Thursday, August 10, 2006

Question of Bladder Control

Well, I finally arrived back in Dallas yesterday. I was going to blog then but quite frankly, I ran out of time. Too many things to do, never enough hours in the day. Given the proclivity lately for American Airlines to screw things up, I decided to go ahead and leave for the airport supper early. My flight was at 8:30 am but I figured I could arrive with the chickens and just eat breakfast at the airport - NOT! There was ONE woman working the electronic ticket baggage check. Now granted, she was very efficient and very nice, but ONE WOMAN FOR EVERYONE! C'mon American Airlines - can we think about cutting the executive salaries and hire a few more line personell? NOTE TO BLOGGERS: This situation occurred before the most recent developments in England.

So it took an hour and a half to check in, only to find out that the ticket computer was broken and had lost my seat assignment - which sucks because I had reserved a prime window seat a couple of weeks ago. So I had to proceed to the gate and wait in line again for a new seat assignment. They gave me one two minutes before time to board. No breakfast - just yogurt and a Diet Coke (sigh). And the seat they gave me - horrors! Very last row - aisle seat.

This is so far back in the plane that there's not even a window. And the only natural light available is from across the aisle in the beverage cart area. Which would be fine, except that I was also right next to the bathroom so the entire flight people stayed huddled in the beverage area waiting for an available restroom, and subsequently blocking all the sunlight. Even worse, that means they were standing directly above me, jostling my shoulder and staring down as I tried (so desperately) to get a chapter of my new book written before arrival.

What I don't understand is why people cannot make it a mere 3.5 hours without having to pee. C'mon. I held it for six hours total before I got home - the rest of the world can't do a measly 3.5? Okay, so I'll give the pregnant woman a pass, but she only peed once. There was a man (obviously NOT pregnant) that peed FOUR TIMES! What the hell had he been drinking? Even worse, he strongly favored actor Chris Elliot who totally gives me the creeps.

So needless to say, hardly any writing got done after the bathroom vultures converged on my private space. I finally gave up and tried to sleep. Didn't really make that one work either, but eventually I arrived home and went off to deal with more writing business - like renting a post office box.

Which leads me to my next new bit of information. I decided to use a newsletter service to handle the email address management for my newsletter mailing list. I don't want to waste time subscribing and unsubscribing people, so I chose a service that would do that for me, plus provided pretty templates to use and charged by the number of newsletter sent and not by the month - since I don't plan on sending a newsletter every month. Well, I go to set up a test newsletter using the template I've chosen and realize it has my mailing address at the bottom. Huh? I don't think so. So I click to delete and find out that apparently new anti-spam legislation requires marketing newsletters to provide an address for the business.

Hence the requirement of a post office box.

Just an FYI for those of you on the verge - plan to rent a PO box.

Am working on finishing up my proposal tonight so must jet. News on the proposal as soon as I have some.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I haven't flown in a long time, but I really grew to hate it when I did. Which is a shame because I'm not afraid to fly. I'd love it if not for all the rude people. And germs.

Just call me Howardine Hughes. *g*

Jaye Wells said...

AA has made me mad more times than I can count.

Interesting info on the newsletter and PO box. Thanks for the tips.

Jana DeLeon said...

LOL on the Howardine, Tori.

AA is definitely on my s-list right now. And guess what? I just got scheduled for a trainng week after next in San Diego - home of the nation's longest security lines as of yesterday. Yeah, team.

 
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