Excerpts from the Travel Journal: Day Nine--Stratford to London to Boston
We had an early morning, sneaking out in darkness and driving to London as the sun rose and chased the fog. We stopped at a 24-hour rest stop that had one restaurant open, whose worker seemed bewildered that I wanted something takeaway rather than eating at the rest stop. I ended up with a breakfast sandwich that had potato on it, and it was actually pretty tasty. Radio One was being amusing for a change, betraying an obsession for a ridiculous chair commercial and reminding me about those ridiculous Irish people who were on Heroes last year, all “Top o’the morning, Peter Petrelli!”
We got to Heathrow. If you want to try something amusing, watch your car go in circles on your sat-nav as you climb a parking garage. Check-in took five minutes, and I was done by 8, meaning I had three hours until my flight. Clutching my precious RSC posters and the DT program I kept checking compulsively, I decided to go with jlrpuck and arctacuda to meet bscotchpuma. Bscotchpuma was already there and had been waiting a while, although he seemed very calm about that. We took photos of bscotchpuma’s and my overlapping twenty minutes of vacation-time, then they set off for Edinburgh. Still killing time, I bought twenty minutes of Internet, then went through security and journaled. And journaled. And journaled. I journaled all flight, only pausing to watch an episode of The Office while I ate my lunch of chicken pesto over pasta.
And thus endeth the trip I had been looking forward to for so long. I had a fantastic time. I honestly could not have written out a better script of the week. I am really not exaggerating when I say that the trip saved my life. I don’t think I would have made it as far as I have if I hadn’t had it to look forward to, and I must thank jlrpuck and arctacuda for either suggesting the trip or not thinking I was crazy when I suggested it. None of us can remember any longer whose idea it was to do this, but it was the world's most brilliant idea, and it was a week in which I remembered that I used to really like the person I was before I became a lawyer, and maybe it's actually possible to be that person again, and to wake up every morning with the desire to get out of bed, and I really cannot express enough gratitude to all of my friends for periodicially reminding me of how enjoyable life can be. I literally walked back into work on Monday morning, walked into my friend’s office, sat down, and burst into tears. There was a long moment there when I thought I might just quit that day and figure out the rest of it later. But I’ve calmed down now. I close my eyes and think of meeting David Tennant every time somebody at work bothers me, and it actually does help! He is quite powerful! And I've learned that I can be something other than a lawyer, that I'm not completely a lost cause, and I've actually made some progress toward figuring out how to go about doing that. I am, actually, the luckiest person on the planet. Or at least in the top ten. In the meantime, I shall begin a countdown to my next vacation, which is an NYC mini-mini-break to go see Daniel Radcliffe in "Equus." In 28 days.