all my innocence is wasted on the dead and dreaming

I'm totally wiped out -- two flight cancelations in twenty-four hours will do that to you. I slept approximately three hours last night (and those three hours were rather poor), waking up at 3am to shower and leave for the Des Moines airport again. Michael took me up to DSM in the dark, and I got there just in time to go through security, buy a bottle of water, and board my flight. I got to Chicago on time, sat through my 2.5hr layover...then continued to sit as the departure time changed from 9:40, to 10:30, to 11:30, to 12, before the flight was canceled entirely due to mechanical difficulties. I'm rather sick of hearing about mechanical difficulties, and think it's a bit worrisome that United had two such issues without any backup planes available (I understand no backups available in Des Moines -- but to not be able to fix a problem with pressurization in Chicago and not have a backup either seems unacceptable to me).

Anyway, the one good thing is that they automatically rebooked me on a flight leaving direct to SFO at 2pm, and called me to tell me about it, so that I could check in on my laptop (and board using my mobile phone) rather than standing in line with the 200 people who were bounced from my canceled flight (+the 40 or 50 people who were already on standby for that flight because they had a flight canceled yesterday). Of course, that wasn't all good, since the 2pm flight was delayed by 90mins. But, I eventually got to board, and I reached SFO at 6:15pm today, only 19 hours after I was supposed to.

I left the airport and drove straight to the office; even though I was exhausted, I had an all-hands with the big boss and one of her international teams, and it lasted from 8:30-10pm. It went well, although at that point I could really not have cared less. And now, I'm back in my house, I'm not traveling again for another three weeks, and I'm going to go to bed so that I can be productive tomorrow. I was at least productive today; I did quite a bit of work in the airport, and then I wrote five or six pages of zee romance novel on the plane, so the day wasn't a complete waste. But tomorrow will be a complete waste if I don't get some sleep -- goodnight!