A Million Words

As if we didn't have enough to do in our final weeks in Ireland, I decided that I wanted to fit in a bit of travel before we hit the road.  So, at 3:20 AM last Friday (over a week ago) Mike, Nova and I jogged to the bus stop to catch the citylink bus to Shannon, and the 6:30 AM Ryan Air flight to Stanstead.   This was my first experience with Ryan Air, and I'd heard some pretty bad feedback. My main problem was the booking process. The online booking system automatically assigned us to the 06:30 flight. I clicked the option to select the early afternoon flight, for a few euro more.  I went on through the booking system. Lo and behold, at the end of it, I was still on the blasted 6:30.  I was not pleased. It took me four days to get back in to the booking system to change the reservation. Then they wanted to charge me 170 euro, more than the original ticket, to make the change. I decided that we would just have to suck up and take the 6:30. So there we were, trotting to catch t

A week from today, we will be on the plane back to the US.  I was going to chronicle our oh-so-organized process of sorting through our things and packing up, but so far it's just happened around the fringes of my attention.  Mike has made great progress sorting through his collections of books, games, art supplies, and dice, while I occasionally throw a few books into a box, or clothes into a bag. Mostly, I'm trying desperately to finish this draft of my cheesy romance novel before we take off.   I began plotting this novel in late October or early November of 2007, shortly before Nova was born. I knew that I wouldn't have the energy and brain power to do NaNoWriMo that year, but a year later, in the midst of ridiculous amounts of household stress, I decided to give it a go again.  I started writing on the first and plowed through a few bumps in the road before losing two days to a vicious stomach bug (first me, then Nova, then Mike... or maybe Nova was first).  I took tw