First off, let me say that I have returned from West Virginia unscathed, safe and sound. It was an...interesting trip, to say the least. But, I'm fine. The car is fine. The house and the cats are fine. Everything is as it should be, and I immediately ordered $60 worth of Papa John's pizza when I got home. No, I'm not kidding.
This is going to be a long series of posts, much in the vein of when I visited home over Spring Break and recapped that time. A lot of my trip is a blur -- not because I don't remember it, because I do, but because I was so exhausted the vast majority of the time I was back home. I've been basically on-the-go ever since the semester ended two weeks ago, and only now do I have a bit of true downtime, some relaxation time, some breathing space. Even when I'm home visiting my parents, and even if the weather is horrible (which it was, but I'll get to that), there is still much to be done and even more to be written about here. So, what I'm telling you is to sit down, get a cup of coffee and a sandwich, because this is going to be a long and descriptive journey through the events of this past week, in rough chronological order.
Ready?
Okay. So. Let's start.
As most of you know, December 20 was my birthday, and that night, in the overnight hours, I had to leave the house to catch my planes back east at 6AM the next morning, the 21st.
I couldn't sleep that night. No, really, I couldn't. It's not like I didn't try. I went downstairs and tried to sleep for hours, maybe dozing off for about 20 minutes at a time, but always waking up before I could get any rest. After a while, I finally just got back up and said fuck it, there's shit I need to do around the house before I leave. I was planning to leave the house no later than 2:30 AM, as it takes a good chunk of time to get to the airport, and I always have to drive carefully and use my GPS because I can never remember the way. I made a checklist of things to do, and as I did them, I crossed each one off the list. Close the bathroom door. Lock the garage. Ready the cats' food/litter/water. Turn down the furnace. Etc. I got all of them done, and by 2:30, I had given the cats a brand new scratch pad covered in catnip, three new toy mice, three huge bowls of water, four bowls of food, and two sparkling clean, fresh-litter-filled litter pans. Now, if my cats weren't idiots, they could survive on that for probably three weeks if they wanted to. I always over-prepare for a trip when I have to leave them alone. I don't like to do it. But this time, I would only be gone for five days, and they've been alone for up to ten or eleven before. I was confident that they'd be fine.
I also forgot to mention that on the night before my birthday, Newton had gotten a snowstorm. This would be the snowstorm that was, at the time, the remnants of Winter Storm Draco as it traveled east. When it hit here, it dumped a few inches of snow and ice on the area, making everything not protected indoors or otherwise treated with salt a nightmare. So, when I readied to leave the house in the middle of the night, I started the car, turned on the defrost/heater at full blast, and then proceeded to clean off the car itself -- a task that took a good fifteen minutes. Mental note: the next time it's going to snow, put the goddamned car in the garage beforehand. This entire time, the car was running/warming up/defrosting.
I should also probably mention here that the Monte Carlo is temperamental when it comes to really cold, nasty weather. If it's below about 25 degrees outside, she doesn't like it. Oh, she'll still run and perform admirably, but she doesn't like it. This is probably the reason why, when I got back into the car once it was warmed up and cleaned off, the "Low Oil" light was on.
Sigh.
My car is very important to me, as you folks know. If she tells me something's wrong -- especially after I spent $1400 on her in September to get her all fixed up again -- I tend to listen to her. However, sometimes lights go on and off on the dash for no real reason. Again, the car is old, and has 225,600 or so miles on her. In another few weeks, she'll be due for an oil change, if she's not already. Knowing I wouldn't have time to deal with the oil problem until after I got home from West Virginia, I went into the garage before I left and got the funnel, rag, and the extra quart of oil I keep in there for just such an occasion, and put it in the backseat. If the light was still on by the time I got to the airport, I would remember to add the oil to the car before I drove it home a few days later -- but for now, it was too cold and too dark to mess with it in my driveway at 2:30 in the morning, especially since the downstairs light burned out and I have not yet replaced the bulb.
So, I bid my house and cats adieu, and left for the airport. The light stayed on the entire way there, and I made the mental note to add the oil once I got back home. I parked the car in long-term parking at around 3:25, got the ticket for it (which I would need when I got back home) and took the shuttle bus to the airport.
Wichita's Mid-Continent Airport is very small. Very small. And nothing happens there in the middle of the night. The place was deserted, save but for a few passengers who had arrived as early as I had. I sat outside in the cold smoking cigarettes to pass the time -- the cold didn't really bother me too much, as I had planned in advance to dress warmly. To save space in my backpack, which also held the new laptop Daisy had given me for Christmas, I was dressed in layers -- three shirts, two pairs of pants, and three pairs of socks, not to mention my thick peacoat. I was glad that I'd dressed warmly, and was even more glad once I got back home -- but I am, again, getting ahead of myself.
I went to check in at the self-service terminal, and typed in my ticket number. Nothing. I typed in my itinerary number. Nothing. I typed in my reservation number. Again, nothing. Hrm. Something's not right here. Any of those numbers should have worked, especially the reservation number. Two girls approached the machine next to me, and couldn't get theirs to work either. Okay, good, so it's not just me, I thought. Still, without check-in, I couldn't get my boarding passes and thus could not go through security when it opened up.
This was a bad thing, needless to say. I took out my phone and looked at it, debating on calling my parents in the middle of the night to have Mom give me any and all numbers on the actual paper tickets, as all I had was the printout of my itinerary (which, really, should have been enough, as it's been enough in the past). Mom had the paper tickets in her possession. However, I didn't have to do this -- when the counter opened up at 4:30, I went up there, told the lady working there that I couldn't get my boarding passes to print, and she looked up my flight and printed them for me. Crisis averted. I did not know, though, that this bit of trouble would be an omen for the rest of my trip to come.
I went through security next; security at Mid-Continent is surprisingly detailed and intricate compared to most other airports I've flown through. As you may recall, when I flew home over Spring Break, I was "randomly selected for additional screening," and had the wand passed over me, had my shoes swabbed, all of that. Despite their level of detail, however, they're fairly quick. This time, as I had my laptop with me, I had three different tubs to run through screening -- one for the laptop by itself, one for my bag, and one for my shoes, coat, and everything in my pockets (keys, wallet, Daisy's necklace, phone, etc).
The laptop and the tub with all of my pocket stuff went through just fine. My bag took forever. I arched an eyebrow at this; all I had in the bag were a few changes of clothes, my DS and camera (with the chargers for them), some cigarettes and a lighter, and my electronic cigarette in case it was too cold to smoke outside while I was home. Everything else -- my parents' presents and the like -- I'd shipped home earlier in the week so that I didn't have to carry it.
"I just want to run your bag through again so that I can get a better image," the TSA guy told me.
"Yes, of course," I said, without a thought. And they did. Then they ran it through a third time. Then they pulled it aside and asked me if they could open it.
"Sure," I said. I had nothing to hide.
They pulled it over to a table, and the lady examining all of it told her I had to keep my eyes on her to see everything that she was doing. I wondered what had tripped their radar, so to speak.
And then I remembered the electronic cigarette. I'd put it in a hard plastic case so that it wouldn't get crushed, along with its charger and two cartridges. Fuck, I thought. This isn't good.
Mind you, I'd purchased said electronic cigarette in West Virginia the last time I visited home, and had flown back home with it in my bag then. I waited. Sure enough, the lady examining my things took out the case, swabbed it, and then opened it to peer down inside.
"Electronic cigarette," I told her.
"Ah," she said, seeming relieved. She closed it and stuck it back in my bag, and said I was free to go, that they wanted to check it because it looked strange on the scanner. I told her hey, that was fine, I was glad they were so attentive, etc, and I left to go to the gate.
Hah, they thought my eCig was a bomb, I thought, and then realized about halfway to my gate that whoa, that could've gone a lot, lot worse than it did.
As an aside, when I left the house this morning, I left the eCig at home to be mailed back to me by my parents with the other stuff. I wasn't going through that again.
At the gate, I turned on my podcasts in my ears and zoned out, until a very large man in a leather motorcycle jacket approached me and asked if the seat next to me was taken. He looked like a heavy metal Santa Claus -- long, white hair and thick white beard down to his chest, and clad in leather from head to toe. He must've been in his mid-seventies. I told him that the seat was his if he wanted it, very nicely (as I greatly respect people who, in their old age, wear jackets like mine), and he sat down. It wasn't until the flight was boarding, and they called for first class and priority customers first, that he got up and walked to the counter -- and I saw the large, embroidered Hell's Angels logo across the back of his jacket. Bitchin'. He immediately got much more respect from me at that point; for some reason, I felt much more at ease knowing that we'd have a Hell's Angel on the plane if anyone decided to start some shit.
The flight to Chicago was fine; I was seated next to a 78-year-old man named Maurice who provided me with pleasant conversation the entire time (read: he wouldn't shut up). I didn't mind this too much, but really I'd just wanted to sleep. The flight into Pittsburgh I had the seat/row to myself, and I was able to doze off a bit...until the landing, that is.
Y'see, remember that snowstorm that hit Newton the day before my birthday? When I landed in Pittsburgh, it was hitting there. I got to experience the same storm twice in the span of two days. We landed in the middle of it, and while it wasn't bad then, barely the tip of it had moved into the area. After looking around for my parents for a while, I finally found them -- and we made our way to Red Robin to meet for lunch with my friends Wayne and Jane -- something that has become a new tradition every time I fly into town. It was a great lunch, if a bit rushed -- the snowstorm was getting worse and worse by the minute, and was reaching near-whiteout conditions in Pittsburgh. All of us decided to cut short our socialization time in favor of getting home alive and in one piece. I did get a very sweet birthday card and present from them, though -- a card from their cats, and an Amazon gift card with an attached, sarcastic note to "buy my own shit." This was incredibly sweet of them; Wayne and Jane know they never have to do anything for me or get me presents (or anything like that) for any holiday or birthday, but they do. Always. Especially around Christmas. We bid them adieu, and because of the snow opted not to do any shopping or hanging around the area but instead to go straight home, as the snow wasn't hitting in Morgantown yet. That would soon change.
On the way home, we stopped at the grocery store and stopped to get pizza for dinner (yes, different pizza than the ones I ordered tonight); there's a place in town called Pizza Al's, which makes perfect New York-style pizzeria pizza. Every time I'm in town, I must get it. It's not a want, but a need at this point. I can't get it out here. I can't get anything even remotely like it out here.
Mind you, at this point (about 6PM) I was burnt-out; I'd been awake for about 36 hours straight, minus whatever light dozing I did on the airplane, and I was at that stage of exhaustion where my body was achy and tired, yet my mind was still awake and primed for action (so, sort of like I am right now, honestly). I ate pizza and drank beer once we got back to the house, and was finally, finally able to relax somewhat. My parents' cats and their fourteen-year-old dog were happy to have me home again, and I returned to my childhood bedroom to see that nothing had even been moved since I was there in March, with the exception that my mother had washed the blankets and sheets on my bed prior to my arrival, since the cats go in there to sleep. My box with their presents in it had arrived a few days prior, and my mother had made me a birthday/Christmas stocking, which contained a few gift cards, some coffee and candy, and a bag of jerky. Half-delirious from non-sleep, I spent an hour that night trying to get my wireless to work on the laptop Daisy had gotten me, to no avail. Couldn't tell you what was wrong with it, but it would not connect to my parents' network. My Dad eventually plugged in an ethernet cable and ran it over to my room so that I could use the internet. This, however, tethered my computer to my room (which, in retrospect, is no different than it is here in Kansas, nor is it different than the computer I had when I was still living there).
After I finally got it working, I downloaded all the updates to my freshly-installed copy of Ubuntu 12.04 (I'll write more about that process later) and called Daisy on Skype to let her know I'd gotten there okay. Skype kept crashing on the laptop -- crashing so hard that it shut down and rebooted my system every time I tried to use it. At this point I was so tired that I told her I'd try to fix it in the morning, and eventually just passed out as the snow finally began to hit our area quite heavily.
So that is the tale of my trip back home -- the actual journey there, anyhow. You folks have no idea yet of all of the other stuff we went through over my journey, though some of you have gotten some bits-and-pieces details of it from me over the course of the past week. Like I said, it was...interesting. But further details will have to wait until the next few posts here.
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