Tales of Travel and Woe

[toosuto]

So now that we have some distance from it the travel leaves not much to tell. Monday was the longest day ever. The alarm went off at 4 am PST so Sara could run the kitties to cargo at 4:30. We started cleaning up and packed our luggage into the van to make our getaway and had breakfast with my parents (the last real waffles I've had since: sadness). Then errands and waiting. We mailed my computer some of Rona's toys etc. (which have another 2-4 weeks to arrive) and headed to the airport. Rona travled pretty well and even handled the sprint in the backpack from one side of the Minneapolis airport to the other. Things went sideways once we actually got to cargo in London to pick up the kitties. Someone forgot to stamp out paperwork so they couldn't let them into the country without paying for a UK vet to come check them out. So it was either pay $300 to get them checked out, $300 to euthanize them or another $1200 to send them back to the states. This sucked up pretty much all of our free time in London to see slownewsday and giantlaser We touched down at 9 am GMT but I didn't leave the airport until 1 pm with Rona so we could sort of catch up with slownewsday.

We got to her flat at nearly 3. Rona got to actually be down and play. I got a shower and some delicious delicious soup (cream of zuchinni, baby goats? It's all kind of a haze except for how tasty it was...) Sara managed to catch up with us 3 hours later. giantlaser came home from work and we all went to the pub for some much needed liqour food stuff and sort of downtime. Our second cab (for the luggage took his own sweet time getting to us and that coupled with ScotRail somehow losing track of our tickets (I still don't really understand how) catching the train to Aberdeen was full of woe and tears as Sara thought that the train might leave without Rona and I or any of our luggage which then spilled all over the platform multiple times as we raced to the far end to get on... (and once on and moving is when I was able to do a mental check and realize that the suitcase with Rona's luggage was not on the train. Finally we all manage to calm down enough to rest and occasionally sleep.

rethought met us at the station in Aberdeen and it was so nice to have someone to meet us. We were tired. Not sure how stuff worked (was X the same as back home? Similar? Where do we catch a taxi?) She helped us lug our stuff home, helped us get settled and pointed us to the nearest grocery (we made there different trips that day) and generally kept us company. On Thursday she gave us a whirlwind tour of downtown and led us to delicious delicious pub food.

Pretty much since then it's been go to the store, buy electricity (our meter is inside the flat and you prepay), go to school, walk around. I did make it out for a day of shooting the town and we have in the past few days finally gotten into a decent routine. We have library cards. Our landlord is awesome enough that he was willing to wait for our bank account to be open before he demanded October's rent (the account should sometime in the first week...) rethought invited us to dinner last week to meet Jayne, neepheid and percible and sometime in the next week or so I'll get to start playing in a 2nd edition (for retro purposes) campaign. We are very excited to be here still. Grateful to have had even the little time we did with Jayme and Tyler and looking forward to have so much less traumatic adventures.

Edit: Jane probably spells her name the normal way rather than like the hero of Kanten. Apparently she does. I am still, obviously, a huge nerd.

Comments

[gin314.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting, sweetie! Been thinking about you guys lots. Continue to tell of your adventures!