First Day in DC

Saturday 1.3.09 – Travel Day

I woke up in a panic this morning at 4:30am sweating thinking that I missed my plane. Mom took me to the airport to catch my 6:20am flight to Philadelphia, PA. I was feeling fine until I walking in the doors of IAH, and that’s when I started stressing. The bag check-in line did not move and the airline tried to expedite the passengers on our flight to a separate line, which just ended up being worse off. After the check-in line was the TSA line… even worse. At this point it was 6:00am and I thought for sure I would miss my damn flight. Through some act of God the line moved and I made the plane. The family I was with, however, ended up behind me and a few other passengers. As they boarded the plane, it became apparent that the airline had overbooked the flight by one seat. The family was bumped to another flight. All the while, I’m feeling pretty damn guilty that I took one seat that could have made the difference to them. As we take off I begin to think about The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - the part where Brad Pitt takes entirely too long to explain the car accident. I keep thinking that I shouldn’t be on the plane, that I should have given my seat up to the family and that now because of my selfishness the plane is going to crash. I basically gave myself a mild panic attack. Then I started to realize that if the plane were to crash, wouldn’t I have done the family a favor? For some reason this thought calmed me down. The connection in Philadelphia was smooth. There was a Gap store in the airport there – crazy. What do we have in NOLA? Luck dog stand and pretzels. Arrival in DC to Reagan went smoothly as well. I hate traveling with so many bags, though – very stressful and I start sweating. I now am the proud month long renter of a red Pontiac G6… H-O-T-T-O-G-O the G6 is hot to go. It’s much zippier than my 4Runner and for some reason it feels longer or maybe I’m just lower to the ground and I don’t know the dimensions yet. I drove over to Nicole’s and got a tour of the house and area as well as met the roommates. I think this is going to be a great living situation! Everyone is super busy, so it seems like there won’t be much drama. It’s 4 girls and 1.5 baths though. Aich! So then I decided it was time to get my room together. I found an IKEA and ate there first… some sort of pasta with meatballs and Texas toast (yeah they still call it TX toast in VA). I’m not sure if I enjoyed it because it was my first meal of the day or because I was watching Mary Poppins while enjoying the meal. Come to find out IKEA was having a huge sale and I bought full size sheets for $4, pillow case for 99cents, a comforter for $19.99, and 3 towels for $6. My total was a whopping $31.00. Why is there not an IKEA in NOLA or BR?!

PS – My new favorite thing is iTunes Genius! I’m sure I’m late on figuring this one out, but I love it so much right now. It made me a playlist from one Jeremy Davenport song that includes Norah Jones, Frank Sinatra, Buble, Astrud Gilberto, and Louis Armstrong. It’s like Genius knows exactly what I want to listen to!