You know how I do.
I also got some really nifty Hello, Kitty! pens and Starbucks gift cards, which were awesome.
Thank you to Vikas and everyone else who contributed:
Finally, comments like this one (thank you everyone who left one & made me cry lol) that my sister Katelyn found and sent to me from the LA Times article:
[Source]
I know that this has been on every blog all day today but there’s a reason why. It’s one of the most hilarious f*cking parody videos I’ve seen in a while:
It’s finally gotten warmer in Raleigh, so to celebrate the 70-degrees and sunny weather, Jay and I went on a picnic in Pullen Park. Jay made sammiches and I ate them. Good deal, right?
P.S. Stay tuned in the next few days for (hopefully) some wedding news 
All set for a picnic!
The chef gives a preview of his delicious meal creations.
Jay loves a mouthful of roast beef…
Don’t smile with your mouth full.
In the home stretch and then I can go back to posting boring shit like my new haircut and pictures of Zoe being adorable.
Thursday February, 18 2010:
So Thursday morning, I didn’t feel so good. I woke up with a terribly sore throat and I couldn’t swallow because my glands felt so swollen. I decided to sit out the trip to the VNA Museum and meet up with my parents and Katelyn as they were finishing it. I met up with them in time for the gift shop and we were off to visit Harrod’s, the ginormous, famous and ridiculously expensive department store. It was pouring rain and cold again that day. Harrod’s was both awesome and depressing. Awesome in the sense that it was 7 stories of shopping in every single area you could imagine, including pets & books. They had this amazing section of their food court that was just all chocolate and sweets. Depressing in the sense that 98% of the things in the store probably cost more than one month of my paychecks lol. We did a little more window shopping in the area before moving on to Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square and did even more shopping at Convent Gardens. Convent Gardens was way more in my price range than Harrod’s.
We spent a while at Convent Gardens. We decided to visit The Admiral Coddington’s Pub (aka The “Cod” I guess?) for dinner. The Cod is famous for being where Princess Diana had hung out before she was Princess Diana. Sadly, we discovered that they didn’t serve dinner until 6:30pm and it was only 4:30pm at the time. So we had a drink and left Pub #1 and headed to Pub #2, which was some place by the South Kensington Tube Station. I don’t remember the name but I was underwhelmed by the food (not that pub food is supposed to be great but the other places we ate at all had good food). I had the biggest pint of Hoegarden at Pub #2. Mmmm. We went back to the hotel to rest up for a little while and then headed back out to Pub #3, which was right down the street from our hotel on Queens Gate and a recommendation from my mom’s cousin who used to live in South Kensington. As you can imagine, we were definitely exhausted after our third pub visit of the day and only stayed for an hour before going back to bed.
Friday, February 19, 2010:
Friday was a more laid back day. We said goodbye to Christie in the morning, who was leaving for Wales that afternoon. We went back to the Big Ben/Parliament area to take more pictures and cross over the bridge to the other side, where the London Eye is. The line for the Eye was too long at that point and since I was the only one who really wanted to go on it, we decided to move on. We walked down along the Thames River, went in some tourist shops, and crossed another bridge to go back the other side. From here, we walked up to some big book store that I cannot for the life of me remember what it was called. It was across the street from a closed-down Borders Books. After that, we headed back to South Kensington for dinner at another Italian restaurant right near the Tube station. I think it was a chain (Bella…something) but it was really good.
Saturday February 20, 2010:
On our final day in London, it was sunny and “warm” (aka like 40 degrees) in the morning so we walked around Kensington Park and up to Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park. Here’s where I have to gush about Kensington Park and that whole area. I’m so happy we went back there in the sunlight instead of the pouring rain we walked around it in previously. If I lived in that area, I’d be at that park all the time.
After that, we went back to the very first place we ate when we got to London: Gourmet Burgers. DELICIOUS. Go to there if you’re ever in London. It’s a chain of awesome. Then we went back to the hotel, gathered our luggage, got on the Tube and headed back to the airport. I have to say that I was very surprised with the security at Heathrow. I was wearing tall boots and didn’t have to take my shoes off. My dad accidentally left his Swiss Army Knife in his carry-on bag (instead of packing it) and they didn’t pick up on it. We got there very early because we anticipated possibly having to do one of those full body scans and never encountered one. I will say this, however: Heathrow has awesome Duty Free shopping there as well as plenty of expensive stores (Harrods, Tiffany’s, Burberry, etc.). It’s a way more fun airport to hang out in than LaGuardia or JFK.
On the plane ride home is where I started to feel sick. My head hurt, I had a lot of aches and pains and it was just impossible for me to even think about closing my eyes to sleep. I did however finish reading “Dead Until Dark,” the first book in the True Blood series and I watched the pilot of “The Good Wife,” which was pretty good. It took us 30 minutes to get through customs upon arriving back at JFK & an additional 40 minutes to get our luggage. I was dying at this point & my ears were all clogged up. Finally, around 12:30am we stumbled into the house on Long Island. I left for Raleigh at 8am the next morning.
Trip: Over.
I’m going to try my best not to make this one as freaking long as the last two have been, mainly because I want people to still want to read my blog lol. So here goes:
Wednesday, February 17, 2010:
I didn’t sleep well Monday night and Tuesday night wasn’t much better. After going to bed at 12:30am, I woke up at 1:50am to make sure that everything was working out smoothly with the YuBlog.org Lost post. I didn’t fall asleep again until like 2:30am-ish. Then I woke up at 7am to pee & figured that I’d download the episode. It ended up taking 40 minutes. I feel back asleep until 8:45am when Kate’s alarm went off. So I definitely was setting myself up to get sick earlier in the week with the lack of sleep.
We watched the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace on Wednesday morning. My mom & I didn’t have the best angle to see it from so to me, it was kinda anticlimatic. Maybe it was because I was freezing (we got there an hour early) or because I couldn’t see very well or because I was just plain tired. Basically, they march a band in (which was neato) & then the band stands in front of the people on the ‘house right’ side so they can’t see the guards being changed. My dad had a good spot though & thought it was cool though so if you’re the type of person who likes the shit my dad thinks is cool then the Changing of the Guard is for you!
We left Buckingham Palace & walked along some park that was right there. It was a nice little park that I enjoyed looking at. Next stop: Westminster Abbey! Westminster Abbey was amazing. Go to there if you go to London. Even though it’s essentially a fancy tomb filled with corpses up to like a thousand years old, it’s absolutely incredible. Look up at the details in everything - walls, vaults, cellings, floor, statues, etc. So that’s what people did before TV, Internet and video games. Definitely, definitely, definitely check it out.
Westminster Abbey is right across the street from Big Ben & Parliament. We did some photo ops there. From there, we ate lunch & went to find some museum with a Winston Churchill exhibit that my dad wanted to see. None of the rest of us had any interest in another museum that day so sadly, Dad didn’t get to go. I felt bad. However, our next adventure took us to King’s Cross train station and Platform 9 3/4!
We finished up the day by going to see a Shakespeares’s “The Tempest” on the West End. I kinda (shhh don’t tell on me) fell asleep for like 30 minutes during the Act I. I actually really like “The Tempest” but it was about 90 degrees in that theatre & we had just eaten dinner/drank ale so it really wasn’t something I had control over…
Thursday, Friday, and Saturday weren’t as active, so they’ll follow tomorrow. Peace out.
I’m sorry that I didn’t get a chance to come back and talk more about London while I was in London. I started to get a cold the last few days we were there: sore throat, swollen glands, headache but then on Saturday, it exploded into an awful sinus infection and I had aches & pains and a slight fever to go along with it. Let’s just say the plane ride back from Heathrow to JFK was not fun, nor was Sunday or Monday. I’m feeling better now thanks to a steady diet of Advil Cold & Sinus, Mucinex and NyQuil. My ears are almost unclogged!
But I digress. Back to London:
Monday, February 15, 2010:
I think Monday was probably my favorite day of sightseeing. We started out at the Tower of London where we got a tour from a Yeomen Warders aka Beefeater. Despite being freezing cold, it was sunny for a little while & glorious. While there, we saw all the famous towers and locations where people were held prisoner and beheaded (including Anne Boleyn) as well as the Tower Bridge. We also saw the crowned jewels which were pretty freaking blingin’, let me tell you. I think the biggest one was 500-something carats. However, my ring is still prettier
We were absolutely freezing after we left the Tower of London, so we headed up to the area where St. Paul’s Cathedral and the Millenium Bridge were. After a much needed lunch, we went to St. Paul’s Cathedral. This place is awesome. We decided to climb up to the top of it, where there was a peephole that you could look all the way down at a center tile. We trekked up a winding staircase of 200+ stairs to the first tier, which was still inside the church. You could see all these beautiful statues and adornments from that level, as you circled around the inside perimeters of the church. Then we kept going. The winding staircase got a bit tighter but it was still walled in, so all was well. This lead to a viewing point that went around half of the outside of the cathedral. Great view; I could see the Globe Theatre on the other side of the Thames River. It was really cool to see London from above.
There was still one more set of stairs to get to the top level. This winding staircase didn’t exactly offer the same security that the previous two did. The higher we went, the more I started to freak out (and I don’t generally have height phobias). I believe I used the word “Mommy” a few times, haha. The first problem I had was that the staircase was one of those black metal ones that didn’t have great protection on the sides other than the railing and the little bars that came down to attach the railing to the stairs. In addition to this, the staircase was right in the middle of the tower we were climbing up - not next to a wall that you could reach out to grab. If you needed to grab a wall, you were going to fall down first. Oh - and you could also see all the way down to the previously level.
But, I made it to the top and it was worth it. Absolutely gorgeous view and it was snowing lightly! If you think you can handle the climb up, this is something that I definitely recommend you do.
We left St. Paul’s and walked over the Millenium Bridge to get to the Globe Theatre. Although we didn’t get to take the tour inside of it (it was almost 4:30pm at this point, I think), we did explore the front area a bit and of course, hit up the gift shop. We went out to dinner with Christie and her friend (also named Colleen) at Sticky Fingers, a restaurant owed by Bill Wyman of the Rolling Stone. Decent burgers.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010:
On Tuesday, Christie took Katelyn & I to Primark, which is basically a giant British version of Forever 21 that’s always crowded no matter what time of day. After Primark, Christie left us to go to class while Kate and I met up with my parents at Kensington Palace. It was pouring rain that day. We did a tour of the palace. What a huge place. It was cool to see some of Princess Diana’s dresses up close and how similar some of the dresses from some of the old debutante balls were to dresses people still wear to proms and formal events now. The upstairs of Kensington Palace showcased rooms of former royals such as Queen Victoria or King William & Queen Mary. If you like history and fancy things, you’ll like Kensington Palace. We walked around Kensington Garden in that awful pouring rain after we were done. It looked gorgeous but wet lol. Still, it was cute to see dogs running around and playing despite the rain. Since Strider got sick in early February last year and these weeks a year ago were filled with trips to the doggie cardiologist and many overnight doggie hospital visits, we were all feeling a little bit sad to remember. Next, we went to a pub for lunch, made a quick stop at TopShop (I assessed it to be a more expensive version of H&M) then went back to Primark because we were pressed for time there that morning.
Here’s where the fun starts! I decided to buy something I had discarded that morning, so I went up to pay by check card. This wasn’t working. Thinking that maybe this store didn’t take Bank of America check cards, I give them my credit card. Credit card doesn’t work either. The woman at the register takes my card to run it herself. Still doesn’t work. She checks the back and of course, I never signed it. So this raises a red flag for her, I guess. I show her my driver’s license to prove the names match but she still calls someone else over. While she’s explaining the situation to a superior, the woman at the register next to her informs her that it’s not my credit card, it’s the credit card machine at her register. She’ll have to input my card manually. Guess what?! She doesn’t know how to do this! Joy! After a long process, she gets it to go through. I sign my receipt and she seems to forget that we’ve been over the whole “back of credit card isn’t signed” thing already. I pull out my license again and show her the signature on it (thank you, DMV for your foresight). Finally, I was free to go.
And with that, I’ll free you from having to read any more of my drabble for today. Thanks for popping by!
Guess where I went today?
Squeeeeee! Platform 9 3/4 from Harry Potter! After the changing of the Guard (kinda interesting but kinda boring, I don’t know) and Westminster Abbey (really, really awesome), we went up to King’s Cross Station and tried to go to Hogwarts, ha. Yay!
P.S. Ignore my sneakers; after the first two days of walking around in boots, my feed, legs and knees rebelled so now it’s sneakers for this girl lol
So far, London has been everything I expected it to be: gorgeous architecture, awesome sites to see, fantastic food, and cold & rainy. All in all, it’s been so far so good.
February 12-13, 2010:
We arrived on Saturday after an overnight flight out of JFK, where Diana Ross touched me. Yes, she did. Well actually, she technically brushed aside me as she cut through our security line to go ahead to the front of the line. Even though seeing celebrities at JFK is about as expected (yawn) as seeing them at LAX, it was still kinda random. Oh and she definitely looks fabulous. Like, really fabulous.
After we arrived on Saturday morning, we went through customs, met up with Christie, got our Tube passes and were on our way back to our hotel, The Regency in South Kensington. At this point, we were utterly exhausted so my parents and Christie graciously allowed Katelyn & I an entire hour of rest/nap time. Woot. While we were napping, flowers came to our door. They were Valentines’ Day gifts from Jay & Jeremiah. My flowers are yellow & red (as seen below) and Kate’s were red. Yay, flowers, pretty. Post-nap, we headed out to Picadilly Circus (reminded me of Times Square), Trafalgar Square (they had a huge screen set-up that the Olympics were broadcasting from), and the National Museum. At the National Museum, we saw original artwork from Vincent Van Gough, Monet, Manet, Leonardo DaVinci, Rafael, Michelangelo, Claude, Rembrandt, and a whole bunch of others. Despite being incredibly tired, it was still really, really cool and something that I’d recommend to try some day.
Side bar: This entire time I’ve been in London, I’ve been having terrible problems with my rental World Edition Blackberry. Word of advice: Get the Tour if you’re a traveler and avoid all of this annoyance/phone time with Verizon. Katelyn has a Tour & has had no problems getting service. I constantly have to reset the phone (taking the battery out) to find a signal & then hope that it actually connects with the network once it recognizes it. It’s such a pain in the ass. #VerizonFAIL.
Following the National Museum, Kate & I went back to the hotel to nap for an hour and a half because Christie wanted us to go out with her and her friends for one of the girl’s 21st birthday. My old ass must have looked like a chaperon hanging out with all those 20 & 21 year old girls lol. I ended up having a great time.
Sunday, February 14, 2010:
My parents graciously let us sleep in while they went to mass. We did a crapload of walking on Sunday. We walked around Notting Hill (didn’t see the infamous house with the blue door from the movie), visited Portabello Market (totally did sing Bedknobs and Broomsticks in my head the entire afternoon), then walked a little bit through the Baker Street area. If you’re not into shopping as much as you are sight-seeing, then I’d say that perhaps this isn’t for you BUT it’s neat area & they have fun places to do a little shopping/browsing, so it is worth the walk thru. Before heading back to South Kensington, we went to Tottenham Ct & Oxford St. see where my dad lived when he studied here back in the fall of 1977. It was still there, only a hotel had bought out where he stayed. It was a quaint & quiet area and his face was so joyous when he showed us the ‘hood.
Rounding out Sunday, I sprinted in the rain to the Apple Store on Regent Street to get there like 3 minutes before closing time so I could buy an international adapter kit for my Macbook’s power cord. WORD OF ADVICE TO FELLOW TRAVELERS: Make sure you purchase the proper power adapters for your cell phones, computers, etc. BEFORE you leave for vacation. If you put it off til the last minute, you’ll end up sweaty and soaking wet in the middle of a London Apple store and that’s not fun or fabulous. We had dinner at a delicious Italian restaurant in our neighborhood on Sunday night. I still dream of that Italian sausage (that’s what she said) and broccoli in my pasta. I’ll have to ask my father for the name of it.
Speaking of dreaming, I should probably go to sleep now because it’s 12:35am and I did not get a good night’s sleep at all last night. I kept thinking about falling down the winding stairs at St. Paul’s Cathedral and then my heart would start pounding and I couldn’t breathe - if you haven’t heard me mention it on Twitter, I’ll tell that story next time. Then I also started having the first of my wedding planning anxiety attacks because well, I’ve never been married before and I have no idea where to even start. My mom said we should start with the guest list first because it’ll be the most difficult of decisions and already that’s causing me panic because we’ve had people contact us assuming they’re invited or joking about it and that makes me super stressed out because aaahhhh I have no idea; I don’t have a date or wedding party or anything other than a state and a possible color scheme picked out. So I was thinking about that crap all night too. AND NOW I’M GOING TO STOP WRITING ABOUT IT AND THINKING ABOUT IT SO I CAN GO TO BED TONIGHT…aka right now.
Friday, Friday, Friday. I woke up on Friday, January 29 (our 2.5 yr anniversary!) at 6am. Why? Well other than my body thinking it was 11am, Clif’s phone kept making blooping noises because it was 1) Charged up and 2) getting text messages. Then at around 6:30am, his phone rang. He answered it and it was his father and he had a full out conversation with him at 6:30am. Honestly, I know that Jay got annoyed by it and talked about it on the Jay & Jack Show but it wasn’t that bad for me. I didn’t want to waste any of the day sleeping in.
I made Jay get up around 7:15am and we ended up going for a walk on the beach. We walked down one way on the beach and then back along the street. On the way back, I saw the hotel that my family had stayed in the first time we went to Hawaii, back when I was 15 or 16, the Moana Surfrider. Oh yeah and we also came across some pretty awesome leis in an ABC store…
Walking on the beach
The hotel that my family stayed at 10 years ago
My kind of lei…
So upon returning to the hotel, it was around 8:15am and we decided to go in the totally super awesome pool at the hotel. Around 8:30am, we saw Clif on the balcony of our hotel room and waved to him. I guess he was shouting down to us a little too loudly because that’s when Jack woke up and went onto the balcony to investigate. Here’s the picture Clif took while he was yelling down to us in the pool. You can barely see us, but we’re in there lol.
So we went back upstairs around 9:15am. In the interest of people want to actually continue reading this, I’ll speed it up a little bit. We gathered Clif and went into Jack & Cyndi’s room, where I did my whole “omg-I’m-so-excited-yaayyyy!” speale and everyone who doesn’t like to have fun in life looked like they wanted to kill me. Soon after, we all showered and got ready. Jack, Jay, Clif & I had not eaten breakfast yet. Jay, Clif & I decided to walk down to a local Jack in the Box and get something light to hold us over.
We had plans with Beth to give us an unofficial “Lost Tour”. We had to meet her on the set at noon. The set was on the North Shore, which was literally the furthest point from where our hotel was. It would take an hour to get there, so we left around 11am. I only had one of those Breakfast Jack thingys in my stomach. We figured that we’d get lunch on the North Shore with Beth after she finished showing us some famous filming locations. So we met up with Michael Purcell of Global Cash Card and hopped into a little rental car.
Well [pause]. Since Jay didn’t know where he was going and was relying on the GPS on Clif’s iPhone to get us to the meeting point, it took us well over an hour to get there. We saw the Grass Skirt Productions signs and turned into the lot. The guys doing security asked us if we were here for Lost and we told them yes and got in with no problem. We see dudes walking around in Others garb. Beth walks over to the car and Cyndi & Jack ask her if they can use the restroom. Michael’s face lights up and he follows them. This entire time, Clif is lecturing Jay & myself about the proper etiquette for being on the set of a TV show. You know, I may be loud and annoying in my every day life but I know how to be on best behavior when I want to be. I start nagging the hell out of Jay for us to catch up to them because I did have to pee pretty badly and I didn’t want to be stuck with professor-dad Clif over there. Jay doesn’t want to “get in trouble” so he resists until Beth waves us over.
We walk around what I think was the costume trailer and come across another set of trailers. My eyesight makes a total beeline to none other than Josh Holloway! Internal monologue: “Uh whaaatttt?!” In an attempt to try not to stare, I turn to face Jack. He mutters to me, “He’s talking to Matthew Fox!” Internal monologue: “flkajdflaudfahfOMFGokdafhia. Be cool. Go pee.” Then I remember my full bladder and natural instinct kicks in and I ask where the bathroom was. I think at this point, it was either Jack or Cyndi who quietly exclaim, “I just walked past Evangeline Lilly!” I nod and walk towards where Beth is motioning the bathroom is.
As I walk by Beth, I see she’s talking to Evangeline Lilly in her trailer but this time, I’m on a mission. I did my business (#1, don’t get any ideas) in Jorge’s trailer and return to the group. At this point, Evangeline Lilly is now outside talking to Josh Holloway and Matthew Fox. I must say that she really is quite a beautiful woman. Oh hell, everyone on that show is attractive.
End of fangirl geek-out paragraph. Start of just plan geek-out section.
So we set off with Beth (and since we all keep talking about Beth but never actually saying who she is, I should probably just clear up that Beth is Jorge Garcia’s lovely girlfriend). Since it took so long to get to the North Shore and we had to leave by a certain time to get back for the ABC press mixer, we didn’t have as much time as we would have liked for the tour. But we made the best of it!
We hit up the camp that serves as the set for New Otherton:
And saw Benjamin Linus’s house:
And the beach where the filmed the pilot, Aljira 316 crash, etc:
Moving along from there, we went to the site where they keep the wreckage from Oceanic 815 and the little plane that Yemi’s body was on:
Oh and did I mention that Jay & I found pieces of the plane that had blown outside the fence? HA! 5 years ago when I stood in the middle of the DVD section of Wal-Mart trying to decide whether or not to buy Season 1 of Lost, I definitely never would have imaged that I’d be actually holding a broken piece of that set in my hand someday…
Next up, we made a quick stop at the set where young Mr. Eko’s flashback took place - the one where the kids were playing soccer.
On the way back to dropping Beth off on set, we stopped at the tree where Kate buried the NKOTB lunchbox. I wished we could’ve gotten closer to it because I wanted to climb it lol.
We dropped Beth back off - and no, there weren’t any more sightings because the actors were all off filming - and then began the long drive back to Waikiki. Clif got us a little bit lost and of course then his phone died BUT we managed to get back based on pure awesomeness and a good sense of direction.
Well, I think I’ve lived up to this blog’s name and rambled on long enough. Next up: Friday evening (well, what I can remember from it…).
P.S. Beth has a children’s book coming out in the spring. You can find it on Amazon.com by clicking here.
Okay so I’m a week late but hey, it’s my birthday today and I’m determined to not do much at work today lol so, I figured I’d share a bit about the trip to Hawaii. Since it may get a little bit long, I’ll break it up into a few parts. Here’s part 1 and it’s going to be the most boring part, to be honest. But if you return within the next few days, I promise to have better tales of beach, drinking, and debauchery. And I’ll even throw in a little bit of Lost.
So I left Raleigh on Thursday morning on a 8:35am flight. My connection was at the Dallas/Fort Worth airport in Texas. Everything went smoothly except we landed early and they had no gate for us because other planes were delayed a bit going out because of the weather. It was a bit of a mad dash from my arrival gate to the next terminal and my departure gate, but I made it in time for the last boarding call. This flight was awesome because I had the entire row to myself and there were TVs on board. I slept a bit for each flight, which was also awesome since I got about 3 hours sleep on Wednesday night.
Got to LAX (or LA X just to keep in line with the Lost/dork theme of the weekend) early and had to change terminals from American Airlines to Delta. I got a bit confused because LA X is the devil. I was stumbling around all groggy because I had just woken up and was still exhausted but I managed to find the Delta terminal and went through security with no problem.
That was the last time that day that I had no problem with anything.
So I got there with about 1.5 hours until my flight was supposed to leave, which was 2:45pm. Althought it was like 1:15pm in California, my body thought it was 4:15pm and I had yet to eat that day. So I found a California Pizza Kitchen by my gate (which wasn’t difficult as every single thing there was a CPK) and stuffed my face with a tuna fish sandwich. Made my way to the gate, where lots of people were already waiting. Called my parents and grandparents to tell them I was all safe and sound and as I’m doing that, I hear an announcement that my flight is going to be delayed 20 minutes. “No problem,” I figured and I texted Jay and reasoned, “We’ll make up for that time in air and I’m sure it’ll all be fine.” Ha, yeah right.
After a little while, it becomes a 30 minute delay. Then a 45 minute delay. The attendants at the gate tell us that there’s an “in-air CPU problem” that they need to fix before we can fly over the water. Of course there is! So I’m at this point getting a little bit worked up but hey, 45 minutes will still get me into Hawaii by 7:15pm and that’s still dinner time so I guess it’s okay.
Then it becomes an additional hour delay. They fixed the problem but now they have to run all the engine tests and that’ll take up to an hour. We can’t be on board during those tests. Now I start to get upset. I won’t get into Hawaii until like 8:30pm at this point and I’m dead on my feet from lack of sleep. I tell Jay to just go and eat dinner without me. He refuses. I tell him he’s stupid. I hang up the phone and go back to freaking out.
So this brings us to about 3:45pm-ish right now. They tell us that we’re going to be delayed until at least 5pm. I go up to the gate attendants and one says the next flight out that she can get me on is at 5:55pm. I say that I don’t want to risk getting on a later flight if ours is scheduled for 5pm. She tells me go come back at 4:30, because that’s when there will be another update. Great. Oh and the best part? They gave us $10 food vouchers for our troubles that did not even work on cocktails. WTF? Don’t they realize that the way to calm angry people is to give them money to buy a friggin’ drink?
So I’ve been around the airplane-delay-block a few (dozen) times before. I know that when you get meal vouchers for a 2.5 hour delay, it means that you’re going to be there longer than 2.5 hours. I reacted accordingly, as I tend to do in life. So I head over to the California Pizza Kitchen again and do my best Jack Shephard impression, which included crying to my waitress over a double Jack Daniels & Diet Coke. Then I ordered a Garlic Chicken Pizza to go just for the sake of spending Delta’s money.
So I head back to the gate at like 4:20pm because I see a crowd has started to gather again. Our plane’s pilot was making an announcement that the engine check had found that there was a problem with a valve that controls cabin pressure. Our new estimated time of departure was 7pm PDT. I was on the phone with my mom at that point and totally bust into tears. I knew I was embarrassing myself but I was so tired and frustrated and all I wanted to do was get to Hawaii and go to sleep that I couldn’t help myself. I went up to the desk to ask them what my options were. The pilot had seen me all teary-eyed on the phone during his announcement that he came over to me to ask me if I were okay. “No, I’m not okay!” I cried at him. He ended up having them put me on the 5:55pm flight, which was incredibly nice of him. I apologized for the outburst profusely and thanked him even more.
I went over to my new gate and ended up eating the entire Garlic Chicken pizza by myself. Which, as you will learn in my Friday story, ended up being a somewhat good thing.
We took off on time at 5:55pm. My first flight, which was originally supposed to leave at 2:45pm, ended up leaving at 6:00pm. It took us 6 hrs 20 minutes hours to get to Hawaii from LA X. It was supposed to only take 5 hrs 45 minutes to get there. There must have been some bad winds or they were letting the other plane land first.
One final story: I ended up falling asleep on and off for about 4 hours of that flight. The other part of that flight, I was reading the first of the True Blood books, “Dead Until Dark.” When the plane landed and I got up to stretch before they let us off, I noticed that none other than Carrie Preston (wife of Michael Emerson) was sitting two rows behind me. Carrie Preston plays Arlene in the TV show True Blood (the red head who has been married a bunch of times). I just thought that was funny. Jay texted me that Michael Emerson was waiting at the airport so he wasn’t surprised that Carrie was on my flight. He said that he was hiding in the corner though so he and Clif did not disturb him.
At this point, it was like 10:15pm in Honolulu and my body felt like it was 3:15am. I was beat. After we got to the Halekulani hotel, I went out to dinner with Jay, Clif, Jack and Cyndi (Jay’s mom). I know I wasn’t much fun though. I could barely keep my eyes open and didn’t eat anything other than Jay’s pickle (That’s what she said, now shut up). Went to bed almost immediately upon getting back to the hotel.
Friday, however, is when the fun REALLY started…
Copyright © 2010 Coll Writes All rights reserved. Theme by Laptop Geek.