Tonight I met up with Andrea and some friends of hers at Starbucks. Andrea is flying to Spain tomorrow for a semester abroad, so I wanted to spend some more time with her before she left. We had a good time. She seems to be one of those rare people with whom I always seem to have things to talk about, so we don't need to have something to do — just sitting around and conversing is always pleasant.

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I think that just like Mitch Hedberg's "One complicated payment," someone decided that since most of the trip had gone awesome, the last part would be made as difficult as possible. My 6:30am flight from Dublin to Manchester was delayed for two hours because of poor visibility, but we didn't find out until we had left the gate, so we had to sit in the plane for two hours watching the sun come up and waiting for the weather to clear. I didn't really mind much, as I slept right through it, but the delay made it nearly impossible to catch my transatlantic flight from Manchester to Boston. To make things more interesting, my duffel bag decomposed a little more at a critical moment. I hurriedly checked in my bag, the woman stuck the label on the strap, and then as I lifted the bag (by the strap) onto the belt, the strap broke. I sighed and showed it to her and she had to cancel the check-in and check in the bag again to get a new label to put on a different strap. That was the third loss of structural integrity this bag has suffered, and this one left a hole for things to fall out of. Fortunately, I only had large things in that pocket, so nothing got lost, but it was disconcerting. Fortunately, the bag made it home without any further incidents, but it's certainly never leaving again.

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Liz arrives today, and will be visiting for a week. Andrés arrives tomorrow, and he will be here for two and a half weeks. I've accumulated four vacation days from working weekend shifts over the last month or two, so I'm taking Thursday, Friday, Monday, and Tuesday off. That means today is effectively my Friday, which is awesome.

After Liz regrettably leaves, Andrés and I are going to see if we can make a weekend trip to St. Thomas to visit Rose. A few weeks after that, I'm going to Cedar Point with Bryan and Cat. Around then, Michelle and Andrea get down here for the summer, and they'll be here for 4 months. So for the next few months, at least, my solitude seems to be in a temporary reprieve.

Liz's plane gets in around 6pm, so the plan is to call her when I get off work at 8. Just have to make it until then and I'm home free.