Treat with virtuous scorn the well-connected

As expected, a lot occurred in the past week. I shan’t write about it all in detail. Maybe some. Let’s see.

Academic hell was last week, but I survived. I gave a presentation last Tuesday, and turned in a paper on Thursday, and graded papers and returned them, etc. I averaged about four hours of sleep, but I made it through ok. Thursday after class, I drove to Boston for my date with Tara.

I like Tara.

I left Boston around midnight, barely awake after a really long day. I got lost on the way home, but Emily helped me navigate. Thank you Emily for helping me navigate you are awesome. I got home around 1:30 or so. I finished packing and went to bed for about two hours. I woke up at 4:00 to go to the airport.

I parked and took the shuttle to the terminal. My flight was scheduled at 6:00. We boarded on time, and rolled out to the runway. Then we sat there for 45 minutes because the people in D.C. weren’t ready for us. Then we flew to D.C., and I slept. Near the end of the short flight, I checked the time, and realized that it was going to be pretty tight for me to get my connection to Roanoke. I asked the flight attendant if she knew how far my connection terminal was, and she didn’t, but assured me that there’d be a United representative in the Terminal to help me.

At 9:25, I booked out of the plane and into the terminal. No representative. So I ran and found a screen with flights and terminals listed. My flight was on time, and in terminal… umm… E? I think it was E. I needed to take a shuttle to terminal E.

I took a shuttle to terminal E, and ran to my gate. It was 9:32, and the flight was scheduled at 9:35. I got to the desk, panting. The woman sort of stared at me, like I was interrupting something. “I’m going to Roanoke,” I explained. “Roanoke is closed.” I put on a disappointed face. “Oh, really?” “Roanoke is closed!” She was practically shouting at me. “You have to go to customer service!” I sighed, said “ok”, and started to leave. Then I realized I didn’t know where I was going, and asked, “where do I have to go?” “ROANOKE IS CLOSED!”, the friendly woman reminded me. “Where is customer service?” This was the first time my voice was less than completely polite. She pointed me in a vague direction.

When I described her as a ‘friendly woman’, I was actually being ironic.

The customer service woman was actually pretty nice and understanding and didn’t seem to think this was all my fault for being such a bad person, though, and she booked me on the next flight to Roanoke, some four hours later. I called John and told him I’d be late, then sat down and practiced giving my talk. I called Emily and talked to her for a while, too.

Eventually I got onto the new flight. The plane was small, so the attendant asked if I’d mind if they put my carry-on bag in the cargo hold, and that it’d be waiting for me outside the plane one the way out. I consented. After the flight, I deplaned, and there was no bag. Everything had been moved to the baggage claim, so I had to go wait for it there. By this point, I was already late for the conference. But I was going to be a little bit later.

I’m going to avoid United Airlines in the future.

Darn, I’m getting tired. I was going to write a lot about the conference. (I’d initially intended to write a lot about my date, too. Ah, well.) The conference was good. Everyone thought my paper was fascinating, and I had some really good conversations about it, and met some cool people, and maybe, if she decides to actually follow through and email me, it’ll turn out that I actually made a genuine friend, too.

Ah, well. This entry is done now.