It’s been a quiet day – I continued to cull photos from August 5th (I’ve gotten rid of 140 of 202 so far, and I’ll probably dump another ten to twenty photos on the next pass). When we sailed out of Heimaey harbor, I noticed an interesting metal sculpture and wondered what it was – it turns out to be a navigation light!

I also chatted with a couple of my classmates about our upcoming reunion, which reminded me to check my flights – and sure enough, Delta had changed our flight home again, adding another stop. I can’t change the flight online for some reason, so I’m currently waiting for agents on the phone and on their web chat to see if they can get me on a better flight. The expected wait on the phone is “under 2 hours” and the web chat offers no clue – I think I’ll be trying again tomorrow.

When we canceled our Antarctica cruise, I knew it’d take a couple of weeks for the refund to show up on our credit card. Usually, refunds are for small amounts, so it’s not worth trying to get the money back from Chase – it’ll get spent again quickly enough. But the refund from this trip was a different story – it’s probably more than I’ll put on that card for the rest of the year, so I wanted it back in my bank account, and I didn’t want to wait for a couple of months if I could avoid it.

I called Chase late on Tuesday afternoon to ask how long it would take for the balance to be refunded. The agent said she’d put in the request for a refund immediately (which surprised me – the billing cycle hadn’t even ended yet) and that I should expect an email from Chase Payments offering me the chance to have the refund direct-deposited. That email came yesterday afternoon; this morning, the money was in my credit union account.

I am impressed. I complain when companies do a bad job; this time, I’m happy to be able to praise Chase and Provident Credit Union for exceeding my expectations.

We started watching Only Murders in the Building and are really enjoying it. We might even be caught up before next week’s episode drops!

I started working on my photos from August 5th – they include far too many photos of whales (not usually a problem for me). Tonight, though, I’m including my only photo of Surtsey; it’s a tourist-free island!