Vacation - Part Two

You would think that sitting at a gate in the airport for close to 4 hours would be sheer torture…and you would be right. However, for some inexplicable reason, Jim and I did that very thing without going insane or killing one another. I think that certainly says something about us!!! I had a book to read** and Jim had his crossword puzzle book, so between those two things, a few walks to get food and snacks, accompanied by loads of people watching (one of my favorite sports), the wait went by SUPER fast.

**The book I was reading at the time was Rant by Chuck Palahniuk and I do not recommend it. I thought the story and the characters were quite interesting, but good GOD was it a difficult read. I found it very confusing, and way too long. I generally have no issue with reading long books, but it bugs me to no end when I realize that the story could have been told in half the time. If you’re interested in reading it, I suggest going to the Rant Wikipedia page. It’ll save you a lot of time and aggravation.

Once it was time for boarding, we waited our turn and found our seats with no problem. The plane was fairly average sized, with three seats on either side of the aisle. We were in the second row (extra leg room!!) with me sitting on the aisle and Jim in the middle. When our third ‘row mate’ arrived, (looking totally pretentious in his dress pants, buttoned down shirt, fancy shoes and snotty expression) he climbed over us and got situated in his window seat. He seemed friendly enough…he said hello and proceeded to ask us if we knew whether or not the flight was full. Neither Jim nor I knew (Hello??? Do we look like the ticket counter?!?!?) so he then asked the flight attendant, who pretty much said the same thing as us. Once all the cabin doors were shut, he started chatting again.

Mr. Irritating: So, do you want to ask about whether or not the flight is full and if we can move to other seats?

(really long pause, while we both tried to figure out where the HELL that came from)

Jim/John: (speaking at the same time) Ummm, well we’re fine with these seats….we’re fine here….we weren’t really planning on moving…..

Thankfully, he then got up and moved to the row in front of us. I’m not sure why it bugged me so much, but it did. I mean, he clearly didn’t want to sit in a full row (which is totally fine) but I found it really annoying that he was trying to get Jim and I to join his little ‘lets move to different seats’ campaign. As if we had expressed even the slightest interest in moving as well. I know I’m overreacting, but it annoyed me.

We had a great flight (we were flying Jetblue, by the way) and I love that we were able to watch TV on our own little, personal screens! I will say that I missed the in-flight trivia competition that I played (and won, thank you very much) the last time I flew Jetblue. Since we were flying on the night before Thanksgiving, I was sad and irritated that I was going to be missing the Rosie O’Donnell live variety show. However, thanks to modern technology, I was able to watch it at 36,000 feet!! Unfortunately, I didn’t love it, but it certainly wasn’t the worst thing I’ve ever seen. I also got to watch ‘Law and Order’ which turned out to be super exciting because I ended up knowing two people that were featured in that night’s episode. Very cool!

After an excellent landing (complete with applause….something that continues to mystify me…no one claps for me when I finish a test case?!?! but whatever) we quickly got our bags and headed over to the rental car place. By the way…it was about 11:30pm at this point. We picked up our car, which was a DELIGHTFUL, white, Chevy Cobalt and began the trip to my parent’s place. Although the car was very basic, (Manual locks and windows? What?) it certainly served its purpose. We got a GPS with it (from here on in referred to as ‘Jill’) so that made it feel kind of fancy. It's the little things people.
After a failed attempt at locating my parents ‘community’ (they live in one of the 5,000 gated communities in Fort Myers) we finally got to the right place. Through no fault of her own, Jill led us to one of the back gates, as opposed to the main gate where we were meeting my dad. I called my dad, explained where we were, and he was more than happy to come fetch us and lead us to the correct entrance. We followed him to their building, unloaded the car and went up to their place. Betty (my step-mother) was still awake and they were THRILLED that we were there. My dad gave us the grand tour; we had a drink (Yay Miller Lite!), chatted with them for a bit and then went to bed.

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s adventure……”Thanksgiving in Florida”

PS – There is someone at work who has been wearing the same sweater every day for the past 2 weeks. Today is day 13 (although I have no idea what he wears on the weekends).
You can bet your bottom dollar (thank you, Annie) that I’ll be giving you daily updates.
N-A-S-T-Y.