My Steel City Experience.

I returned in semi-one piece from Pittsburgh. I only went up overnight for a class regarding the EU's REACH certifications. Sounds fun, doesn't it?

1. Yay for my coworker saying, "I think you should take the Tom Tom with you."
2. Boo to Chevy Cobalts.
3. Boo to PennDot for posting "Blvd of the Allies DETOUR" and then not posting any additional detour signs.
4. Yay to have a freezing cold hotel room.
5. Boo for having a hotel in the ghetto, four locks on the door, and not sleeping.
6. Yay for having the Tom Tom again and for Pepsi products.
7. Boo for rain in Pittsburgh.


I went to the class, got some basic information, and I left. I got the airport, and I asked to be put on standby for an earlier flight. The flight was overbooked; it was impossible. So I sat in a zoned-out state with my cell phone in hand, backpack on my back staring into the distance when, at 5:45 (20 min after the earlier flight was supposed to take off), the gate guy came up to me and asked, "do you still want the earlier flight?" I said, "yes." He winked and said, "I can do that for you."

Now, my lovely ladies talked to me yesterday, and I am sure you can gather I was probably looking like a pitiful beast and not really caring that I looked that way. The gate guy argued with the other because the other said, "we can't do that - the flight is already closed." My gate guy said, "we'll make her a plus one. She was very sweet, and she needs to get home on THIS flight." He chatted with me about a Shelby being his dream car, and he didn't have an AC Cobra, but he had a Mustang cobra...but not a Shelby. He joked about, "well if you get a Shelby one day with the word 'SHELBY' on it, it really will be yours." So I jogged down to the plane and scared the crap out of the flight attendants, boarded, and sat at the gate for 30 minutes.

We took off, I headed home, and the person next to me, a music professor, noticed I was quiet, and he asked, "are you okay?" I told him, "yes," and he offered me a Riesen candy that I declined. I fell asleep on the plane and woke up not long afterwards (maybe 45 minutes) to "we're making our intial decent into Greensboro." I freaked out thinking I had slept through deplaning in Atlanta.

The Professor saw and said, "no no, don't worry. There's bad weather in Atlanta. We need fuel and are landing in Greensboro."

Needless to say, it was an "adventurous" flight home.

I am SO glad to be back in Georgia, and I am SO glad that someone else is, too :)