Made It Home - Finally

The rage inspired by Delta has finally dissipated, and I've caught up on sleep. What should have been an easy, early flight out of Rome that left plenty of time to make it home by 3 pm, with a side trip to my sister's friend's graduation party ended up in a 30 hour travel ordeal, fueled on zero sleep since the three hours on Friday night and as much Diet Coke (not nasty Coke Light!) as could physically fit into my stomach. I missed America.

I showed up to the airport at 4 am Rome time, ready to check in. Online check in had failed, so I figured I'd just go to the desk. Well, the desk has no record of my reservation. What? This was taken care of way back in December, when there was that scheduling snafu caused by a random extra four-hour layover in Detroit. The ticket counter lady says she's just KLM, I have to wait until Delta's ticket counter opens, 6 minutes away by shuttle and not until a full hour after my flight leave. After a few frantic phone call home (I don't even want to know how much those calls are going to cost), I finally got the ticket lady to book me on the noon flight to JFK. Ok, 8 hours in the Rome airport. Tolerable. I ran into a few Centrisiti who looked horrified to see me, since we met an hour after I was supposed to have left. The Delta guy managed to confirm the reservation, so time to wait until 9:30 when pre-check in starts. For a country that doesn't really get lines, there sure were a lot of them now.

I made it safely on the JFK flight, no delays. Ran into a few more Centristi, who were also sympathetic to my sleep-deprived plight. Dear Kirsten let me borrow her phone to call home, for which I am eternally grateful. The JFK flight passed without incident - they even had Diet Coke since they were run by Delta! I could barely sleep on the plane (my seat didn't recline and I was still stressed), so I ended up watching the Green Hornet, Tangled, some movie with Lauren Graham about a kid in the psych ward, as well as Castle, 30 Rock, and the Parks and Rec about Twilight.

JFK was a mess getting through to the domestic terminal. Efficient, but painful. Line for customs, reclaim bags, walk past a guy who asks what food I brought (olive oil and paprika pringles) and who decides that my snacks and souvenirs are not a threat to national agricultural security, redrop backs, train to terminal 3, through security again in a building that had no air conditioning, then a four hour wait until departure. Manageable. I got some Burger King with American ketchup and a giant Diet Coke, and sat down to wait until my flight show up on the board and I can go to my gate.  Finally, about two hours before take off, I head down to look at my flight, which has been delayed by 45 minutes. Great. I headed over to the gate (after being sidetracked and going to B23, not 23 and actually in terminal 2) and discovered that this building also lacked air conditioning. Back to the first place, which had a place where I could sit down, connect to the internet, vent my frustration on Facebook, and scrap a bit to reduce stress.

Come time for expected boarding, I went over to my gate to discover it won't depart until "9:45" EST, that planes have just been cleared to land, and they'll get us on as soon as our plane lands, deplanes, and gets cleaned and catered. Around 9:50, the planes gets here; 10:10, maintenance arrives. 10:30, we finally get on the plane to discover that it's a bitty little commuter plane, and everything has to be gate checked. After my bag of souvenirs is pried from my hands and the rage replaces my exhaustion, I spent the next half hour while we wait for "supplies" (which I suspect was either toilet paper or chips for first class, neither of which was worth the wait on a late night flight) wondering if, should the plane take off with my souvenirs still sitting next to the plane, I would get arrested if I get up and make them go back for it. The loaded it on (and I still had plans for filing for immense damages should so much as a book cover get bent out of place), and I went to sleep. Around 11:15, I wake up again and realize we still haven't moved. 11:45, and we finally take off. It was the most harrowing take off I've experienced - it seriously felt and looked more like we were launching into space above the Atlantic (or maybe it was a bay - geography is difficulty from this type of view). You could feel addition g's when we turned. Passed out again, and we landed at 2:45 CST. 30 hours later from my first arrival at the airport.

I am never flying Delta again. Nor will I use a travel agency ever again, since somehow there were two reservations that canceled each other out (I still haven't figured out what happened yet). I will never, ever fly through JFK. And quite frankly, I wouldn't might not leaving the country for another decade. Traveling should be fun. This, not so much.

I'll post my newest pages later.

Trying to finish up the 2009 book

Once again, exams week = prime scrapping time.  Here are my pages from the weekend.

First, an Italy page. This one contains all the quotes I've been writing down from various places during the semester, mostly from Chris, Adam, Scott, and Dora.

Stolen Moments - Makin Me Happy, Happiest Add On, Happiest Little Bits; Captivated Visions - January 2011 Blog Challenge Template; Sahlin Studios - Practically Perfect

This one is from the Cake Smash challenge. I've been having the trickiest time getting this photo done for some reason, and I'm still not thrilled with it, but I'm tired of it holding up the album.

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One made as part of the four-page Toy Story queue area/Buzz Lightyear set, in the same color scheme.

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Made using the new Sahlin Studios kit - it was an impulse buy, discovered almost immediately after I opened up this photo, but before making any decisions on how to scrap it.

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A template challenge page, also using a new-to-me kit from iNSD.

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This has been sitting half-finished for a while, so I just decided to leave it mostly as is with a few minor updates.

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Mousescrappers 2nd Birthday Celebrations

So these coming couple of weeks are the celebration of Mousescrappers' 2nd birthday, and there have been many games and much merriment to accompany such an event. Also, many scrapbook pages.

There's cake decorating:

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And bake me a cake:

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And Hopscotch:

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Of course, the scraplift challenge is still going on:

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As is the weekly challenge, this week hosted by CynthiaY2; theme = all about me, Disney related.

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Last Week of Classes

It's the last week of classes, the due date of the final paper (which I finished a good 12 hours before deadline - awesome!), and two days before the art history presentation I haven't started on. Naturally, this is also prime scrapbooking time.

First, the lone Italy page I've done since Easter; I really need to get on this if I want the book done by Christmas, as is my goal. Well, actually before fall semester, but I'm trying to be realistic.  Gabii was fun, way back when, but I've started skimping on the journaling since I'm not in desperate need to study the notes right now.  Maybe over the summer I'll go back to dense journaling.

More Disney pages - I'm making a last push to finish the 2009 trip before the 2011 trip. It seems to be working.  These are all pre-Mousescrappers birthday celebration.

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This one has been a long time in the making - I've been trying for forever to figure out how to scrap it without having either an all orange page, or a crazy mix of blue and orange (our shirts + Frozone + background).  A template challenge at Mousescrappers made it easy.

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My new favorite page, from the DLRP trip:

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Second new favorite page. I have various failed attempts on this page sitting on my hard drive as far back as a year ago; I'm finally satisfied with the page.

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This is another one that took a long time. I made a page, hated it. Went back, made an ehh page. Got a Pocahontas kit from a pp. Fumed at the timing. Britt kit came out. Finally went back and remade it.

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New third favorite page?  I've been waiting to do this one until I had the perfect layout for it.  

Journaling: Somehow during the school year I stumbled upon the Kingdom Keepers book and became hooked. The story is just plain fun, and it was a nice way to get my Disney fix. However, one element that featured prominently in the first book was Walt’s first pen, located in a diorame in One Man’s Dream in DHS. Do I actually believe that one of the pens on the desk is his first pen? Of course not, no more than I believe that it will magically serve as a weapon to fight Malificent, or that smiling at the Small World dolls will stop them from attacking. Like the rest of Disney, however, the story and attention to detail is just too cute and fun not to want to preserve in memory.

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