The alarm went off at 5:15. Many times I am awake by then, but could happily have slept longer this time. Got up and groggily checked my email and read a few things on my computer. Had breakfast--only one piece of toast. Put my toiletry kit in the suitcase and zipped it up. Got dressed to go in the clothes I had picked. Sky arrived (5 minutes early). Ray jumped in the shower and I realized I hadn't packed up the computer. It was difficult about shutting down, but finally got it and ran downstairs. I put mayonnaise on a couple slices of bread and threw them in a little insulated lunch box we have, with all the leftover cold cuts and a few things we were taking from the garden: herbs, green beans, carrots, tomatoes..Also the leftover lentil salad. Ray flew downstairs and then went back up to get the suitcases. I grabbed my sunglasses from the car in the garage and ran out. We jumped in Sky's car and drove off, locking the front door behind us.

We got to the Hampton Inn right on time and the shuttle pulled in behind us. We thanked Sky and she left. Turns out we were the only ones taking ths shuttle from Athens that morning. The driver was  a pleasant older gentleman. We chatted with him some. He has to drive the shuttle both ways even if there are no passengers, because he needs to keep to the schedule. Someone could show up without a reservation--or make one at the last minute.

We were at the airport in plenty of time, of course. We checked the one giant suitcase (with all my stuff in it). We carried two bags on our backs, plus my purse and the big white boat bag through the airport--long line at security, but moving steadily. We were at the gate early and reading magazines. When they asked for volunteers to be bumped to an eventing flight, we said sure. Free flights are good and we weren't in a hurry. Polly and her family weren't going to be home until evening anyway.

We spent the day at Hartfield--reading, dozing, eating our sandwiches and lentil salad (I forgot to grab any of the fruit unfortunately). We played gin rummy and we played Scrabble on my phone. We charged the phone a couple of times, when we were near a place to plug it in. I remembered that Janna was flying out the same day, a little later in the day, so I called her to ask where she would be. She was on the shuttle and let us know later what gate she was at. We collected our stuff and headed to Concourse B. There were lots of restaurants there, like a food court. We spent about 15 minutes with her. She is headed up to Wisconsin to visit her aunt and sister--it has been over 100 there, too, but hopefully won't be as bad.

After she left, we stayed at that concourse for a while, but it was awfully busy and noisy, so we wandered over to C, where our flight was due to leave from at 7:45 pm. We continued with the same activities, taking turns sitting with the suticases while the other person went to the bathroom or wandered around, mostly checking out our restaurant choices. I talked to Polly and she said she would come get us at the airport unless we were too delayed.

About 5:30, we picked a restaurant and ordered chicken salads (mine was teriyaki--his was just grilled) and fries, with cheese and bacon and ranch dressing. I stopped eating before I finished, worrying that I might get indigestion. Sometimes packaged dressing has something in it that bothers me, sometimes lettuce has been treated to keep it from turning brown. (I didn't have any problems! Yay, Charley's!)

We actually left the ground a little early--everyone was on. We were in the first seats behind first class, so there were only two tray tables for three seats. It was a crowded plane, with a narrow aisle and not much leg room. A nice retired principal from Perry sat with us and we chatted a lot. I read a little and was starting to doze when we arrived. Ray's leg started to bother him, so he got up and walked back and forth a couple times. Since he had the window seat, that necessitated my getting up and her getting up to let him out--and again back in. She took the window seat at that point and let him have the aisle, so he could stretch out his leg. Then we could see the mountains and Seattle as we got closer. She was looking out and he was too, over me...

We were near the front, so got off sooner than we usually do. Our suitcase had arrived earlier and was right there to grab. We went outside and it was cool--not cold, there were people in shorts and sandals, but very pleasant. Polly called and we moved our stuff upstairs to wait for her at Departures, a trick to avoid the crowds (although probably not needed at 10 PM).

Everyone was aleep at the house. I put a couple things in the fridge and joined them. Of course, I woke up before 5 this morning--it was getting light here, what could I do? Very happy to be here and looking forward to seeing those kids any minute now.