Phil’s Filings

If you celebrated Valentine’s Day, I hope you spent it with someone you loved.

If you celebrated Singles Awareness Day, I hope made fun of all the lovesick people out there.

See? Both sides are now happy.

No time to blog about anything significant.  So you get this worthless waste of electrons.

Enjoy.  I guess.

Got caught up in trying to get a lot of stuff done for work today and tonight. Didn’t have a chance to write anything, but I did get my photos sorted. Now I gotta upload them all. Debating whether or not I want to start watermarking them.

My trip started as they usually do — with me not being able to get to sleep.  After packing up my bags, I don’t think I finally fell asleep until 12:45am or so.  My alarm went off at 4:15am so I could get to the airport in time for my 7:15am flight.  I always want to be at the airport in plenty of time; I’ve had enough experiences with flights that I’d rather spend more time in the airport than rush around trying to get there.

I should preface this by saying that unlike last year, I did not have a direct flight to the port city.  In 2007, Kate and I were able to take Midwest Airlines from Milwaukee to Fort Lauderdale; unfortunately, no such nonstop flight exists between Milwaukee and Miami.  Kate was flying direct from Chicago to Miami, but I was not able to get on that flight.  After comparing ticket prices, it was only a few dollars more to fly out of Milwaukee to Miami with a stop in Atlanta than to take a shuttle bus down to O’Hare.  I figured the convenience of Milwaukee outweighed getting a non-stop flight.

I would regret that decision.

I got to the Delta ticket counter around 6:05 am.  Plenty of time for me to check-in.  Oh, if I only knew how much time….

“I’m sorry, but your Atlanta to Miami flight has been canceled because of ice storms.”  This flight was supposed to leave Atlanta around 12:10pm and arrive in Miami around 2:00pm, for the record.

“Excuse me?” I ask, incredulous.  I had been worried about snow in Milwaukee; I figured maybe rain it Atlanta, but ice storms?  “I need to get to Miami today.  What can you do?”

The ticket agent works with her computer for a minute.  “I can get you to Cincinnati by 12:00pm.  There’s a 12:40pm flight that I can put you on standby, but if you don’t make that flight, I can get you a confirmed seat on a 7:55pm flight.

“If that’s the best you can do, I suppose that’ll have to do.  Let’s make the change.”

Click-click-click.  “Okay, you are now booked through Cincinnati.  Now, in case things change in the weather, you’re going to want to be forceful in getting to Florida, even if it means getting somewhere close to Miami if not in Miami itself.”

I’m now booked to leave Milwaukee around 9:30am.  Time now?  Roughly 6:15am.

Oh, yeah.  Plenty of time to check-in.

I say goodbye to my parents, who were kind enough to be my transportation and also had witnessed the flight horror unfold before me (both of them remembering my hellish travel events to and from Rhode Island last summer).  With time to kill, I head towards the main waiting area between concourses, and try to nap.

I fail.

I finally get some breakfast and head to my gate.  Where I find out that my flight is delayed.

Well, of course it is.

I soon learn that the flight crew for this flight got in late the previous night, and FAA rules require a certain amount of sleep at night.  Around 10:00am, I call Kate to tell her of my problems; through phone calls and txt messages, we keep each other abreast of the situation, and it looks like she’ll leave Chicago on time.

Well, of course she is.

Eventually, the flight crew arrives, and we head out of the gate.

“Folks, we need to de-ice the plane; this should only take about 5 minutes.”

Fifteen minutes later, we’re headed towards the runway, and surprisingly, we take off without any more delays.

I land in Cincy around 12:00pm, and after exiting the plane via the stairs (seriously), I enter the terminal, trying to find out where that 12:40pm flight is.  The agent at the door is less than helpful; I end up seeing the sheet of paper in his hands with a list of departures and gates and end up helping myself more than he ever did.  I make my way to the gate and see this message on the monitor:

“This flight is overbooked; see an attendant if you wish to give up your seat.”

“Oh, Lord, I’m not getting on this flight, am I?” I ask the agent there.

“Well, never say never, but it’s not looking good.”

It looks like I’m not going anywhere for a while, but I decide to buy a sandwich just in case I do get on the flight.  But as you would expect, the 12:40pm flight takes off on time without me on it.  I then stand in line to get my ticket for the 7:55pm flight.  After a short wait, I finally get to the agent and explain the situation.  “Yes, I was on standby for this flight, but I’m also supposed to be confirmed for the later flight.”

Click-click-click.  “Yes, you are confirmed for the 7:55 flight.  Let me print your boarding pass.”

I get the pass — and notice there’s no seat number on it.

“Um, what does this mean?  Am I still on standby?  I’m supposed to be confirmed.”

“Well, you’re confirmed but it’s still standby.”

Huh?

“I suggest getting to the counter early; there are six open seats, and you are fifth on the list, so those are good odds.”

Oh, yeah, this makes me feel loads better.  However, the agent did give me a $7 food voucher, which won’t do me any good for lunch (I still have that sandwich, which I quickly ate) but I’ll probably get a better dinner than I would’ve planned.

Now, let me tell you about the Cincy airport:  It sucks.  It’s boring, few stores, and I’m surrounded by Ohio State and Cincinnati basketball shirts.  As a Wisconsin native, the former hurts when thinking about Big Ten football.  As a Marquette alumnus, the latter is just plain offensive… although, without Bob Huggins, it’s not as much fun to beat up on Cincy.

I spend the next several hours alternating reading, playing my Nintendo DS, listening to my iPod, calling friends and family to update my situation and watching the same stories over and over on CNN Headline News.  I also take this time to update Kate on my situation, and I arrange with the hotel to let her check in before me.  I was supposed to arrive two hours before her; now she’ll arrive several hours before me.  She ends up leaving Chicago a bit late, actually.

Around 6:00, I notice some ticket agents at my gate.  Twenty minutes later, I decide to press my luck.

“I need a seat assignment,” I say, presenting the boarding pass to the agent.

Click-click-click.  “Here you go, sir.”

Holy crap.  An actual seat number.  I may actually get to Miami tonight.

I go eat dinner and use that $7 voucher to pay for half of it.  Hey, it’s better than McDonald’s — and that sandwich I had earlier.

I head back to the gate and notice several other people with Ships and Dips I backpacks.  We commiserate about our mutual travel woes, and we all agree that even though this flight is overbooked as well, none of us is giving up his or her ticket.

The flight leaves about half an hour late, but I land in Miami about 10:30… only 7.5 hours later than planned.  Now, I figured the rate things were going, my luggage would either be lost or would’ve made the standby flight ahead of me.

I don’t see my luggage arrive on the carousel, so I head to the luggage agent office, where I happen to see one of my bags in the back room.  Of course, I can’t get to the back room unless I stand in line, so I do so for twenty minutes, during which time I feel extremely bad for the traveler from Japan who had lost luggage.  Then I notice a worker head to the back room and remove some luggage.  I slide over to the window and notice its mine.  The worker then heads to a microphone for the PA system and announces that there is luggage waiting for me.  I step out of line and announce that I’m here.  He takes me to my luggage, and then gives me instructions — which I can’t understand, thanks to the accent — and leaves.

Hell with it, I’m finding the shuttle for the hotel.  I get a voice mail from Kate, and she landed on time, tells me how to the find the shuttle, and she left a key for me at the front desk.  A couple of missteps later, I make my way to the shuttle area, where it picks up myself and several other cruisers.  I finally arrive at the hotel around 11:45, exhausted.  I get the key, head up to the room, and there’s Kate, watching some TV after spending some time at the pre-cruise party, which I missed entirely.  We talk a bit about the day, what she did at the party, and then we head to bed.

Surely, this is all the bad luck for the cruise, and I got it out of my system.

Lesson learned:  Next year, fly into Miami (or wherever) two days before the cruise, not just one.

I jotted down some of my thoughts that I had that day; I was planning on doing this the entire cruise, but I was too busy to do so, or I forgot.  In approximate chronological order:

“Wait… my flight is canceled?”
“What now?”
“Oh, God, here we go again.”
“I WILL be on that 12:40 flight.  I WILL be on that 12:40 flight.”
“So much for positive thinking.”
“So how can I be confirmed on the 7:55 flight and still be on standby?”
“Great, no Diet Dew.  Guess I’ll buy a Diet Coke.”
“… great, now that I have a Diet Coke, THERE’S the Diet Dew.”
“It’s great being stuck in an airport with OSU and Cincinnati shirts….”
“Well, I now have a seat number.”
“But it’s still overbooked?  Uh-oh.”
“I’m on the plane!”
“Man, this morning seems so far away.”
“Hey, cool, they’re watching <i>Transformers</i> on their DVD player!”
“My luggage made it before me — that’s usually reversed.”
“I’m in the hotel.  MAN, I’m tired…..”

<i>Coming Soon - Pictures of Day 0 and the write up of Day 1</i>

Haven’t written a single word about my cruise since I first came back.  I’ve been meaning to do a full write-up with pictures, but I haven’t weeded out all the bad pictures.  Been trying to do that this weekend in between napping and coughing.  Hope to have some pics up soon.

*****

It looks like the Writer’s Strike is all but over.  While I’ll be glad to have some new TV programming on (at some point; looks like April/May is when new episodes of some shows may return), I still can’t fault the Writers Guild for striking.  I’ve supported them in their demands; it’s only fair that they get paid for their work no matter what form it appears in or what matter it’d delivered.

But I can’t wait for that first Daily Show and Colbert Report with the writers.

*****

In just a little under a week, Toy Fair 2008 starts.  You know the place to look.

*****

Right now, it’s -3 F, -30 F wind chill.  More snow predicted for tomorrow.  I’ve been inside since, oh, Wednesday, thanks to being sick.  I need to get out tomorrow, even if it’s just over lunch.

*****

I wholeheartedly recommend <a href=”http://www.jasonplumb.com/” target=”_new”>Jason Plumb and the Willing — Beauty in this World</a>. What a great album.

Coughing’s really bad, and my voice sounds like I chainsmoked 24 packs of cigarettes a day for 20 years.

Saw this in my Inbox this morning:

Subject: [CodeProject] Daily News - Cobra language slithering to open source

I immediately thought of GI JOE.

As I sit here and think about turning a year older, I realized something.  I accomplished two goals over the past 365 days, goals that I had set up for myself — not necessarily since my birthday, but for the year of 2007.

One of them was pretty material — I wanted to go to a Packers game at Lambeau Field.  And those of you who read my blog or have seen my Flickr account know that on December 30, 2007, I did just that.  Sara and I went up, bought tickets from a scalper, and froze a bit — but I knew that I had to see a game in 2007 if I wanted to be sure of seeing Brett Favre play.

The second goal I truly really accomplished last week when I went diving in Grand Cayman.  After snorkelling in Grand Turk on the first Ships and Dips cruise, I started thinking about diving again.  Then, when Ships and Dips III was announced to be going to Grand Cayman, I knew I had to get myself back in the water.

And as had mentioned in my blog after the refresher course was over, becoming a diver once again was more than just refreshing my skills — it was conquering a fear.

Before the trip, when my ankle was still hurting a lot, I started having some anxiety about diving — not just the ankle, but about being so far away in the case of getting injured.  I had expressed a bit of nervousness to my parents before leaving but also to Kate the night before we went diving.  She reassured me, and my parents knew that if I didn’t feel up to it, I wouldn’t go diving.

It wasn’t just anxiety, though — it was that old fear creeping back up in my mind, whispering to me, telling me I had an “out” if I wanted to not dive.

But I controlled the fear.  This is not to say that I won’t approach diving without a clear respect for what could happen; far from it. Diving still can be dangerous if you don’t adhere to your training and follow safety rules and guidelines.  And I respect all that, and if my ankle truly was not feeling up to diving, I would not have gone.  Heck, I aborted the first dive that day in Grand Cayman when I probably could have continued.  Why?  Because I was a bit uneasy about the way things were going, and I needed to respect that instinct.

That wasn’t the fear talking — that was common sense.  The fear was telling me I couldn’t do this or I couldn’t do that.  The fear was telling me that something bad could happen to me.

It was right — something bad <b>could</b> have happened.  But it didn’t — because I kept in mind my training but also listened to my instincts.

I’m sure that fear will always be there in some fashion.  But I can control it and still respect it.

So what’s in store for year 34?  What goals should I set for myself?

Definitely something to think about.

Was it only a week ago that I was in warm, sunny weather?

Today, we got hit with at least 15 inches of snow.

And there’s more snow in the forecast for pretty much every day over the next 10.

Oh, yay.

A month or so ago, my mind was wandering, and then I suddenly started thinking about a girl I used to know.  Her name was Rachael, and she worked at the same Dairy Queen that I did.  All in all, we worked together maybe a year or so.  I’ll admit, I thought she was cute, but nothing ever came from it.

So, when her name popped in my head recently, first I wondered what made me think of her and second I wondered what she was up to.  Was she still in the area?  Was she married?  Did she have a family?

Over lunch today, I stopped into Target to pick up a few things and drop off some film from the cruise (I took a disposable waterproof camera with me on the climb up Dunn’s River Falls).  I’m walking down the aisle, when suddenly, there she is — Rachael.  She looks ten years older than when I last saw her (it’s probably been 12-13, actually), but I’m pretty sure it was her.  I saw a ring on her finger and she was with a toddler, so apparently all my questions I just listed have answers.

She walked past; I stopped, turned to look at her and was going to say something when I realized other than “Hey, are you Rachael?”, I really didn’t have much to say.  I should’ve stopped her and at least confirmed it was her, but I didn’t.  Not sure really why I didn’t.