Ordeal at IAD

***There will be a second entry about the rest of my trip coming shortly***

From the time I left my apartment to the time I walked my house in Palo Alto, nearly fourteen hours had gone by.

It started with my BlueVan ride to Dulles airport. The driver drove like there was a siren on top of us and complained about old people driving. Then it took him half an hour to find the third person we picked up. Granted this wasn't completely his fault, but I was getting worried. Little did I know, there was no need for worrying...

I arrive at the airport in plenty of time for my 7:15pm flight. I get my boarding pass and go through security with ease and walk to Concourse B where my gate is. The flight is now departing at 8:45 thanks to weather in Boston where the aircraft is coming from. Fabulous. I decide I need food. I'm not seeing much in Concourse B so I grab a Dining at Dulles guide that has a map of the concourses. According to the guide, there should be a Burger King right across from my gate, but there isn't. I ask someone who looks official, maybe a pilot and he tells me they closed some stuff down and are redoing things because there aren't enough food places in the concourse. No Kidding. Since I have so much damn time, I decide I want to explore Concourses C an D which are connected and have lots more to choose from. According to the map, it's just a short shuttle ride across the airplane road. I walk to the shuttle area and start to wait. Not so fast Jane. There's a sign saying the shuttles going from Concourse B to C are not running. This means I have to take the shuttle to Concourse A, and then another shuttle from there to C. If I had a picture of the map, you'd see this is extremely roundabout considering the net distance I needed to travel. After some Concourse C wandering I settle on McDonald's. I make my way back to my gate B22 only to discover that we have been moved to gate B24. Five minutes later we return to B22. At this point departure time is 9:30. We watch the 9:20 flight to SFO board and take-off. People with no checked luggage got to take that flight. That didn't include me. Not fair. Eventually the aircraft arrives, but then there are maintenance problems. Finally we board at 11:30. I spend the entire flight dead tired yet unable to sleep. In a nutshell, it was awful. We land at 2am Pacific time...in the international terminal. I'm in the third row so I made it to baggage claim fairly quickly and for some odd reason my suitcase is sitting on the belt which isn't moving. This makes me wonder if it was on the 9:20 flight. I notice it has an LAX tag on it, too. This makes me wonder if it went to LA first. I'm too tired to really care and I'm just happy my bag is there. Then I call my mom who unfortunately had just taken the split to the domestic terminal so she has to drive around and back onto the freeway to turn around. Eventually we do meet up, and all is well.

Palo Alto here I come

Two days from now I'll be flying home for four full days of jam packed fun! One of the best parts is that packing for it will be really easy. I plan to fill only half my suitcase so I have room for everything I bring back. This means I can start last minute and just throw things in without caring about neatness since it'll get tossed around anyway.

So far my plans at home include dress shopping with Kristina and Dawn, dinner with the neighbors at Oasis, quality Peetie time, going to the Y with my sister, getting my hair cut and highlighted, British Bankers with Michelle and Becca, Alisa's wedding, developing pictures, and if not a whole meal then at least a super chocolate milkshake at Peninsula Creamery. Believe it or not, I still have some open time on Sunday.

Annoyance of the day: Instead of focusing my frustration on those who send out junk email advertising free Viagra, Cialis or some other sexual performance enhancing drug (which take up about half of the office email inbox), it goes to the handful of people who are stupid/desperate enough to click on the links thereby encouraging more of it. Same thing with Ashley Simpson. It doesn't do any good to blame her for her fame. The blame goes to the actual fans buying her stuff.

Wedding number one of the summer

It was another family oriented weekend, this time my dad's side. I had Friday off so I left for Pittsburgh around noon. First I did my good deed for the day and returned a cell phone I found the night before outside a metro station to its owner. Then I proceeded to not figure out how to get on the GW Parkway and ended up in the district around where we play softball. After making some random turns, I finally busted out the map, made and illegal U-y and I was on my way.

Four and a half hours later I found myself at the Marriott in Cranberry Township, PA only to be whisked away to the rehearsal dinner which took place at an old Catholic Church that was turned into a brewery. I think they actually got our beer from the confessionals.

Saturday I amazingly got up at 7am on my own and went to the hotel gym. Then I drove over to Target to buy a last minute birthday card for my Aunt Linda and Starbucks to get some breakfast. For lunch, Linda and I went to visit my mom's friend who just moved to the Pittsburgh area from California. When we got back to the hotel, Brian the groom, his brother Aaron, the best man and another friend of his were all outside in jeans and t-shirts smoking and drinking to prepare for the wedding. Such guys.

The ceremony was nice and short and the reception was in the same room. In fact, we were seated at our tables for the ceremony. Dinner was buffet style and the bar was open. I ate steak for the second night in a row. No complaints. The music was great and I would have loved to dance, but I didn't know anyone else who was. Instead I caught up with my cousins who are guys and lame and don't dance. Not that I didn't like chatting with them, but it would have been amusing to see them try to bust a move.

After the reception we headed back to the hotel and a bunch of us hung out at the bar downstairs for a while. I didn't get much sleep that night and I was quite tired for the drive back. Over 130 miles on the turnpike which is a scary road is not very fun. Needless to say, I was glad to get back. It was a fun weekend and now I have my trip home and Alisa's wedding to look forward to next!

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Things I don't get:
-Why I see so many cars with Alaska plates.
-Why one ear gets more wax than the other.

Memorial Day Weekend 2005 - Part 2

Saturday: Another lazy day. Friday night I got a room to myself and slept like a baby. I took a shower for the first time in two days. My mom and sister spent all day sorting through her clothes, deciding what she'd take home and what she'd store in NH. In order to feel a little productive I decided to unload the rest of Annie's stuff from the car. That was my exercise for the day. Make that the weekend. Before heading down to Connecticut, we all went to dinner at the Mexican restaurant my cousin Jaime (father of Braedon) cooks at. With my mom footing the bill I helped myself to a grande chicken quesadilla and a nice large margarita. Then it was time for the four hour drive down to the farm. I must admit I was a back seat driver Nazi. Luckily we got there alive, albeit late, and after a quick visit with my Aunt Susan and cousins Danni and Heather, drove to the cabin way out on the edge of the farm to sleeeeeeep.

Sunday: We took our time getting up in the morning. Breakfast got skipped and we went straight to cousin Corey and Annie's (different Annie) for lunch. Their four year old son, Dylan, decided to have his three week old pet chicken, whom he named Little Brown join us at the table. I was very impressed with how fearlessly he held that thing. That kid could survive in the wild better than me I'm sure. For the afternoon we went to the beach for a while, then Annie and I joined cousin Megan at her yoga class. I don't think I'm cut out for yoga. I'd like to say it's because I'm not spiritual enough, but then I remember my dad's into yoga. We had to chant "ohm" a couple times. I felt out of place. Ohms remind me of physics. At the end we got to lie on our backs for 5 to 10 minutes and I fell half asleep and started dreaming, though I don't remember what about.

Dinner was with everyone at Uncle David and Aunt Pauline's recently finished new house on the outskirts of the farm. We ate some colorful organic food then busted out David and Pauline's wedding album plus Megan's baby pictures and reminisced about family stories that have been told a hundred times. But since they are such good story tellers, it's always entertaining.

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Ok, it has now taken me about three days to finish this entry and I'm starting to forget details. I don't think anything that blog worthy happened the rest of the trip. Monday we woke up and did lunch at David and Pauline's again with everyone and then drove back up to Manchester so I could fly home. There were no mishaps at the airport or on the flight. I had my cell phone and only one boarding pass the whole time. And the people next to me knew how to breath properly. Let's hear it for smooth flying.

Memorial Day Weekend 2005 - Thursday night/Friday

My mom and sister met a sweaty, exhausted, grateful-to-have-landed-with-no-more-problems-Jane (see below) at the Manchester airport. We headed to Concord and settled ourselves into a hotel for the night. Unfortunately I was not able to catch up on sleep because my mom was snoring and Annie had laryngitis which meant an infinite amount of phlegm was coughed up and sniffled all night. Friday morning we drove up to North Conway to my Uncle Paul and Aunt Vickie's place. I opted to be lazy and not go to Bates to help move my sister out of the dorms. Instead I stuck around with cousin Topher who took me with him to get gas so I could buy some ice cream (Ben and Jerry's chocolate fudge brownie in case you're wondering.) Then we came back and Topher taught me how to play cribbage. After some beginner's luck, he proceeded to demolish me. But I managed to even things out when we played gin rummy.

After that, my seven week old cousin, Braedon paid us a visit. Of course, being a relative of mine, he was very cute. He also had very big feet.

Uncle Paul made us some juicy red steak after my mom and Annie got back. Then we had family game time and played Outwageous which is a trivia game that invovles betting on whether you think the other teams of two will answer a question correctly. Now, there have been many moments, especially in the past year, when I've felt older than I am. But trivia games have a tendency of putting me in my place. I consider my general knowledge to be fairly decent, but trivia games are so darn frusterating because they assume you're at least 30. And I got paired with my sister which didn't help. The only category the Paul/Topher team ever bet we would get correctly was spelling. Luckily I surprised them a few times, like with my knowledge of Scott Baio being the star of Charles in Charge. But most of the time I sat there whining things like "But I was SIX when Pan Am flight 103 blew up!"

**Rest of the weekend coming shortly**