Title is courtesy of my younger brother Derek, when trying to explain why we haven't heard of this new 'tradition' involving watching movies every night before bed.
So yes, I'm at home, finally. And very, very glad to be here. The kids are busily eating their Thanksgiving pie, before going to bed. I'm sure they'll have lovely exciting dreams tonight. As for me, I'm tired, but feeling quite happy and productive. Between Sharon and I, we pulled off the entire Thanksgiving dinner. From roast turkey to home-made whipped cream. I'm rather proud of myself. And proud of all the willing slaves that cut celery and made bread crumbs, and put marshmallows on the sweet potato casserole, of course. There are distinct advantages to cooking for a large family.
And I found out that I should get my luggage here tomorrow. Which got lost in Minneapolis. This is a very good thing, and maybe I can finally put The Flight In Which Everything Went Wrong behind me.
See, it all started when we got held up an hour longer than expected in Dallas traffic...
...and so I got to the airport only 25 minutes before my flight was supposed to leave. This being 6:30pm, there was only one guy manning the Northwest ticket counter. And before I even got up to the counter he was asking me:
"You weren't trying to go to Minneapolis, were you?"
Minneapolis, of course, being the connecting hub I was scheduled to go through. So clearly I was trying to go to Minneapolis, and just as clearly I was about to be disappointed. Which happened in due course, as he told me that they weren't taking any more passengers for that flight. Whether this meant I was merely too late or they overbooked my flight, I didn't determine. I was flustered enough as it was.
So, I got rebooked for a flight that would leave at 6:15 the next morning, called Heather's cell, got her to turn around and pick me up again, and we decided to go and get a hotel room rather than try to drive home and turn right around again to come back out to the airport.
And so we tried again the next morning. And I managed to leave my ID at the hotel room, and not notice it until we'd made our way through the check-in line. This was at 4:30am, so I'm going to claim Early-Morning Insanity. It's a documented condition. While I held my place in line, Heather went back and picked up my misplaced verification of self, and I finally checked in. At this time, it was about 5:00am.
About 15 minutes later, I noticed that I wasn't given my boarding passes. Only a receipt. This, of course, was after I made my way through most of the line for security.
5 minutes later, I finally had my boarding passes. 10 minutes later, I was through security, and this time I actually made it on the plane. Sinking into that seat was quite the nicest feeling in the world.
After dozing through one 2-hour flight and reading through the next 30-minute flight, I landed in Waterloo, IA. Except that my lone duffel bag didn't land with me. Nope, it had decided to wait around for the next flight of the day from Minneapolis to Waterloo. Which brings me to the point where I arrive home, get stormed by lots of kids, make Thanksgiving dinner, and get a call telling me that my bag should arrive tomorrow.
It's been a rather full day. And now I must go pick the rest of the turkey off the bones.
Posted by Ardith at November 25, 2004 10:27 PM | TrackBack