7/29/05

here. Edited to add: Or, if you’re not in the mood to make your own, these guys make a mean whoopie pie. Yeah, you have to order a dozen, but whoopie pies freeze nicely.

* * * Is Flickr being a huge goddamn pain in the ass for everyone today, or am I special? * * * Written on July 24, 2005. So, the visit is almost over – the spud and I leave for home tomorrow at 12:45. We have an hour and a half flight to Dulles, a five-hour (ugh) layover at Dulles, and then another hour and a half flight to Alabama. I’m looking forward to getting home, but NOT looking forward to the trip to get there. The day they perfect a teleportation device is the day I’ll be first in line. “Oh, zis lahf. Eet ees juzt too hard. Zee pain. Zee ahnguish. Leaf me alone, so I may wallow in the pain that ees mah lahf.” Everyone showed up for a cookout, and most of them went swimming. Liz came over a little after 4:00 – at my invitation – and we sat around the living room and watched TV and talked, and Debbie and I yawned back and forth at each other. So it’s been a good visit, and these past few days have been pretty low-key and relaxing. I’m looking forward to getting home, but I’m not quite as eager to leave as I’ve been in the past. * * * Written today. So, we got to Portland in plenty of time to catch the plane, and I impressed the guy at Security with the size of my laptop (does that sound pervy?), and we had a discussion about how I’d wanted a small laptop, but my husband had to have the biggest laptop, and he never even uses it! And in retrospect, I probably sounded like a spoiled rotten bitch, who was actually bragging about how we had SO MUCH MONEY that we needed to buy the BIG laptop, so we could get some of that pesky money out of the way, because it was just cluttering up the house. But I swear to y’all – I WANTED A SMALLER LAPTOP. Just like I’d rather have a smaller TV and a smaller camera (it does take good pictures, though, I’ll give it that) and a smaller car (which I got). Anyway. So the spud and I went and sat down near our gate for a while, me reading and she talking on her phone to a friend, and then they started up with the announcements. Independence Air only flies to Dulles from Portland, and it flies there several times a day. When we arrived and checked in, the 10:30ish flight had been delayed to 12:00, but our flight – 12:45 – was deemed still on time. The people who were on the 10:30/ 12:00 flight were in an uproar, because for the most part no one was going to Dulles to stay in the area; Dulles was just a waystation on the way to their final destination. And since their flight was delayed by an hour and a half, chances were good that they were going to miss their connecting flight. The gate agent did her best to reassure everyone that they’d be put on the next possible flight to their destination, but there was much grumbling and unhappy faces among the masses. I got up and looked at the board, and found that our flight was now pushed back to 1:05, and I debated whether the spud and I wanted to go get something to eat, decided we’d just wait ’til we landed in Dulles, and sat back down with my book. At 1:10ish, the gate attendant announced that there was a disabled plane on the runway in Dulles, which meant that all flights that hadn’t taken off to Dulles were now grounded until further notice. Ten minutes later, he announced that there’d be a further update from Dulles at 2:00. It was right about then that I started being grateful for our long layover in Dulles. The longer we waited in Portland, the less time we’d have to spend in Dulles, right? Right. So it was 1:20, and I told the spud we’d go get something to eat, and would be back at 2:00 to hear the update. We went to the one restaurant in the airport, sat down, and ordered lobster rolls. Very good lobster rolls, they were. We ate pretty quickly and then sat and waited for the check, and as we were waiting, someone came running in, yelled “They’re boarding!” to his wife, and they both went running out. “If she comes back, give her this,” I said to the spud, handed her my credit card, and went to see what was going on. There were a line of people at our gate, and they were definitely boarding. I went back into the restaurant, signed the credit card slip, and told the spud to follow me. Really, we could have taken our time. Because we ran to our gate and stood in line, and then the line of people getting on the plane moved like cold molasses in the middle of January. Further delaying the boarding experience, some woman stood and argued with the gate agent about her luggage for the longest fucking time. Finally, someone in line behind me shouted “Could we get a move on? We’re missing our connecting flight in Dulles!”, and the arguing woman shut her trap and got her ass moving. So all in all, we ended up taking off about an hour and a half late, but we landed in Dulles only an hour and ten minutes late. I guess we made up some time in the air. The spud and I stopped at Starbucks and got some fruity-flavored frappucino drinks (the strawberries and creme frappucino, I think) and then settled down at a fairly deserted gate. I tried to call Fred on my cell phone but couldn’t get any kind of decent reception, so I called him from a pay phone. We did our usual “My god, I hate T-Mobile, T-Mobile sucks ass” song-and-dance (seriously, T-Mobile sucks ass sometimes. Fred called me yesterday from the middle of Madison, and lost the signal in the middle of the call. He then called me back and told me that when our T-Mobile contract is up in December he’s going to throw his phone at the T-Mobile guy at the T-Mobile store. He won’t, though – he knows it’s not the guy’s fault. At least, I think he knows that…) and talked for a few minutes. Then the spud and I spent the next few hours reading. I’d forgotten to see about getting some movies from Debbie to watch on the laptop, and the book store in Terminal B didn’t sell movies, so we were pretty much out of luck. The time went by fairly quickly, though. Around six – our flight was scheduled for takeoff at 7:30 – we went to find something for dinner. We bypassed the few food places in Terminal B, because they were packed. We ended up buying a sandwich from the Wolfgang Puck’s cart in the area between Terminals A and B, then settled down near our gate and ate, then read. Naturally, our plane didn’t start boarding until ten minutes before we were supposed to take off, and there was some confusion about seating, but it all worked out, and we settled into our seats, put our tray tables and seat backs in an upright position, and waited for takeoff. And waited and waited and waited. When I’d realized we’d been sitting there for a long time, I turned my phone on to see what time it was, and found that we’d been sitting on the plane for an hour. I text-messaged Fred to tell him I thought we’d be late, and then turned my phone back off. About ten minutes later, we finally took off. You know, the thing I really hate about flying during the summer is how fucking hot and sweaty I get. Because planes might cool off once they’re in the air, but when they’re on the ground, they’re really warm. Not to mention that laptop I thought I should take to Maine with me was FUCKING HEAVY. I had to beg the spud to carry it for me a couple of times, because it was just killing me. You’d better believe I was cursing Fred’s name. Today, four days after we got home, my shoulder is just now getting back to normal. I’ll be purchasing a laptop case with wheels before December, you better believe it. The upside of being on a delayed flight is that we flew by a really pretty sunset, and I took a bunch of pictures. About halfway through the flight, as I was reading, I realized I was being surrounded by the most horrific stench. I gave the spud a dirty look. “Did you fart?” I said accusingly. She stared at me and shook her head. And then we must have been overtired from the day of traveling, because we started laughing, and we COULD NOT STOP. I swear, we were both crying, we were laughing so hard. We must have guffawed for about five minutes straight. I’d just get myself under control, and I’d think about saying “Did you FART?”, and I’d start laughing again. Maybe you had to be there. So anyway, despite the fact that we’d boarded late and sat on the plane waiting for takeoff for at least an hour, we still managed to land only about half an hour late. And that, my friends, concludes this week’s saga of my trip to Maine and home again. Monday, we’ll be back to business as usual. Woohoo! See all the pictures from Maine, here. See all the dog pictures, here. See all the sunset pictures, here.]]>