Not hard at all...
Aug. 28th, 2000 10:18 pmJust finished configuring this new look for my LiveJournal. As I alluded to in the previous tablet, once I saw the LJ configuration items presented in the "raw" form, it all suddenly clicked into place, and the time I sought to do the work came available tonight, since Lee is in school and Galina is in the air, somewhere halfway out over the North Atlantic, en route to Moscow.
I was gratified to have my internal clock wake me up a scant three minutes before the Alarm Clock From Hell was scheduled to go off in my ear. (Yes, this is the same internal clock I've been abusing the heck out of for the past few days. Go figure. It probably hates the ACFH as much as I do, and woke me up as a form of self-preservation, not because it particularly likes me, or anything.) I jumped out of the sack and raised general hell to wake up the rest of the household. Soon, I was putting my work stuff in my bag while Galina finished packing her stuff. I had announced our schedule several times yesterday and again at the top of the morning: "The plane leaves at 9, so we've got to be at the airport at 8, which means we leave here at 7." (It wasn't as if we were leaving at oh-dark-thirty, or anything.)
I made the mistake of repeating the last part of this formula at 6:57 am to Galina, which earned me a quick response, to the effect of: "We'll leave when we're ready." I drafted Lee to come along to the airport, to sit in the car as I helped Galina get her small mountain of luggage to the check-in (if asked to move by a cop, she'd do a loop of the airport and come back for me). We finally left at 7:25, and I was not feeling spunky. I hate rushing through traffic, and I really hate running through airports carrying heavy loads and elbowing my way through check-in lines.
At any rate, by the time we got to I-45, the traffic was starting to thicken. I maneuvered for the HOV lane and soon started to outstrip the rank and file over in the lanes reserved for "individual" commuters (and car pools whose drivers could never figure out how to get on the HOV track, but I digress...). As we passed Hobby Airport, Galina started to express concern.
"How do we get out of this lane?" she asked.
"Why?" I countered, suspecting what was coming.
"Well, we're going past the airport," she said.
"We need to go to Intercontinental," I said, and felt more than saw her eyeballs pop out onto her forehead and do a small fandango. Those HOV lanes are narrow, and lined with concrete on both sides. Attention is crucial.
"What? Wh-why didn't you...," she sputtered.
I didn't let her finish. "I told you it was Intercontinental when we bought the ticket, and I told you again yesterday," I explained.
"Well," says she, "what are you dawdling for? Step on it!"
So, to make a long story short (oops! too late!), we got to IAH at about 8:20 am, where - for some reason known but to God - it turns out there is nobody waiting to check in at the Delta counter. I'd sooner expect Times Square to be a ghost town on New Year's Eve, but I'll take good luck whenever and wherever I can find it. The agent checked Galina in so quickly it seemed almost too fast (I ought to check to see if I can arrange to travel to Russia on Mondays, the next time the issue crops up), and then she was through security and I was back in the car, and it had been too fast. There was nothing left but to head back home with Lee asleep in the back seat.
Godspeed, love.
Cheers...
I was gratified to have my internal clock wake me up a scant three minutes before the Alarm Clock From Hell was scheduled to go off in my ear. (Yes, this is the same internal clock I've been abusing the heck out of for the past few days. Go figure. It probably hates the ACFH as much as I do, and woke me up as a form of self-preservation, not because it particularly likes me, or anything.) I jumped out of the sack and raised general hell to wake up the rest of the household. Soon, I was putting my work stuff in my bag while Galina finished packing her stuff. I had announced our schedule several times yesterday and again at the top of the morning: "The plane leaves at 9, so we've got to be at the airport at 8, which means we leave here at 7." (It wasn't as if we were leaving at oh-dark-thirty, or anything.)
I made the mistake of repeating the last part of this formula at 6:57 am to Galina, which earned me a quick response, to the effect of: "We'll leave when we're ready." I drafted Lee to come along to the airport, to sit in the car as I helped Galina get her small mountain of luggage to the check-in (if asked to move by a cop, she'd do a loop of the airport and come back for me). We finally left at 7:25, and I was not feeling spunky. I hate rushing through traffic, and I really hate running through airports carrying heavy loads and elbowing my way through check-in lines.
At any rate, by the time we got to I-45, the traffic was starting to thicken. I maneuvered for the HOV lane and soon started to outstrip the rank and file over in the lanes reserved for "individual" commuters (and car pools whose drivers could never figure out how to get on the HOV track, but I digress...). As we passed Hobby Airport, Galina started to express concern.
"How do we get out of this lane?" she asked.
"Why?" I countered, suspecting what was coming.
"Well, we're going past the airport," she said.
"We need to go to Intercontinental," I said, and felt more than saw her eyeballs pop out onto her forehead and do a small fandango. Those HOV lanes are narrow, and lined with concrete on both sides. Attention is crucial.
"What? Wh-why didn't you...," she sputtered.
I didn't let her finish. "I told you it was Intercontinental when we bought the ticket, and I told you again yesterday," I explained.
"Well," says she, "what are you dawdling for? Step on it!"
So, to make a long story short (oops! too late!), we got to IAH at about 8:20 am, where - for some reason known but to God - it turns out there is nobody waiting to check in at the Delta counter. I'd sooner expect Times Square to be a ghost town on New Year's Eve, but I'll take good luck whenever and wherever I can find it. The agent checked Galina in so quickly it seemed almost too fast (I ought to check to see if I can arrange to travel to Russia on Mondays, the next time the issue crops up), and then she was through security and I was back in the car, and it had been too fast. There was nothing left but to head back home with Lee asleep in the back seat.
Godspeed, love.
Cheers...