Today was "Rain on my Parade" Day.

-It appears as though EasyJet, a budget airline, has direct flights to both Dubrovnik, Croatia, and Santorini, Greece, which are my two top-priority destinations for the latter half of spring break. The problem with this is that they don't start offering those direct flights until THE FIRST WEEK WE'RE BACK IN CLASSES. This is, in fact, the story of my life: the timing is completely off. Other larger airlines of course fly to both of those destinations, but flights to Santorini on these airlines start at around $400, which no one else seems willing to pay. This isn't to say I'm looking to toss my money around, but I've gotten myself so worked up over Greece that I think I'd be willing to do it, since the accommodation is so cheap: I'd just be more frugal in my other trips. But no one else seems to be willing to go for that price, which all but kills the idea. We're talking about Lisbon, Portugal now, which sounds nice, but it doesn't have the same appeal to me. For some reason, I'm much more keen on the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe. I'm trying not to be heartbroken about this.

-I'll admit another scrap of nerdiness: in early January, the Royal Mail came out with stamps of the album cover of Coldplay's A Rush of Blood to the Head, which is tied with the Beatles' Revolver as my untouchable favorite album of all time. I ordered three strips of said stamps from the Royal Mail website for the measly sum of £5. Today, I get a large envelope from the Royal Mail, and I eagerly opened it. Inside was a catalog of stamps, and a note thanking me for my order--no stamps. They either forgot to put them in the package, or forgot to send me the package with them inside preceding this one. I'm convinced that both the Royal Mail and the USPS have a lifelong vendetta against me, since these screw ups seem to happen to me all the time.

-Speaking of the Royal Mail, I'm still waiting on three textbooks for classes that should have been here days ago. One of the missing books is kind of my fault, I suppose: I ordered the book from an Amazon seller in Canada rather than the UK, even though I thought I double-checked everything. The other two have no excuse.

-I forgot I wasn't wearing Wafflestomper when I went to go get some chocolate milk from the kitchen, and almost the second I stepped out into the hallway, I fell over and didn't really know how I got on the floor for a second. It's a strange thing, not actually being able to walk more than two steps at a time. I'm growing concerned about how I'm going to deal once Wafflestomper comes off permanently on March 2 and how long it'll take the muscle to grow back. As a side note, yesterday I forgot I was wearing Wafflestomper and attempted to sprint towards a crosswalk before the signal changed. That didn't work so well: I also nearly fell over, and my leg nearly pulled out of the whole cast. It turns out you can't really sprint when you can't bend any part of your foot or ankle. Who knew.

-I'm having minor friend-problems, which I'm obviously not going to write about here, but it looks like I might have to dust off my seldom-used confrontational hat and say something, since it's been getting me down more than I thought these sorts of problems could.

-Massachusetts is dead to me, thanks to their election yesterday. A REPUBLICAN senator to replace Ted Kennedy, Massachusetts? What a great way to repay Kennedy's decades of service. NOT.

-This next section isn't about my downer of a day, but I'm including it anyway. For some reason, I've been in a very Beatle-y mood the past few months. I don't think I can possibly reach the level of obsession with them I had back in 2003-2005, and I don't know where it's coming from, but I dug out my Help! and A Hard Day's Night DVDs and watched them these past few nights, and I don't think I've enjoyed them that much since the first time I watched them as a kid. I had a bit of an epiphany: I'm in England, I have a month-long break, and it looks that my previous travel plans have been all but thwarted. So, I'm going to go to Liverpool for a bit of a pilgrimage. I've been to the Beatles Story Experience before, but this time I'm going to have a proper Beatles mini-vacation and go to all the famous spots as well: their childhood homes (two are museums now), Strawberry Fields, the Cavern, Penny Lane, the Casbah, etc. I'll even take the cliche Magical Mystery Tour bus of Liverpool (though the Beatles day-tour might be out of my reach at £95). Why haven't I thought of this before? Whatever my travel plans end up looking like, I'm probably not going to be doing all that much in the first two weeks of the break, so I might as well spend two days in Liverpool doing something I actually enjoy. And I'm going to go by myself: almost anyone else would drag me down, either by not wanting to or not being able to geek out with me, or by making me feel like I was forcing them to see things that were uninteresting to them. I don't want to have to make excuses to people on why I want to see random buildings and houses. I want to see them and enjoy them for what I believe they mean to the history of music, and therefore, what they mean to me.