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December 27, 2004
Home Again
After a lovely trip to Copenhagen with Amity (we caught the 5:38 a.m. train from Karlskrona to Kastrup Airport, then had a freakishly expensive--but delicious--breakfast at the hotel), I flew home. Although I was clearly tagged as a spy (or a drug mule), the extra scrutiny at the airport caused little delay and I was happy to sleep through most of the flight.
A quick evening with the family, followed by some frantic packing, and I was asleep by 10 p.m., only to find the alarm going off at 4:30 a.m. We piled into the minivan ("Grandma's car") and set off for the airport again. At that point, I was seriously questioning whether a 7-day Caribbean cruise was worth more time in an airport. But we managed to get to New Orleans (via Atlanta) on time, and checked into the lovely Norweigen Dream.
We spent a fun 7 days at sea, stopping by Cozumel, Belize City, Roatan (Honduras), and Cancun along the way. We headed back on Christmas Day, which was not quite as delightful as I anticipated, since the ship was in the middle of rough seas and we could barely walk down the halls and spent most of the day in bed. Nonetheless, I was quite sad to arrive back in New Orleans yesterday morning (to find they had the first snow in 50 years the night before--only an inch--and the highways and airports were seriously affected).
The family spent many, many hours in the airport, finally leaving at 4:30 p.m. and arriving back in Baltimore at 11 p.m. Of course, it couldn't be that easy--our luggage somehow didn't make the flight. After an hour of waiting, I filled out a missing luggage request and we went home. Jess stayed behind to meet her new man, who was catching the next flight in from Atlanta. Our luggage must have been on his plane, because it arrive on the luggage carousel when his did. Good boy that he is, he and Jess brought all the luggage back home, so I had some clothes this morning when I woke up.
Now I'm in the middle of unpacking (and repacking--since I'll bring my summer clothes back to Sweden with me) and going through photos to order (I want to catch up on my scrapbooking while I'm here). In a bit, I'm hoping to make it to the mall, to peruse the after-Christmas shopping opportunities.
But first, I have to go disable the smoke detector, which has started beeping in the last 3 minutes. It's enough to drive someone crazy. Of course, this brings back memories, since this very smoke detector did the same thing about 7 months ago when I had my first date with Brandon. Perhaps I should call him while I'm here. I have his sweatshirt and he has my book. Perhaps an exchange is in order?
