Philadelphia 8:30 AM

Up after four hours sleep to clean up in the bathroom. My hair’s a wreck and my makeup is worn off. My clothes look “quite traveled” but the wrinkling is consistent with my shirts and slacks, so it makes quite the ensemble. I checked in with Kalen again and called the hotel in London. He’s clear to stay the night and they know that I am coming in late. He’s off to get a backpack for the clothes for Paris and his Greek Isle tour. He’ll box up the clothes that he doesn’t need and send them back via UPS to Samantha and Vic Lowery’s store.

I took my $5 airport voucher and ventured over to McDonald’s to see what I could get for breakfast. I ordered a sausage McMuffin with Egg and a coffee. It was less than $5 so I ordered an orange juice. The total came to $6.25. I gave the clerk the coupon and $1.25 exact change. She said that I couldn’t do it that way. So I told her to split the orange juice off and see if that would work. She did and told me that I owed her $2.50. I pushed the $1.25 across the counter and said “This should cover it.” She insisted that it wasn’t supposed to work that way, and I told her that a $5 coupon was worth $5 and I owed her $6.25 so just keep the change. (She didn’t get the joke.) So I told her to just make is a small orange juice and see if that fit inside the $5. She said that she rang it up that way already and couldn’t do it. I told her that I could do the math for her, and that I now needed to know what I owed her since we changed the juice size. She said “Oh, just forget it. I don’t have time for this.” I was amused with this because I felt that it worked in my favor, since I had ten more hours to discuss the math, and the line was starting to grow. Win one for me.

I finished my breakfast complete with my small orange juice and went back to my staked out corner of the terminal for a nap. High pressure negotiations can be exhausting.