Home- FINALLY!
September 29, 2004
I didn’t get this updated quite as quickly as I had hoped, and I doubt that all of the new photos will be added any time soon. I had a wonderful time in Kentucky, though I was sick the whole time, and quite tired. When I returned I
My trip to Kentucky was very good, and I got a lot of pictures of my nephew. He’s getting so big!! While I was there I was able to see him do some of the sign language signs that Clifton and Margaret have been teaching him, and I got to see him try to walk a few steps as well. It is so neat to be able to watch him grow up!
Leaving Kentucky is always hard, leaving behind the majority of my family, but I got to the airport, went through security, got on the plane, and headed to Atlanta, where I had a little over an hour to change planes, and head for Orange County. As I’m sitting at the gate waiting to board, the nice announcer guy from my flight comes over the loud-speaker and informs us that the pilots for our flight have been delayed, and they are not due in to the airport until about 10 minutes after our plane was originally scheduled to take off. So he says we’ll start boarding as soon as the pilot’s plane touches down, so we can get going as fast as possible. The pilot does arrive, and we were told we would arrive about 30 min later than expected. Well, no big deal. Stuff like that happens all the time. So we all board the plane, and it taxis out to the runway. And sits. And sits a little bit longer. And then there’s a little more sitting. So finally when we’ve been on the runway for about a half hour, the captain comes on and informs us that he has been told that there is a power outage that is affecting ALL of the southern California airports, so no one is allowed to take off until they have figured out what to do about the problem. He admits to not knowing any more than that, but that we were told to wait on the runway, so we sit a little longer.
Isn’t it funny how when in situations like that, everyone becomes a lot more talkative to the people around them? The gentleman I was sitting next to probably wouldn’t have spoken to me, had there not been a problem. We certainly wouldn’t have gotten to know the gentlemen behind us, or the lady across the aisle if all went according to plan. The captain eventually came back on and let us know he had just called his wife in Orange County, and asked her to turn on the news to see if there were any reports. Well, evidently the local news stations knew more than the people in the flight tower, so we found out that all flights in and out of LA, John Wayne, and Ontario, and possible San Diego were all being delayed, due to power outages, and they had no estimated time for the problem to be fixed. A little more waiting, and his wife called him back and said that the news now was saying that flights into OC were all being cancelled. Nice of them to let us know, huh? Well, anyway, he finally got word that we were going to pull into a gate, we just had to find an open one, so again- more waiting. By this time most of the people around me were getting very agitated. People started yelling at one another, and the flight attendants (as if it was their fault that the power went out 2,000 miles away). This caused my seat neighbor and myself to get extremely calm. He kept on saying, “What can you do? Getting upset isn’t going to change the fact that we are all stuck on this plane together. We all have places we need to be and people we want to see.” Quite true! I personally wanted to see a pillow and a nice cozy bed by this time, but I knew that others just wanted to get home. I didn’t care if it was home, or a hotel- I just wanted sleep! So they tell us as we’re exiting the plane “Your flight hasn’t been cancelled, it has just being delayed a bit.” As we enter the terminal, the announcement is, “Your flight has not been delayed, it has been cancelled. Repeat- your flight is cancelled. Please sit down in the terminal, and wait for hotel vouchers to be printed.” So there you have it. We were all redirected to an 8am flight to OC the next day. So I waited around and didn’t get in line right away to get my voucher, but when I did, they had stopped handing out the little bags with all the personal needs in them, but they gave me my voucher- for a $50 hotel room, not a free one. :S I was not expecting to spend $50 that day, but alas, what can you do. So I headed out to the curb to find a shuttle (with the rest of the people on my very full flight) to get some sleep. After standing outside for a half hour unable to make contact with the hotel, and no sign of the shuttle anywhere, another shuttle driver comes up to me and asks me what I’m looking for. I respond “Country Inn”. He inquires if I have a reservation, or a voucher. I told him, and he said “I can get you in to the Ramada Inn for less than $50, and we can leave right now. Sold! So I traveled to the Ramada, went to the desk, got my room, and a toothbrush, and went up to find the room.
What awaited me was a HUGE suite! I opened the door only to find I was in the kitchen area, furnished with a kitchen table, a fridge, a microwave, coffee pot, everything you might possibly need. Oh yeah, and a huge full-sized couch. Then I walked beyond the little sitting room, and found 2 King sized beds and the TV. Unfortunately I was too tired to really enjoy any of it. I set the alarm on my cell phone, and fell into bed and a very deep sleep. I awoke the next morning, took a shower, and put on the same clothes I had been wearing the entire day before (ewww), and went down to enjoy the complimentary breakfast. I figured I’d get some cold cereal and juice, maybe a muffin. Well, I ended up with my choice of cereal, homemade waffles, muffins, doughnuts, bagels, coffee, hot chocolate, juice- the works! So I had some waffles, and then waited for the shuttle to the airport.
The shuttle arrived, and there was a couple waiting to get one as well, but I guess we were the last stop on the shuttle�s rounds, because there weren’t enough seats. There was room for 1, maybe 2, but not 3. I ended up sitting on a stepstool between the driver’s seat and the front passenger seat, holding on to the cup holders for dear life! We made it to the airport, and I started to head over to the security place. As I got up to the conveyer belt area, the lady at the front said, “Oh, you’ve been selected for some extra security screening. Please step into the line over there.” As I entered the line, I recognized some of the people from my flight the evening before. Turns out everyone whose flight was cancelled was selected for extra screening. As if we weren’t already unhappy enough, they stick us in a line that takes longer, but not only is it longer, but they have this little “maze” built. It has glass walls, so you can see everyone else breezing through the regular security line, but this little glass hallway winds around the entire area, and finally spits out into another conveyer belt area. So I took my laptop out of the case, and put everything on the belt, and they took us all one by one, rummaged through our personal belongs, while “an officer of our same gender” rummaged through us! After being patted down like a criminal, and after the contents of both carry on items were strewn about the table, they said, “Okay, you can go.” So I quickly try to put my bags back together, and gather everything that is mine, and started off for the gate.
The conversation at the gate was quite amusing. Everyone had a different story to tell about their hotel stay the night before. Others stayed in the airport, and slept on a bench. I was glad I had found the Ramada shuttle, and had no more stories to tell. I boarded the plane, and found my seat next to a young mother with a 2-year-old boy, and a 2-month-old baby girl. Yippee! 2 babies next to me for a 4 and a half hour flight. Well, thankfully they were well behaved, and only screamed a few times. I struck up a conversation with the woman next to me, and found out that she had been on vacation with her husband, and 2 kids, but the husband left a few days earlier, and since they were vacationing in Florida, she had decided to leave early to avoid the hurricane- only to get stuck in Atlanta! She also recounted the events of the evening before, saying she waited for the shuttle for over an hour, and by the time she actually got to the hotel, she had to wait in line, with 2 tired babies in tow, and didn’t get to her room until well after midnight. I then wished that I had found her, and gotten her over to the Ramada with me. And we could have shared that giant room, and only paid $25 each! But anyway, the rest of the flight was uneventful, and I finally returned home.
Once home I went to the doctor, had to have blood drawn (my least favorite thing in the whole world), and found out I have Mono, and was sentenced to 2 weeks at least in bed, and no dancing for probably around 6 weeks. I am nearing the end of my 2 weeks, and it’s a good thing, too, because I have a shift on Saturday, though it is only 4.5 hours, but the week after I have 40 hours, and I’m back to Admin-land! So hopefully I will be able to handle that. I am feeling much better than I had been, so we shall see!
I do have 2 roles of film to scan in, and upload, so I’ll get to that eventually. The Comic-Con pictures are back, as well as a few extras from Unique’s Pro Comp, and as always, random pictures of the kitties. And I still have a roll of pictures in the camera. For now, though, I have pictures of the surprise that my boyfriend had waiting for me on the kitchen table. He was a busy guy while I gone! (And yes, he folded every single one of them, and there are 48 of them! He had them arranged at Michael’s.)
More pictures to come hopefully soon!
By the way- I found out that I did better than I thought in some of my open category dances for Unique. I updated the list, but I got Gold in Rumba (not silver), and Silver (not bronze) in Cha Cha and Swing.
But my cats seem to enjoy my time at home. Clifton and Margaret have added a few more