Airlines have seriously cracked down on everything. When my mom and I flew to LA on Continental, they stuck tight to the two item carry on rule, no wiggle room allowed. In the past I was allowed to bring my carry on luggage, a backpack, and a purse, but this time they didn't allow it. But wait, let me explain the back story.
During this trip my cousins, sister, and I planned a snowboarding trip. Unfortunately this required lots of gear. My sister had left for California a week before me, and hadn't brought her hiking boots to wear in the snowy mountains. Since I had to bring my rain boots + her hiking boots + other snow gear, I opted to bring a larger carry on. After looking online at the carry on requirements, we decided that this suitcase was within the allowed size. When we got to the security entrance checkpoint however, the lady stopped us and told us to try to fit the luggage into the carry on measurement thing to see if it was too big. The suitcase was fat because I had piled on the rain boots and hiking boots, so it was too fat to fit into the measurement cage. So my mom and I opened up the suitcase to see what we could do. The only option was to take off our regular shoes and wear those troublesome boots. I donned the rain boots. She wore the hiking boots. The whole time we were standing there, laughing ridiculously. We must have looked like fools. We certainly felt like it because, well, it wasn't raining, and we weren't going hiking, but here we were in the middle of the airport, under the scrutiny of two nitpicking guards, wearing these thick out of context shoes. The two guards just stood there stoically while we laughed, which made it even more bizarre. After taking off the top layer of shoes, the suitcase fit the size requirements. But wait, there's more! We approached the guards expectantly, waiting to be let through, when the man stops us with his broken English. "Only two carry on. Two!" He points to my offending handbag accusingly. I sighed and opened my suitcase, again. I smashed the purse into my suitcase, stood up, fish rain boots and all, and walked towards the guards for the third time. Thank goodness we were ushered in. I half expected them to point to my butt and say, "Sorry, too big. Can't let you in." And I would have responded, "Sorry, can't help you there." Hahaha.
Everything on the plane must be paid for now. You're hungry? Want some TV? Too bad, you gotta pay. What ever happened to the good old days when meals came with the ticket and screens dropped down to play a movie? I guess those days are officially gone. Oh well, I'll live. I guess I was just one of the few people who actually kind of liked airplane food. If that makes me weird then so be it.
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Near Misses
Merry Christmas! I'm blogging from Los Angeles because I'm here for a week visiting grandparents. The past couple weeks have been a little crazy, but in a good way I think.
I'll start with finals. My finals week wasn't supposed to be very stressful. I had two in class final and three projects. My first final was Tuesday night for graphic design art history. Or so I thought. Tuesday morning I get an email from my creative writing teacher asking why I wasn't present for the final last night. She thought something had happened to me because I've been present for every class, and it was uncharacteristic for me to be absent for the final. Thus began my freak out mode. I had thought that my final for that class was the following Monday. I checked the official finals schedule and sure enough, it was the following Monday. But on the other website she had made it the previous Monday, even though Monday was still considered a reading day. I hurriedly emailed her asking if I could turn it in two days late, and she graciously gave me till Monday to turn it in. Awesome. The testing screw ups should have ended there. They didn't.
Tuesday night was the art history final. All went well. Or so I thought. My teacher pretty much mapped out everything that was going to be on the test, and we had to know slides, unknown slides, definitions, quotes, and write an essay to top it off. On Wednesday morning as I was going to class, I was thinking about the Tuesday night test and realized that we hadn't been tested on term definitions. Offhandedly I mentioned it to classmates in my Wednesday morning class who had taken the test as well, and they told me that there were terms to define. I was really confused. What the heck? It turns out that I completely missed that section in my eagerness to write the essay which was the last section. Shoot. Thankfully since my Wednesday morning teacher was the same as my Tuesday night one, I asked him right after class if I could do (I was going to say "redo" but I can't redo something I never did) the section and he let me.
You would have thought that at this point I had learned my lesson at being careless, but I hadn't. When I went to take my marketing final, I didn't realize that they had changed the room the final would be in, and it wasn't in the classroom where the class was normally held. Therefore I went to the room and no one was there. Please not again.I feverishly (yes, feverishly. At this point I was frantic) ran to the computer lab and looked up the right room number. I was only ten minutes late but managed to be the last one in.
After the first incident with my creative writing class, one would think I would be super grateful and thank God for His mercy and grace. Not so. I was grateful to my teachers, but felt a sort of entitlement because I had been a good student throughout the semester. As if I deserved their understanding. After the second screw up and my teacher didn't give me a hard time about it, I was thankful that I had remembered to mention it to my classmates, otherwise I would have completely missed 20% of the test. But I credited myself for having discovered it myself. It was only after getting my marketing classroom screwed up that I thought okay God, you have my attention now. Everything worked out for the good, not because of me but because God was in control. It was actually a blessing in disguise that I had an extra week to work on creative writing stuff. When I was talking to my classmates about the test the morning after, I wasn't even being serious. It was just something to talk about. But if I hadn't said what I said at that moment then I would have been in trouble. For my marketing final, when I entered the business building, I was alerted to a possible room change when I heard a random, agitated student outside the building talking on his cellphone about a room change. God was truly sovereign, and He showed me that through all the mess ups, and he allowed me not just one, but multiple do-overs. I didn't deserve any of it, because I had messed it up on my own. God reminded me that yes, I am careless and absent-minded and prideful, and I just can't do things right on my own. Sure, I can be more careful next time, and I should be, but I'm bound to make mistakes that I can't really go back and correct, but God provided a way so that I could get myself out of it. Thanks God, and I'm sorry that I'm so quick to attribute things to myself--to try to pull myself up by my own bootstraps without noticing that you provided the bootstraps in the first place.
So this is the lesson: 1) Don't be like me and not pay attention to when/where/what is on the final. 2) When you mess up when/where/what is on the final and God bails you out, give Him the credit. This is assuming that you completely bypassed #1, but even when you do pay attention and get the whens wheres and whats right, thank God that you did. Don't take it for granted.
I'll start with finals. My finals week wasn't supposed to be very stressful. I had two in class final and three projects. My first final was Tuesday night for graphic design art history. Or so I thought. Tuesday morning I get an email from my creative writing teacher asking why I wasn't present for the final last night. She thought something had happened to me because I've been present for every class, and it was uncharacteristic for me to be absent for the final. Thus began my freak out mode. I had thought that my final for that class was the following Monday. I checked the official finals schedule and sure enough, it was the following Monday. But on the other website she had made it the previous Monday, even though Monday was still considered a reading day. I hurriedly emailed her asking if I could turn it in two days late, and she graciously gave me till Monday to turn it in. Awesome. The testing screw ups should have ended there. They didn't.
Tuesday night was the art history final. All went well. Or so I thought. My teacher pretty much mapped out everything that was going to be on the test, and we had to know slides, unknown slides, definitions, quotes, and write an essay to top it off. On Wednesday morning as I was going to class, I was thinking about the Tuesday night test and realized that we hadn't been tested on term definitions. Offhandedly I mentioned it to classmates in my Wednesday morning class who had taken the test as well, and they told me that there were terms to define. I was really confused. What the heck? It turns out that I completely missed that section in my eagerness to write the essay which was the last section. Shoot. Thankfully since my Wednesday morning teacher was the same as my Tuesday night one, I asked him right after class if I could do (I was going to say "redo" but I can't redo something I never did) the section and he let me.
You would have thought that at this point I had learned my lesson at being careless, but I hadn't. When I went to take my marketing final, I didn't realize that they had changed the room the final would be in, and it wasn't in the classroom where the class was normally held. Therefore I went to the room and no one was there. Please not again.I feverishly (yes, feverishly. At this point I was frantic) ran to the computer lab and looked up the right room number. I was only ten minutes late but managed to be the last one in.
After the first incident with my creative writing class, one would think I would be super grateful and thank God for His mercy and grace. Not so. I was grateful to my teachers, but felt a sort of entitlement because I had been a good student throughout the semester. As if I deserved their understanding. After the second screw up and my teacher didn't give me a hard time about it, I was thankful that I had remembered to mention it to my classmates, otherwise I would have completely missed 20% of the test. But I credited myself for having discovered it myself. It was only after getting my marketing classroom screwed up that I thought okay God, you have my attention now. Everything worked out for the good, not because of me but because God was in control. It was actually a blessing in disguise that I had an extra week to work on creative writing stuff. When I was talking to my classmates about the test the morning after, I wasn't even being serious. It was just something to talk about. But if I hadn't said what I said at that moment then I would have been in trouble. For my marketing final, when I entered the business building, I was alerted to a possible room change when I heard a random, agitated student outside the building talking on his cellphone about a room change. God was truly sovereign, and He showed me that through all the mess ups, and he allowed me not just one, but multiple do-overs. I didn't deserve any of it, because I had messed it up on my own. God reminded me that yes, I am careless and absent-minded and prideful, and I just can't do things right on my own. Sure, I can be more careful next time, and I should be, but I'm bound to make mistakes that I can't really go back and correct, but God provided a way so that I could get myself out of it. Thanks God, and I'm sorry that I'm so quick to attribute things to myself--to try to pull myself up by my own bootstraps without noticing that you provided the bootstraps in the first place.
So this is the lesson: 1) Don't be like me and not pay attention to when/where/what is on the final. 2) When you mess up when/where/what is on the final and God bails you out, give Him the credit. This is assuming that you completely bypassed #1, but even when you do pay attention and get the whens wheres and whats right, thank God that you did. Don't take it for granted.
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