So, some stuff has happened

Here's what's happened since I last posted.

Flying out Friday night my flight was delayed a couple hours due to weather (though none of it was in LA), nearly making me miss my connecting flight at JFK, I really didn't want to miss this flight. It was Christmastime, in the snow, with tons of people flying, and I knew that if I didn't make my connection I'd be stuck at an airport for hours if not days.

We land at JFK, and luckily I get out just in time to see that my connecting flight has been delayed half an hour. I get to the gate just as they should be letting us board. There were about 5 different flights all leaving from the same gate, so there was nowhere to sit, barely room to stand. Of course this meant that some airport jackass had to drive through us with an empty oversized golf cart.

They delayed the flight half an hour again. And again. And again. Every time they said that we should not leave the boarding area. I was running on no sleep, and kinda pissed. Two and a half hours after we were supposed to take off we finally got on the plane. I was ecstatic. We learned that part of why we were delayed was that some asshole had ripped up some of the emergency track lighting on the plane's previous flight, and they had to fix that with shorthanded staff.

But I was ok, because I knew we were finally leaving for my 40 minute flight to Burlington, VT. Or so I thought. We then had to wait two hours on the plane for the de-icer. Then another two hours for the runway to take off. I was beginning to consider what life would be like living on that plane on that runway, how the view would change as the seasons passed. Finally we took off, landing 40 minutes later in a city with 3 feet of snow. 15 hours earlier I had been in Los Angeles. This was an adjustment.

I had worn my winter hiking boots for the first time in two years, noticing a crack across the soles of each of them when I put them on. They were old boots, but I figured they could last the trip. They did not. By the time my brother met me at the airport the heel of one of them had cracked open like the San Andreas fault and all the rubber had fallen out from the inside. In all my years of living in New England I had never seen boots do something like that. It was pretty fucking weird.

Burlington was fun. I hung out with all my brother's hippie friends, even played wingman for some of them a few nights, getting them some play. I felt good about myself.

On Christmas Eve my brother and I set out for the 5 hour drive from VT to my parents' place on Cape Cod. We learned after we had been on the road for an hour that we were going to a fancy dinner at 5pm with our whole family. We tried to haul ass to get there in time, but got stuck in more traffic, and ended up getting there an hour late, unshaven, and having not showered. Not sure how I smelled, but I'm sure it wasn't great.

Christmas was nice, although my brother gave me some kind of crazy feverish Burlington cold he had, so I've been sick on my parents' couch the past few days. Now I'm recovering enough to go to New York in a couple days for some new year's eve fun.