Seattle Washington 2009 BellaOnline Gathering
Monday morning I woke up bright and early at 8am even though I wanted to sleep until 9am to get my full 8 hours of sleep. No dice! The bright sun shining in through the bank of windows made that very unlikely. I got up, showered, and began the final preparations to leave.I called Bob on Skype and took him on a virtual tour of the house, carrying the laptop around with me from floor to floor. It worked rather nicely!
Then I left him on the kitchen table while I went around doing the final cleaning - stripping the beds, gathering the towels, starting the laundry, hand washing the remaining dishes. I took out the trash and made sure all the doors were locked.
I called a taxi agency I found on the web and asked them to arrive at 10:30am. I asked for the price to SeaTac and they said it was $20 - when the taxi which had taken me here had charged $30! I'm curious now about the other taxi. I went around taking final photos of the house and had my two bags by the front door. Just about 10:38 the taxi pulled up and we were off!
I saw an eagle being chased by a smaller black bird as we drive along towards SeaTac. Everything was lush and green, very pretty. It was about a half hour drive to get to the airport to my spot. I had a $10, three $1s and then two $5s folded into an origami butterfly with pipe-cleaner antennae in my purse. I gave him the butterfly plus $12 :) He gave me black a blank receipt. That always strikes me as a little odd, that they leave it blank, but OK.
I went in to the real tiny JetBlue desk. The two check-in kiosks were right by the counter with the attendant. I signed in and looked at my seat. It was - again - a center seat. I clicked on it to find a window or aisle. The ONLY non-center seat free left on the plane (and there were only 3 or 4 center seats open) was another exit row! I even asked the attendant about it and he said the flight was full. So I cancelled out of my seat change and clicked next for the "one bag" screen. Then I got a screen saying I was being charged $40 for my special seat! I hit CANCEL and it still printed a receipt for $40.
I asked the attendant what was happening and he called in. Apparently it had to do with my flight out from Boston - when I "upgraded" to the window seat that time, it affected my flight back too. So now I have to see if I am being charged $80 for seats that didn't really end up being worth it. Especially since this one is still a center seat. He said "oh but it has extra leg room". I asked, "Does it recline?" He said "yes they all do." I replied, "no, the one I had coming out from Boston didn't recline."
In any case, there was of course people waiting behind me so I didn't want to drag it out. So he gave me my boarding pass and took my luggage - which was now down to only 44 pounds. Hurrah! He didn't ever check my license or tell me where the gate was. It wasn't that hard of course to find how to get to security. The line moved quickly and soon I was walking along towards my gate. There were interesting sculptures along the way which I enjoyed.
I passed an African Lounge which I took a photo of for my friend Jeanne. The menu did not seem African at all and the decor was suspicious. Finally I got to the end of the gate area for A10. There was a little restaurant near it so I sat down to get some food. I realized that I'd left my laptop unplugged during all of the "Bob Tour" time and now I had almost no battery life left, and there was no plug around. Still, enough juice to type in a bunch of notes about what had happened up until now.
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