The beaver is a proud and noble animal

Hee hee hee :D

I'd been in email conversation with the hotel manager to confirm my reservations and all, when I wrote in the last email:

I've been reading online reviews of the hotel and I must say I'm looking forward to my stay. I did run across something interesting on [a british hotel reservation website] that mentions a free bottle of champagne for 2 or more guests staying 2 or more nights. Would it be horribly cheeky of me to ask to if this could be applied post-reservation? *grin*

The response:

A bottle of Champagne it is *smile*

You have to love the british :D

Spent last night watching the US election returns with the boys. Most people thought that there would be a decision last night. I had my doubts. Events have proved me right. I wish I wasn't :( I feel it in my bones that dubya is going to win, and that scares me. Everybody left round 11:30, as we are all old fogeys. I was asleep before my head touched the pillows.

I confirmed my reservation at a nice-looking London hotel. Lookee here. The room is 50 pounds a night. If you want your own en-suite bathroom, it's 80 pounds. Now I'm sorry, but I'm not paying 30 pounds (67$ canadian) for a bathroom. I don't mind using the common facilities on the floor. Besides, the hotel only has 17 rooms, and 5 floors, with one loo per floor (and about half the rooms have en-suite facilities). Michel and I had worse odds when we were in a B&B in New Orleans.

I am working on a surprise full of shiny, pretty things :D

From today's Sinfest

Actually managed to sleep ok, but I think that's just because I was so tired last night. I changed the sheets on the bed – not by choice, but rather by obligation – so my pillows smell of bounce rather than of Katy. Sucks. Weird random moment: waking up in the middle of the night at the usual time Katy went to the bathroom…

Boris seems to be looking for Katy. Normally, first thing he did when he was let into the room was to jump on the bed and attack her feet. Now, he's just mewling around my legs and he hasn't even jumped on the bed. He just kind of went to her side of it, stood up on his hind paws, sniffed around and looked at me funny.

I was feeling mopey right now, until I looked up above my monitor and saw Parsley, and that made me feel better :)

Sara and I drove Katy to the airport. Even though we spent a looooong time waiting in line, it didn't seem long enough, and then Katy was behind the gate doors and my eyes got suspiciously moist. Sara kept us laughing as long as she could while we were waiting, to the expense of a few new bruises on her body, but I still had a heavy heart.

As I'm writing this, Katy is probably taxiing to the take-off runway on her way back home. Me? I'm at my sister's place, fixing her computer (the usual :P), and watching the Gala de l'Adisq. I didn't feel like being alone right just now… I can only imagine what Katy is going through. I know I was happy to have Sara during the drive to my sister's place. I hope she's going to be ok *sends good thoughts her way*. I know the happy-face tissue she left me was put to good use.

I have no idea what's going to happen when I get home tonight. For the past month, I've been happier than I've ever been. It dawned on my a few times during the day that she wouldn't be there tomorrow when I got home. Wouldn't be a warm presence next to me when I went to sleep. I wouldn't be able to meet her for lunch, and talk about what she was going to do that day, or what we were going to make for dinner. When I get home tonight, the apartment will be empty – the cat doesn't really count. I don't know how I'm going to handle that, to be perfectly honest.

I know that I'm going to see her in 7 weeks, and that I'll probably be so busy with work and odd projects here and there that time will just seem to fly by. Tonight though, will be rough. I miss her already. I love her. At least she left me her lion :)

We're packing up Katy's things. I just burned all the pictures we took on her trip to CD. There are 843, that take up just over 1GB of disk space. That's scary… As for how I'm feeling right now… I don't really want to think about it :(

I'm going to see Katy during hte holidays, huzzah. Got my ticket freshly confirmed and all :D I will not even attempt to understand the mysteries of air travel. The flight I have is Ottawa->Toronto->London. It's 650$. If I do Montreal->Toronto->London on the exact same dates, it's 900$. If I do Montreal->Toronto, it's ~675$, but I can't really do that because of schedule constraints. It was a pain in the ass to find the sweet spot, date-wise. The day you're leaving seems to have a huge significance, but it's not always consistent. Also, the expedia website listed two exact same flights, dates and times, for two different prices. I don't get it, but it's not important anymore :D

My flight information:

Fri 24 Dec 2004

Ottawa (YOW) to Toronto (YYZ)
Depart 6:00 am
Arrive 7:10 am
Duration: 1hr 10min
Flight: Air Canada 479

Toronto (YYZ) to London (LHR)
Depart 9:00 am
Arrive 9:15 pm
Duration: 7hr 15min
Flight: Air Canada 868

Total distance: 6075 km (3775 mile(s))
Total duration: 8hr 25min (10hr 15min with connections)

Sat 8 Jan 2005

London (LHR) to Ottawa (YOW)
Depart 4:45 pm Arrive 7:20 pm
Duration: 7hr 35min
Flight: Air Canada 889

Total distance: 5362 km (3332 mile(s))
Total duration: 7hr 35min

Two little edits: yes, I'm leaving Ottawa at 6am. That means I need to be at the airport at 4am. That means I really shouldn't really sleep that night, cause I'll need to wake up at 2:30 am. Normally, flights to europe are in the afternoon, but I didn't want to land on xmas morning.

Edit #2: to all those people who sniggered because I always keep my passport in my bag, I say HA! I needed it just now to confirm something, so I say neener neener in your general direction.