Those 3 Words........as long as I'm counts as 1

And "Please turn off the light" I think as I struggle to get to sleep. Finally I give up trying and open my eyes. The floor below is littered with chip and toblerone wrappers. For good measure there is also an apple core.

Slowly I turn to my left. This is not my beautiful house. This is not my beautiful wife. My God, how did I get here?

Lets cue the "going back to the past" music from a few days ago. Its a little different as I've added a few "do do da wad do do's" to make it a bit more contemporary.

So after finally getting to sleep despite the sound of jackhammers some 17 floors below, i woke up this morning at precicely 618. That is my going to work wake up time. My "let's get up for work" side of the brain is winning the fight against "it's holidays" side of the brain. 

So we slowly got ready and headed down to get some breakfast before leaving for the airport. Once we had finished our smoothy we bid farewell to Butterfly on Hollywood and began the short walk to our airport shuttle departure. The street looked almost new. Jackhammer Guy had done well.

Got to the train station to check our bags  through to Chicago (you can't do that from Sydney Central) only to find that we couldn't do it here either. Something about "your seats have not been allocated". Now that's the moment that a small cartoon light bulb should have turned on over our heads. 

We tried to do a check in at the self check in terminal. Nothing and still no light bulb. 

We hopped onto the world's most luxurious airport train.....Tax Deduction...realising that those responsible for the Cityrail equivalent did very little research before going ahead.  

24 minutes later we arrived and given the choice of terminal 1 or 2, chose poorly. Still, the 5 minutes of extra walking would do us good. We found our line and Counter C25 called us up.

After about a minute she uttered those words that nobody facing a 14 hour flight wants to hear. 

"I'm so sorry but your flight is full"

Now you all know the annoying I Bought a Jeep ad in the Chinese restaurant where woman 2 reads her fortune and everything goes quiet? Well everything went quiet.

Annette went through the whole Seinfeld Rental Car episode about The reservation, whilst I stood safely some 30 metres away. The airline lady instructed us to come back at 11. 

We went to eat our banana and walnut muffins to contemplate the possibility of a midnight flight to New York connecting to Miami connecting to Chicago. The holiday would be over by the time we arrived.

So anyway, no, this is not my beautiful wife. It's a woman from Adelaide next to her husband with me in exit row 59k.

The last I saw of Annette in my quest for snack food, her head was wobbling as she tries to sleep in centre seat 72e.

Oh, yes, I did get another patting down by customs. They always ask if I mind but as I'm not really in the mood for a strip search, I really have to agree. 

Oh, I had the chicken.

So by my calculations, we are over 7 hours into our flight. It's dinner time in Hong Kong but breakfast time in Chicago. All attempts to adjust my body clock by sleeping from midnight to 6am Chicago have failed. My only concerns now are whether to watch episode 5 and 6 of Breaking Bad, eat more Toblerone or have a packet of chips. 

Why not all three? I say.