Greetings from the US!

The past few weeks have been really tough. The move, the problems with the internet, and the fact that I was planning a trip to the US that I could not blog about because it was a secret.

Yes, I am an international spy.

NOT.

My Dad's birthday is the 5th and Mom and I decided to have some fun and fly me in to surprise him. It worked. We surprised him. Teehee.

It's been DAMNED hard to not write about it on the blog, though. I've wanted to blab for weeks. ARG! But Dad reads the blog, so I could not mention the trip. But now I can, hooray! (And I am using Dad's rather sweet new Macintosh G5. It has a HUGE screen. Unfortunately, the folks still only have dial up, which is damned slow, but this is one cool computer. Mom has her own little Mac laptop and they have the house wired for connectivity. If only they had DSL. Macintosh has the corner on coool design on computers. I might look into one for my next computer. (Dave, stop howling with glee. Seriously, now, quit it.))

I flew in to Houston on Continental on Saturday. I gotta give Continental kudos for very comfortable planes. Even though the flight was packed (I mean, overbooked packed!) I was fairly comfortable because the legroom on the flight was at least enough where I could cross my legs without having to stick them out into the aisle to do it. The flight attendants are kind of wierd, (and yes, I will always spell wierd wierd so just deal with it, ok? One of my adorable quirks.) on Continental, though. All older, and kinda cranky. One or two are nice, the rest are just barely doing what they need to do to get by. It felt as though all my elementary school teachers had been hired to manage the flight, and all the passengers were nothing but an unruly bunch of kids who needed to be kept in line and fed ice cream every few hours or so. I've noticed this on every flight with them...the flight attendants are very authoritarian...,,hmm.

My brother met me in Houston on Saturday at 6pm. My luggage did not. It got to me at 1am on Sunday night, having been left behind in Amsterdam, which was annoying as i had planned to go to Ft Worth Sunday afternoon to see my sister and brother in law on the way to Missouri to surprise Dad. As it was, I had to wait around in Houston for my luggage to get to the US and then pass through Customs. And let me tell you, American Customs SUCKS ASS. When I called to find out where my luggage was, the folks on Continental said "Well, it landed at 5:30 on Sunday, but you might not get it till tomorrow". When I asked why, they said that Customs gloms onto it and won't let go for hours. I asked if maybe we could get them to expedite my luggage, as I didn't want to be TWO days late on my travel plans, and the lady on the phone snorted and said "Hurry Customs? If I ask them to hurry your luggage, they will actually go slower. Customs Sucks." Yes, she actually said that Customs Sucks. That made me laugh.

Anyhow, they managed to get my luggage to me at 1am (and I was NOT a pretty sight when it arrived, having been awakened from a deep sleep, I think I scared the delivery guy to death). I borrowed a car from my brother and drove to Missouri on Monday, a nice smooth trip in a very nice older Audi with lots of speed and room. There is nothing I like better than a road trip. It's one of the few times where I can just totally be myself, just me and a car and some good music. I love to drive, I'm quite good at it, and the lure of the open road and a fast car is something I just can't resist. I really do think that the best part of any trip is the getting there. I loves me the road trips.

Got to Missouri right around 8pm on Monday (about 11 hours on the road) and surprised the hell out of Dad, it was great.

I'l be here for a week and then to Austin for some hanging out, some Mexican food and a wedding on the 13th. I go back to Norway on the 21st.