are you fist fucking me flights

Gosh, has it really been 20 days since I've written anything?

Yes, but that's because I've been traveling and running around with my hair on fire.

A bag of dicks I work with decided, on Thursday the 12th, that I needed to fly to San Antonio on Monday the 16th and then Atlanta on the 18th for work.

Grr. Any idea how hard it is to find cost effective flights and hotels with corporate rates on short notice? No idea? Well, it's really fucking hard.

Then there was the travel itself. I was unable to get a direct flight to San Antonio, or a direct flight from San Antonio to Atlanta. I had to route through Dallas. As you may be aware, Dallas has had some serious rain and flooding.

Monday I had estimated I would get to my hotel in San Antonio by 8 pm. It was actually more like 11:30 pm. I was in meetings all day and then working in the evening doing my real job.

The flight to Atlanta was a disaster. I got to Dallas, boarded my flight, and then we were delayed for an hour due to a hurricane in Atlanta. When we finally landed in Atlanta we were stuck on the runway for an hour waiting for a gate to open because all of the outbound flights were still at their gates because of the aforementioned tornado. When the gate finally opened we couldn't get to it because there was a back up of planes waiting to take off blocking the way.

I had estimated I would get to my hotel at 11 pm, and I had to be at work for a 6:30 am meeting. But I didn't get to the rental car place until 1130 and they had canceled my reservation because I was so late to pick up my car. I ran around to different counters until I finally procured a car from, I'm not making this up, EZ rental. Then I called my hotel to make sure they didn't cancel my room (they just had but reinstated my reservation).

I finally got to the hotel around 130 am. Then I overslept my 630 am meeting because I didn't realize turning the volume off for my phone calls would turn off the volume for alarms (say what you will about blackberry, I never had half the problems with their phones as I do with my android phone). I have never, in my entire career, overslept a meeting. I got into work at 7 am and no one said anything to me about missing the 630 meeting.

My dad said "why do you keep flying directly into the path of storms?" Why indeed.

Friday most people left work at noon because of the holiday but I was there until 7 pm. Then on the way to the hotel I was staying at in Atlanta (near the airport) I ran into a horrible traffic jam due to an accident. I was estimating my hotel arrival to be 9 pm, it was actually 1030 pm.

Ech.

The next day, Saturday, I was flying to Williamsburg to spend the week with my family for thanksgiving. I got up on time, I had clear skies, security wasn't too bad. I had a tight connection through Charlottesville and was texting my parents that I was worried about missing my connection. But instead my plane took off early from Atlanta and I didn't have to run (too fast) to my connecting gate.

Travel was going so smoothly compared to the past week's travel that I joked with my parents that they would probably lose my luggage.

Also, on the flight from Charlottesville to Williamsburg, a little girl in front of me (age 8) started to totally lose her shit. To the point where she was about to delay our departure. So I popped over the top of her seat and said "do you want to see pictures of my tiger?"

It turns out the little girl is autistic and her mom had forgotten to bring her favorite stuffed bear (her poor mom had 3 back packs full of toys and stuff, but had forgotten the bear, who could blame her). Anyway, seats were shifted around and I spent the 45 minute flight educating the little girl on tigers.

When we landed I held the little girl's hand so the mom could manage all the backpacks (the mom said "she never touches strangers" and I was like "she knows I have asperger's so we're in the same tribe") and we went to baggage claim where their bags were waiting (courtesy of American airlines who made their bags a priority). The mom wanted to wait to meet my mom, who was picking me up, to tell her what a big help I was (my mom's response was "um, she was???" because I'm usually winding kids up, not calming them down).

They then waited for my bag to come out on the baggage claim thingamajig because the autistic girl wanted to find it for me. After asking if every suitcase on the thingamajig was mine (there were like 60 suitcases) she got frustrated and said "take this one!" pointing to some random suitcase. I asked why that suitcase and she said "it's pretty" (it had flowers on it). Then she and her mom left.

They lost my luggage. It got routed to Orlando somehow.

I went to customer service to fill out a claim with my mom, with whom I was carrying on a conversation with as I filled out the claim.

I gave the dude my claim check, gave him my phone number and shit, and when he asked for an alternative number my mom gave him my parents' land line.

At which point the guy looked at me and said "do you know this woman?"

For fucking real.

My bag was supposed to be delivered at 7 pm Saturday night. My mom and I finally got it at 11 pm and we had to meet the driver part way. He had tried to deliver the bag at 7 but realized they gave him the wrong bag. Then he got stuck in traffic, and then lost, and all other kinds of shit. I gave him $10 for his efforts and he said "you are the only person today to tip me" and then spent the next 15 minutes telling me his life story.

Anyway, first world problems. I read a new yorker story today about a syrian refuge escaping to Sweden. I should not complain.