Consequences

I guess I had so much fun in Ireland that now it's time to pay the piper. I caught a cold there that started as just a sore throat. After a few days (and gargling with hot salt water) it dropped into my chest. I thought I'd lucked out by not getting anything in my head.

Um. No.

Just in time for the flight home--and an incredibly long day--this nasty cold moved up into my sinuses. And my ears.We were delayed in Dublin just a bit because 2 passengers hadn't made past security, and they were pulling their luggage from the plane. That was comforting.

The flight from Dublin to JFK was nearly 7 hours long, and then we had a 7 hour layover, which ended up being a bit longer than that. Both Arlene and I had printed out our boarding passes, but it only gave us the pass for the first leg. As a result we had to go out of security, get boarding passes for the second leg, and go through security again. Which was the 3rd time, since we had to go through both Irish and U.S. security in Dublin.

As our plane was preparing to leave JFK, there was a little excitement, which delayed us further.

When I texted Paul (and some of my other kids about it), Paul's response was:

"That's why I don't fly."

And he doesn't. He'd love to go to Hawaii to visit Erin, but he'll only go on a cruise. He and his wife Kelsey would love to visit Ireland. But it would involve and long, overland trip and then a cruise.

The bottom line is that we were about 40 minutes late getting into SLC, arriving about 12:10 a.m. Now add on to that the 7 hours we'd gotten back with the time difference, and I'd been awake 27 hours. That's not a good combination with the cold. I had to call in sick, and I've been dragging ever since. This is the first cold I've had in a long time that's messing with my ears. I have to keep asking people to repeat themselves, and I'm frequently dizzy.

And I have responsibilities at a work related conference next week. Ugh.