Ugh. Today blew so badly. Wait, I should backtrack to my last entry….

So, the stuff at NASA continued throughout the week, Thursday night we had a DCS vs. MCS game of Laser Tag, which rocked. I did _really_ well, getting some of the best scores of the two teams (we had some non-SOFIA people playing, we couldn’t get a game all to ourselves).

Friday afternoon, we were done with NASA stuff. I have to say that while this week was enlightening and fun, it was very difficult and tiring to sit through all these presentations, etc.

Before we went back to the hotel, we toured a few more facilities at NASA. We saw “Hangar 1”, which is the gigantic hangar you can see from 101 that was originally built to house US Navy Dirigibles. This structure was immense (you could fit 3 Titanic’s in it with the doors closed). After that we went to see the vertical motion simulator that pilots and astronauts use to simulate flight. It was like a gigantic X-Y plotter.

After our tours, we headed back to the hotel, and I stayed behind while everyone else went to San Francisco. I guess it was a combination of being tired and not feeling touristy. So I took a nap for awhile and eventually contacted Chris. I got a ride out to Cisco and hung out there for awhile (actually getting to meet a few of her co-workers, which was cool). I also got to hear her IP Phone’s funky ringing ability. We left after we got all her Linux problems solved (She didn’t need my help for that, I’ll tell you.. :P).

We headed back to her apartment and watched a movie but ended up falling asleep rather quickly. We woke up Saturday and hung out all day, going out to eat, shop, etc. She returned me to the hotel at 2am Sunday so I could check out and catch my plane. I am really glad I got to spend some time with her; our relationship has been really strained since she moved, and I think that this time we healed a little bit… (At least I did.)

So the DCS team left the hotel at 4:20am to catch our 6:25am(PDT) flight. We made it in time, but we cut it a little close. Boba lost his ticket (which is why we left the hotel at 4:20 instead of 4), and we left him behind to deal with the ticket counter. He never made it on our plane, and I am not quite sure how he made out…

Today was flight-hell. I got back into Rochester at 4pm(EDT), but a whole day of flying really tired me out. I went to the Continental desk to get my ticket back to NJ (7pm), and the lady told me that there was an earlier flight (5:30pm) that I could be put on standby for. She took my bag and I went to the gate. I got on the flight, and ended up in EWR by 7:20pm. That is when the fun began…..

So I get there, am greeted by Mom and Larissa, and we head to the baggage carousel… What fun that became. My bag never appeared, and when I went to claims, they said that my bag was still coming in on the original flight I was scheduled for. I grudgingly agreed to wait for the later flight to come in so I could get my bag.

That flight was scheduled to arrive at 8:25pm, which came and passed. I tried to ask people for help several times, to no avail, and the screens told me that the plane was “ON TIME” and scheduled to arrive at 8:25pm (of course, it was already 9:45pm at this point, so it was obviously inaccurate).

I then went on a wild goose chase around the airport trying to find out information about when the flight was going to arrive. I was ultimately found out that the plane hadn’t even left Rochester due to bad weather, and that my bag was stranded there.

I went to the Baggage Claim again to ask if they could ship my bag to me once it arrived. The kind woman there (who was able to deal with me, and as you can imagine, I couldn’t have been that fun to deal with), told me that my bag had been in Newark all along, and showed me to my bag, sitting in a big pile. Apparently my bag came up separate from the rest, and no one bothered to tell me that the 8 times I asked about it. Bastards.

I am tired, jetlagged, and frustrated. Thank god my dad has a Cable Modem now so I don’t have to deal with no bandwidth in addition to all this. :)