Travel Woes and Babysitting

Right about now Daughter#2 and her husband should be winging their way east over the North Atlantic, probably very close to where the Titanic sank, on their way to Manchester, England. They are scheduled to trek across the lake area of northern England with a group from Virginia Tech's School of Architecture. Thanks to US Airways they are here at our house spending the night and waiting for another flight tomorrow evening. They drove up from Harrisonburg early this afternoon and we drove up to Pentagon Row for an early dinner. Her favorite Lebanese restaurant wasn't open yet so we dropped into Sine's Irish Pub instead. It was very crowded with the post work crowd from the Pentagon and Crystal City and we ended up sitting in the bar area. We enjoyed a leisurely dinner before dropping them off at Washington National just after 5:00 for their 7:00PM flight to Philadelphia where they would connect with a 9:05 flight to England. Plenty early enough or so they thought. Although why it takes an hour to fly to Philly from Washington is beyond me. When they checked in they were told that their 7:00 flight was always late and they would not make the connection so come back tomorrow and fly to Philly at 3:00. How nice of them. Needless to say our brave travelers were heartbroken and had to scramble to make changes to their itinerary and make attempts to notify their group of their delay and make alternate travel arrangements in Manchester to catch up to their group. It would have been nice if US Airways had been a bit more forthcoming with their connection problems when Daughter#2 was making her reservations. Jerks.

On the up side, we get to babysit the Black Demon for the two weeks that they are treking across merry England. She seems none the worse for wear from her hiking accident. Her fur is pretty much grown back and she seems her normal rascally squirrel chasing self. It will give Ann someone to walk with and keep her company.