August 5, 2008 1545 Baltimore Airport

I typed this up during a layover on my way to Norfolk

Hope this isn’t a sign of things to come!

I was fully packed last night before I went to bed with the exception of the laptop bag. I am borrowing Nic’s laptop again and she has no bag because I wrecked hers at the last Milblog conference. I kept meaning to get another…..but you know me...I’ve never met a task that I can’t put off. I realized that I didn’t have the bag around midnight and almost popped back to the office to get it, but, of course….I put it off.

My alarm goes off at 0800. That should be plenty of time because everything is ready…right?

Wrong!
I wanted to leave my house at 0900. Somehow I was still there at 0930. What happened? I don’t know!

I dash into work. I grab the bag. We get on the road. I remind Tom, my son to stop at the dump on the way home because I already have loaded the rubbish into the trunk. That would be pretty effin’ horrible to comeback to a trunk full of trash that’s been stewing in the August heat (yes, Chief, I know…it’s not that hot)!

I have one errand to do before we hit the highway. It’s a bill. I have to pay it. Yes, I know that it was unwise to leave it for the last minute. That’s me. I’ll go stand in the corner.

OK, so now Tom and I are flying down the highway. The good part? No State Troopers spotted me. The bad part? I didn’t go fast enough. LOL

As I was going through security, I heard my final boarding call and my name on the overhead page.

There I was running down the concourse in my socks, juggling the empty bag for the computer, the bulging Walmart bag with everything that was supposed to go into the bag for the computer, my sneakers and pulling the backpack on wheels Gracie gave me for my birthday. I got to the gate…there was the plane….but the door was closed.

Great! Now I am screwed…and not in the good way.

I go to the gate agent. I ask what I do. She says “Your final destination is Norfolk? Well, we put you on the next flight in 90 minutes.”

No charge. No lecture. Thank you, Southwest!!!!
I thanked her profusely.

So now I am sitting in Baltimore waiting for the connecting flight to Norfolk and I should be where I am supposed to be by 1900.

How does this happen to me? My bed is stripped. All the laundry is done and put away. My room is straightened out in case my Dad and brother come down (my mother postponed the drywall project,but sometimes my father can be willfull). Everything is done but there is still chaos. I should have stuck to my usual modus operandi and left the bedroom looking like tornado hit it.

But all’s well that ends well…..thanks to Southwest.

August 5, 2008 1545