Laurie White’s Blog

So, I am in New York for the Advanced Placement Development Committee meeting. I suppose I should just shut up and be happy to be here after the travel day I had yesterday getting here, but why would I have a blog if I shut up when I was supposed to?

So, New York is a great place that I really haven’t had time to enjoy during the meetings because they’re packed. So I decided to come early Saturday (fly out at 10 AM) so I could get to the fashion district and Mood Fabrics from Project Runway.

Looking back, this was a good idea, or I’d still be traveling. I got to the airport, went to my gate, at the end of the B terminal and was informed my flight was moved to the middle of the B terminal. Yeah, I’d passed the gate and then gone much further.

No problem, exercise is good. So I go to the new gate, but the plane there is going to Philly, not Newark. But the gate agent announces the Newark plane will be there (numerous times…lots of people are surprised like I am), so I sit and knit.

And, let me just say, I could have been real bitchy yesterday if I hadn’t had my knitting in my purse. But I decided to make each delay an opportunity to knit another row. Yeah, I went Pollyana on the problem. Not at all like me.

So, sooner or later the Philly plane leaves and ours comes and unloads and we get back on in pretty good time and of course the plane is full, but that’s okay, the flight is under an hour and a half.

And then the pilot makes an announcement. Over the next 5 hours I’m gonna learn to hate the pilot making an announcement, but for now, it’s interesting. Seem’s there’s a stop at Newark, so we can’t take off. And that’s all he knows.

Hey, I had meant to finish reviewing the multiple choice questions during the flight, so I take them out (and oooooh, out my tray table down!) and get to work. To Delta’s credit, the crew does their damndest to make the wait tolerable. The pilot invites families to come to the cockpit and take pictures of their kids in the pilot’s seat (something I’d never seen before in a post-9/11 world). The flight attendants bring out trays of water. And the passengers don’t riot or demand to be let out (although there is some grumbling by the skinny girls around me that they’re hungry). And we wait.

And I finish all the multiple choice.

And for some reason (the pilot explains all the intricacies of the flight controller in DC and his handler in Atlanta, but really, I don’t care why–I just want to know when) we taxi out to the end of a runway. (Okay, the stop was lifted, but we still don’t have a landing slot in Newark.) And we wait some more. A lot more.

And I finish writing up all the free response solutions and call my father and talk to Charlie and Fran (who has already arrived in New York and who I was supposed to be shopping with). So I start knitting again, which is good because I can knit standing up and the guy in the seat next to my aisle seat keeps getting up to go pace.

And, we finally take off at about 1 PM (just 3 hours late) and fly via the Indianapolis flight controller instead of the DC one so the flight is a bit longer but who cares because we’re flying! Since the flight was due in around noon, we’re not eating anything more than peanuts, but hey, it’s better than sitting on the tarmac.

And we land and luggage takes forever as usual, but there’s a train and it’s good and fast so we’ll get to Manhattan soon, except…

To get to Amtrak, you have to take the airport train. Fine. So we go until we can see the Amtrak station and come to a stop. And sit there. And wait, and wait, and watch the Amtrak pull in, and watch it pull out, and then we move.

So, normally there’s no problem, but since it’s a Saturday, it’s 50 minutes until the next flight. So I get some of the free response solutions entered and running.

And the train finally shows up and it’s packed–mostly very skinny kids who seat 2 to a seat made for big adults so they can play cards. Fortunately, they get off in a few stops and 3 very tired adults get their places and the trip continues without incident until I get to the hotel and there are a million or so people in the lobby. But after another wait (and I am getting good at knitting while waiting), I get a room and it’s okay if you ignore the toilet that doesn’t stop and the fact the bed looks like it was made by my cat and dog and one of the is still under the bedspread.

But I’m here and I finally eat and we see a play (Altar Boyz–great fun and not more concentration than I can deal with) and I get some sleep and a good strong shower this morning and then the straw breaks the camel’s back.

In dealing with the leaky toilet, I completely miss the fact there are no bath towels in the room. In fact, I miss that little fact until I get out of the shower. Fortunately, I have two hand towels (and yeah, I’ll admit it, sheets) so I’m up and washed and dried and ready to face the day.

Let’s hope it’s better than yesterday. But if it’s not, I still have my knitting.