So. Yesterday was the shittiest day _ever_. Why, you ask? *Warning, I swear a lot in this post!*

• I woke up at 4:30 a.m. Yup. 4:30 a.m. I had my route all sussed out to get to Heathrow from my friend's place by 7 a.m. to actually check in for my flight on time for once.
• Catch the DLR. I'm on time. BUT I get to the underground to switch onto the Circle Line and discover that I've JUST missed the circle line train I was supposed to catch. So when's the next one? IN HALF AN HOUR. Fuck.
• Catch the tube, catch the Heathrow Express, get to Heathrow, I'm in the queue to check in, I'm only a few minutes late after all, and they tell me my carry-ons are too heavy. Fuck. So I check one, praying life will be all right, as it's the bag that has all my Christmas gifts and such in it.
• Flight from London to Toronto was surprisingly smooth. Get to TO, pick up my bags, go through customs, re-check my bags, grab a bottle of Coke, go sit down at my connecting gate, flip open my laptop to do some work, and PSSSSHHHT! I open the bottle of Coke, which was apparently having some pressure issues, and it's everywhere. EVERYWHERE! On my laptop, on me, on the book I'd just bought. Luckily a kind soul sitting in the same area went and found me some stuff to wipe it up with, and I had a couple of hours to let my laptop just sit and dry out. There doesn't seem to be any damage, except for a slight stickiness to the keys.
• Get on the flight to Toronto. Looking forward to it. That book I bought is good (actually finished it all in one go on the flight), it's a relatively short flight... and then I look around. I'm sandwiched in the midst of about 5 children, all under the age of 2 years. And they took it in turns to cry throughout the flipping flight. Once we actually got underway, that is. We ended up sitting on the flipping Tarmac for an hour and 15 minutes because someone lost paperwork about the cargo hold. Unimpressed, I must say.
• Finally get home at 5:30ish. Factor in the time difference. That was 12:30 a.m. London time. Yup. I've been up for 20 hours. Now factor in the time it took to retrieve my luggage, drive to my parents' place... I was fuckin' knackered last night. Forced down some dinner (because Air Canada makes you PAY for your food on flights scheduled for less than four hours, bastards), had a bath, went to bed.

Woke up this morning, though, and things were looking slightly better. I woke up at 4:25 a.m. local time. BUT, I fell asleep again until 8:30. That's, like, 11 hours of sleep last night. And I'll probably have a nap later today, as my work at Fort Edmonton is going until 10 p.m. tonight - that's 5 in the morning, England time. And I need to find that No-Doze I bought when I was working nights. Yup.

BUT, I checked out my laptop, and as I said, except for slightly sticky keys, everything seems to be in fine working order (THANK GOD!). AND! I'd forgotten to turn off the wireless detector (you can do that on my laptop as a power saver thing) and think my next-door neighbours have a wireless network in their house, because somehow I'm connected to the internet without any cables and without my parents' having wireless internet. Mmmhmm. That's right. It's slow, but it's here. Internet in my room! Without paying for it! Score, baby!

So I'm off to wrap presents now, find my Christmas cards, etc.

Maybe it'll actually start feeling like Christmas now.