What we do for love (the unromantic kind, too)

Today is a bad day to fly. I woke up to the news of the "foiled" terror plot this morning, and I immediately felt bad. My cousin Stef was flying from Minneapolis to visit me.

I called her before 8 a.m. Minnesota time, warning her to get to the airport early. The lines at BWI already looked...very very long. She took my word for it and advice to leave her lotion at home. She showed up at the airport three hours early, only to breeze through security. Then I felt my second pang of guilt. She had to sit for three hours.

The waiting wasn't as bad as her trip to Atlanta. It was a rocky flight, full of bumps and dips. I sometimes like that; it feels like you're on a rollercoaster. When she got to Atlanta, she found out she wouldn't be leaving any time soon. Her three-hour scheduled layover turned into a five-hour wait.

And I haven't heard from her, but I just looked at her flight status. It looks more like six hours.

By the time she gets here, if she actually arrives at 1:30 a.m., she will have traveled for 14 hours. And to get from Minneapolis to Washington, D.C.

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I went to NYC this weekend -- big surprise. My very sweet boyfriend took me to The Devil Wears Prada. I had just finished the book, and I'm pretty sure I couldn't stop talking about it. So on Sunday night, we went. After about 20 minutes into the movie, I asked Ben, "On a one-to-10 scale, how much do you hate the movie?" He turned to me, smiled and said, "I love you."

He later said the movie wasn't his style, but he sure liked me enough to sit through it for two hours anyway.

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When I moved out here, I was terribly lonely for the first six weeks. I talked to my mom and sister almost every day. Uh, I still do. Every time I ramble on, much like I do in this forum. I talk fast, sometimes breathlessly, moving from one subject to another like they actually understand what I'm talking about. And they put up with it. All this -- after I ask them to read the blog, too.

Yep, that's love.