No card to share with you today, but since I'm at loose ends I figured I'd say a live "hello" and let you all in on what's up in my world :) Run now, folks!
I've been in Vancouver since March 5th, and so all my posts for the month were pre-scheduled. I was so pleased with myself that not only did I get my DT work finished ahead of time, but I even did all the posts - last time I came out I had my posts pre-loaded with the photos & then 'winged it' with live blogging while on vacation. I am so organized, I preened...oh, hubris. Silly me.
So, I was supposed to fly home yesterday - but on the weekend, my Facebook feed started filling up with terrible predictions of a huge storm hitting home mid-week. Then snow accumulation predictions began - 30 cm being the smallest amount expected - and I began having palpitations. I was already to have a 4.5 hour layover halfway through the trip, and I thought OH CRAP, I'll be in Toronto until the end of my natural life. Well, at 2 AM yesterday Rob texted me to say the airline had called & I needed to check my flights. Not delayed, guys. Cancelled! They completely shut down all the airports out there.
Figuring I was still stuck on the first 2 legs of my trip, off I went to the airport. Usually I fly Air Canada, and as anyone who's ever done it will tell you, customer service is not a concept they're familiar with. Last time going home my flight was bumped to a smaller plane, eliminating my seat (in between me printing my boarding passes at home and arriving at the airport). They quickly changed my flight, handed me new boarding passes, and said RUN THE PLANE IS WAITING FOR YOU! So I ran, blithely assuming that my destination was still Toronto. Nope. Found out ON THE PLANE that now I was headed to Ottawa - what? - and then Toronto. And in all that, they never did book me on the final leg to Moncton, so I arrived home extremely late, tired, and sans baggage. I couldn't even report my missing baggage because all the Air Canada personnel had left the building. Not just the guy whose job it is to take such reports, every.single.damn.person.
Enter Westjet pilots & staff, who saw me losing it & tried to help me - even though it wasn't their airline that had caused the problem.
So this time, I'm flying Westjet. I get to the airport, fully expecting to be obligated to take the first legs of the flight, and the agent said 'well, if you have a place to stay here, I'd stay here. There will be thousands of people stranded in Toronto" and proceeded to give me more travel options. There was still an advisory in place for travel today, so she booked me for flights on Friday, giving me a direct flight to Toronto (score, instead of stopping on the way) and making sure to note in my itinerary that if I had to rebook again, I was not to be charged for changing anything. She apologized multiple times for the inconvenience, was patient, and other agents came over & commiserated.
That said, yesterday was a pretty rough day - lots of tears. Three weeks is a long time to be away from home, and the let down of not being able to go home when I expected really sucks. I miss my family, my dogs, and my friends. But now I have a few extra days to spend with my mom, get some laundry done, and fart around on the computer.
This trip has been really fun - I got to see most people multiple times, spend time just BEING with the people important to me (instead of rushing around like a crazy person), meet a new blogging friend (Hi Lesley!) and eat amazing food cooked by all sorts of people I love. (Not to mention drink, my goodness). I didn't take a single picture the entire trip. I brought my camera, and every time I thought to take a picture I realized I didn't want to leave the moment I was in to do it. I have thoroughly LIVED every minute of this trip, and it was liberating to just pause and enjoy everything and everyone.
Since I haven't prepared anything for the month of April in terms of design team work, I'm going to be hopefully crafting up a storm once I can bring myself to let go of my boys, all three of them. I am so appreciative of how understanding all of my design team coordinators have been. Besides, I have new crafty stuff to play with when I get back!
I'm slowly catching up with my reader today since I have the spare time, and please don't be offended if you haven't heard from me lately - checking in to bloglovin this morning for the first time in more than three weeks had my total at over 1400 unread posts, so I'm slowly making my way through & reading everything, but I'll never catch up with comments! I've missed all of you, though, and I can't wait to get back into the regular swing of visiting with all of you.
So, that's that. Back to farting around on Facebook & Blogger for a bit!
xoxo,
Jessi
