Getting ready for a vacation is no vacation. Even after you've made the travel plans and booked the hotels and tours, there are still all of the loose ends at home to tie up. OK, it's true that Kathy and I are now empty nesters, but we still have kids; they just don’t live at home. And life does not stop just because you're gone. Examples: There were the three days tying up loose ends at work. There was a conference happening as soon as I was back in town. On Thursday and Friday, I spent my time making and canning applesauce so I could unplug the second fridge, which would normally be full of apples from our trees this time of year. My concern was having a refrigerator and freezer on the same circuit which has on occasion popped the breaker—not something that I want to have happen when we’re gone for two weeks.
I also hauled five loads of cut logs to the splitting pile—done with that project for the year! I ordered a new door for the walkout basement door, and a new sash for the broken window in our bedroom, two projects for when we were back in town.
Saturday morning we were up at 4:50. Linda W. drove us to the airport for an 8 AM flight to Atlanta. We got to Atlanta noonish to discover that our 12:45 flight to Kennedy had been pushed back for a half-hour—so we ate lunch in Atlanta and then caught our flight to New York. Got to Kennedy around 3:30 PM and then boarded the flight for Athens at 5:20. We’d already been traveling all day and we hadn’t even done the trans-Atlantic part yet!
The flight across was interminable. There were a couple of crying kids right in front of us, and it is impossible to get comfortable in the confined space you’re allowed in an airplane. I didn’t feel like reading, so I watched lots of trashy TV reruns on the cabin screen. This was an older plane so we didn’t have individual screens, just one fuzzy dim screen a row in front of us. After the trashy TV shows I faded in and out through “Mission Impossible III”. The movie seemed to consist of people running and shooting at each other and blowing things up, but I’m not sure what the exact plot was. Then I finally found a music channel playing new-agey music that relaxed me enough to sleep—for a couple hours at least.
I also hauled five loads of cut logs to the splitting pile—done with that project for the year! I ordered a new door for the walkout basement door, and a new sash for the broken window in our bedroom, two projects for when we were back in town.
Saturday morning we were up at 4:50. Linda W. drove us to the airport for an 8 AM flight to Atlanta. We got to Atlanta noonish to discover that our 12:45 flight to Kennedy had been pushed back for a half-hour—so we ate lunch in Atlanta and then caught our flight to New York. Got to Kennedy around 3:30 PM and then boarded the flight for Athens at 5:20. We’d already been traveling all day and we hadn’t even done the trans-Atlantic part yet!
The flight across was interminable. There were a couple of crying kids right in front of us, and it is impossible to get comfortable in the confined space you’re allowed in an airplane. I didn’t feel like reading, so I watched lots of trashy TV reruns on the cabin screen. This was an older plane so we didn’t have individual screens, just one fuzzy dim screen a row in front of us. After the trashy TV shows I faded in and out through “Mission Impossible III”. The movie seemed to consist of people running and shooting at each other and blowing things up, but I’m not sure what the exact plot was. Then I finally found a music channel playing new-agey music that relaxed me enough to sleep—for a couple hours at least.
