It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's a...Flying Cattle Car?

So I feel as though an entire post needs to be dedicated to the indecency that has become air travel.  I'm having a hard time coming up with another aspect of our modern life where we pay so much to get so little. 

Sadly, I flew an exponentially greater amount when I was in middle school and high school than I do now.  With a few scant exceptions, I have really only made trips to Texas, and even then I usually take "Connections" planes. 

I suppose it was a bit of a shock to me at how poor flying had become when I experienced both a big plane and big airports for the first time in a while this past weekend. 

First, PROS:
1-Continental now offers DirecTV on their bigger planes. It is THE best $6 I've ever spent-hands down.  Not only did it entertain me for the 3 plus hours I was on the plane, but on Thursday I got to watch two of my favorite shows: Real Housewives of New York and Bethenny Getting Married, as I was flying over the country.  How cool is that??


CONS:
-Everything else
-Since I was flying with Lauren (who flies a TON) I got to reap the benefits of Elite Access with her.  Unfortunately, this means almost nothing because people stampede towards the boarding line as soon as they call first class.  Why are they so eager to get on a cramped airplane where they no longer get to breathe fresh air?
Probably because NO ONE checks their bags anymore (likely because of the ridiculous fees) so people have to fight for available overhead space. 
After 9-11, I think most people went to checking bags to try to circumvent all of the new rules, but now that you have to pay, its back to images circa 1995 of women bringing a bulging carry-on, a vera bradley duffel and a tote bag purse onto the plane.  Not cool...

-It has been quite awhile since I've had to fly alone on a plane other than the small ones where one side of the aisle is a single seat.  The degree to which you had to be all up close and personal with weird people you don't know is borderline unacceptable.  If they can't make the seats bigger, they should at least fashion bigger dividers so people aren't actually touching arms as much as the annoying couple that insists on holding hands at dinner. 

-Also, where do these people come from that are flying? I'll throw it out there: my ticket was about $350 give or take and I really had to consider whether or not I wanted to spend that amount on a trip.  Though I've obviously cut back a lot since living on my own, I'm still able to indulge myself in a decently luxurious lifestyle and I still had to consider it.  As I looked around the airport, I had to ask myself how, probably 1 in every 5 people, ever had the cash to make it to the airport.  This probably sounds bad to say, but hey it's my blog and I don't have to make it PC.  Perhaps it's because I am older now and am capturing the full experience, but I used to think flying was normal yet still somewhat "exclusive" for lack of a better word. Now I literally feel like I may as well be at a bus station. 

As you can tell, I was rather disillusioned by this weekend's travels, but it was all worth it for the visit itself.  I hope that it gets bad enough in the near future so that they can finally regulate and keep the weirdos/rule breakers in check to make flying a little bit less tortuous. 

Toddler Birthday Blowout Bash

This past weekend I went with my friend Lauren to visit my surrogate family in Texas (her family) and attend the party of the year, if you haven't heard about it already. Carolina Grace is turning 2 this Wednesday, and we were also celebrating Connor turning 4 in September, since they will be in London for the actual event.  This qualifies for a Toddler Birthday Pool Party Rager.
It all kicked off around 10-you know the typical start time of any good party.
We put on our finest bathing suits and prepared ourselves to see some sweet jumps, and some big arms (big arm strokes, that is).
Melissa and Lauren made the kids some awesome birthday cakes, while I watched and made some pretty important executive decisions.

In case you can't tell already, Connor has pictures of Robot Roscoe & Co. on his cake, and Gracie has Lady in Pink on her cake. They are both from Backyardigans (I think).  

You can also note the shots of Juicy Juice ready to be consumed by the out of control party-ers.  They were brought to us on a tray, which I have to say looked kind of funny.  

Later that day, after we all had or attempted to have nap time pass out after birthday rager part one, we got together for some Fajitas and some present opening.  

Getting lip gloss applied and wearing just a few of the necklaces she received.  

Testing out her new pillow pet. It's a pillow, it's a pet, it's a pillow pet! 

Fire Follows Me

So ever since my house fire incident at Sweet Briar, I've been a little weary of things catching on fire.

Apparently, fire just likes to follow me...

I drove up to Delaware where Lauren lives so that we could fly out of Philadelphia to Houston for our trip to see her family.  The plan was to leave the house at 4pm, and we were walking down the hallway out of the house, right on time when the power goes out.  It had gotten increasingly dark in the last 30 minutes and was clearly going to storm, so we figured it would come back on quickly and still made our way outside.
The reason for the outage was made abundantly more clear when we walked out and noticed this little situation out on the power line:

It's not nearly as noticeable in the pic, but if you look right at the middle power line you may notice a small fire/sparking coming from the power line.  It appears as though lightning decided to strike the tree right in front of the Collins' house, have the limb land on a power line, and some sort of combination of the two cause the power line to spark. EXCELLENT. 

After a tense 20 minutes of running around phone calling, re-arranging, and planning, we ended up leaving for the airport with PLENTY of time, especially since our plane ended up being delayed for a total of two hours.  Unfortunately, Lauren's husband Sean could not make the trip since he bravely sacrificed himself to stay home and take care of the house and the dogs (since they didn't know when the power would be back on---it turned out to be early the next morning).  

When we got to our terminal, it was packed with delayed passengers, but we were lucky enough to get a table at a bar when I could enjoy this: 

The important thing is we made it there....

Milly Visits the Office

Milly stopped by to help me finish up my work before I left for my trip for Texas: 

First she did some crucial typing up of some letters, and found time to get on gchat as you can see

Then she printed out the letters and mailed them off

Then she barked out orders from her big chair

Then after that she was just really tired and took a nap in my lap

PS I finally broke down and got a new camera because my other one took approximately 5 years to take a picture. I got a Canon Powershot and the pictures are remarkably better in quality and I can capture Milly before she moves. Totally worth it. I'm looking forward to using it in Texas this weekend!

Mega Adventure Monday

This past Monday turned out to be a lot more interesting than I thought it was going to be.  I went home for lunch as I often do, and took Milly out after I ate something.  When we returned from said potty walk--hey whatdo ya know!--the door was locked. Whooopsss.  See, we have one of those little locks that you turn the knob horizontally or vertically to lock/unlock.  The fatal flaw is that you can open the door while it is still locked, however you can obviously not get back in.  This makes it very easy to get locked out and all of us have done it on several occassions.  Luckily, in the past, someone else came home very shortly after, someone else was inside, or I could walk to Mike's house and he was home. On this day, none of that was true. 

What WAS lucky was that I am within walking distance of my office.  The bars where we often go out to (and walk home from) are right near by, so I knew it was very doable.  It turns out that it's a lot more difficult in 98 degree heat and you're totally sober.  Also, if you haven't put two and two together yet, I definitely had Milly with me.  Luckily, I work at a really casual office and everyone was super pumped that Milly stopped by.  I had to call my mom to get Mike's cell phone number (I only have my house phone and my parent's cell phones memorized) and then he graciously saved the day and brought by his key to my apt to the office. 

I wish I had a pictures of Milly chillin at the office, but both my cell phone and my camera were in my purse-in my house.  She mainly sat in my lap while I did work and laid her little head on the arm rest of my chair.  I actually was very productive that afternoon.  She also got to run suicides up and down our long hallway per the instigation of our attorney.  This including a bounding leap every single time over the metal divider that is in the hallway floor. I have no idea why that was necessary but apparently its the dog version of "don't step on the crack". 

It could have been a really bad day but it kind of turned out to be a fun little adventure, thanks to a lot of people being willing to help me out in my stupidity. 

Why do today what you can put off til tomorrow?

So I'm done with school, but I still have to take the pesky little CLA exam in late July.  The book has got to be about 4" thick, and I haven't even read through all of it once yet. Plus, thanks to Mike's persistance, I chose Esate Planning as one of my specialities, so I have to learn about his sick fascination with boring-ness. At least its not tax.....

Here's a list of things I've done to avoid studying:

1-Target trips-for specific purposes or for no reason in particular--there have been lots of them

2-laying out and studying at the same time--i did in fact bring the book to the pool, but it didn't get opened...but it was there...

3-organizing/cleaning my room

4-organizing/cleaning Mike's condo

5-Grooming Milly

6- Cooking "real" dinners

7-Running really important errands, like getting my jeans hemmed

8-Doing Laundry

9-Cleaning out the refrigerator

10--as of last night--getting on my hands and knees on the bathroom floor and scrubbing the grout of the tile with Tilex to make it white again. Yeah-I have a problem.

Things aren't looking good for me for this exam, but my apt is going to be really clean!

Dorkasaurus Rex

I found this picture tonight when I was looking for another older picture on my computer. I don't even remember taking it, but it's hilarious. She definitely is a member of the awkward, dorkasaurus rex family to which she belongs.  This was right after we moved to Richmond. I can't believe it's been 11 months! 

Just so Milly doesn't leave me any mean comments, here's a cute one taken just a few weeks after I got her: 

She still loves my Ugg boots, but she'd need a bigger basket to cuddle in now. 

I think it's safe to say we've both grown up a lot since then (and hopefully have gotten a little bit less awkward).

3-Day Weekend: A Proposition

So as with all vacation time of any sort, as soon as it's over you decide that it should definitely "be like that" all the time.  This past Memorial Day weekend was no exception.  I honestly don't really remember ever caring that it was a holiday weekend until this year. I was always already out of school for summer, so why did it matter that it was a "holiday"?  This year...it mattered.  Our office could barely even focus on getting through work on Friday, because we were so longing for said 3-day weekend. A holiday from work is even cooler than a holiday from school.

We didn't really do anything "exciting" per say over the holiday. No beach, no road trips, no sunning ourselves, and not even :that much: drinking.  We did more fun things: sleep in, sleep some more, run some errands, shop, watch TV, sleep again. We rarely have that luxury-and by we I mean Mike, but I include myself in his lifestyle. 

This of course leads me to wonder, if a 3-Day weekend is so great for our mental health, why isn't it like that every week? Would it make as much of an improvement as we think or would we just then long for a 4-day weekend?

Reasons why a 3-Day Weekend is great:

1) You can enjoy Sunday for what it was intended to be by Jesus: a day of rest and relaxation.  Sunday is rarely that restful because you have to spend it running errands and doing work to prepare for the next day. Especially in an academic world, you feel like you have to spend most of it studying as well.  I don't think Jesus would approve.

2) We need a day where retail stores are open, but your average business offices are closed.  Then you can spend all of Monday getting your errands out of the way.  In retail you work shifts and not 9-5 M-F anyways, so they get other days off. 

3) You are a lot more rested, so you can be a lot more productive in the remaining four days. You can probably even work longer on those four days if you needed to because you get that whole day off.

4) You could have longer to travel on the weekends. This is also a crucial mental health element to be able to get out of town, and it would cut down on people wanting to take off...maybe? Plus, people would be in a much better mood during the work week.

5) It would just be really, really AWESOME.