London Calling...

You know what really grinds my gears?

International keyboards. Where the fonz is my ampersand? And for that matter, my -at- sign? And how do I generate quotes?? This thing is teh sux, quote unquote. My shift key is the smallest key on the keyboard. I hope no one likes apostrophes. European keyboards are essentially worthless. Anyways, I guess this could use some explaination...

I'm in London. And I just discovered my apostrophe, thank you. Thank you. Don't ask me why I'm here, unless you've got about a half a day to listen to a sordid tale about gifts and curses, camping trips, the mentally insane, standby tickets, stimulus checks and the job that just wouldn't fire me. If you can wait, we're submitting the screenplay to pre-production, and this epic comedy will be hitting theaters in early December. I'll make a long story a little less long. Denise and I are en route to the Madeira Islands of Portugal to visit the land of her Forebearers. Through a really bizarre chain of events we ended up with a 3 night stay in London, which thus far we have milked for just about all it's worth.

The best part of the trip, however, was the fact that Denise and I are on seprate flights, she possesing an actual legit ticket, and me with a Employee 1st class standby ticket out of Oakland, by way of Denver and Chicago, booked about a week ago. Apparently I'm not the only one traveling this summer, as I was bumped from my first 3 flights starting at five in the morning, barely squeezed onto a flight to Denver, and took my chances on non-stop London flight leaving late that night. They weren't expecting me to get on, as every flight out of Denver for the next 3 days were oversold by almost 10 people each. United = Awesome. Let me tell you, that marks the second time that I have spent 9+ hours in the Denver Airport. That place rules.

Well, thanks to a freak thunderstorm causing mass landing delays, I made my flight no sweat. 1st class would have been sweet if I'd only been told of the dress code for those on employee tickets, and thus I was bumped to coach due to my shameful brand new Converse Chucks.

Meanwhile, Denise is FREAKING OUT because we can't communicate while she's in London due to a lack of international calling plans from verizon, so she's imagining this horrible catastophe where I arrive in London two days after she flys to Portugal, where I would get to enjoy two weeks here with no hotel, and no money.

But, as always, the universe revolves around me, and therefore Denise also. So I land in London just about an hour after she landed. We met up at the border, played good cop/bad cop the the border patrol officer, and lived happily ever after.

In the end: Denise has a heart attack, Arnold gets 4 hours sleep in 3 days, and the trip couldn't have worked out better thus far.