"I Like to Be Here When I Can."

December 23, 2008 11:27 PM

o I actually came far too close to having that nightmare scenario from that terrible JTT movie come to pass.

I woke up at 2:30am Central and drove to Milwaukee. The drive was pretty ridiculous, actually. The roads weren't terrible, but they were far from good. In the end, though, I made it to Mil-town without too much of a problem. My parking and shuttle situations worked out fine, too. The problem started when Frontier Airlines decided that, instead of de-icing the plane and taking off, we would sit on the runway for a long time. Like, an hour. After we boarded at about the time we were supposed to take off. So now we're already an hour behind. When I only had a forty-minute margin for my plane change in Denver. Lovely.

We did eventually get into the air, but my inability to sleep on airplanes kept me from, well, sleeping on the airplane. I did get sat next to a really hot asian girl, so that was a plus. Her douchebag boyfriend, sitting on her other side, was a big minus. This girl was really hot, was an accountant, and made lots of money. She also seemed fairly nice, by which I mean that she didn't seem like the sort of huge bitch I'd expect someone as hot as her to be. Her boyfriend, aside from being a huge douche, was a welder. A welder. How does a welder end up with a rich accountant? I have no idea.

Anyway, we ended up landing about twelve minutes after my connecting flight took off. The pilot actually said "you're pretty much on your own here, sorry." When they announced that you had to bring your seats up to the full upright position, I did. But then the male stewardess came up and told me to bring it up all the way. I said that I had. He forced it to get more upright, and then said "Sometimes you bigger guys make the seats go down farther." So Frontier Airlines has an amazing two-pronged campaign to ensure repeat business: first they'll fuck you over, then they'll insult you. Nice.

I was rudely told that I had to go to the customer service desk, which had a line about four-hundred people long. After waiting, and explaining to the woman behind the counter that I was willing to fly into any Los Angeles-area airport, she said "You're going to LAX? There's another flight in ten minutes." Sometimes flying to a giant city has its perks.

Ten minutes ended up being about half an hour, which was perfect because it gave me the chance to go down to the bar and have a giant, overpriced bloody Mary. It was awesome. Then I got on the plane. My total delay was about an hour, which was just fine, because it made sure my parents would have enough time to get to the airport.

The flight from Denver to LAX was ok. I got free TV. I don't know why.

Upon arriving at LAX, I immediately got lost. Then I found my way and found my mom and my aunt. And I was literally floored. Remember all those predictions I made? I was wrong on almost all fronts.

First of all, the first thing they said was that I looked skinnier. This is false, but it was nice of them to say. Then, my aunt said "I didn't know if I was looking for someone with long hair or short hair. Your hair looks nice short." This is strange--my hair is long. Then they told me that I looked good generally. They did insist that it was cold, but they understood when I mentioned that I was warm under my jacket. Then they asked me if I wanted to go home first or straight to the In-n-Out. I expected them to do all those other things not because they're mean or because they want to be hurtful, but just because they're extremely honest and forthright. The fact that they were the opposite of critical confused me. But it also made me happy. Either way, I was really excited to see them.

We went to the In-n-Out. It was a-ma-zing.

Then it took us way longer than it should have to get home because my aunt forgot whether she lives East or West of LAX. Hey, sometimes after living in a certain city for thirty years, you forget minor details like where you live in relation to a major airport.

But, eventually, we got home. And this house is amazing. They bought it something like four years ago and it was ok, but it also had many shithole qualities. It does not have any of those now. It is simply gorgeous, and they've replicated parts of a fucking tropical rain forest. There are banana trees with giant bunches of bananas, avocado trees, orange trees with beautiful ripe oranges, and just a slew of amazing vegetation. I'll put up pictures soon.

So now I'm home. My mom's cooking up some tamales. And we're working on the brine for the turkey I'm going to cook tomorrow. I'm going to cook a turkey. I'll let you know how that goes.

The point is that I'm home. And it's fucking awesome.

1 Comments

Anonymous said:

is that the same place with the tropical backyard?

December 29, 2008 11:59 PM

Leave a comment

Name

Email Address

URL

Remember personal info?

Comments (You may use HTML tags for style)

Captcha:

Type the characters you see in the picture above.