I always like to start another year of mind the gap, though it's difficult when you have nothing exciting to report. I actually have a lot to report, but most of it is fraught with anxiety and includes a lot of reports about meals and airport shuttles. Don't worry, I'm not sick. I'm just in Denver. Exciting Denver, one state over. By the way, anybody else get the creeps at the Denver airport? Here's why.
The day began at the Provo Airport, which I was more excited about than the actual flight to London. Lisa dropped me off just fifteen minutes away from my own doorstep. The check in line was ridiculously short, and the security was quick and breezy. I could get used to this! But sadly I don't think I'll ever getting used to de-planing because one of the jet's engines wouldn't start. And then waiting two hours so some fix-it man could drive down from Salt Lake. So I missed my connecting flight in Denver, and was forced to stay a reasonably comfortable night at the Country Inns & Suites near the airport. It was not too bad, really, though full of junior high school girls on some kind of soccer team. They were drawing Harry Potter tattoos all over themselves in the lobby. I tried to swim in the pool, but turns out swimming by yourself is super boring!
I escaped hotel ennui for a bit at a nearby Outback Steakhouse. Turns out, eating by yourself is super boring! But I kept myself amused by reading The Hunger Games on my kindle. I may be the last person to read these books. But I like them. I liked eating a big steak and thinking about Katniss & crew starving. I didn't find it ironic at all! Mostly tasty. On my walk back to the hotel an incredibly powerful lightning storm hit. I watched it out my hotel window and talked to my mom on the phone. A few hours after this phone call my grandfather and namesake, Layton Byron Jones, passed away in Washington State. He was 98 and pretty sick, so we saw it coming. But I can't help but think that the lightning storm was his way of telling me goodbye.
