, and Matt had commecnted yesterday how it almost seemed like it was going to rain.

Well, it certainly did. About 4 am I was woken by the pounding rain driving down onto the roof, hitting so hard it sounded like a hail storm back home. Off and on in the early morning, showers like that happened. It was kind of soothing, actually. Almost homey, for a born and bred Pacific Northwest boy like myself.

When I finally worked up enough motivation to get up and turn the heat on, and then dived back into bed to listen to the rain for a bit longer, I actually stopped counting down time til nmy vacation for a few minutes. Eventually, I took advatage of a lull to bike into work, and by mid-morning all the rain had stopped nd the evidence was mostly gone, lasting only where a few deeper depressions hadn't fully evaporated.

Of course, it was much nicer lying in bed listening to the rain than wiping the dust-puddles off my seat and bicycling through the piss-looking puddles with the film of oily sheen on top, but at least it was nice for a while...