bodger: xkcd android girlfriend arc weld cherry stem (Default)
The next day, I got an early start to make sure I got to the airport on time. As it happens, I got to the airport 'way too early, and nothing was open. I found a comfortable bench, fired up my laptop, and proceeded to catch up on email.

Presently, someone wandered by and asked if I had been at the iCarly event last night. I said I had, and he shook my hand and said he thought he recognized me as a big bidder for the day on the set. It turns out he was the winning bidder, but didn't really have any friends or family who enjoyed iCarly. He said he'd try to find out if I could come with him, as I was obviously interested enough to be willing to put down major money. We exchanged contact info.

Finally the ticket windows opened up, and I went to the USAir window to try again to get my flight changed to terminate in Charlotte (where I would be catching my flight to Florida) instead of Dulles. It was still impossible. So I asked if I could just have my luggage marked to come off at Charlotte. The agent looked very flustered and asked why I would want to do such a thing. I explained that I'd be abandoning the Charlotte-Dulles segment and catching some other plane. She snapped "I don't want to hear about that!" and turned away. Hopefully there won't be anything in my luggage that I can't carry on the plane.

more (with pictures) )

bodger: (What terrible problems you have)
While poking around on facebook, I noticed an event for the STS-133 space shuttle launch. This reminded me that I'd always wanted to see a shuttle launch, and there were only two launches left. I had, actually, experienced a shuttle launch a while back, from the Kissimmee/St. Cloud area, halfway across Florida from the cape. It was a dawn launch, and I was to the west, so I couldn't see anything at all other than the rising sun.  I listened to the radio and waited for a bit, but I couldn't see or hear anything, so I turned around and headed back to my hotel room. At that point, the sound reached me.  It had been attenuated and delayed by the distance, but I was still impressed.

So I clicked on the "I'm attending" link, not really sure whether I'd be able to realistically do so. However, some friends of mine noticed and I started getting messages asking if I was going, and if I had an event pass and so forth.  I explained that I didn't have a pass, and hadn't yet made any travel arrangements. One person mentioned on FB that she might have an extra pass, so I requested it, but it went to someone else. I poked around on the airline sites, but the nearby airports only had expensive flights at inconvenient times, so I didn't pursue it. Then I started hearing from [personal profile] aramintamd and [personal profile] vvalkyri that they might still have an extra pass (providing an interesting illustration of a social networking site actually yielding a real benefit). At this point, the launch was in a few days, but I tried at the travel sites again, and managed to nab a workable flight into Orlando.  I was unable to choose a seat, but that wasn't important.  I realized that this was a basically insane quest.  I was going to fly down in the morning and back in the evening. If anything went wrong, I'd miss the launch. I already had plans to see the Mummers Show of Shows that weekend, so I couldn't stick around.

But I figured any chance to see a shuttle launch was better than none )

May 2018

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