Now that the week from hell is over, and I have time, I'd like to tell you about last weekend. Not sure if I mentioned it before (I forget what I say at times, especially when it comes to things I've talked about a lot to multiple groups of people), but I went to my cousin's wedding in California, and my family had quite an adventure there.
The story begins Thursday night. I got in late and realized that I still had a paper due the next morning for lab, and I had to finish packing for the trip. Normally wouldn't be a big deal, except for the one hour lecture from mom about how my procrastination was going to "ruin" the trip. After dealing with her, I was pretty drained, but hey, everything got done, and despite having to spend 2 hours on skype calming down a friend after her mom laid into her about he being a worthless failure, I got to sleep at about 4 am, and expected to be up at 10 for my lab at 12.
Well...
Friday morning, I'm woken up by dad screaming "FUCKING FUCK YOU FUCKER!", which should be the harbinger for the apocalypse. However, I'm used to him doing shit like this, so I ignored the warning signs. Turns out, he was getting a last load of laundry done, because whoops, part of his suit hadn't been washed since he used it last month (welcome to my dad), and he realized that having a suit would probably be something you'd need for a trip to a wedding. In the process, because he underloaded the washing machine, but put in a full load's worth of detergent, the washing machine overflowed and flooded the back room, kitchen, and part of the living room. So he spent a good part of the morning cleaning that up. But whatever, shit happens, etc. I really couldn't give a daisies. The REAL reason he was rustled, however, came out an hour later when I got a phone call from mom.
Turns out dad didn't run out and do the VERY ESSENTIAL ERRANDS he was supposed to the day before, instead sitting on his booty watching a movie marathon. He figured he could do it today and no one would notice, but he had to spend the day cleaning up. This meant I had to run the errands with an hour until I needed to leave for lab. There was no way I could do it, so I opted to skip lab, since I'm allowed to once and have my assignments waived for the day (as long as they weren't "major" things like term papers or tests). This meant the paper I wrote the previous night was worthless, and I was a bit upset about that. Oh well though, I really wasn't looking forward to data analysis with the macs at school anyways. I ran the errands, even managed to get enough time to stop by Gamestop and finally get my Keldeo downloads (though I had to go in the store and get badgered by the employees to preorder something) and stopped by Walmart to get some last minute things for mom, because we didn't have enough luggage tags for whatever reason.
On the way hope, traffic was fucked, with more than 3 accidents (2 of which were on the same road within a couple of blocks of eachother), and police sirens were everywhere. I rolled down my window a crack just so I could pinpoint where the police were so I could move out of their way, only to realize that it was beginning to sprinkle where I was. I went to roll up the window, and nothing. Turns out my dodgy switch decided to completely die right there. Had to hustle home, wind and rain whistling in through the window, and got home, where luckily, the rain hadn't reached. I tried lowering my window all the way, since sometimes it needs to do that to go up, and nothing. Switch was dead as could be. Dad had to hotwire it to get the window back up, and we found out it was going to be $100 to replace the switch case which was causing the problem.
So by this point, my uncle was there, we ate dinner, and then hustled to the airport to get there 2 hours early, checked our bags (mom checked her clothes bag because she had something in it she couldn't take on the plane, we checked our toiletries bag (which was 75% dad's), and a garment bag full of our dress clothes), and started going through security.
My uncle's knee set off the security thing, and they had to manually scan him to determine that his knew set it off, they patted him down and checked with him to make sure he didn't have a fake knee. Everything was fine though, but every time we had to go through security for the weekend, his knee would set it off.
So we had two flights to take to get to Santa Barbara from Austin. We were going to get to LAX and then fly out about an hour and a half later to Santa Barbara and get there about 11 pm PT (so 1 am our time). The plane arrived in Austin 40 minutes late due to some "unforeseen circumstance". This would make getting on the next plane tighter, but not a problem. The pilot told us he was going to do what he could to make up time in the air, so that wasn't a problem. We got on the plane, took off, and everything was fine. Until we arrived 15 minutes later than we were supposed to even with the initial delay. We had 35 minutes to walk across LAX, catch a tram, and then board our plane. Not a big deal, but it was definitely a crunch. We got to the gate with 20 minutes to spare, ready to board our plane.
Turns out, they took off 20 minutes early. American Eagle didn't want to wait, and there were enough standby passengers to fill the plane load of 40, so they left early. The four of us, and about 10 other passengers who "missed" the plane were told to go to American Eagle's customer service to figure out what to do. They offerred us standby tickets for midnight, but told us that that flight "usually doesn't take standby passengers" (yet the 9:20 one was more than pop flyin' to fill half the plane with standby and strand people with actual tickets for that flight), and that because our plane was delayed for an FAA related reasons, they weren't liable for us being left behind, even though they made the decision to leave early without us. Because of this, they refused to pay for our hotel or a tram ride, if we took a tram to Santa Barbara (only an hour and a half away), we would not be refunded or granted credits for our tickets (because we arrived at the destination and they "fulfilled" their promise to get us there, even if we payed our own way to get there by not using them), and were generally rude to us. They told us our bags should be downstairs and that we could stay at the Doubletree (a kind of Hilton), who "might" give us a discount due to our circumstances. We went downstairs, all tired from being up since about 7-8 our time, and search for our bags for over an hour. Go to the baggage claim desk, and found out that our bags made it onto the plane that we missed. This meant our toiletries and all of mom's clothes, the stuff that we needed, were in Santa Barbara, but not us. We waited outside for half an hour with terrible traffic for a tram to take us to the Doubletree, and got to talk with a funny tough-as-nails Homeland Security agent that shared with us what people tried to get away with that day in the airport (including a guy with a fully loaded rifle in his carry-on). She sympathized with us and did her best to find the right tram for us to get us out of there. One of the first nice people we dealt with all day.
After getting to the Doubletree, we found out that the rooms were $200 apiece, and mom, for whatever reason, insisted we get two (because I guess double wide beds aren't good enough for 2 people each for a quick 5 hours of sleep?). Dad was beyond rustled at the prices, and the guy sympathized with us, especially after he found out that we missed all possible trams to Santa Barbara and couldn't rent a car to leave at this hour either. He ended up getting us a deal through American Airlines (that ran the first flight we took) that gave us both rooms for $90. AA ate the rest of the cost, and apparently was "very displeased" with American Eagle's bullshit. So a bit of a bright spot, even though we were paying for 2 hotels that night since we still had the room in Santa Barbara reserved. We went to bed, woke up at 5 am all to start over so we could get on our flight at 7:45 am. Went through security again, uncle set off alarms with his knee again (for no apparent reason), and the airlines got suspicious that we weren't checking bags. Plane arrived a bit late, but we got out at 8, and the ride was only 20 minutes (all of this bullshit over 20 minutes). We got our rental car okay, got to the hotel, and passed out for a few hours.
We quickly got ready for the wedding around noonish, and took a trolley to the place where the wedding was, up in the hills. This ended up being the first time we met the groom's family (they all live in California), and they were a bit... rowdy. Half of them were all ready sloshed and had to yell everything they said, but they weren't too bad. One guy was kinda being a douche though, just kind of the typical "yo bro, I bet you're fun to party with, too bad you've never been to a party, unlike me!" bullshit. I had a bit of a headache after the trolley ride from the yelling and the lack of decent sleep.
So, was it all worth it AZ?
Absolutely.
The ceremony itself was basically the vows and exchanging of the rings, it was bodaciously 5 minutes long, and the groom was crying the whole time (to which my cousin kept telling him "Dude, come on. It's just a wedding."). The rest of the time was spent at the reception, which was the real point. They wanted a wedding not as just "our special day" with a big fluffed up ceremony, but they wanted a party for everyone, and a chance to celebrate their day with everyone. They constantly walked around and talked to everyone, catching up and having fun with people they hadn't seen since high school or college. Everybody got into dancing (especially my other cousin's girlfriend. It was amazing to see her popping and locking while he just stood there stiffer than robofrankenstein), and the people there were all hysterical. I sat with a table of college people and discussed video games with them and general stupid college shit. Was kinda nice to find people dealing with the same bullshit as me.
Anyways, the best part of the reception, however, involved the douche from the tram. My cousin is a photographer, so for her guest book, she decided to get a photo booth and a bunch of props for people to use, and they'd put a copy of the pictures into the book and sign next to it. They'd also get a copy for themselves to enjoy. About halfway through the night, my cousin decided she wanted to get in on the fun with her friends, and came to the booth to take pictures with us. When it got to be my turn with her, however, she got called up to do the slow dance and had to leave me, but told me she'd be back ASAP. When she left, however, douchebro came over. He was barely standing and was pretty much yelling everything he was saying. He thought everything was funny and was being pretty much a tool. He decided he wanted to go into the photobooth with me, and me being the timid bitch I am, agreed.
So the first two pictures, he was just fucking around, making stupid faces and getting on me for not "getting into it". I just wanted it all over and for him to move onto his next target. The third picture though, he decides to try to get a rise out of me. He plants his lips on my cheek, and I could tell he was waiting for a reaction to laugh at me. Of course, if I didn't react, he'd win aswell.
So I facebattled him on the lips.
He fell out of the photo booth screaming. People stared at him, and once they found out what happened, laughed. He called a truce with me, and after that, I think he was a bit... afraid to keep drinking? He sobered up quickly after that. The people who saw what happened, mostly the people I sat with at the reception, high fived me and were glad to be rid of douchebro doing his bullshit.
The rest of the night was spent partying, I had a few drinks, and it was all good times. We got to see my cousin more than we expected (we even stole her away for breakfast the next morning), and even though we flew back the next day, it was a lot of fun, and we really didn't feel "rushed" for a vacation.
And I kinda liked the facebattle I had (it was my first "real" one), even if it was a joke and I really wasn't interested in douchebro.
So AZ, what do you think? Was this a good vacation story?
I bet no one read this whole thing...Also, 4000th post.
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