Just reserved a seat for one in the I-hope-it’s-purple cabin of a Virgin Atlantic plane, which shall wing its way from boring, tedious, probably shitty-weathered old O’Hare to Heathrow’s hopefully-not-so-broken-as-T5 Terminal 3, the Saturday after my 31st birthday. I cannot wait to learn my plane’s name! (Sadly, it will not be Unicorn Chaser, as she only flies domestic.) I even offset my carbon because I am a good little girl scout (even though I am not yet convinced it is not a scam…but I am willing to play along so long as people make up convincing enough lies. Besides, they give me stickers!).

I’d have traveled for my actual birthday, but I have CSO tickets for that night, and it’s Gustavo Dudamel, so the UK’s gotta wait in line. — I do feel mildly bad because I’ll be blowing off two nights of Alliance-Française classes, but I’m pretty sure I’ll pass the final for Niveau 7 either way, so I won’t worry too much about it. (The phonetics class, if it has a final, I’m probably going to blow it because I am pretty crap at the API, but at least I’ve gotten some sound — ‘scuse the pun — help out of the class anyways.)

I am really interested to see the final breakdown of my ticket costs. The fare was only $280, which you must admit is excellent. The taxes and fees were $365, or one third again the fare cost. Seriously, I want to see how that is all broken down. It is worth noting that the first time I flew to London, in June of 2003, it cost me slightly more: about $675, vs $645. A friend bought the tickets for the second, most recent time I flew to London, in January of 2004, so I don’t recall how much that was, but I think it was about the same. So considering inflation, it’s far cheaper to fly now than it was back then! I should take vacations more often!

So I am very excited. It has really been since that first trip to London (the very worst vacation ever in the history of vacation-kind) that I’ve had much of a proper vacation. The second trip to the UK was really just a long weekend (4 days, I think?), and my massive road trip out to New Hampshire in ’05 was somewhat muddied by being preceded by an unexpected 1400-mile-round-trip hospital visit and, two weeks later, the death of my grandmother, immediately before I was supposed to start my actual vacation. I went to Las Vegas last January for a long weekend, and I went to Baltimore this summer for a long weekend, which worked out better than last time I went to Baltimore, but only by certain measures. That’s really been about it, though. I can’t remember the last time I took an entire week off of work and unplugged. I actually asked for three weeks off of work, since I took no real vacation for all of 2008 since we were understaffed all year, but they said no; so one week in the UK and a few more days off for this year’s Vegas trip it is.

Right, I mentioned I’m going to Vegas again, yeah? ‘Cos I am. And this year, I have been practicing my video poker skills. Two weeks ago we went to the Casino in Hammond for Liz’s birthday and I kicked ass. I was up $80 on video poker, then we went to the nickel Wheels of Fortune, which are so incredibly much more fun than the expensive Wheels of Fortune — and I could not for the life of me, get a spin. (The Wheel of Fortune — excuse me: WHEEL! OF! FORTUNE!!!! — machines basically work like the game show except there are no puzzles. You spin the reels like a regular slot machine, and sometimes you get the magic combination that lets you have a spin of the win-this-amount-of-money wheel. When the magic symbols come up on the reel, it shouts WHEEL! (for the first reel), OF! (if you get the second as well) and FORTUNE!!! (if you get all three). I got lots of WHEEL!s and many WHEEL! OF!s, but not a single damn WHEEL! OF! FORTUNE!! the whole time I sat at that one machine. Which, it should be noted, had no problem giving Liz spins later! Of course, she was the birthday girl.) The spin is, like, the whole point of the damn thing. IT WOULD NOT GIVE ME A SPIN. Everyone around me was getting spins left, right, and center, but I didn’t get any. It did give me lots of money though; one time I hit a magic combination on the slot reels that gave me a little over $50, which is practically real money. I cashed out at one point being up $122 for the day. (My initial buyin was $100, so that is not too shabby.) And then we went on and found the nickel video poker machines, which have crappy odds and are not as much fun as the nickel Wheels! Of! Fortune!!!, but at any rate, I am much better at video poker this time, so I should not feed the machine $40 only to lose it in ten minutes anymore (I will lose it in an hour…), and I came out of Hammond with $80 more than I went with (so I promptly went home and ordered pizza delivery to celebrate, because coming home with $230 when you had expected to come home with $0 is totally awesome). Where was I? Oh yeah, I’m totally psyched about video poker now.

So I have plans for London. I am going to hit the London Transport Museum, and maybe see if I can go on a tour of the BBC Television Centre because that would be neat, and Friday there is ice skating (of course I am going ice skating) at Somerset House with Desdemona Plays Pop. And I want to go to the Tate Modern because I’ve never been. Obviously I wanted to get a ticket to go see Sunday Night Project but as I have received no calls and now it’s well past 7 days, … fail. Alas. On the free entertainment side, the side that makes people stare at me funny and remark that it must be nice to be so easily amused, I am going to Boots straight off just so I can buy paracetamol because I prefer paracetamol because it’s much easier to spell than acetaminophen. (That almost makes up for all the diphthongs such as in “paediatrics” and “oestrogen,” but not quite. (Though credit must be given to the language just for giving me an excuse to use the word diphthongs, which is also easier to spell than acetaminophen.))

My plans for Vegas…. I mentioned I have been practicing video poker, right? Because I totally have! (Hint: it’s all about the pairs.) Also I am going to a sports book to put down a few dollars on the Sox winning the division because I meant to last year and forgot and look how that turned out, so I’m not going to forget this time, Just In Case. That is, in all honesty, the extent of my Vegas plans. I am going to completely veg out the entire time and it will be brilliant. (Except for when I am doing homework for the one math class and one bio class I will be missing in order to be there. But that is what airport delays are for.)

I know this whole post is utterly stream-of-consciousnessy, and sorry for that, but dudes, I am just so excited. I have not had a vacation in so very long, and I saved up my money and I have my passport and I know the 3-1-1 rules and I am totally going on vacation! VAAAACAAAAAATIONNNNNNNNNNNNN!