Well, It's about Frickin' Time

you say. I have been making excuse after excuse after excuse not to update my little bloggie. And I finally got to the point where even I wasn't buying my excuses, let alone anyone else. I am no longer on my road trip, (have been back over two weeks now), we finally got a wireless card for the old iBook, I am now officially (almost) employed so there goes the "busy searching for job" excuse. I guess it is just hard to know where to begin once you've been away for so long, and really so much has happened. so forgive me if this is disheveled gobbly gook as i attept to recap the last 2 months of my life starting with post Londonness, per Bostoness :)

after moving out of the lovely luxury london flat (yeah, right), we made it to canterbury, home of the in laws, who kindly offered to store a whole apartment in their used to feel big but now is totally stuffed house. we did however, finally get our very own double bed after years of being forced to sleep in separate single beds when visiting them. this was mostly due to the fact that there was just nowhere else to put the damn thing. and i think they were doing their best to encourage us to come and visit whenever possible. it was just the best thing to be able to decorate our room there with all of our things, knowing we always have it to go back to. it made it a lot easier to get on that plane. so major cudos to john and marion, the best in-laws in the world, hands down.

speaking of getting on that plane. we were lucky enough to be flying on august 11th, the day after august 10th, which is also the day that suicide bombers were planning to blow up 5 planes travelling from london heathrow to various US airports. oh my god. not only was i scared shitless that we were going to die, and suspicious of any person who spent a little too long in the bathroom on the plane, or smuggled in a magazine, but i have also never seen security like that in my life. for those of you who've been to heathrow, the line to get through security was over 2 hours long and wound all of the way through the airport into the entire plaza where all the stores are. this was only line number two. line number one was another 2 hours waiting to check in at the desk. then there was line number 3 at the gate. we were not allowed to wait in the gate, and instead had to wait in line to go into the gate, at which point our passports were scrutinized. then line number 4 was full on strip search (before boarding the plane), and getting frisked, along with the emptying out the entire contents of our little clear plastic bags. we were allowed to bring eyeglasses, not in the case, wallets (and the contents were emptied and sorted through), and a passport. that was it. 7 hours with no water, no lipbalm, no books, no magazines, no snacks. oh lordy, there are no words to describe. the water was the hardest thing for me as i usually drink about a gallon on the plane!

and looking back now it's hard not to feel like that was the beginning of our being jinxed. the road trip was amazing and incredibly hard at the same time. i think jon and i both had sort of romantsized "jack keroac"-esk kind of ideas about what it would be. we pictured lots of camping and hiking and cute little towns and lots of nature. in reality, we saw some amazing national parks, and some absolutely beautiful and strange landscapes. but this was mixed with strip malls, chain hotels, chain restaurants, and lots of old unhealthy looking very fat white people. and the bottom line is this is one god damn huge country. we all know it cognitively, but it isn't something you can really fathom until you attempt to drive accross it. i am a new england girl, used to being able to drive accross 3-4 states in a day. so getting used to the fact that it took us all day to drive accross one state was hard. aside from that, i was not prepared for the sheer size of our national parks. i kind of assumed that once we reached the parks, we could park the car and hike our was around to see them. WRONG. not only do you spend all day driving to the park, but then you spend all day driving in the park to see it.

so realizing that i have naively attempted to squeeze 8 weeks of posts into one, i think i will end here for now and fill you in on part two in a separate post. stay tuned.....