Since This is NATURALLY How Holidays Should Start....

[pimpchickie]

First off, I sat in traffic getting out to MSY for close to 40 minutes. Thank God I'd planned on being two hours early to the airport. Then, because of the winter storms shutting down Denver and Chicago, my flight in New Orleans got grounded for 40 minutes. This would not have been such a problem if it weren't for the fact that that gave me 10 minutes to make my connecting flight in Dallas, which I HAD to be on otherwise I'd miss my connection in Los Angeles and then who knows when I would've gotten to Australia. Thus, in order to make the interim connection I had to run barefoot through DFW including up and down, respectively, a set of escalators and on to the little TRAM to take me to the right part of the terminal. Whew, made the flight. Oh wait. But that flight left about 40 minutes late giving me 15 minutes to catch my flight to Sydney. Well, after deplaning and taking about 10 minutes to WALK to the international terminal (makes sense, right? International flight, international terminal) and clear security, I find out I've been directed to the WRONG terminal and that I need to go BACK to the terminal I'd just come from and clear security and all that jazz, AGAIN. See Krista sprinting through YET ANOTHER airport in bare feet. (And for those of you wondering, yes, this did get me several bizarre looks in both airports and on both resulting flights.) Ok, so now I'm at least on the flight to Sydney. Score! Oh, but now I'm trapped in a window seat for the next 14 hours of my life. Grrrrrr. As Pat would say, "Disgruntlement abounds." Luckily, I sleep for most of the trip across the Big Pond. Touch down in Sydney: excitedness! Clear customs, sweet. Wait at the baggage claim.......Wait some more at the baggage claim........Still waiting at the baggage claim.......Finally, see a Qantas rep. "Ummm...are there any more bags that are going to come out?" Response: "If your bags aren't on the carousel now, they're not here." Fan-fucking-tastic. So, after all that hullaballoo to get to Australia, now that I'm here I have no clothing and no Christmas presents for my family. Awesome! Just GRRRREAT. At least I wasn't like the girl next to me who was sobbing hysterically at the lost baggage counter. Her stuff is supposedly in London. The Qantas people basically told her to kiss it all good-bye because it'll probably be weeks if they can get it to her, if at all.

Hopefully all this snafu-age has worked itself out of the holiday system and will leave the rest of my vacation stress free. I can only hope. **fingers crossed**