Day 0.5 - Liftoff

Sometimes I wonder. At some point during the week, I decided, for the hell of it, to actually open my paper ticket and take a look at it. I already knew I was departing at 10:30pm on Thursday night but I was so amped up, I wanted to see what it felt like to hold that ticket and hand it to the flight-check-in clerk. Sure enough, my timing was wrong - as usual. 5:30 departure time. Scheisse. That means that I have to leave work early. And this happened to be the day that my boss said I have to actually start earning my money and work a "professional workday", i.e. 10 hours. [Side note: 10 hours is professional? Grrr....the Euros have got the right idea, how about quality of life? I could digress, but I won't].

To make matters worse, this screwed up my whole plan as far as sleep is concerned. I prefer 10:00pm flight because I buy a mini bottle of wine preceding the flight and sip-sip-sip-sleep. But 5:30? Hells no would I be able to sleep at that time. And I needed ENERGY because kickoff for the Argentina-Germany Quarter-Final was just three hours after we arrived! We're talking about one of THE games of the tournament - a heavy favorite to win the World Cup vs. the Host Country! In lieu of this situation, I had to improvise. It just so happens that I'd been building up the trip by listening to a daily soccer radio show based in LA from a couple of Brits and they started the show every day with a Come On England song (to the tune of Come on Eileen, that great 80's song). I HAD to have that song. For some reason, it didn't occur to me that I should download it illegally like I do with everything else. I actually went to iTunes and purchased it! I was so pumped up listening to this song that I knew I'd have plenty of energy when I touched down in deutschland with the song blasting through my tired iPod.

I also improved the sleeping odds by procrastinating all week on cleaning my apartment and packing until about 9:00pm on Wednesday night. Packing took about 10 minutes to accomplish [Soccer shirts: check. Camera: check. Shorts: check. Glossy white Pumas: check. Extra memory card for said camera: oops.] . Cleaning my apartment took a few hours (I even cleaned my sink in the bathroom) and I got to bed at 1:00am, giving me little time to sleep that night, but ensuring moodiness at work and unconsciousness on the plane...

Justinho, I was incredibly unproductive during my half-day of work prior to my flight. As an aside, the Czechs were already eliminated by this time and their jersey stayed home with all my cotton t-shirts :-/ .