Mood: Way too much to do..
Reading: Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde

My family, without fail, picks the worst times for our European vacations. London in a heat wave (the Underground was disgusting), Paris in May (the rainiest month), and Venice in November (it snowed -- I didn't even know Italy had snow. What the hell happened to the Mediterranean climate?). This upcoming vacations is no exception -- we're going to London tonight, the day after a terrorist plot to blow up planes going from London to the US was foiled. To make it all even better, we're even travelling on United, the targeted airline. Security lines will be gruesome, my boyfriend's flipping out, and we might not even be able to carry books onto the plane for a seven-hour flight.

Although I'm half-convinced that the plot was created and then secretly exposed by disgruntled security guards who realized that the wave of confiscations could earn them some new Chanel perfume and a lifetime supply of toothpaste and hair care products, I'm reasonably sure that in terms of my safety, I have nothing to worry about. All things potentially dangerous and then some will be dutifully taken away. We won't even have books, very possibly, and although I've thought long and hard, I can't come up with a single way someone could blow up a plane with a book. The worst thing that's going to happen to me is that I might die of boredom.

But people keep telling me to be optimistic for some reason, so here are some positive things about the situation:

1. Our security guards will smell very nice. Just think of all that confiscated perfume and cologne. I'm sure they'll also have freshly-brushed teeth and freshly-washed hair.

2. Parents will learn what they're putting their children through. One of the few things permitted on the flight will be baby food -- but only if you taste it. And as if American baby food didn't look gross enough, some of the people flying to teh US from the UK will have the rather eclectic British baby food. As my parents have informed me, when I was in England at the age of seven months, I ate such delicacies as "peaches and green beans" and "blueberry and beef." British parents need to taste this food and realize that it's the reason that English adult cuisine is so awful -- to people with repressed memories of British baby food, Shepherd's Pie must look pretty damn good.

3. No one will be able to judge their flying companions by their book covers. Understandably, you might spend your flight in great distress if the guy next to you was reading How to Make a Bomb Out of Common Household Materials (And Other Brilliant Tactics for a Terrorist in a Secure World) or Seventy Ways to Keep Seventy Virgins Happy and Wanting More! But now, you can spend your flight worry-free as the two of you sit and chat while watching a mediocre in-flight movie about a plane crash.

4. Two words: business class. Since my dad's going to England for a business trip, this is my first (and quite possibly only, in my entire future life) time flying business class. And in terms of that, I really do have the best possible timing. Not only will I have the usual perks like leg rooms, seats that can actually recline, and better food (or so I've heard), rumors tell me that we have significantly shorter security lines. I can wave at the rest of the poor shmucks on coach as we breeze on by. It might make me feel better.

5. Finally, since everything that could go wrong has gone wrong already, nothing else will happen. We won't lose our luggage (which happened when we were coming home from Paris), and we won't have our passports stolen (which happened to my dad on a bus in Prague). Thus, this should be a perfect trip at all times when we're not on an airplane.

I'll give an update when I get back!

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