Welcome to Glenn's Blog!

Here I will periodically post random thoughts and stories about what's going on in my life and the world around me. As if anyone cared. But seriously, you've found your way here, so hopefully you will enjoy at least some of what I have to say, even if you aren't entirely interested in it. At the least, it should be a good way to waste time.

Monday, June 29, 2009

Stuck in Houston?

Well, tomorrow we leave on our trip to England. I'm certainly looking forward to leaving the 100+ degree temperatures here in Sacramento, and settling for the mid-80's-plus-a-chance-of-rain that they are having in England right now. As it turns out, however, we almost we're looking at being stranded in Houston on the return trip. I went online this morning to do do our check-in and boarding pass printing, because the email message I received earlier convinced me that it would be a good idea to do. Not that I wouldn't have anyway, because, hey, who doesn't want to save a little time in line at the airport check-in counter?

As it turns out, you can't print boarding passes, not just because we have baggage to check but because they need to visually inspect your photo ID. So, the email lied, or perhaps just played a good joke on me. But it worked out in my favor, because as I was logging in online to not check in and not print my boarding passes, I noticed that the last leg of our return journey was conspicuously missing from our itinerary. 

So, I called their convenient 1-800 number to find out what the deal was. Now, several months ago I had received a very serious looking email sporting a vivid red exclamation point, stating that our itinerary had changed, that the world as we knew it was ending, and that our entire trip was certainly doomed. As it turned out then, our initial outgoing flight time had changed from 6:05am to 6:00am. Whew! That was a close call. This time, what had happened was, our last leg of the return flight had been changed to be 50 minutes later.

This was apparently too much stress to place on their automated system, because it didn't even bother to send me a serious looking email. The system just gave up, and decided that the trip was surely doomed this time, and so it just removed us from the flight altogether. And gave our seats away to another couple. Well, in the end, the kind people at the other end of the phone line scratched their heads for awhile, mumbled to themselves about how they have no idea why this would or could happen, and fixed the problem. Or so I hope. I now have a new piece of paper that clearly states that I am booked on the return flight. I'll just put it right next to the other piece of paper that clearly states that I was booked on that flight the first time. And hopefully, there will be no more changes that will drive their system to further despair.

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