It's been two years...
May. 17th, 2024 01:13 pmTwo years ago today ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kittyhawk83 and I were en route to Scotland to be collected by ewein2412 who immediately began giving Jen instructions about How to Drive in Scotland and so began some of the best weeks of my life. I will probably post more about this because it's fun to remember and also I never really did share anything but the thousands of pictures I put on facebook that nobody wanted to wade through. 🤣 Their loss.
Actually, how about I post my trip diaries now? It'll be fun to revisit, and if it's boring, you can skip it.
Day 1, or Oklahoma Bound: 16 May 2022
I was too keyed up to even attempt to sleep.
Dan, who had been sick for several days, was sleeping on the couch the night of the 15/16, so I had the bedroom to myself to use to pack with all the lights on. I don’t often use my giant honkin old “Countess Palaffi” suitcase anymore (my mom gave it to me when I was still living at home--it’s huge enough to accommodate the ridiculous vintage wardrobes I used to drag to the Nelson Eddy Appreciation Society gatherings every year, and instead of labelling it with my name like a normal person, I used the stickers it came with to label it COUNTESS PALAFFI. Because Nelson Eddy in I Married an Angel, his stupidest movie, is Count Palaffi and I just thought it was so much fun to say.
I mean, it can’t possibly get mixed up with anyone else’s luggage, so there's that, I guess?
So I packed everything--just a few books for Elizabeth to sign this time, since she did that mass signing in October 2019 and I’ve only acquired 3 new books since. I also packed copies of my two books to leave in a Little Free Library somewhere over there, because why not?
It’s a little nervewracking packing for such a long trip. You don’t want to bank on readily available laundry facilities, yet you want to take as few clothes as possible. I’m no longer the “must change for dinner” person I was in the NEAS days, but also I wanted to look nice, so I figured if I changed my tank tops out I could wear my Peerie Leaves jumper for a good many days, and I took my Harriet Vane hat and a couple other outfits and figured I’d save my TeeTurtle Les Mewsérables shirt for extra emergency clothes, and wear my Lawyer Cat shirt for travelling to Oklahoma. No need to impress anyone there. Do clothes really matter that much? THEY SHOULDN’T BUT I AM VAIN SOMETIMES OK
We left the girls to sleep at the house and I drove us to the airport so Dan could rest as much as possible. Miraculously, there were no delays or issues with any of the flights and I got to Oklahoma ON TIME.
Taking off from Eugene, the sun was just rising, and there were lakes of mist in the sky, pooling among hills and trees. It was otherworldly and beautiful. The Three Sisters mountains were also vibrantly blue against the peachy-gold of the rising sun.
I had a layover in Seattle, and slept most of the way to Oklahoma City because I’d been up for the previous 24 hours and I was very tired.
When I arrived, Jen and I took our customary Airport Selfie Where I Refuse to Look Normal:
...and we got pizza for dinner at the Beer Place (aka Hideaway, the place where you can, in fact, purchase beer). (There is a story behind this.) I did my usual margherita pizza and had an amazing Caesar salad. Jen had a Caesar salad and a pizza with lots of dead pig chunks on it.
Then we had ice cream from Braum’s, a local shop. I can’t remember now which flavour I got, but it probably was cheesecake-adjacent because I am nothing if not predictable in an ice cream shop.
When we got home, we watched an episode of a WWI documentary and started the 1998 Les Misérables but I was so tired we decided to finish it later and went to bed.
Day 2, or I Hate Texas: 17 May 2022
We finished watching Les Misérables in the morning and got on our flight to Houston.
I was wearing one of my new outfits, a 1950s sundress, and it was nice in the sense that I was SO HOT after traipsing through the Houston airport, where the walls and signs bear constant reminders that everything is bigger here (🙄) but my chief concern was that they could have maybe NOT made the distance between gates stupidly bigger than needed. Also they could dial back on the bigger heat. I had to carry my stupid velvet coat everywhere (I took it out of my suitcase because it weighed enough to make the case over weight) and I had to keep reminding myself it will NOT BE THIS HOT WHERE WE ARE GOING.
Stupid Texas.
There was an airport shop we passed that had “FOOD GLORIOUS FOOD” above the coolers, which made me laugh. But I bet the prices are bigger like everything else in this stupid airport, for food which didn’t look that glorious actually.
There were tables by the gate that had chairs affixed to the floor so you basically were squooshed claustrophobically but you could order food from the screens on the tables, so Jen got us a quesadilla to share and I spilled pop tart crumbs all over myself like a mature adult and then we moved to normal chairs because I was tired of being squooshed.
And then we got onto the plane. FRANKFURT BOUND.
kittyhawk83 and I were en route to Scotland to be collected by ewein2412 who immediately began giving Jen instructions about How to Drive in Scotland and so began some of the best weeks of my life. I will probably post more about this because it's fun to remember and also I never really did share anything but the thousands of pictures I put on facebook that nobody wanted to wade through. 🤣 Their loss. Actually, how about I post my trip diaries now? It'll be fun to revisit, and if it's boring, you can skip it.
Day 1, or Oklahoma Bound: 16 May 2022
I was too keyed up to even attempt to sleep.
Dan, who had been sick for several days, was sleeping on the couch the night of the 15/16, so I had the bedroom to myself to use to pack with all the lights on. I don’t often use my giant honkin old “Countess Palaffi” suitcase anymore (my mom gave it to me when I was still living at home--it’s huge enough to accommodate the ridiculous vintage wardrobes I used to drag to the Nelson Eddy Appreciation Society gatherings every year, and instead of labelling it with my name like a normal person, I used the stickers it came with to label it COUNTESS PALAFFI. Because Nelson Eddy in I Married an Angel, his stupidest movie, is Count Palaffi and I just thought it was so much fun to say.
I mean, it can’t possibly get mixed up with anyone else’s luggage, so there's that, I guess?
So I packed everything--just a few books for Elizabeth to sign this time, since she did that mass signing in October 2019 and I’ve only acquired 3 new books since. I also packed copies of my two books to leave in a Little Free Library somewhere over there, because why not?
It’s a little nervewracking packing for such a long trip. You don’t want to bank on readily available laundry facilities, yet you want to take as few clothes as possible. I’m no longer the “must change for dinner” person I was in the NEAS days, but also I wanted to look nice, so I figured if I changed my tank tops out I could wear my Peerie Leaves jumper for a good many days, and I took my Harriet Vane hat and a couple other outfits and figured I’d save my TeeTurtle Les Mewsérables shirt for extra emergency clothes, and wear my Lawyer Cat shirt for travelling to Oklahoma. No need to impress anyone there. Do clothes really matter that much? THEY SHOULDN’T BUT I AM VAIN SOMETIMES OK
We left the girls to sleep at the house and I drove us to the airport so Dan could rest as much as possible. Miraculously, there were no delays or issues with any of the flights and I got to Oklahoma ON TIME.
Taking off from Eugene, the sun was just rising, and there were lakes of mist in the sky, pooling among hills and trees. It was otherworldly and beautiful. The Three Sisters mountains were also vibrantly blue against the peachy-gold of the rising sun.
I had a layover in Seattle, and slept most of the way to Oklahoma City because I’d been up for the previous 24 hours and I was very tired.
When I arrived, Jen and I took our customary Airport Selfie Where I Refuse to Look Normal:
...and we got pizza for dinner at the Beer Place (aka Hideaway, the place where you can, in fact, purchase beer). (There is a story behind this.) I did my usual margherita pizza and had an amazing Caesar salad. Jen had a Caesar salad and a pizza with lots of dead pig chunks on it.
Then we had ice cream from Braum’s, a local shop. I can’t remember now which flavour I got, but it probably was cheesecake-adjacent because I am nothing if not predictable in an ice cream shop.
When we got home, we watched an episode of a WWI documentary and started the 1998 Les Misérables but I was so tired we decided to finish it later and went to bed.
Day 2, or I Hate Texas: 17 May 2022
We finished watching Les Misérables in the morning and got on our flight to Houston.
I was wearing one of my new outfits, a 1950s sundress, and it was nice in the sense that I was SO HOT after traipsing through the Houston airport, where the walls and signs bear constant reminders that everything is bigger here (🙄) but my chief concern was that they could have maybe NOT made the distance between gates stupidly bigger than needed. Also they could dial back on the bigger heat. I had to carry my stupid velvet coat everywhere (I took it out of my suitcase because it weighed enough to make the case over weight) and I had to keep reminding myself it will NOT BE THIS HOT WHERE WE ARE GOING.
Stupid Texas.
There was an airport shop we passed that had “FOOD GLORIOUS FOOD” above the coolers, which made me laugh. But I bet the prices are bigger like everything else in this stupid airport, for food which didn’t look that glorious actually.
There were tables by the gate that had chairs affixed to the floor so you basically were squooshed claustrophobically but you could order food from the screens on the tables, so Jen got us a quesadilla to share and I spilled pop tart crumbs all over myself like a mature adult and then we moved to normal chairs because I was tired of being squooshed.
And then we got onto the plane. FRANKFURT BOUND.
