UNCLE! UNCLE!

Man! You guys are a persistent bunch! Relentless, even!

Yes, yes, yes...I've been a posterboy for sloth recently. But, it's not my fault. It's Chicago's fault. That's where I've been vegetating for the past week or so.

Really...you guys have known me long enough to know that an extended absence from blogville means that I'm probably stuffing my face with Italian Beef on the other side of the ocean.

This latest Chicago trip was, like all the others, fabulous. I saw some friends that I was dying to see, ate a lot of irresistible foods that Europeans would likely poo-poo, and watched enough Iron Chef on the Food Network to qualify as a Japanese language scholar.

About the only downside to my trip was the trip itself. Iberia Airlines--which I praised so highly for upgrading me to Business Class two months ago--blew it's stash of goodwill by overbooking our Madrid/Chicago flight. Ines and I arrived at the airport 2.5 hours before departure, only to be told that there were no seats available.

Now...call me cynical, but I've lived in Spain long enough to doubt--and doubt very seriously--that 300 of my fellow passengers arrived at the airport and claimed their seats before we did. This is, after all, a nation that can't even sit down for lunch before the sun begins to set.

When they first informed me that the flight was full (despite the fact that we bought our tickets six months earlier), I optimistically assumed that they'd just upgrade us. I was, after all, travelling with a 3.5 year old; plus, I gave this stupid, incompetently-managed airline a boatload of free publicity in Expatica just a few weeks earlier.

Well...Iberia couldn't quite muster two seats in Business Class, but they did muster two seats on a flight to Miami.

Miami. For those of you who are not cartographers, I can assure you that Miami is not exactly a suburb of Chicago.

So, Ines and I flew nine hours to Miami. Then stared at a lot of obese people with sunburns during a five hour layover. Then boarded a three hour flight from Miami to Chicago.

In short, we left our home in Madrid at 8:30am and arrived at my parents' house in Chicago--are you ready for this?--TWENTY THREE HOURS LATER!!!

But the fun continued.

Although our bodies finally arrived in Chicago, our luggage didn't. In fact, our luggage didn't arrive until three days later. And while I certainly appreciated my father's offer to lend me some of his underwear, the five inch difference in our waistlines necessitated a polite refusal and an emergency trip to Target.

Once the luggage did arrive, however, all was well. Ines and I not only returned to Spain with a cache of happy memories...but also, with enough underwear for the entire population of Madrid.