Reading: The same. Don't expect anything new for the next few days.

Learning: What constitutes emergency conditions for Boston cabs.

Listening: The radio

Viewing: Magpies. CNN.

Moving: Not the walk I intended. I can procrastinate cleaning the bird's cage like nothing you've ever seen.

11 November 1999: Denver to Boston

Last time's title, No Place Like Home, came from making a home of my office with tokens of moi, photographs and animules but more because I was, obviously enough, going home. Wednesday I emailed five of my family in Storrs for a place to stay Monday night and got answers from everybody. My family, I love 'em. And home for Old Lyme, because I got to see my granny and mother. And home for my sister, because I got to see her as well. That's all I've been thinking of, going home and seeing my families. That's also why my unstated plans for next week fascinated my mother: they involved her.

Thursday: depart DIA at 4:45, hours before PSA arrives for a CU conference (poop!). Arrive Logan 10:28, stop at CLH's restaurant, go home and collapse

Friday: drive to Old Lyme after day with Blister (that's my sister).

Saturday: morning with my maternal progenitors; afternoon at wedding; night at EJB's.

Sunday: see TJZ and RDC's family.

Monday: see each of our sole surviving CT grandparents again before zooming off to Storrs. Dinner and sleep at Charenton with JUMB and APB.

Tuesday: see ABW, NKW, and new arrival AEW, return to Logan, fly home.

Newsflash: CLH admitted that though living in Boston she goes home no more often than I do, and she doesn't envy my trying to cram in visits to everyone while I'm here. This is the woman who was pissed at me because she only got one (full) day (24 hours) out of the first week I came home after moving to Denver, conveniently forgetting that I traveled to Boston to see her for the first day but she elected not to travel to Old Lyme to see me for the second arranged day. Thpbt.

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Okay, that's what I wrote on Thursday, before I left. Kind of like that "Laverne and Shirley" episode where they broke into Schlitz or whatever to steal a nasty note Laverne wrote and it was all perfect like "Mission: Impossible" and then they said "And that's how it'll go" and you realize the scenario you just saw, all choreographed and with everyone in black, was just in Squiggy's head. To be continued.

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I scampered to CostCo for a few things that I'd want in the house when we got back, particularly orange juice. I forgot dried cranberries, though. And an actual box for the present and tissue and a ribbon and Biolage Daily Tonic. And the bank. Then I packed Blake up into his brand-clean cage, packed the car, remembered apples and greens for Blake (and a good thing that was since they'd've shriveled in the days we'd be gone), fetched the actual bird, and then remembered I hadn't locked the front door. I remembered that before I put his cage in the car, though. I was proud. I brought my buddy to camp, was way early to pick up RDC, and so had a sandwich at Alfalfa's. With a book. Lunch out alone is such a treat.

Thursday, 2:45 p.m. After that passel of errands that made me grateful I don't do them often, I picked up RDC at DU and drove us to DIA. I hurled the car into a long-term parking spot and we skedaddled for a shuttle bus. It was 3:30 and I was trained from a young and never-flew-much age to arrive two hours before. Seventy-five minutes isn't enough. And this time it really wasn't. We decided to treat ourselves to curb-side check-in, and I'm glad we did because the skycap was the last competent person we talked to and he worked for some no-benefits-to-immigrants contractor, not for United. What he told us wasn't good, but at least he had a clue.

"Oh, no. Flight #348 was canceled. It became probably #542, which leaves at 3:42. [It was 3:35.]"
Naturally I wanted to skedaddle to the gate anyway, just in case, but RDC did not and it's RDC who could get us out of this situation and into Boston whereas I would just scream and cry and pout and hyperventilate.
At the United counter, we insinuated ourselves at the First Class/International Departures desk: in no mood for a line. However, one formed behind us full of people in the same predicament, and the line formed not only because normal people arrive an hour before departure but also because the clerks were imbeciles.

This is the contradiction in my pleasure in nice friendly business transaction. I like that the clerks at Alfalfa's know our names and the dry-cleaner is a social butterfly. I do not want employees to talk about their cats when they're supposed to be finding me a flight, however. Well, there was room on the 6:45 flight and CLH was still closing and done at 2 anyway, so now we had oodles of time for a bite. I wanted a drink and RDC wanted a bite, which is a reversal of our usual preferences. At Wolfgang Puck's (which I just recently discovered has a store in DIA), he had beer and chicken and I had iced tea and the phone. I had to check up on email I'd received during the day.

"TJZ? Hey, HB just emailed to say they'd be chez toi Sunday evening, but we might not be there till 8:00. D'you know how long they're staying?"
"Oh, they're staying the night."
"They are?! A slumber party, that'll be great!"
It was only now that she realized we intended to crash with her as well. We came to the conclusion of the more the merrier, and I hung up, staring at the phone in rapture. Not only TJZ but HEBD as well, plus ZBD and JPD. Oh the bliss. I had another George O'Keeffe postcard in my DayRunner and immediately scrawled a note to DEDBG. Not that it will get to her sooner than email, but aside from calling her right then, which would have been around midnight, I just had to share my rapture. RDC was sipping his beer and smiling at me as I left a surely unintelligible message on RJH's machine as well--he hardly knows the people involved but he always likes to hear me happy.

And then I realized something more. PSA was going to attend a conference in Boulder and arrive Thursday around 6:00; possibly we could find him long enough for a hug before we had to board our own delayed flight. I was delirious. Skipping and prancing I was. Then we descended to the main level of the concourse where I scoured the arrival screens for Billings, Bozeman, Butte, Helena, Missoula--I know all of these places are way the hell away from each other but how many airports can there be in Montana? There were none, and I figured he was probably flying a different, short-bus airline that used one of the other two concourses. I turned resolutely from that possibility and we found our gate.

I have not flown often with RDC. Three Christmas flights and a honeymoon in Florida is all, and my experience--or unfounded expectation, if you asked him--was that he'd gripe about babies yelling and seats cramping instead of bearing the conditions as the shortest distance between two points. He was calm and happy, though, and I bet he'd like me to point out that I've omitted most of what happened between discovery of our canceled flight and being rebooked. I plead the Fifth.

We arrived too late for reliable or prompt T-ing so shared a cab with someone. Our cabmate seemed decent enough, asking if we lived over Tower Records (given the address), until he decided our cabbie was conning us, as if someone would risk his taxi license for an extra measly three bucks that wasn't going to break him or us. Plus the baffoon wanted to abuse the cabbie after we had arrived at Exeter and Beacon--his stop--but while the meter was running for us. I put a stop to that, the cabbie lamented his honor for seven blocks, and we tipped him handsomely. Whatever.

CLH's bartender was upstairs waiting for us and she had primed him: he greeted us with "I know you," nodding at me, "don't drink but what'll you," pointing his chin at RDC, "have?" He gave RDC a shot of 21-year-old Glenlivet. CLH emerged from her paperwork and we were off to the Fens and bed.