Year: 2008

Today could’ve been a disaster. My flight home from Belfast was scheduled for 11:15am, and the client had arranged for a car to pick me and another editor up at our hotel at 8am. However, the awful weather in the northeast wreaked havoc on Continental air traffic, so the inbound flight was delayed by 4 hours.

I saw this online when I got up in the morning (miraculously not hung over, despite wine at dinner and 4 pints of Guinness till 1:30am), but we were stuck having to either tell the client’s car service to blow off because we didn’t need it till later, or go to the airport “on time,” and wait there.

Because the client’s office wasn’t open till 9am, we elected to stick with the driver. And we spent SIX HOURS in the airport until boarding. Fortunately, I kept my power adapter in my carryon and still had wifi access through the BT service I bought on my first day in town.

So I hung out, chatted with the other editor, met up with a NJ-based employee from the client company and chatted with him, goofed on the internet, listened to music took care of e-mails, bought some souvenirs, read most of Philip Roth’s new novel, and still had two hours to kill before a seven-and-a-half-hour flight. Sigh.

But then something amazing happened. I looked out the window as we approached Newfoundland, Canada, and saw this:

And I thought, if we left on time, there’s a good chance the angle of the sun would’ve been so different that this would’ve made no impression on me. Instead, I managed to get a photoset of some amazing sights. And I get to share it with you, and that makes all the delay and aggravation worth it.

What I’m saying is, try to find the beauty wherever you can, even when you’re tired and pissed off over the misworkings of the world. In fact, do it especially when you’re tired and pissed off over that stuff.

Enjoy the pix. I promise I’ll get the set of Belfast Itself up sometime soon.

Guinness is like a bowling ball, both in my stomach and my brain. Dude, I am wrecked.

No time for a post, dear readers! The client visit was all day (it went great, thanks), and I only have an hour in the room to clean up, pack, do my work e-mail, and get ready for dinner and far too much drinking!

So I leave you with a little bit of Belfast art from my Sunday meanderings:

I don’t have time to resequence and caption these pix, dear readers, but I’m sure you wanna see how today’s mini-coach trip up to The Giant’s Causeway went, so I’ve posted the pix.

In case you don’t wanna see the pix, I’m betting I can change your mind:

Keep in mind: these are natural formations.

Oh, and the backdrop is pretty nice, too:

I’ll get around to reorganizing and captioning during the weekend. Your job is to marvel.