up up and away

well i made it here...
with barely any sleep...delta was NOT oversold, there was a middle seat between me and the guy at the window, BUT he read three entire papers and crunched EVERY page really small and in half and then thirds so he could read the articles close to his face and not hold his hands out.
do you know how annoying it is to hear newspaper crunched and folded every 2.5 minutes? yea. no sleep.
THEN even though we were all instructed to CLOSE the windows so we could..oh, i don't know..SLEEP!!....he opened his at dawn to watch the "beautiful sunrise" all the way from london to frankfurt (ie, last 2 hrs of the flight--streaming light. on my face. thank you.)

aaaanyway, got to the airport--
my checked bag drama unfolds:
first bag: five pounds over the 50 pound max, so the skycap made me take out some books that CLEARLY did not weigh 5 pounds, but then he said it was ok...think it was cuz i was wearing a tight shirt.
SECOND bag (delta charges 150 for a 2nd checked bag)- so i made mine a carry on--except..it weighed 47 pounds and looked like a mac truck.
so i hid this bag from view from:
skycap,
security checkpoint
gate agents
airplane entrance agents
and then..the nice airline attendant helped me HOIST it up (over the overhead bin one row ahead of me- just in case it would fall and break my head..wanted it to be the other guy's head).

And so- with my huge backpack of my : laptop/laptop bag, all plugs, all electronics, food, water, three opera scores and other various things that made THAT bag also seem like i was breaking the "one purse/one carry on item" rule....

I MADE it through!