England, Monday Apr 19 (day 13 of our trip)

On monday, I awoke around 9:00, and did my daily rounds on the internet: checking the latest news, and reading emails the people in the states sent as I slept. I also decided to try something new: putting in a few billable hours at work to try and alleviate all the paid time off I was racking up. I wrote to people and asked them if they had any work for me—any administrative type projects that I could do in Word or PPT. The thing that's a pain is, I tried to be "responsible" before we took off, and left my work computer at home so nothing could happen to it. It's funny too because my boss is actually on vacation, so I didn't really have a manager to tell me it was ok I'm still gone…I'm just kind of not showing up and hoping it's ok. The people on my team have been very sweet though.

After a breakfast/lunch, we went towards town with Cole, and he got us into the Bodelean Library with his student ID (that thing has been super handy to get us into places the other tourists can't go!). We saw another Harry Potter location: the room where they filmed the infirmary. "This is where Dumbledore shared all those wise words with Harry every time he woke up from saving the world." Cole said.

Ben was in a good mood because the night before, the Avalanche played the Sharks in the playoffs, and our goalie blocked 50+ shots, breaking a record, then the Avs tipped in a goal after the puck glanced off a Sharks skate. Back at home, I spoke with Marti. She said that the folks at United felt that standby passengers like us were likely to wait 2-3 weeks trying to get a flight out, and we would be much better off with a paid ticket. She suggested cheapoair.com.

So, we began a long internet search. Cheapoair, then Orbitz, Priceline UK: some were too far out for a ticket, too expensive, or if we clicked on a reasonable one it would say "sorry, reservations are unavailable for this flight." We abandoned our search for the moment to get ingredients for dinner: spicy chicken spaghetti. We worked together in the shared kitchen to make the meal, which was a very nice calming activity: chopping and frying all the ingredients to make the sauce. Then Cole and Brooke joined us for a nice "family meal."

We headed upstairs after cleaning up, and continued our search for tickets. I called my credit card company and told them we were going to be making a charge to a UK company, but then tried to make the purchase and got denied! We got on the phone as quickly as possible, and told them yes, we were in control of our card, and the woman was very nice, staying on the phone while we made the purchase, and sending it through.

So we have a ticket now, it came to $1500 which is way more money than we wanted to spend, but we feel relieved that there is an end date in sight. Of course, we'll feel a LOT better when the air opens up again and we know some flights are actually going out. Cole joined us for our nightly watching of the tv show Community, and I wrote a shortened version of these blogs for my sister, to possibly appear in the Reporter Herald. Before we went to bed, we read on the news that another cloud was headed towards Britain, possibly crushing hopes that the airport would open the next day. On that low point (but with some hope), we went to bed.