nightmare flight before christmas

i got to the airport around 6:30, fully expecting to swing into the check in, get past TSA, and have plenty of time to visit the bathroom and peruse the trashy magazines before settling in at the gate to wait. upon handing my passport and web check in boarding pass to the luggage check lady, she looks at it, asks me what my flight number and destination were. los angeles, flight 468. she then tells me very bluntly that i was supposed to be on flight 466 that departed at 12:30 pm.

suddenly everything from earlier began to click into place. my dad had called me about an hour before my shuttle from school to the airport was leaving to tell me to check the flight status, since it looked like my flight had been delayed from 2:00 pm to 8:00 pm. i checked my email confirmation for flight 468, double checked the time then for 2:00, then checked the flight updates. 8:00 pm. so at that point, i decided to forego the shuttle, and kill some time at school and leave around 6:00 pm with lawrence, who offered to drive me to the airport since he was going home anyways. we watched wizard of oz (i slept through most of it), played some girl talk jenga, had a little dinner, then set off.

fast forward to present moment. initial thought: fuck! luggage check lady tells me that she will put me on standby for flight 468, still leaving at 8 pm, but if i don't get onto flight 468, i will have to pay an extra $100 fee for another flight. i say fine, not really pondering repercussions at the moment, just praying that i squish into flight 468, the flight i was originally supposed to be on. apparently, it was my fault for not checking my boarding pass before getting to the airport. but even if i had come via SU shuttle, i still would not have made my flight, which not only changed numbers, but moved up a couple of hours.

at the gate, a very korean looking middle-aged woman approached me to ask if she could use my cell phone to call someone in los angeles. she offered to pay, but i refused, so she gave me a lindt chocolate in thanks and sat next to me and proceeded to interrogate me with various questions. i obliged, since she had given me chocolate and was so cute! she even showed me pictures of her new granddaughter, and her family. after cooing over the pictures for a good 10 minutes, we both get called for standby, and manage to get onto the flight, except i am assigned to the emergency exit aisle so that korean woman can get a normal seat. how could i decline?

the entire flight was awful. i had a window seat, but no armrest, so leaning against the wall was impossible. there is plenty of leg room. but the drop down table didn't even get close to my seat. there wasn't anyone in the middle seat, and the guy in the aisle seat was studying to be a paramedic, and used the middle seat as his storage area. happily enough, he wasn't a make-small-talk-conversation guy. and yet, i couldn't even appreciate this miniscule pleasure for the extremely obnoxious, loud women behind me, and their chair kicking children. they carried on conversation that was not only completely idiotic, but ever increasing in volume, so much so that yoda on full volume couldn't even drown them out! at least their children fell asleep halfway through the flight. but their jabbering, which knew no pause, no breath of silence...continued from takeoff to landing and beyond.

official worst flight ever! on a happy note...am home, ate in n out immediately, got a kick start to christmas shopping yesterday, and lindsay managed to pass pharm! i guess there always is a silver lining....^^