Just checking the time according to my mobile telephone... It's 6:40am. I'm sitting in the Austin Bergstrom International Airport, and have been here for about an hour. Do you really wanna know about my day thus far?

I packed my suitcase last night, and was all done by 9pm, ready to go to bed early because I knew that I had to be up at 4:30 to get fuel, drive to the airport, return my rental car, get ticketed and catch a flight. The people in the room next to mine had different ideas, however, and spent ALL NIGHT (I say all night because my night ended at 4:30 am, which was only an hour after they decided to shut the hell up) banging doors, arguing, and cooking something (?!?!) in the microwave - it must have beeped about a hundred times. As such, I've had absolutely NO sleep. None. Zilch. Nada.....

I've stopped for petrol and gotten the pump that has credit card facilities in the pump to avoid going inside, only to find that the printer is out of paper. Fine... I had to go inside and get a receipt.

I'm tired... I'm really tired... So I go to drop off the rental car and end up driving through the car park for fifteen minutes because my lack of any good sleep for three days brain is too confused by the railing across all the hertz entrances to figure out that the have a further (unmarked) entrance that I'm supposed to use at this time of the morning. All good, got it sorted in the end....

I go to the ticket booth. I am standing in queue behind this old couple who must surely have been moving house by plane for the amount of luggage that they had. Seriously, between the two of them they had 4 massive cases and another 3 very large soft bags, and a couple of carry-ons. They held up the queue for quite a while, although it gave me the opportunity to look around in my dazed state and notice that the flight has been delayed. By 2 hours. This gets me into Dallas about 45 minutes after my flight to Portland is due to leave. Great!!!

The lovely lady who ended up helping me out at the counter managed to move me to the 6am flight, which was currently scheduled to board at 8:10am and leave sometime shortly thereafter. Should arrive at 9:10 or so, which is the boarding time for my connection to Portland. She says I *might* be able to make it - not to sure about my bags though! I ask her to check the next connection to Portland, and it's at 11:30am. It is fully booked. Overbooked. My only chance to catch that plane is to hope that some of the people on it are also delayed, and there is space available. The only flight with available seats that is scheduled to leave after my "6am" flight arrives in Dallas is not until about 3pm or sometime thereafter. I keep my 9:10 boarding time flight and suddenly have a religious experience... I'm praying REAL Hard that I make my connection!

I'm having a great day! =)