So, as I mentioned yesterday, my (eventual) flight from Chicago to Portland appeared to be proceeding without flaw…until it didn’t.
I had a nice morning at the Hyatt Regency (and let me AGAIN say how impressed I am with the Hyatt (and with SwissAir for sending me there), for how they managed to take an exhausted, frustrated, disappointed, tear-stained and travel-weary mess of a person and treat her with dignity and respect and cheerfulness, transforming her into a reasonably well-rested, fed, clean, and even exercised human being), and got to the airport in plenty of time for my on-time flight; we boarded, settled in, and…..
and……
and……
and……
Fifteen or so minutes after we should have taken off, the captain announced that they were making a few tiny little repairs to non-essential things, shouldn’t be more than a few more minutes….
and…..
and……
and…………….
Looooooooong story short–after a few more uninformative announcements, and them actually letting people get off the plane and wander around the airport (though I didn’t, trapped in a middle seat in the last yes LAST row, I didn’t want to bother), we eventually took off nearly two hours late.
But I did get to Portland by about 7:30 (9:30 Chicago time, god-knows-what Italy time); it was SUCH a joy to see Mark waiting for me just outside security. We went for a late-ish dinner at Lauro and came home and crashed. I had that almost-too-tired-to-fall-asleep thing, but then of course fell asleep; woke up at 3:30 with The Jetlag (and all the anxieties about all the things to do, and where are the deliveries, and where is the mail!?), and have mostly been awake since.
And busy. Mark’s first novel, The Book of Joby, is being re-released in mass market paperback in January (yay!!!), and Tor sent him the page proofs just now (really just now: this morning) (part of the 3:30 am anxiety: should have been here yesterday) and they have to be back in New York on Monday. And, as I am the proofreader, I am doing the proofreading. (I insisted, in fact. He was all going to do it himself, and I was all, I don’t think so.)
The book will be 750 pages in this format…if I do 150 pages a day, I can get it done by Saturday, then have Sunday to scan and send in. So I did 152 pages today–not much more than my usual proofreading pace. And it’s totally fun to read it again. Such a good book. 🙂
Anyway, that’s pretty much how I spent my day. Also doing laundry and getting groceries and watering orchids and poking through the garden (did autumn arrive just like that? yes it did) and going through all my mail (which also arrived, a day late) and the other sort of getting-home stuff. And I’m not even telling you about my seatmate on yesterday’s flight, who is a short story in her own right…I have not the mental strength or agility right now, and I might save it for a short story anyway and never tell you here. But, wow.
And I feel that this post is disintegrating into sleepy nonsense, and it’s not even 8pm, but I’ve been awake since 3:30, and, well, um.