Flight Credits and JFK

The Russians have hung this weird beach ball thing on the downspout next to their balcony. Is it just decoration, or does it serve a purpose? I thought maybe it's meant to scare the pigeons away so they don't perch on the balcony railing -- something Mrs. Russia hates. It will be interesting to see how long it hangs there before it inevitably winds up bouncing around our patio.

I spent yesterday morning dealing with customer service at Delta airlines. Dave and I each have about £160 in credit from the tickets we bought to go home at Christmas last year, before we had to abort that trip because of my mysterious fever. We used most of our credit when we traveled in February, but this last little bit remains, and it's bugging me, just hanging out there. I'm afraid I'm going to forget about it. I came up with a plan to use it to fly somewhere in Europe over October break, or maybe at Thanksgiving. I thought it might be fun to go to Rome or Madrid or some other sunny place.

But no! Apparently it is impossible to fly on Delta from London to anywhere in Europe -- even though Delta allegedly serves all those cities. Every time I searched, the computer would say flights on those routes were unavailable, something customer service confirmed. I could only book flights back to North America, which we didn't want to do -- that would be a long way to travel for basically a long weekend, and why spend £2,400 to save £300? It would be smarter to let the credits expire at the end of December.

Eventually we decided to wait and book tickets to the USA for next year's weeklong February break. That will give us more time and the expense would make more sense. I just can't let myself forget to do it by the end of the year!

Also, remember how our bathroom renovators are supposed to come back and paint our hallway after the wall dries out? Well I hadn't heard anything from them in weeks, so I inquired and they sent an engineer a few days ago to check the dampness levels. Apparently the wall is still too damp to paint. I guess that slow leak really saturated it, and our cool, rainy summer hasn't helped. So we're still in a holding pattern there.

We are indeed having very British weather. It was raining and 55º F (or 13º C) yesterday morning when I walked the dog. Freaking miserable. Olga, who usually hates rain, decided later that morning that she simply had to go out in it to drink her "bird juice" and trample the flower beds.

Then she and I took a walk yesterday afternoon to the cemetery and got caught in the rain again! But we survived.

Last night Dave and I watched Oliver Stone's movie "JFK," which I hadn't seen since the early '90s. It's waaaaaaay too long (3.5 hours) and many of its allegations have been discredited, but it still had me up late reading about the magic bullet theory and Jack Ruby and Badge Man and other aspects of what's still the most fertile ground for conspiracy thinking in our culture. Entertaining, but I'm a bit sleep-deprived today.

Dave left about ten minutes ago on his trip to Detroit and Indianapolis (for which he should have used his Delta credits, just as I should have used mine when I went home at the end of July). For the next week, Olga and I are on our own!