today i woke up at 530am and barely made it to catch a 715am flight. i was in a 5 hour meeting in a very dim conference room listening and watching powerpoint presentations and demos. there were quite a few people in the room, about a baker's dozen, and i didn't say a word. needless to say, i was extremely tired and i was nodding off on two separate occassions. i had no idea what anyone was talking about - there are so many freakin acronyms in the airline industry, but combined with the IT industry, it's ridiculous. there was tension right from the beginning with the company's #3 man scolding the software company for being so behind, so it was pretty scary. so that was orlando.

the best part was the treatment we got in the airports and in the flight back to atlanta. i got to bypass all the security lines with a flash of my badge, and it works for any airport that a1rtran serves. on the flight back to atlanta, we were a early so we happened to catch a previous flight that was delayed that was finishing up their boarding. we showed them our tickets, and they rushed us in the gate, closed the door behind us so nobody else could get on (to be honest, i don't think they even knew if all the right people were on board yet). turns out, there were three open seats for four of us. i kept saying that i'll stay back, but the stewardesses who were pacing the isles making sure if there were no open seats asked if i would be willing to ride in the jumpseat. of course i said 'sure' but one of them remembered that the rules were recently changed that only uniformed staff were allowed on. this whole time, the plane was ready to go so basically, they delayed the flight just for me.

so what did they do? so it turned out that one of the passengers was an off-duty steward, so the on-duty stewardesses made him change in the lavatory and sit in the jumpseat so i can sit in his seat.

on a sidenote, i hate people who hog all of your space... i wanted to yell at this guy to stop putting his leg and arms over my side of the armrest. it was freaking uncomfortable, and you could tell he was doing it on purpose so he could have more room. so annoying.