Monday, Monday

All good things must come to an end, including a free weekend trip to see Peter Pan and approximately 200 other people in the process.

So, I had one final morning of sleeping in (man, do I miss that!) before heading out for another round of visits-- this time, it was the shops that had my attention. Marsh had the Snapple I wanted (By the way, best stuff on Earth? They aren't kidding!); Wal-Mart had the Tetley. So, we had to go to both. And the very friendly cashier at WM took a huge step over the gulf that has long existed between me and nationwide chain stores (and Wal-Mart in particular) when, upon noticing that I had enough Tetley to last me for the next six months, she said, "Now, did you know you can order anything at Wal-Mart and have it shipped to your local store?"

As it happens, I did know that, but it had never occured to me that they meant tea when they said that; I though it was stuff like flat-panel TVs. No, apparently I can get myself a box of Tetley delivered to my Lubbock WM, which for me is so local that it is within walking distance. Brilliant.

So after this jolly discovery, we took Grandma back home, and tried to go see another of our three dozen cousins, but we had no luck, because she works nights & was sound asleep when we went to her house. This is probably just as well, really; I would feel pretty guilty getting her up for 20 minutes' worth of chitchat.

After that, it was a whirl of throwing all my stuff back into the suitcase, saying goodbye & thank you to Grandma, and loading it all up in Dad's truck. Then we had to go to Mum's work to say goodbye to her (and I got to meet the boss), then a stop by McDonald's so Denise could deliver something & we could get some lunch, then off to the airport. By the way, Indianapolis has a beautiful airport.

The security people stopped me so they could measure my scissors! Man, all the fun stuff happens to me at airport security.

Northwest Airlines sent me to Detroit first, for reasons passing understanding. I have to say that while I would have preferred a more direct route, it was worth it (almost) to have a look at the Detroit airport. Another beautiful building. I walked the entire length of Terminal A because I had three hours to just hang out.

And whatever my grievances against Northwest Airlines (and believe me, I have a list), their pilots are brilliantly good at landing. Every landing I experienced this weekend was so very smooth, and a couple of them I wasn't sure for a second if we were actually on the ground or if it was just turbulence. That's how smooth it was. This is in contrast to our Continental landing last summer, when I'm pretty sure we were shot down.