Londonward

Check in online, go through the motions, find nice seats, print out boarding passes and happily stroll to the airport early tomorrow morning - but no! “Your documentation must be verified by a staff member at the airport”! I can only hope that the settings for our seat choices were saved anyway, even if it didn’t let us complete the check-in process completely.

I don’t get it - why have online checkin if it just doesn’t let you do what it’s meant to?

Of course, being used to little sleep, I am wide awake only some 6 hours after coming home last night. Because of various living configurations, I had never been out with my brother before. I think he had a good time, though, as did I. I first snuck him into the staff party with me. It actually felt really cool to arrive and within minutes get whisked around with “Hi! Great to see you!” as if they had been expecting me. After the free bar had shut and the vodka luge was dry (not least because I was goaded to having more than 1) we finally made it to a pub. And to another pub. And then home via a fast food joint.

I’m hoping that the configuration of the plane we’re taking to Houston is the new 777 one rather than the old one, but there seems to be no way to tell. To spare you from clicking the links, the new one has power sockets in all seats with no need for fancy adapters. That would make the rush for the check-in to get seats on the few powered-up rows that much less hassle.

Oh, and another interesting thing about the flight. Looking at the one going out today, it is (surprise surprise) late by about 45 minutes. I started thinking - what if we don’t make our connecting flight to Lima? Who’s responsible for putting us up for the delay? Surely they wouldn’t let us book flights without them being manageable transfer-wise? I don’t know, I don’t do this often.

It feels weird being at work after my last lecture of the term. Usually I do procrastinate by looking at stuff on the web but now that I really don’t have anything pressing to do it suddenly feels strange.

I am getting a little excited now (finally!) about the trip I’m about to take. I’m going transatlantic for the first time to spend some time in Peru, but I haven’t had the time or energy to really devote to expecting it and imagining what it’ll be like. Still have no clue what to expect to be honest, but at least it’ll be (half) a world away from London.

It’s the little things that get me excited: I’ve checked online and the airline we’re taking, Continental, does PC plugs which’d mean I’d get to faff around on my laptop should the in-flight entertainment get boring. Considering we’re spending the better part of 24 hours inside that aluminium tube I’d say that’s likely. The weird thing is they want you to get some sort of adapter, which I’m taking for granted can be bought at the airport itself. Well, I hope so at least, as getting my laptop to charge would allow me to charge my mp3 player which gets a pathetic 3.5 hour battery life.

Speaking of which, I’d need to update my music so as to not skip every third track. If I just had time and the hard drive space to swap stuff around…

As you can tell the sorts of preparatory things for the trip have been on the lowest of low flames on the back burner for the past few weeks. I haven’t thought about packing yet, nor of the amount of reading that I’d reasonably be able to do. I have an academic text and some literature, but originally thought I’d print a load of articles off to do over the break as well. It’s not like the reading is ever done. All of this has come on rather suddenly, though, and I haven’t prepared at all.

I am physically and mentally exhausted. I also managed to hurt my foot (again, though this time the left one) by falling down my own stairs while obviously preoccupied with some high-flying theory or something. My ankle is swollen but I did manage to walk (hobble) on it all day. I have finally made it back home and having it horizontal does feel pretty good.

I didn’t even realise how completely worn out I am until yesterday, when receiving less-than-stellar feedback from my tutor about something I’d sent him sent me careening into a spiral of tiredness and worry. I’m mostly over the worry with a healthy dose of que sera, sera. I was hoping I’d get a really good night’s sleep tonight as I’ve been tired every single morning. Going to try for 8.5 hours. Not that it’s going to cure anything, but maybe it’ll keep me going through tomorrow.

Plan for rest of week: Work tomorrow, write essay, plan debate for Friday, try and clean this pigsty of a room before my brother gets here. Oh, and try and get this ankle fixed. Damn ankle.

Absolutely exhausting. That’s what university terms are. And to think that in 5 weeks I’ll (supposedly) be ready to do it all again!