This post is coming to you from the JetBlue terminal of the Long Beach Airport. Can I just say that this is a very small little place? Definitely smaller than my high school gym. Possibly as small as my elementary school gym? The construction is more like the portables, though.
Did you notice how that guy looks like a giant?
Yup it's pretty tight in here.
And when I say tight, I'm not
talking about how awesome it is.
What am I doing here, you ask. Well here it is.
Many moons ago when I was making my travel plans to come home for Christmas, I felt some kind of urgency to get the best deal I could get before prices rose closer to the holidays. So in the aforementioned urgency, I booked a ticket home that took me straight from Salt Lake International Airport to my beloved JFK. At the same time, I apparently booked a return flight that cleverly took me straight from my beloved JFK to Long Beach Airport to Salt Lake International. Wait, what? I'm flying PAST Utah all the way to the opposite coast only to get on another plane so that I can get to Utah? I really don't remember choosing this. I hate layovers and I hate long flights, so I must have been momentarily out of wits when I chose this for myself. But it WAS my choice (so they tell me), so I will live with it.
The first flight wasn't too bad. JetBlue gives you free DirectTV, so I took advantage by bringing along my earbuds. My biggest tender mercy of this trip so far was seeing a rerun of the Closer which I had never seen (How did that even happen? I don't know). That was an hour that went by quickly. After that, I was disappointed to find out that it wasn't a Closer marathon :( I did watch a little bit of the Usher story and a few episodes of Say Yes to the Dress. The rest is a blur. What I do remember was popping Ricola herbal throat drops the ENTIRE time. I'm not even kidding.
You know when you feel the slightest tickle on the side of your throat (this is of course the opposite side as the side that is all sore and has a lump in it because you've had a cold and talked WAY too much in the last couple of days and now you have no voice) and you try not to think about it because you don't want to cough in the middle of sacrament meeting? But the more you try NOT thinking about it, the more you do, so you fumble for a cough drop as the coughing begins, and even after you put the cough drop in your mouth, somehow it doesn't seem to work right away and you're coughing so bad that you are crying? Yeah, that was happening to me today (and also when I was out to dinner last night trying to play it cool). Except this time I wasn't trying to not cough because I didn't want to interrupt church (or look like a dork in front of a really awesome guy). This time, I didn't want to cough because when you cough on a plane, everyone looks at you and thinks to themselves, "you're infecting us all!!!" And I surely didn't want to attract that kind of attention, did I? So I literally consumed a full bag of Ricola herbal throat drops today. Luckily I still have more to cover my next little flight to Salt Lake.
I should mention another tender mercy that I experienced today. I haven't needed to blow my nose like crazy. In fact, I was able to breathe through my nose the entire trip. This is great, of course, because blowing your nose and making those sounds that indicate you probably have some kind of nasty sinus infection also gets people thinking. For the most part, my only tell tale sickness signs were my barely-there raspy smoker's voice and having a tissue on hand for the inconspicuous nose pass.
Also a tender mercy or at least an upside to modern day technology: that even this teeny tiny terminal has WiFi so that I can pass the time by writing a blog post.
So here's to looking at the bright side. I made it thus far without too many problems. And for that I am grateful.
I WOULD like to make a small complaint, though. Why do I have to pay almost $9.00 for a sandwich that tastes like it was made 3 days ago?
