Another travel day

I called supershuttle last night because I was travelling back home today. Oh, and this is after my battle with Northwest - I'll get to that. So I called supershuttle, gave them the address to the hotel as well as my flight information. They ran everything and finally told me it would be $17. Okay - not bad. Then she continued to tell me I needed to be in the lobby between 3:49 and 4:04 to which I of course asked "AM?" Yes - AM. My flight was at 6:05. I didn't even have a paper to take with me - it was too early for them. I got to the airport, checked in (I paid the $75 for a first class upgrade since I got just over 3 hours of sleep and the last thing I wanted was to be sardined in between two people in a center seat), and the shops weren't even open for me to buy a paper. I like reading the money section of the USA today. I couldn't even get a coffee - too early for those shops. >:|

Okay, back to NWA (I still get a chuckle every time I say / type that. "Straight outta Compton!") When I originally made my reservations I made them only caring about my flight there because I knew there was a 95% certainty that I would have to change my flight anyway. What I didn't know was that NWA makes their flights virtually impossible to change - online or on the phone. I called the number (after I navigated around to actually find the number which they had so cleverly hidden) and the message I got was something along the lines of "We're sorry. Due to extremely heavy call volumes we are unable to process your call at this time. We look forward to helping you with your concern at a later time. Thank you and screw off". Okay, so I added that last part but you get the picture. A "call back later" message from an airline!? How stupid is that? I was left with no other choice than to do just that - I called back later. Same thing several times. Finally I made it through and of course I got put on hold. I was on hold for about 30 minutes, heard a click as if I was being transferred, and then silence. The bastards disconnected me!! It was a good thing I was in a restaurant attempting to eat dinner or else I would have launched my phone against the nearest solid vertical surface and yelled obscenities.

It was at this point I figured I'd see what I could find out online. I finally got back on hold about 20 minutes after my disconnection. So I was waiting on hold while I was navigating online to change my flight. Problem is that when I went to change it the stupid system saw it as two seperate items so I couldn't change the whole thing and I couldn't cancel the 2nd leg. What I mean is I wanted to change the time and the connection point. My original ticket had me going from austin to minneapolis to dc. What I wanted to change it to was austin to memphis to dc which put me in about 5 hours earlier than going to minneapolis. Again, though, the stupid system would let me change it but the closest I could get was to fly out of austin at 6:05, connect through memphis, and get home at 12:05 in addition to flying out of minneapolis at something like 4pm and arriving home at like 6. I couldn't do it so that the 2nd leg was no longer in the picture.

I finally gave up on the stupid web site. Keep in mind at this point I'm still on hold. I decided to finish my dinner all the while holding the phone to my ear (looking like a moron I'm sure). I finished my dinner, ordered some cheesecake for dessert, ate the cheesecake, had some coffee, left the restaurant, went back to my hotel, got most of my things ready to leave and FINALLY someone came on the line. Oh, I forgot to mention initially when I was put on hold I was asked to please stay on the line at the end of the call to answer a short customer service survey. "You bet your ass I'll complete the survey" I thought to myself. The lady finally came on the line and I told her what I wanted to do. I also expressed to her my extreme displeasure about the entire ordeal and told her that I will never fly NWA again if I can avoid it. I was serious. She was "sorry to hear that, sir" and then proceeded to inform me that my change would cost an additional $500 or so (can't remember the exact figure). At this point I had so much time invested in changing my flight along with the fact that I wasn't paying it anyway, that I agreed to it just so I could go to bed and get home sooner. I had been away for 2 weeks.

I finally completed all the crap, she told me to have a good evening and "thank you for flying NWA", I replied, and in exasperation hung up the phone. FUCK! I forgot the damn survey! Well, if you are thinking to yourself that I didn't call back you are 100% correct. I had enough of their crap and my life would be complete if I never placed a call to NWA again in my life. I thought America West and Delta connecting through Atlanta were bad - NWA is currently the winnAr! Total time dealing with that nightmare from start to finish: about 2 and a half hours.

So I got up at the ass crack of dawn, didn't have a paper to read, finally got one, tried to solve that 9x9 number puzzle in USA Today, and finally got pissed and stopped. At least I had my PSP and some good old Hot Shots Golf to calm me.

My flights were on time, I made it home, and that's about all worth mentioning. Oh, and my grass is finally green - not brown. It "greened" while I was away. At least that's good. Although after my hellish 2 weeks of work and the nightmare travel day I have to mow the lawn tomorrow. :T Oh well, worse things have happened.

Doing my part.

Well, I'm not sure exactly what the hell this is going to end up being. I'm not even sure why I'm starting one of these stupid things. I hate the word (if it's accepted as such yet) "Blog" and I hate it even more that by simply typing out my thoughts here I now fall into the infamous group of "bloggers" all the newspeople feel have some sort of importance to report every couple minutes.

JWOB - Jason's Waste Of Bandwidth. I figure why not? People still use AOL and that's about the biggest waste of bandwidth (next to all the neato pictures, jokes, and warnings everyone feels it necessary to forward to me every few hours). So here it is, folks - playing my part in muddying up the internet waters.

So today I played about the worst game of golf ever - even worse than the first time I played with the "Pauls". I wanted to throw my clubs several times. I suppose it might not have hurt - they would have gone farther than my ball did a couple times. Oh well.

I was rude to Jenny on the phone earlier. I didn't mean to be and now I feel bad about it. I was playing golf and someone was teeing off and my phone rang. It was distracting and by keeping the ringer on I was rude - it's sort of like being in the movie theater but not *as* bad I suppose. Even still, I'm sorry, babe.

Every time I go to a party street like 6th street in Austin, 4th street in Louisville, and the like I realize that I just don't care for that scene much anymore. I go, drink, enjoy the "scenery" and that's about it. Tonight, though, at least I got to play some darts even though Paul beat me and it was his first time playing. He probably wouldn't have beaten me if he had a dart sticking out of one of his eyes. I probably wouldn't have been allowed to play though if I had made that happen.

Why am I doing this? Why am I putting my thoughts down for others to read when a) they probably don't give a shit and b) I don't really care for anyone to know anyway. If I want them to know I'll tell them. This is what makes me wonder if I'll ever "blog" again. *shrug*

Damnit, I have to do laundry. I hate doing laundry - especially when I'm out of town. Oh well, at least I don't have to do it at the hotel.

Fantastic 4 was quite a let-down. It was weak on pretty much everything. I don't get it though - it was 2 hours long but it just seemed like it was rushed. Maybe they spent too much time explaining how they got their powers and too little time developing their abilities and using them for good. The Thing's wife was such a bitch. I'm glad they parted. She knew it was him but shook her head and told him to get away. Could she have been any more superficial? He was better off. They left a cliff-hanger at the end for a possibility of a 2nd one. I will not be seeing it unless it's free and even then I'm not 100% sure I'll watch the whole thing.

It's 3am and I should get some sleep.