A Bump in the Road

Steve and I had a great work week planned - apart. But we ended up more together this week than ever.

I woke up Sunday sick with the high fever/chills/body & muscle ache/cough stuff that's going around. It's been terrible. All I did was sleep and shake.

The above didn't fare well with the fact I had a Tuesday night flight out to Chicago for work. The Tuesday night flight obviously didn't happen as I was still sleeping and shaking.

It's hard to describe the joys of Wednesday. It started with me successfully "poisoning" Steve (his words), as he woke up with my illness. And so his sleeping and shaking began.

Southwest got me on a Wednesday morning flight out to Chicago. That was fine until KC got a few inches of snow, and Chicago got a whole bunch of snow.

Early Wednesday I found out that my rescheduled flight had been cancelled. SWA got me on an early afternoon flight that only turned out to have a slight delay.

That was until they got us on the plane. After a total of 90 minutes of "We'll have another update on the Chicago weather in 30 minutes", we were off!

"Off" consisted of driving around on the cement and then pulling back into the terminal. That's was a good feeling.

The next thing out of the pilot's mouth was, "We'll have another update in another 1-1/2 hours." With that we were swept off the plane with strict instructions to stay inside security. I chose to take my luggage just in case.

I was glad I took my suitcase, because I walked out to a line of at least 100 customers in line trying to talk to the SWA reps. It was obvious nobody was going anywhere.

So after standing in line for almost 1-1/2 hours (with no updates) I finally got to the front of the line. I asked for a refund and they said no problem.

As I stepped out of security with my refund I noticed they only had refunded 1/2 of my ticket!

So I was forced to walk to the SWA ticket counter and get in a completely different line for 30 minutes to get this fixed. By now it was dark, and I was on the verge of collapsing and pretty close to crying due to exhaustion (and I like to cry so it's important to note I never did at the airport; even when sick). They fixed the problem, and I was finally out of there.

Since short-term parking was full, I jumped on the Parking Spot bus in a daze to hear, "Hey, it's Beth Book"! I looked around the full bus and didn't recognize anyone until a woman says to her friend, "Her mom was my kindergarten teacher!". It turned out I did know her. Ahh..."The Set".

It was a long, frustrating day. But even though I came home to a sleeping and shaking Steve who is unfortunately still sick, I was happy to be home so we could both go directly to bed in separate rooms!

(This long story I spent my Thursday night writing really is for my parents so I don't have to repeat it again!)