Let's start with the evening prior to departure, shall we? Melinda, Dessi, and Bobbity came over and hung out for a while, during which my inebriated husband had a chat with Christy thinking she was Bobby, so yeah, wee bit o' confusion but kind of funny. Dessi and Bobbity dipped out, and Ric crashed, so Melinda and I decided to watch a movie because I came up with the brilliant idea of not going to bed in order to force myself to fall asleep on the plane, thus avoiding a great deal of jet lag. This actually worked well except that I was totally loopy the morning of our departure. Marlene stopped by to wish us well, then we piled into Melinda's mom's car so Melinda could take us to Groome. As previously mentioned, I was loopy, so we were almost there when I realized that I had left my purse and had no ID with me...or Burt's Bees (God help us all should I travel to the UK without my crackstick!). U-turn, back to my place, grab purse, and go for round two. Thank you, Melinda, for being accustomed to my absent-mindedness and for being ever so very patient!
I spent the ride on Groome as the bologna to two coughing, snotty, disgusting individuals, one of whom was a grown man who kept grazing in the van and was incapable of doing so without leaning forward to chew in my ear, and the other of whom was a toddler who only shut up when I gave her the death stare...then would promptly turn around and wail even more. Perhaps I shall go to hell for this sentiment, but I spent the rest of the day wishing hemorrhoids and extensive diarrhea upon a three year old child, and as of yet, I have experienced no guilt, only a few annoying cold symptoms of my own--this is where I pause for a moment, gaze thoughtfully into the distance, and decide it'd be more appropriate to wish hemorrhoids and extensive diarrhea onto the mother of the screaming little snot rocket for not either drugging, beating, or muzzling her obnoxious little booger trove of a miscreant...and my family wonders why I look at them like they're crazy when asked when I want to have children!
We arrive at Delta, I loudly exclaim to Ric what a blessing that child was for being such a cheap contraceptive as I now have no desire to ever procreate even if the future of the universe is utterly dependent upon my uterus and mine alone, the mother looks at me sadly as if she wishes I had adored her child enough that she may have been able to sell her to me, I shake my head no just in case she were thinking of attempting to barter anyway, and we continue on our merry, now phlegm-free way. Perhaps there's something about Thanksgiving that briefly abducts the normal Delta employees and exchanges them with happy little airline elves, or perhaps they're still too full to be their normal pain in the ass selves, but we met the most chipper, kind, wonderful baggage check guy ever, and he saved us $150 by ignoring the fact that our bag was 6 pounds overweight, and he even thanked us for the $10 we slipped him as compensation for playing dumb. We shmoozed with him for a bit, I told him he was the nicest, best-looking Delta employee we had ever met, and then off to security, where I was ordered to remove my belt (just in case all those missiles and bazookas I was transporting were magically hidden within the thin metal buckle). Comedy is what happens when you try to make your way around Hartsfield Jackson while lugging a carry-on suitcase, laptop bag, a pea coat, and a diet coke from the airport McDonald's, all whilst attempting to keep your pants up, a feat in and of itself when you have all those mini-missiles and bazookas hidden on your person, right?
Watched the latest Harry Potter on the plane (rather disappointing, but I'll cut it some slack since it is coming before a part one of two sitch, so I guess they decided to make a movie with nothing but back story in it...whatevs), fell asleep, woke up long enough to inquire to the flight attendant about the GA/ Ga Tech game, and being the delightful lady she was, she got the pilot to ask dispatch, then reported back to us with, "Well, I would've figured a bee could take a dog, but the dogs beat the bees!" People several rows ahead of us turned to stare (glare?) at me...perhaps yelling "HELLZ YEAH!" on a plane full of homeward bound Britons was a bit much...somewhere out there, some Brit is probably lamenting the horror of their plane ride with the exuberant American and her profane mouth. C'est la vie!
So immigrations in the UK was rather funny...we were expecting the usual passport flash, stamp, and continue, but they asked us a number of questions about the purpose of our stay. At one point, the woman questioning me asked me where my husband was and without really thinking about it, I pointed to Ric and said, "He's that guy over there in the Yankees cap." The lady glared at me, bemused and seemingly irritated, then snarkily responded, "The who?" I just giggled, said, "My bad," hollered at Ric to wave, and mentally congratulated myself on having resisted the urge to make a Pete Townsend reference in response to her question. I know, I'm lame. I do believe this is the point where she chalked me up as a clueless American and passed me through missiles and bazookas and all, so we went to Avis to get a car.
DRIVING IN ENGLAND IS A FREAKING BLAST! We spend an hour and a half in the car laughing at me trying to figure out how to operate the f'ing radio (helps if one turns the volume up; Ric's co-worker Kevin got a great laugh out of that brain fart). The radio station we were on was hilarious--think American radio from about a decade ago, so we rocked it out to "The Thong Song" and Nelly Furtado, admired the woolly sheep adorning the gorgeous countryside, and exclaimed about every 14 seconds, "This is so weird!" Now, Americans are aware that the English drive on the opposite side of the road, but it never dawned on me (and likely on many others as well) that this reverses everything. The McDonald's drivethru was in reverse (and they had employees writing down orders rather than speakers, which was also odd to me), and I had a stand-off in the hotel hall with an elderly couple trying to figure who was to pass whom because they even pass each other on the left when walking. I moved to the right, the woman looked at me like I was nutty, her husband waved me through, and I had a Sesame Street flashback of the little monsters going, "Up. Down. Opposite!"
Anywho, enough for today. Stay tuned for the pros and cons of our hotel, pictures, the death can of 7Up, obese bunnies, and lemon geriatrics shampoo and conditioner, among other things. Seacrest out!
No comments:
Post a Comment