The Silence of Our Friends

Latest update on ME!

I've got several things to say and several things to sort through. Hopefully I will say and sort them in a way that isn't too confusing!

First I just wanted to mention that I am sort of blogging at LiveJournal now, I just wanted to try a different platform, and one thing I like about lj is the friends/community aspect. The friends page is sort of like having a built in CSS reader so that you don't miss anything that is going on with your friends and communities who also blog at lj...unless you don't sign in to lj and check your friends list! Anyway, for anyone interested my lj is here:
The Silence of Our Friends - LiveJournal version
Go ahead, friend me, I generally friend back, but I readily admit I'm slow about it. It's only because I forget to check who has friended me that often. Don't worry, you won't miss anything since I haven't had any locked posts yet. But of course, I also don't want to miss what you are saying and need you on my friends page for that. So go ahead and poke me in comments to let me know to get over there and friend you.

There are a few things I don't like about lj, the first is threaded comments. I find them confusing and wish that lj would make it so that you can change preferences for that, at the very least have it so that you could "expand all". It would also be great if there was a way of marking which comments are read and which are unread. The last thing is, now that I make the move over to lj, everyone else is moving to DreamWidth! This is just my luck.

Ok, in general 'Donna News', I just got back from a vacation. It started out as the vacation from HELL, we got to the airport with over an hour and a half to go before our flight. We were flying Southwest, and they were badly understaffed. The line was huge to check our luggage and get boarding passes, but after an hour we did...and then we got into the line for security to get to our gate. That was also huge. We got to our gate just in time...to see our flight leave without us. We weren't the only ones, there were 8 passengers who missed that flight. Now think about this, we were checked in, they knew we were in the airport because we had boarding passes and our luggage is already on the plane, but they didn't hold the plane for a lousy 5-10-15 minutes to get all passengers on board. Now I'm not saying that an airline has to wait forever for every dawdling passenger, but they know they are understaffed and the lines are huge, their fault...they also see how long the lines are for TSA, not their fault, but certainly not the passengers fault either. Instead of waiting a few more minutes to board everyone, now they are stuck trying to fit us on other overbooked flights to get us to our destination. Now they have a bunch of irate passengers instead of pleased customers.

And...most importantly, our luggage is on that plane without us. I thought new security measures were in place so that this never happens. You see, one of the things terrorists do is put bombs in their luggage, check that luggage, and then don't get on the flight. So when luggage is on a flight without the passenger who checked that luggage, the airline is supposed to delay the flight and remove that luggage from the cargo hold. (Here is a related article about "Positive Passenger Bag Match" or PPBM from MSNBC.) They really do not give a shit about their passengers, or crews, just the schedule. And you know something, a plane does not travel at only one speed. It can speed up and slow down like most other vehicles. This means that even if a flight is delayed for 15 minutes, it will still likely be on time to it's arrival destination, the schedule is just fine!

We were there at the airport all morning and much of the afternoon, watching flight after flight take off without us. They kept telling us that maybe they could get us on the next flight and get a connecting flight from there. But no, all their flights were booked and no last minute cancellations. Finally we told them we want our money back and that we would see if we could find a flight on another airline.

So at home I'm working the computer trying to find us other flights, everything in NH and Mass was either booked solid or so overpriced we couldn't afford it. So we ended up flying out of Hartford, CT. Yeah we had to make a three hour drive to start our vacation. But back up a bit, we also had to cancel our car rental since we wouldn't be there to pick it up, and we had a one day stay at a hotel to cancel too. And of course we have to make a new car rental reservation, but the hotel situation wasn't a problem since the rest of our vacation was staying FREE at a timeshare my sister owns.

Anyway, so far we have heard from the car rental that they refunded our money, but I don't know if the hotel charged us since we had a late cancellation. And really I'm not sure if Southwest even really refunded our money or is pulling a fast one and giving us "credit" with Southwest for a flight at a later date. They mumbled something about that and we told them absolutely not, we will never fly Southwest again, but that doesn't mean they didn't do it anyway. Waiting on our latest credit card bill to make sure we get our money from them.

So we finally make it to Florida. The weather was gorgeous with high temps in the mid 80's to low 90's, and sunny every day but one, when it was mostly sunny but we had a few showers in the afternoon. After a long New Hampshire winter this was heaven. Of course I got sunburn, but it wasn't the really painful bright red kind, although now my arms and legs are all peeling. I hate that! My sister's timeshare is at Orange Lake Resort and the place is beautiful and very roomy even though there was 7 of us in a two bedroom. We didn't go to any of the amusement parks, we just can't afford it and really shouldn't have even gone on this vacation. All we did is run up the credit card. We had sunshine and pools to keep everyone happy, this is what we really wanted. The kids are teens so a trip to Disney doesn't thrill them anymore, although I'm sure they wouldn't have turned down a day or two at Universal. They met and hung out with lots of teens from all over and even have some of them friended on their facebooks.

After a bad start basically a great vacation. Although...I do have more. I'm just pressed for time right now and will either just end here or come back with the rest later, if I find more time. Oh well, I wrote a lot more here than I thought I was going to already!

posted by Donna at 8:10 AM |