I Woke Up Today in London

well.. Heathrow, anyway.

And am now at saethwr's house in Cardiff~!

meant to post a journal when we got in to Chicago, but i couldn't connect to the internets there.
anyway, we got put into a holding pattern because Chicago apparently isn't used to rain... the airport was shut down for awhile, as i understand it.

Our plane to london was on time, though..
and... actually an awesome flight.
Boeing 767 (bigger than I've ever been on, personally)
that was half full at best.
so we had like six rows all to ourselves~ can you say SLEEP?!
very nice.
got two meals, both of them much better than we had expected-
first pancakes and fruit and some ham and eggs;
second one a pot pizza thing.
nomnom~

um.
getting through the border was... fun.
we'l just say fun.
suffice to say, the lady we went through thinks we're kind of stupid coming to visit an internet friend for three weeks, and it took an additional half hour to get in.

um.
baggage.. the claims were shut down (the airport was on its way out as well) and.... yeah.
got my bag after a moment of wtf...
couldnt find kriz's.
after a shitton of RAWRGH, went up to the desk to ask about it, and we kind of started to think it was lost or stolen, because we were trying to find it using kriz's name- then i realized (by looking at my bag) that the names were transposed- used the right name and found out that Alaska somehow failed to get his bag onto the American Airlines flight from seattle to chicago.... which confuses me because MY bag made it, and, as well, the flight was 45 minutes late. More than enough time to UNLOAD the last plane and get everything to the gate. ahw ell.

um.. stayed in a hotel in heathrow, woke up at like five am, ended up at the airport by eight ish, and .. like an hour trying to get krizzles bag, cant get them to cooperate, angst, angst, feet hurt.. um.
after MANY failures to meet us at the meeting point- krizzle decides to go try something else.
and, what do you know, Sunny (the guy who stayed late to help us locate the bag the night before, and who we both REALLY like) is just chillin out in the lobby with krizzles bag, and god forbid the airline could have told us that....

since we lost an hour or so, we couldn't go get breakfast on the way to Bristol for the Bristol fur meet; which is alright, since Sae made sure we had Welsh Cakes;
um.. a nap later and we both wake up to "Hey Jude" on Sae's ipod, which is somehow amazing. .. that that's the song that woke us up, since .. there were many louder songs on his playlist ;P

guys, it is fucking amazing how green this place is...
i'm so used to "Golden" california it's almost weird to see cows in a green field instead of a brown one.

anyway, bristol meet was DAMNED AMAZING, though kriz and sae both walk way faster than i have any ability to do (connective tissue thing.. my calves tighten up within seconds of extended stride/speed walking to keep up) and that was fairly painful, but worth it.
um.. starbucks, looking for waterguns, meet at the bandstand,start setting up for the barbeque, fill waterballoons, etc, etc, etc....
food, fun, waterfights...
water balloon catapult.
krizzle got DUNKED (via bucket over head) .... then over to a pub to hang for another hour or two or.. um.
i can;t keep track of time.

then... uh, kriz and I partook in a bit of liquor, in part because it's rare that we get to do so in public... a bit of cuddling, bodily harm (all in good fun) and eventually a game of Munchkin: Cthulu...
then the hour or so drive to Cardiff from bristol, which again involved a nap... get to Saes house and meet his Gran and Gramps~ and here we are now.

[edit] also, the name of the journal i was going to post in Chicago was "Landing on a runway in chicago." you know. if you were curious.

edit:
Here are the pictures from today: