Travel Watch

Well folks, it’s time for another winter break for Gigantor the Unfortunate. It’s also time for another unfortunate travel story. Why world? Why? Liz has called me a bad travel omen.

It all started with a snowstorm in the Washington DC area. What’s that you say? ‘That’s preposterous? DC hasn’t had a good snow storm in years!’ Well you’re wrong. Snow returned to DC…on the day I needed to fly home.

What’s that sound? That vengeful, vengeful sound. That would be irony. I couldn’t fly home on Saturday, not because it was snowing or foggy (stupid fog) in Iowa. I couldn’t come home because DC was getting two feet of snow.

I’m going to try to make this story as brief and winy-less as possible. Ha, good luck! By some miracle on Saturday morning my flight hadn’t been cancelled yet. I knew that it would be soon, but I took the shuttle to Des Moines Airport anyway. Don’t ask me what I was thinking. When I got to the airport my flight from O’Hare still wasn’t cancelled for some ridiculous reason. But because I erred on the side of caution and rebooked my flight for the next day. The person who helped at the counter went into a little song and dance about how I should have left yesterday to avoid the snow. Ya think?

My friend Jessica, from Grinnell, picked me up from the Des Moines airport b/c she had an appointment with a genius…for her Mac…in the DM area anyway. We got lost on our way to Jordan Creek Mall, partly because of my awful direction asking. While her computer got examined I looked for Christmas presents and ended up only buying a belt and ear muffs…for myself. I was really glad to spend more time with Jessica. She’s really cool and I only loosely got to know her during the semester. Plus she told me the dirt from the group’s early history.

At the DM airport, my mom had contacted Mama Sholten (the bro’s GF’s mom) to see if I could stay with their family until Sunday. Jessica and I got semi-lost on our way there too, but we made it and I spent the rest of the day with the Sholten parents. They were so nice and accommodating, especially to someone they had only vaguely heard about previously through the bro. I mos def got to work on my small talk skills (they ain’t that great yet). At one point, I watched TV with them for a little bit and I got to see a news story about people who were stranded because they couldn’t fly into DC. Ha!

Earlier that morning the shuttle had waited for a train to pass in Grinnell. As I frosted cookies with the parents that night in Des Moines I watched a train go by outside of their condo. Sometimes it’s unexpected where life will take you.

The next day all my flights were on time and I got home in a matter of hours. Just kidding. My flight from Des Moines was delayed by 10 minutes. It was terrible! She said sarcastically. I got to O’Hare on time and leisurely walked to my gate. Waiting for my flight, I ran into Harry, a classmate from HB who was on the same flight. I boarded and settled into my plane seat, so happy that everything was on time and I would be home soon. I think you see where this is going. Then, on the loud speaker, the pilot said “There’s a big backlog of flights into Reagan trying to find a gate, so we have two choices. We can go to the airport and sit in the plane for four hours, or stay in O’Hare for four hours. I’ve chosen the latter.” Just to clarify: my flight got pushed from 6pm to 10pm. Harry and I went to a bar recommended to him by a friend, then ate dinner and went to board our plane. As we sat in the waiting area I worked on this blog and heard a women complaining on her phone that her flight had been pushed to 11pm. I looked at the screen and what do you know? She was talking about my flight.

Then a crazy old man came and bombarded me with questions about my computer. Then he saw a poster of Tiger Woods and said he couldn’t be called Tiger anymore. He would have to be called Cheetah. Like a cheater. Get it? Yes crazy old man, I got it.

Then my flight was pushed to 11:58pm. Then it was pushed to 12:30am. Meanwhile crazy old man harassed/terrorized various people in the waiting area. Then it got interesting. Another flight into Las Vegas was also having trouble…and had been having trouble all day. Let’s just say that the natives were getting restless. The airline people started making angry announcements telling people to back the frak off. I wasn’t entirely certain a fight wouldn’t break out. I hate angry travelers. Cause getting angry with people trying to do their jobs really helps make things go faster. My favorite part of the night was watching a show about sharks because one of the people in the show was…Anderson Cooper. Naturally he would be swimming with sharks. Wait till the girls at Grinnell hear about this. Oh how they’ll swoon.

I boarded my flight at 12:15am with cautious optimism and…thank god it took off. The baggage claim at Reagan was crazy. Apparently my luggage got there before I did. There were just hundreds of bags in lines. Harry and I shared a cab to Arlington. A sketchy dude tried to take us to Arlington for 40$...yeah he was not a taxi.

As I was driven home I looked at the snow that had put a wrench in my travel plans. It looked a lot the snow in Grinnell. Except the snow in Arlington is fresher and in Iowa they actually know how to plow their roads.

I fell asleep in my bed at 4:30am. Maybe I should rename

Hell Week

Why do they call the week before finals hell week? Finals week is hell week.

Ok, last week was a little hellish. I had a presentation, which always goes oh so well. Seriously it was pretty bad, but then it was over. Following, I had to rewrite the paper that I presented on. I only mention it because it inspired a miracle. While finishing my paper I...I didn't....I didn't procrastinate! The paper was like a pit in my stomach that tortured my soul and I wanted it gone as soon as possible. Unfortunately, as soon as possible meant like 10 hours later. I don't think I've ever put so much effort into a paper ever.

I did have an academic feel-good moment during “hell week”. As anyone who reads my Facebook statuses knows—I hate methods with a deep fiery passion. So, I was really not looking forward to rewriting my methods proposal (I had already rewritten the stupid thing once). Fortunately, I didn't have to! I went into his office and basically he said ‘you already made all the changes I suggested, this is an A paper, I’m willing to let you not rewrite it’. !!! I said I was willing not to rewrite it. What followed was more amazing. I had a completely nonawkward conversation with him afterwards for like 10 minutes. Guess who's going to be one of my recommendations when I try to get an internship this summer.

I had hoped to ride the wave of nonprocrastination from my seminar papers into finals week, but it's faded a little.

Sunday was quite busy. I went straight from bed to the dining hall to the library to the dining hall to watching Battlestar Galactica with friends to a pancake study break. At the study break, held in the infamous Harris Center, I discovered a game straight from the devil, pictured above, and accurately named Hot Hoops. I must say, if you judge by this game, my basketball skills have greatly improved since middle school. I swear I could play Hot Hoops all day...it's so weirdly addictive. It kind of goes like this: Oh no! I didn't make a basket! I have to try again! Oh yay! I made a basket! I have to try again! etc etc etc

Monday=Meh. It was very productive, if you consider digging your car out of the snow productive.

The rest of finals week wasn't deadly exciting or noteworthy. I turned in my 18 page seminar paper, my flawless methods proposal, a sit down resource and environmental econ test (don't ask me how I did cause I don't know), and wrote two 5 page essays for Politics of Russia. And then when I was done with everything on Friday—yay!—I was rewarded by dinner at the new Grinnell Mexican restaurant with friends, saw Avatar (A movie which lead me to ask: why the heck would a robot have a switch blade?) and my friend who also lives in the DC area told me that all flights into DC were cancelled the next day. The day I needed to travel. Merde! Turns out he wasn’t completely right, but right enough. But, you’ll have to wait for the next post to hear about that. Duh Duh Duhnnnn!

My First Waltz

Hey there. It's been a while. Mostly, I have been in school. However, a week ago I got to go home for Thanksgiving break. As I don't feel like explaining my whole break (you can blame Perri for that one-I only write about things once...unless I'm in Methods and I have to write something three &**@*$# times), so I'll give you the cliff notes version.

I flew home, ate a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner, read about Putin, witnessed a 21 year old British guy down a whole pot of coffee and 5+ classes of red wine, picked up Liz at Dulles with mom, got caught up on How I Met Your Mother, ate at Five Guys, had 'coffee' with Liz and Harry from my high school days (oh so long ago), rediscovered how bad I am at bowling, read about Putin some more, got introduced to Dead Like Me, made Liz watch episodes of Cowboy BeBop, woke up really early, started flying back to Grinnell, got to O'Hare thirty minutes early, sat on plane for 50 minutes waiting for the lighting to let up, ran to my connecting flight and just made it, got to Des Moines, discovered my luggage wasn't so lucky, drove back to Grinnell, prepared for my Politics of Russia debate, went to work, walked to security to get my bag that the airport drove to campus, found out United people broke my bag handle, lugged heavy luggage across campus, went to bed.

And now I'm back at school. Twwwooooooo Moooooooooorrrrreee Weeeeeeks!!!!!!!!

Tonight I went to waltz with the gang. We all had dinner at the Depot (old train station, now restaurant). Our waiter was very nice, but a terrrrible waiter. It took him 30 minutes just to take our orders and it was an hour before we got our food. He told us it was because he had two tables tonight and had never done that before (really?). The food was good when it arrived, despite my steak being mostly fat. I almost would have been able to forgive our waiter, but another couple came in about an hour after we got there and he waited on them too. They had their appetizers in 10 minutes and got there entrees about the same time we did. But enough complaining...for now. Ominous right?

After dinner, we hit up the Gates pre-waltz party where I drank punch and ate chocolate. Then, we went to the JRC pre-waltz party that had a buffet line of about 20 different kinds of desserts (no, I did not try all twenty). Then was the waltz itself. Harris looked so much nicer than I've ever seen it before, it helped that we got there a little early b/c no one was really drunk yet. I had never been to a Grinnell Waltz before so I had no idea what to expect. There was a live band for half the time. They played mostly jazz, swing, quiet jazz, an orchestral version of a Fiddler on the Roof song (naturally) and Hava Nagila (a surprisingly dangerous song-people feel down, I got kicked in the back of the leg-fun!). By the end of the night I was feeling pretty tired because they kept playing really slow and quiet jazz lullabies. I mostly danced with my friends, however I did dance with one boy who seemed to enjoy making me twirl into other people. Most of us got really tired and then I left.

Wow, that story was kind of dull wasn't it? Sorry, I'm tired. Not doing any of the homework you should be doing and dancing is very exhausting. Anyway this blog is only to keep you updated on what I'm doing...not for your amusement or to entertain you. Ok that's kind of a lie. Oh well. Good night y'all.