I'm back from London...and sick. I came back from London with a really bad cold/sore throat/upper respiratory something. So I've been home from work for three days. Today, I'm feeling much better & will likely go back to work tomorrow.

The flight back from London wasn't much fun. I got to Heathrow, checked in, answered all security questions with answers that didn't make them want to search me or impound anything and then went on a tour of duty free shops. A coworker had asked that I look for a particular brand of scotch. I know nothing about scotch. However, his instructions were clear enough & I found one of the right ones. Meanwhile, my head cold was getting worse. I went on another search for sudafed. Flying with a head cold wasn't going to be fun. I wanted a lot of anthistimine in my system before take-off.

The flight wasn't very crowded...but I did end up with a boy scout next to me. He wasn't literally a boy scout. He was a very enthusiastic recent recruit to Oracle. He had just accepted a job at Oracle and this was his trip to the fabled Silicon Valley to start his new job. We talked a bit and it came out that I'd worked at Apple. Oops. Letting him know that was a mistake. It turned out that he was one of The Faithful. He wanted to know all about every detail of working for Apple, what Steve Job is like, etc. I told him that I knew it was time to leave when random people in grocery stores started asking me about my job. He kept asking about Apple. I didn't answer. I think he would have been much more happy to be working for Apple than for Oracle. I just wanted to sleep.

The Boy Scout wanted to look out the window all the way across. I had the window seat so I could sleep. He had the aisle. I think he spent most of the flight standing in the aisle near the door, looking at Greenland. When we landed, we flew over Oracle. He pointed it out. I was concentrating on trying to pop my ears to relieve the pressure. Well, on the way there, I was in front of the Musical Man who kept kicking the back of my seat in time to his walkman. On the way back, I had the Boy Scout for fun. I'm just glad to be back home with an ample supply of TheraFlu.

Stacey