I Spend a Lot of Time in Airports Trying Not to Cry

Those of you who know me, know that I have the worst luck when it comes to air travel. If something can go wrong with my flight, it will. Lost luggage, interminable delays, security issues. I didn't know what else they could come up with to ruin my travel. This past week I learned not to underestimate them--they will always find a new way to screw me over. I should be smart enough to give up on travelling at Christmas time. It's expensive, it's crowded, and there is weather, but I do it anyhow. My 3-hour layover in Newark on my way to Ohio became a six-hour delay. The plane was there, but we had no crew. I think they had a weather delay somewhere. I figured I paid my dues on the way to Ohio, so they trip home should be OK. The weather across the country was perfect and I got to Pittsburgh Airport in plenty of time. I strolled around for a while to get some exercise, then went to my gate. Pulled out my boarding pass, which I had printed out the night before, and noticed that it said "No seat assigned. See gate agent." I had chosen my seat when I purchased the astronomically expensive ticket back in September, so I wasn't worried. I just assumed it was some kind of system glitch. I went to the gate agent and she explained that they had overbooked and would call me when they "free up some seats". I told her I had already chosen my seat. She said that really doesn't mean anything. They make that announcement saying "We have an overbooked flight. If you have flexible travel plans and can wait for the next flight, please come to the podium and we'll give you a $400 travel voucher." They made that announcement a few times. They start boarding the plane by groups, but she hadn't called me back to the podium. They boarded the next group, then the next, and finally the last group. I was still sitting there. I went up to the gate. They had overbooked by 3 passengers. No one volunteered for the $400 voucher. Three of us would be deemed "involuntary denied boarding." I was being bumped from a flight that I reserved and paid for in September! I didn't think that could really happen. I should have known better. My gate agent Alisa, who was very nice, explained that they would pay me "for my inconvenience". Whatever--I just wanted to get rebooked on another flight. So Alisa is looking on the computer for another way to get me home, while she is on the phone to the people who make the payments. She writes down a number and shows it to me. This would be the amount they would pay me in cash--not flight vouchers, or tickets, but cold, hard cash! It was 205% of my ticket cost! Yes, you read that right: more than double what I paid for the ticket. Suddenly, getting bumped from a flight didn't seem so bad! Although, she wasn't having much luck rerouting me to Orange County. I told her I could fly into Long Beach or Los Angeles, if it would make it easier. It made it a lot easier. She booked me in the front row of a direct flight to LAX, leaving at 7pm--6 hours after my original flight left. She handed me my boarding passes and that large check, and mentioned that there was also a flight to LAX via Chicago leaving at 3:30. It was full, but I might want to try stand-by. What did I have to lose? I went to that gate, got my stand-by ticket and headed to the bar. Ordered a beer and watched the Notre Dame - Rutgers bowl game. It was getting close to the time I needed to check my standby status, but ND had the ball and was marching down the field. As soon as they scored the winning touchdown, I mosied over to the gate to check the standby monitor. There were 3 names on it, but only one with a check mark next to it--mine!! It was the happiest moment of my life! I turned in my standby ticket, got my boarding passes and got in line. I spend a lot of time in airports trying not to cry, but this time was different. I was so overcome with joyous happiness that I was a little teary as I boarded that flight. My original flight took me from Pittsburgh to Newark, with a 3 hour layover and arrival in Orange County at 10:30pm. My standby flight was scheduled to touch down in LA at 7:45. To make that silver lining just a little shinier, I landed half an hour early--3 hours and 15 minutes BEFORE my original flight. Earlier and richer! A shared-shuttle to Orange County was supposed to be there in 20 minutes, but it got there in 5 minutes. We were on the freeway and home-bound by 8pm. Got home, collected my mail, checked on my new car, unpacked my suitcase and was in bed 35 minutes before my original flight landed. It was bliss! Who knew that being bumped from a flight could make me so happy??

What I Learned From My First Job

Lately, on LinkedIn, a bunch of rich, famous CEOs of major corporations have been writing posts titled "What I Learned from my First Job." Today I read the post from the guy who runs eBay. He delivered beer and got to drink at 7am. The perfect summer job for an 18 year old! But he claims he took away leadership qualities and trust from that job. So, what did I learn from my first job? At first, when I started thinking about it, I was pretty sure the answer was 'absolutely nothing'. I was a 16-year old waitress at a Perkins Pancake House. I ran track in high school, and they worked my hours around my track schedule until school let out for the summer. I worked a few days a week, in the evenings--when no one goes into a pancake place. Minimum wage for servers was $1.85 and I'd usually come home with less than $5 in tips because the place was empty. Every once in a while I'd get to fill in for one of the 'regular' girls--the 20-somethings who got to work the breakfast shift--and I'd make $30 in tips. It was an interesting clientele at Perkins in those days. We had two groups of regulars who came in every night: the Arabs and the Mafia. The Arabs were nice and were probably just escaping from their wives for the evening. The Mafia tipped slightly better so we all wanted to wait on them. The Godfather, Tony, Shadow, Big Ed, and few others whose names have faded from my memory. They'd sit around, talk, and study the racing sheets from Waterford and Thistledown Race Tracks. They were all up in arms one night after a horse, in a 'fixed' race, came in 4th. They'd been double-crossed and were not happy. Someone would have to pay for that. The only other major issue was when Tony's son was murdered. Junior ran a strip club. The place had been bombed in the past, but he met his demise when someone gunned him down outside his apartment. Tony never came back to the restaurant after that. And the other guys had zero sympathy. Junior had either threatened or tried to kill every single one of them and they were glad he was dead. Nice things to tell a 16-year old, but I guess I could say I learned loyalty. They were united in their dislike of Junior, and in the dog-eat-dog world of organized crime, they had each other's backs. Surround yourself with people who share your values, and together you'll go far. Maybe it's not the ideal way to present a lesson in loyalty to a teenager, but hey, it was Youngstown. And, then again, maybe I really didn't learn anything--I'd much rather have drank beer at 7am and ended up as the multi-millionaire CEO of eBay.

Another Senseless Shooting

We only get a few days, or if we're lucky a few weeks, before the news of another senseless shooting takes over our airwaves. I get alerts on my phone of major events from the LA Times. Obviously those alerts were going off all day today, especially since this happened in my little corner of the world. I watched all the early coverage on the live feed on my computer at work. I spent most of that time wondering how the family and friends of the victim will find the strength to go on. How do you deal with sending your loved one off to work, and not having them ever come home again? Do you struggle to remember their last words, the last thing you said to them, the last touch, the last kiss? How do you accept that finality? How do you wake up tomorrow? Especially when it happens at the hands of an unstable element with access to guns: high-powered unnecessary assault weapons. I know that, in a society unwilling to give up guns, or even agree to stricter gun controls, this event will occur again and again and again--in another workplace, another school, another mall. I can accept illness, car accidents, plane crashes, and the wrath of Mother Nature. I don't like any of those things, and some have affected me personally, but I understand them. What I have a very hard time with is dealing with man's inhumanity to man. How is it possible to point a gun at another human being and pull the trigger? It is completely unfathomable to me. I realize I've probably written these same exact words in an earlier blog post commenting on another shooting. And I wonder how many more times I'll have to write them again.

Automation Dependency

In light of the Asiana Airlines crash at SFO, many articles and newscasts are discussing the dependency of pilots to use automated systems to fly and land an airplane, instead of an 'old-fashioned' visual/manual method. In this fully automated world, that applies to far more than just flying an airplane. It is getting to the point where we have to ask ourselves: Are we better off with technology, or not? Who writes a letter anymore? Blogger.com is blocked on my computer at work, so I'd hand write out a blog post, but due to not writing for years, my penmanship sucked! So now I just type my blog in an email to myself, and copy and paste it to my blog page when I get home. When you go to a meeting at work, does anyone takes notes with a pen and paper? I'm sure it's few and far between since most people type notes on their iPad or laptop. I used to know hundreds of phone numbers by heart. People were impressed with how many numbers I knew. But I only know a few now because I simply pick up my phone and tell it who to call. I don't even have to dial the number. We're losing our ability to do things on our own. We need to find a happy medium between manual processes and technological evolution. If we allow machines to think for us, how long will it be before we can no longer think on our own? Are we making ourselves irrelevant? Maybe this is how the world ends--no huge cataclysmic disaster, no new ice age or dinosaurs--we just simply phase ourselves out. In evolution theories, we came from animals with tails, but since we didn't use them, they became unnecessary and disappeared. What's next?

My Garden

Every year I plant a few different types of vegetables in my patio garden. Last year I tried potatoes for the first time. Red potatoes. I made potato salad, potatoes sautéed with peppers and onions, potatoes boiled with the skins on, then fork-mashed and drizzled with butter, salt and pepper. Each dish was awesome, if I say so myself! Last October I went to Italy and discovered I actually like eggplant--especially when it's smothered in sauce and cheese! So, this year, I planted eggplant in my garden. Can't wait to try them, but it'll still be at least a month or two. I'll let you know how they turn out. I also planted basil from seed for the first time. It only got so big, then stopped. It's not dead, but I have to figure what I can do to boost it up. Maybe I'll Google that later. I always plant tomatoes and tried the grafted tomato this year--which means extra yield. There are already a ton of tomatoes on my plant. Today, I harvested the first one of the season. Wow, was it good! There is nothing like a home-grown tomato! Store-bought, or even those bought at a farmer's can't begin to compare with the incredible taste, juiciness and freshness of a home-grown tomato. Sometimes, it's hard to believe they're even the same plant. I can't wait to harvest the next tasty batch!

I Run for Boston

As many of you know, I run in the mornings before work--but only in the spring and summer when it's warm and light enough outside. Today, I rolled over to look at the clock. Crap--I forgot to turn my alarm on! I should have already been out there. I jumped out of bed, threw on my running clothes (which I always set out the night before), brushed my teeth, and flew out the door. Because I'm motivated: I run for Boston. I run for Martin, and Krystle, and the Chinese grad student. I run for the 170 injured people whose lives will never be the same, many of whom now have bodies that will forever bear the scars of what the worst of human nature is capable of doing. I run for the thousands who were denied their dream of finishing that race because I know there is no feeling quite like crossing the finish line of a marathon. I run for everyone who set out for a day of celebration and had it turn into a tragedy no one will ever forget. I run because I never want the bad guys to win. So I forgot to turn my alarm clock on and might have been a little late for work, but I ran for Boston.

An $8 Cup of Foam

As per my yearly tradition, I went to the Angels home opener last night. They raised ticket prices, so it was nowhere near a sell out, and they didn't even announce attendance. I was happy to see that parking and beer prices were the same as last year. Still too expensive, but way better than any other local sports venue. There was just one problem, other than the fact that we lost: I didn't think it was possible to make the concession stand experience any more painful than it was--but they have succeeded! I ordered a beer. That's it--one beer. Shouldn't be that hard. The girl held the cup upright, directly under the tap. Anyone who has ever drank a beer, poured a beer, or watched a beer being poured knows that this particular technique will succeed only in filling the cup with foam. Her first try, the glass was 3/4 foam. She set it aside and collected my money. Then she tried again. This time it was 1/2 foam. AND SHE HANDED IT TO ME!!!!!! $7.75 for a cup of foam??? I was incredulous!! I said "You seriously aren't going to give it to me like that, are you?" She didn't really say anything, but I knew the answer was yes. Maybe she thought the foam turns into beer once it settles. And we all know that doesn't happen. So, I start to explain to her how to pour a beer: 'hold the cup against the tap at an angle'. At that point, another worker obviously overheard me, came up and showed her how to do it. And I finally got a full cup of beer! I would think they would train new employees on how to work the equipment PRIOR to opening night, but I guess that's not the way it works at Angel Stadium. On our 2nd foray to the concession stand, they were out of hot dogs. Really?? It's a baseball game, for God's sake! Who runs out of hot dogs at a baseball game? At least I got a full beer that time!

Meditation Class

I finally signed up for a meditation course. I've been wanting to try it for a while now, and a new class was offered through my city's recreation program. Like most people who do meditation, I was looking for peace, stillness, purpose. The first session was last night. Jessie, the instructor, was very welcoming--she hugged everyone! We started with 20 minutes of easy yoga. Then we closed our eyes, focused on our breathing, and allowed her to guide us through our practice. She has a soothing voice, uses a lot of positive reinforcement, and gave us various ways to focus on the internal and block out the stresses of daily life. It was so relaxing! I don't think I have ever sat that still for that long! If I'm at home, I get up about every 2 minutes--I'm always thinking of something else that I need to do. If I'm at work, I cross my legs back and forth about every 30 seconds. To sit still and completely relax for 45 minutes was amazing! I can't wait for next week's session.

The 'Good Guy' with the Gun

I was a waitress in a pizza place during the summers when I was in college. I became friends with my co-workers, particularily with a sister and brother who worked there. Their brother used to come in for free pizza, as would mine--don't tell the boss! Their brother, like me, was a sophomore in college. He was looking forward to going back to school as he was going to be an RA that year. He loved his college, as I loved mine, and we both couldn't wait to get back to our "other" lives at school. Anyhow, we all became friends and used to hang out when we weren't working. We had a lot of fun together. I'll never forget the phone call one morning from the boss asking if I could come in to work. My co-workers were scheduled to work but were at the hospital with their brother, my friend. He had gone out dancing the night before--his favorite thing to do. On the way home he stopped at a bar where his buddy was a bartender. Near closing time, a robber came into the bar demanding the money in the cash register. The 'good guy' with a gun, an off-duty cop, pulled out his pistol and started shooting. My friend was caught in the crossfire. He wasn't killed, but that 19-year old who loved to dance was paralyzed for life. If the 'good guy with a gun' hadn't been in that bar, the terrified employees would have emptied the cash register for the robber. It's likely the bad guy would have taken the money and run. If the 'good guy with a gun' hadn't been in that bar, my friend might still be dancing today. A 'good guy' with a gun is simply another person with a gun.