travel day

Well hello there from about 20,000 feet in the air. I’m on the airplane!
I was SUPPOSED to be landing right now. But for some reason, this day (and previous night) has proved to be the most “interesting” travel day to a gig that I’ve had so far.

Beginning with last night. I know this always happens—I can’t sleep well when I have to wake up for an alarm for something other than the ordinary. The ordinary being rehearsal, costume fitting, something within the FIVE to TEN mile radius of my sleeping location.
No, I had to wake up for the car service to take me to the airport.
Which meant, I slept from about 2:30-4:30. Then my body decided to wake up on its own and be wide awake until 7:30, at which time I decided to get up and get ready for my 8am pickup.

And isn’t it SO fitting that I asked the car to pick me up at 8 assuming there would be traffic for at least an hour like there usually is, and I arrived at the airport at 8:40.
My bag weighed 50.5 pounds and the check-in lady ALMOST made me pay the overage fee for HALF a pound! I told her I’d take something out..and she decided she didn’t feel like waiting for me to do that and just checked it. (and then charged me 15 bucks for it).
I proceeded to the cafeteria since I didn’t want to go through security too early (after all, it was now 8:42 and my flight departed at 11:15!), bought a banana and a water and sat around listening to my iphone tunes for a while.

At about 10:15 I went through security and arrived two seconds later at my gate (not before the guy in front of me had to ask three different guards if he needed to take his computer OUT of the carrying case).
----- YES! Do you never fly?! I mean, REALLY? Did you not hear the lady guard say at LEAST five times while we have been in this line that ALL COMPUTERS MUST BE IN SEPARATE BINS AND OUT OF THE CASE?!
Really.-----

THEN I took the most amazing picture with my iphone—shown in this post for your viewing pleasure.

I mean, heaven forbid some Chinese or Taiwanese underpaid assembly-line worker should be approached by an international terrorist organization and forced/asked/paid to put bomb-making gelatinous materials INSIDE of the snow-globe with a picture of snowflakes falling at the Empire State Building, and somehow get that EXACT snow-globe shipped to the “EverythingNYC” store at the LaGuardia Airport, only to be bought on the exact date of arrival by another part of that same terrorist cell who has just been activated and has already lived in New York City free of any suspicion and now wants to use said snow-globe and its suspicious liquids inside to threaten a flight to….wait for it….Milwaukee.

Come ON people! Really? Snow-globes? Could you not come up with anything that would be MORE of a threat…like, ohhh…say….I don’t know—Easter Peeps? I hear you can somehow manipulate that sweet yellow marshmellow-y mass into concealing a PREGNANT WOMAN.

Ok, really though, the comedy of errors is just beginning.
I arrived at the gate.
11:15 departure is now pushed to 12.
12 turns into 12:30.
We board around 1—yay! We’re all on the plane AND the guy next to me moved up into a free row so I’m sitting by myself.
And then the intercom of doom comes on.
…..Ladies and gentlemen,…bla bla bla..bad weather, no Western runways are being allowed to take off (and I’m flying West)…bla bla bla…we don’t have a lot of FUEL so we’re going to turn the engines off (WHAT?!) bla bla bla…stay tuned.

Oooookeeeeey dokey! So I nap for a while. 40 minutes later…
Still nothing. There is a line of airplanes behind us, I’m getting hungry because of course, I thought I’d be at my destination eating lunch by now. Not so much.
Up next- the flight attendants pick up the intercom phone and say—since we’re sitting here waiting until who knows when, we’re going to play…AIRPLANE TRIVIA!
Yayyyy! Isn’t that SO much FUN?!

1. What is MY name?
2. What is the HEAD flight attendant’s name?
3. What are the names of all the 7 dwarves? (umm, really?)
4. What is the city code for where we are flying?
By this point, about 3 people are paying attention, I’m being sarcastic about the whole thing to the singer that is also on my flight to the same destination, and then..the next questions---
5. For the prize of a cinnamon roll---WHO wants to come up here and sing the national anthem?

COME ON people! There are four opera singers on this flight!
But the other three didn’t volunteer. And since I was getting pretty hungry, I decided to stand up and sing the national anthem (after speeding through the words in my head to make sure I remembered them!)…and while it was not the WORST live performance I’ve ever given…somewhere less than superbowl and more than college varsity game…
It was actually pretty hilarious. Of course I went for the octave high note at the very end…and then people clapped. And then I got my cinnabun.

Now that I think about it, it was probably left over from this morning’s flight TO New York..but I don’t care. I’m going to eat it when I get hungry. Possibly now.

Oh. The update—the flight left at 2:30 on a runway heading EAST and then did a sky turnaround through the no-visibility and extreme turbulence of the crappy weather clouds out today.

Two more hours to our destination.


(posted from the sanctuary of my extended stay hotel room which will be my home for the next 4 weeks.)