Christmas has come and gone for me. I work tonight, Christmas Eve and tomorrow morning. I got to celebrate at home Monday and Tuesday.
I flew out of Louisville at 5:30 Monday morning. Smooth sailing. I got in at 6:45. My bag was waiting as was Staci. We headed back to her house, wrapped presents and I got to spend time with Connor. I also got a nap. It's been a very long and busy week, so I needed some rest.
Monday night we went out to dinner with the Mariachi band. I got my presents when I came home, but was more excited to give Mom and Dad their gifts. I'm very proud of my gift ideas this year. I got Dad a digital picture frame. Staci, Stefanie and I went in on it. I spent the last week scanning and loading pictures. It turned out really nice.
I made Mom a cookbook. When I was home last I stole Grandma's recipes and typed them up, scanned old pictures and printed them all out on blurb.com. (It's a great site for anyone looking to make their own books with pictures, recipes or whatever).
Tuesday Mom and I went to historic downtown Kirtland for a Nativity display. We then headed back to Staci and Matt's for dinner and I was ready to catch my flight back to Lexington...or so I thought.
The weather was really starting to get bad. It was raining and getting cold. All around me were stranded passengers with delayed and cancelled flights. The all telling flight schedule told me mine was on time, but I knew it wasn't good.
About 10 minutes before my flight was supposed to take off, they changed the gate. Everyone moved down the concourse but at 8:40 there was still no plane. They told us the plane had just landed and would be at the gate shortly. About five minutes later they told us the plane was here, as soon as they unboarded and did their safety checks we would be on our way. Not so bad, until they realized the plane at our gate was not our plane. There was a computer error. This was the plane going to Fort Wayne. Our plane, coming in from Raleigh Durham was circling and ready to land when they diverted it to Pittsburgh. At that point I knew I was not getting out of Cleveland that night.
I waited about another hour, but then headed over to the service desk. I was scheduled to work Christmas Eve morning and I didn't want to not get on a flight in the morning. I was lucky to get a nice agent who told me she wasn't supposed to book me on the morning flight, but the way the day was going, no one would notice. At first it was just as a caution, but about 15 minutes later they cancelled three other flights around and announced the airport was covered with ice and no one was coming in and out. I quickly booked it back to the service desk (before all the other passengers) got my ticket for the morning, my bag and called Staci to pick me up.
They ended up cancelling the flight around midnight. I overheard someone in the morning who was on that flight that was diverted to Pittsburgh. They were sitting on the runway until about 2 in the morning before they ever took off.
I made the right decision.
The airport was a mess again in the morning. People were everywhere trying to get on a flight. I was scheduled on a 9:10 flight, which was delayed about an hour and a half. The plane was supposed to get in to the airport at 6:30 in the morning, but was diverted again to Columbus because it was still to icy to land in the morning. I made it to Louisville around 12:30, drove back to Lexington and just made it to work on time.
It wasn't so horrible. I know a lot of people who had much worse luck with planes this week. Actually, there were perks. I got to see Liz. Her flight from Florida got in at 8:30 so we sat at my gate chatting for about an hour while my flight was delayed. I also got to help Staci wrap Christmas gifts and spend time with Connor during his happiest time of the day, 5 in the morning.
Getting the extension on my vacation made leaving less depressing.
Now I'm looking to getting off work Christmas evening and having a few hours with Greg opening presents and eating a Christmas dinner.
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