vacation from hell
I should have known when my flight to pittsburgh left 30 minutes late that the trip was in trouble. So yes, my flight left 30 minutes late because the incoming flight was late, and then it took people almost 45 minutes to offboard. So i'm on the plane, and its completely booked, and we finally take off. The plane was a little warm when i first got on, but I assumed it was just cause there wasn't much time between when the last flight ended and this one began. Nope. The AC was broken on the plane. It was absolutely stifling, and they ended up running out of water 40 minutes before we landed because it was so damn hot.
So I get to the Dollar Rent-a-Car counter to pick up the car, and they lost my reservation. Thankfully I had a print out of the confirmation email, and they honored that. But since they didn't know about my reservation, they didn't have the compact car that I reserved. So they 'upgraded' me to a PT Cruiser. Oh jebus, is that a horrible piece of junk car. It drives like a tank, can't accelerate to save my life, the seat is like a milk crate, its ugly as hell (I think it looks like a hearse), and the dashboard layout is utterly unintuitive (the window switch is in the center, and not on the door?!?).
Being Pennsylvania, half the roads in the state are in some state of construction, which means that lanes are closed. And invariably, nothing at all is being done for 90% of the closed lanes. For example, I-70 between Monongahela & Smithton had the left lane closed (7 miles), yet only about a half mile of it had any construction equiptment or people. And being the northeastern US in June, its miserably hot & humid.
Unsurprisingly, Denise's parents house has the AC turned on, yet set to 78F, which means that you can't feel the difference. So I spent every damn night sweating and sleeping poorly.
The drive to my parent's house was reasonably uneventful, other than more pointless construction along the PA turnpike. Now life at my parent's house was also utterly unenjoyable. My mother was the controlling dictator that she always has been. It was about 84F in the house, and she utterly refused to turn on the AC because she claimed that she couldn't afford the AC bill. Right. That's why she spends a fortune on expensive food like smoked whitefish salad and manzenia olives. So I was sweating without even moving. It also doesn't help that there is no ventilation in the house because she almost never opens any windows. So its incredibly dusty, and i'm always sneezing. I met my sister's fiance (now husband), and he seems like a goofy, harmless, spineless slug. She keeps mocking him, and he keeps laughing it off. The wedding was a complete trainwreck. Yes they got married, but it was complete chaos. Nothing was well planned, no one knew what they were doing. I was asked, and agreed, to read a prayer at their wedding, but no one told me when or where I would read it, although the day before my sister did comment that i'd be given a copy of the prayer. Turns out no one gave me a copy, and when the time came to read it, I didn't even know it because the ceremony was outdoors without any amplification. Then the banquet afterwards was just as much of a disaster, with the food taking forever to be served. David was fairly well behaved. We left at 11PM, and David fell asleep on the drive home, and was a complete zombie he was so exhausted. We got up at 6AM the following morning to drive back to Pittsburgh.
Denise's father made a deep fried turkey for dinner that night, and it was actually pretty tasty. The skin was very crispy, and the meat was juicy, but not greasy. The next morning we had to get up at 4:30 EDT in order to make the 90 minute drive to the airport in Pittsburgh, and then wade through the utterly pointless security checkpoints at the airport. The flight again left late (about 15 minutes), and David was completely psycho from the start. He wouldn't sit still, and wouldn't focus on anything for more than a few seconds. Thankfully, once we landed the remainder of the day went fairly smoothly. We were all exhausted (since we had been awake since 1:30AM PDT) and ended up going to bed early.
Today David woke up at 5:30, so my day was kinda rough from the start. I did sleep relatively well last night though. I worked from home, and overall the day was largely uneventful.