American Airlines Sucks Beans!

This is not going to be about knitting, as you can probably glean from the title gentle readers, so if you do not want to read a diatribe about American Airlines and the many ways in which they suck, stop here & wait for me to post about my finished Green Gable (it's blocking now). If you do want to read my opinion of American Airlines sadly misguided policies and lack of planning, keep reading. I had to fly to New York for the day on Thursday, leaving O'Hare at 6:55 am and returning at 8:45 pm. Now I understand that American cannot control the weather and flight related delays, so that is not what I am complaining about. I was delayed 2 hours getting into NY and missed my first meeting, but that was weather related. I figured I would be delayed on the way back, but I never thought I would be delayed for 15 hours, literally spending the night at LaGuardia. I arrived at the airport at 7:15 pm for my 8:45 flight, which was now due to depart at 10:45. I got on the standby waitlist for the 3 Chicago bound flights that were due to depart prior to my flight, but didn't get on any of them (there were 70 people on the standby list). When the 7:40 pm flight finally arrived at the airport at 9:40 pm, the ticket agents yelled at everyone to get on the plane asap since the crew was due to go "illegal" any second. So everyone rushed onto the plane (old people, babies, etc.) only to get kicked off 10 minutes later since the crew went illegal (which means they were on duty more than 15 hours, and according to FAA rules couldn't fly). When my flight arrived at 11:00, the same thing happened. We got on board as quickly as possible, but the flight attendant said "I don't know why they're boarding you, we go illegal in 5 minutes" and everyone knows you can't board a huge jet in 5 minutes. They cancelled my flight, but the 7:40 got rescheduled to depart at 1:00 am, I was now 9th on the standby list. They boarded the flight, then started going through the standby list, my name was the last one called, they handed me a boarding pass, walked me down the ramp, then sadly, no seat, they had miscounted. I must admit a tear ran down my cheek at that point. The ticket agents at the gate told us to go back to the check-in counter to find out about hotels, but the check-in counter was closed until 3:30 am. The only American employees we could find were in the Baggage Claim area and they said "there are no hotels, go sleep in the terminal". The terminal was closed, and it was now 2:00 am, so I found a chair and sat down until the check-in counter opened. Okay, this story is getting super boring, so I'm just going to skip directly to the parts that were American's fault.

1) Where are the engineers and logistics people? As the flight attendant pointed out, American knew approximately 6 hours earlier in the day that the crew would go illegal at LaGuardia and people would be stuck there overnight, why didn't they arrange to get an alternative crew there to get us out?

2) I understand that American wants to treat it's best clients well, but they should not allow Platinum members who want to catch an earlier flight to jump ahead of regular clients who have been stuck at the airport all night on the standby list.

3) If American cancels my flight, thus leaving me at the airport all night, shouldn't they help me find accomodations? As a woman who travels alone most of the time, I do not appreciate their lack of concern for my safety.

4) The second flight out the next morning (7:15 am or something) was overbooked & they offered ticket holders a $300 voucher and to put them on the 10:10 am flight if they gave up their seats. My heart lept in my chest as 2 people offered to take the deal. My heart sank when the gate agent told those people they "didn't need their seats after all." They didn't need the seats because none of the people booked on that flight got bumped, yet they gave no consideration to the handful of us who had been at the airport all night.

Thoughts on the Harlot book

I finished the Harlot book that Lynae picked up for me at the Oakbrook appearance last week. Here are my thoughts: While Knitting Rules made me laugh out loud on the train (to my embarrassment, I mean I know the guy sitting next to me was thinking "she's reading a knitting book and laughing out loud") this one merely provoked a gentle snort of recognition from time to time. Also, she's missing three diseases (in her section on knitters' diseases, pgs. 131-140), One: Frogitis, where you find a mistake in your knitting or the color is pooling strangely or whatever and you frog your whole project and start again. Perfectionists are especially prone to this disease and there is no known cure; at one time or another I have frogged nearly every project I have ever knit. Two: Covetitis: where you covet everything you see on other people's blogs and in fact immediately order the supplies to knit that which you covet even if it's 1 in the morning (especially! if it's one in the morning); this is how I amassed most of my stash. Also you are especially vulnerable to this disease if you are studying for a big test and using your computer a lot. The only way to avoid this disease is to stop surfing knitting blogs and stop attending snbs. Three: Seeing Knitting in Everything, family members can even catch this disease. Last Saturday I went out for sushi with one of my kids and we went to the Japanese grocery store attached to the sushi shop & she said "Mom, come here quick they have really fancy knitting needles!" They were chopsticks! Fake jade, mother of pearl encrusted pointy chopsticks. Ha!

And finally, in her list of knitting songs (pg. 173) she is missing the best knitting song ever; I am of course referring to Weezer-The Sweater Song (If you want to destroy my sweater, pull this thread as I walk away, watch me unravel I'll soon be naked...) If you never heard it before, head on over to itunes right now!

Green Gable

We had an awesome time in Florida! The weather was perfect & I have to say the beaches were the most beautiful I have ever seen. White sand like sugar and clear, aqua blue water. One day we went to Seaside (where they filmed The Truman Show) and rented bikes and rode around. All the houses are painted pastel colors and have names on the front. I yelped out in suprise when we rode by Green Gables. I had cast on Green Gables somewhere in Alabama on the way down & I actually had my knitting with me, so I had my middle child hold it up in front of the house, how cool is that? I had originally cast on Green Gable last summer, but made a mistake in the lace and frogged it; it sat in my stash all winter, but spring break seemed an appropriate time to start it again, and now I'm nearly finished, hooray. My goal is to wear it to Maryland Sheep and Wool in a month.