Don't You Just Hate It When Volcanic Ash From Iceland Gets All Up in Your Airspace?

It's eerie calm and chaos at the same time.  Eerie calm because there's still not a single plane in the sky over northern Europe and every airport is bathed in cricket-chirping silence.  Chaos because every traveler is stuck wherever they are.  But the ferries and the chunnel train are making a booming trade!  And one lucky taxi driver cashed in when someone paid him £700 to drive from Belfast to London.  But do you know all this already? Is this in the news in America?  It's domino-effect chaos over there, too, right?

Parts of Scotland are blanketed in ash on the ground, and people there are having strange health problems.  (Ash is made up of shards of glass and rocks as sharp as knives!  Who knew?)  But round these parts the blanket remains up in the sky.  Since we're not trying to fly anywhere at the moment I am free to be fascinated by the whole thing instead of stressed. But our friend is due to fly from LA tomorrow to come stay with us, so the stakes are elevated.  We'll spend the weekend with our fingers crossed, gazing up into the strange sky.  And also cleaning the bathroom, because you owe it to any visitor to do that, you know?


*Update:  bathroom cleaning a total waste.  Airspace still closed until further notice, with warnings of food and drug shortages to come if this continues.  The Royal Navy is stepping in and ferrying stranded Brits back home. cool!  So absolutely fascinating, the sudden shift to a world without air travel!  I like it -- a radical experiment we could never try otherwise.  If it hadn't ruined our fun plans (sorry Dan!) I would be even more intrigued.  In the mean time, there's a cozy air mattress all set up, and a sparkly bathroom, too, if anybody wants to come over...by steam ship.