Bloggin SBL 08 - Part 1

I tell ya, my fortunes have not been spectacular. It started with three weeks of little sleep. It continued with a B-Day yesterday that had a number of mishaps (was supposed to have a nice steak for lunch, we had an emergency release at work so I had to stay late on my birthday, dinner at the local brazilian churrascaria was not very spectacular, my hot water heater started leaking water profusely and I didn’t get to bed till about 12:30 because of packing).

The first day of my SBL trip today has continued the trend. I went to bed at 12:30 and got up at 4:00 for my 6:00 flight. Of course my hot water heater was now turned off, so I couldn’t take a hot shower (not a good way to start a day). I get to the airport counter 15 minutes late for my checkin, so I have to wait till the 7:20 flight on standby. Thinking my fortunes had changed I did get on the flight and made it to Atlanta 10-ish (EST). Yay!

I was, of course, wrong. I showed up to the counter at around 11:30 for the 12:18 flight for which I was once again on standby. The nice lady at the counter said she would call the names of standby’s later if seats became available. 12:18 rolled around and I went to the counter to ask her what the next step was since I didn’t make the flight (I have never flown on standby before). She asked for my name, which I told her, then she said I wasn’t marked as a standby but as a confirmed passenger on the flight so she didn’t call my name. Doh! So I am now sitting betwen a Ben & Jerry’s and a candy store in the Atlanta airport awaiting a 3:09 flight to Boston. On the bright side I am sitting between two wonderful establishment that can help give me diabetes.

So I decided to go ahead and buy wifi so I could email my roomie at SBL (I don’t have his phone number). I am really tired of airports, so I am looking forward to getting out of here. I caught about an hour of sleep on the first flight so I’m working on 4.5 instead of 3.5 hours of sleep, so that helped. I will hopefully get a little more on the next leg of the trip.

So the question is, what is next? Here’s my list of likely next mishaps in order of likely occurrence: 1) My luggage gets lost. 2) Like the first leg of my trip, I get to sit by someone who smells bad. 3) The hotel has lost my reservation. 4) The hotel has my reservation but put Jeff and I in one bed, not two. 5) I hit my head entering the airplane and lose all my knowledge of Greek. 6) The power in my laptop battery runs out and I don’t actually finish this post. 7) I pick the wrong shuttle/train/bus and it takes me three times as long to get to my hotel. 8) The plane falls out of the sky and I with the plane’s inhabitants survive, and we spend a long time on an island wondering why the current inhabitants keep attacking and taking people, wondering what the Dharma project is and wondering if there is a mysterious monster on the island.

Or will things go smoothly from here on out? I can only hope so. So that’s my first update. Exciting, isn’t it!