I finally got back home at a little past 5pm on Saturday. I slept 13 hours straight last night, and I reckon if it wasn’t for the fact I have to set my alarm clock for work tomorrow, I’d sleep long and late again tomorrow.

Taken it easy most of today. Dorrie has been under my feet every time I move, probably making sure I don’t disappear again. She’s become a little more vocal, and a lot more energetic in my time away, but otherwise she’s pretty unchanged. The house and my housemate are both fine. The weather is absolutely atrocious (wet and wildly windy), and makes me wish I were back in the blue-skied snow of Colorado, or the blue-skied warmth of South Carolina. Alas, back to reality.

Work as usual tomorrow - but in a new building.

It’s 9.40am, Pacific Standard Time, and I’m sitting in the United Airlines passenger lounge in Los Angeles airport. I shouldn’t be here - I should be in Chicago again, killing time in my layover. Unfortunately, adverse weather conditions (i.e. snowstorms) have crippled the Chicago area, and as a result a large number of flights, mine included, have been re-routed or delayed.

Richard dropped me off at Colorado Springs airport at 4.30am, ready for me to check into my 6am flight to Chicago. The check-in attendant explained the situation to me, and told me that I’d been booked on a flight to Los Angeles leaving at midday. What? I said. 7 hours hanging around? Can’t you get me on an earlier flight? He had a look, and told me he could get me on a flight to LA at 6.42am, but it would mean a layover until my connecting flight to London at 5.02pm. I said I’d take it, and perhaps I’d be able to get an earlier flight back to London.

The flight to Los Angeles wasn’t so bad. It was shorter than I thought it’d be at a little over 2 hours. We flew over the Grand Canyon, which is pretty cool even at 30,000 feet. I was amazed at how huge and sprawling Los Angeles is, too. The downtown skyscrapers are this little cluster, and then the city stretches for miles and miles. It looks even bigger than London, although according to some facts and figures courtesy of Wikipedia, it’s not really. Very impressive, though.

At LAX, I went to find out if there was any chance of an earlier flight. With the weather affecting several areas, though, I had no luck. I would have paid some more to upgrade to business, but that’s actually overbooked. I was given the option of taking two standby flights from LA to DC, then DC to London, but that’d take longer and would run the risk of me not getting on standby. In the end, I figured I’d just sit it out here in LAX. I paid $50 to spend the time in the first class passenger lounge, which gets me comfort, internet access, and some peace, and managed to get an upgrade to a premium economy class exit row seat on the 5.02pm flight. Better than nothing. I’ll end up getting home at around 3pm tomorrow - around 4 hours later than originally planned. I’m going to be so wiped out.