this needs to be separate!

and I'm back!


Oh how I've missed you my blog. The Philly post is overdue, but that's because I have a great excuse. I was stuck in the airport.....over night.

Yah, you read that right. Me, high maintenance me, stuck in an airport on a cot. It was TERRIBLE! So I'm going to post about my Chicago airport sleepover separately so it doesn't cloud my amazing trip. I'm not blurring the heinous with the wonderful.

Jana and I were supposed to land in Austin Friday night at 10:55. Well I was ready. I love traveling, but you can only do the hotel/moist-y carpets/shower shoes/3dollar bottles of water for so long. And I missed my Rands. We were basically two ships passing in the night since he returned from NYC on Monday night, and I left on Tuesday morning. So you can imagine my disgust when we sat on the airport runway in Philadelphia for 3 hours! I loved breathing in everyone's germs for that long. Airborn, where were you?

Air Traffic and Control prohibited planes from leaving or landing in Chicago due to bad weather. That stupid Windy City! Well we had a two hour layover in Chicago and we were told the departing flights from Chicago were also delayed. So more than likely we'd make our connecting flight.

Or not!

We left Philly at 8:15pm. The flight to Austin from Chicago left at 8:20. They had a delay, but they left at 9:15. They were singing verse three of "The stars at night are big and bright deep in the heart of Texas" while we were just landing....at 10pm.

Lucky for me, I have a hubby who loves me and was refreshing our flight status at home. He saw we missed our flight, so he called Southwest to schedule our next flight. Well the next flight out was Saturday morning at 9:45! I'm thankful he called because other Austinites trying to get home were put on stand-by for that flight.

So Jana and I strolled up to the hectic counter in Chicago waiting to receive our free hotel voucher. Ummm wrong! They don't give hotels out for weather, but they did supply 200 Coleman cots in Concourse B.

Well I could go on and on and on about the torcherous evening ahead, but I'm sure you don't want to hear me complain about the refugee camp in Concourse B. I'll just give you the highlights or lowlights in this case.

-Cots make your back hurt after 5 minutes.
-The man three cots away snored louder than I thought was humanely possible.
-Washing your face in the airport sink gets you the "Oh she's homeless" stare.
-I used the solo cup that housed my granola for my six dollar yogurt to store my contacts in. Hey, I was glad it had a lid!
-The drunk lady next to me complained incessantly about how she was bored, missed her plane to Vegas and no longer had any alcohol beverages to help her deal....if she did, I might have stole her goods to help me deal
-I shamefully used the lice infested blue airport blanket and paper pillow case that I'm sure has never seen a washing machine.
-I memorized all of the announcements (that were announced every 15 minutes).
-When we were "woken" up at 4am, the grouch next to me yelled out, "If I would have known y'all were going to wake us up at 4am, I would have slept someplace else." Really, and where would that be Oscar? We didn't have a choice! You're in an airport stupid! He later shouted out, "Why do they keep announcing those stupid announcements?" He clearly forgot we weren't checked in at the Omni but at the airport.


My favorite part was when we were lining up to board the 9:45 flight. I pretty much told my sorrowful story to anyone in ear-shot. One lady touched my arm (umm please don't, I probably have lice and other airplane blanket critters swinging from my arm hair) and said, "I feel your pain. I live in Chicago, and we didn't have electricity."

Ummmm... get out of town! No electricity is not equivalent lady! Did your sleep number not reach the level of the hardness of my Coleman cot? YOU STILL HAD A BED! And luke-warm FREE waters in your fridge. When you use your purse as a pillow so no one stole it in case you had the rare experience of falling asleep, then we can swap stories. Until then, shut your mouth! The only valid thing she adds to my story is that her husband works at the Sears Tower, and they had to vacate the building because the 60-70 mph winds were blowing out windows. Scary...not to mention I flew through a lightening storm the night before. But are we really keeping tabs at this point?