The first time I ever booked a flight was back in ’99. Oh so long ago. My parents or rather my Dad is not one for traveling or vacationing. Our vacations are usually staying home, watching tv or drama (Thai or Chinese – this is before the rise of Kdrama) Infrequently, maybe Thanksgiving, we would go to Fall River to visit some far off relatives. A few times, after they moved to Cleveland, my Dad would even drive us there. This is Thanksgiving. Think 15 hours to get there, 48 hours of more tv and drama watching and then another 15 hours back.

Sounds terrible but us kids, we love to travel. We even enjoyed the ride our to the midwest. Anything but here.

Anyway, back to ’99. Miss Nikki and I saved up enough money from the dry cleaner and CVS and we wanted out to Houston in the middle of July. (Anything, even the humidity was better than here.) My brother tagged along because, well we can’t just leave him out. Poor Emely. I still remember her tears. But then again she’s always crying, so maybe it wasn’t because we were leaving her behind. Who knows.

I digress. Anyway we had enough money, we can just buy the tickets. From online. We had dial up. We can just buy the ticket and go. We don’t even need to tell our parents…. Actually, did were we able to buy tickets on line? I remember a phone call. My memory is letting me down. Ha.

Back to the story. No. We could not do it on our own. We needed a credit card for these types of purchases and as I was the first one in the family to get a credit card and not until sophomore year of college, (3 years later) we needed assistance.

And no one in Lynn had a credit card. We had to call over to Houston to borrow their credit card to make the purchase. So much for that surprise.

Since, then I have make other flight reservations over the year. Once, our ticket to Japan had to be reschedule because someone couldn’t and did not already get the day off. I’m sorry, were you not there when we drove all the way to Boston to book the flight. Did we not plan it one week in advance? Didn’t we? Ha. Still sore after all these years.

And that leads to this trip. Today’s purchase. Actually, let’s talk about November’s purchase first. (Maybe because it gives today’s purchase a new light.) I feel better now. I guess.

After deciding since April or so to take this trip, I need to book the first let of the trip. My last day of work would be on a Friday. And I will not fly the weekend because well. Money. Weekday traveling it is. Tuesday should work as it is cheaper to fly and maybe I can get to S on Wednesday and spend a few days there before heading to B and everything else. But wait, I lose a day. Better move the flight out to Monday. Weeks of flight shopping later, flight is booked… to leave on Tuesday. Aish.. What ever. I’ll do S another time. But 2.5 days should be enough. right? Too late now. Do you see the problem? Do you? Do you? Maybe my family should not have trusted me….

So today. (In case anyone is keeping track, I have not bought any flights since the first leg out back in November. I am daring that way.) After weeks of delay. (It’s not like we can just buy the tickets… we need to be in the same room to choose the tickets.) No that is not what happened. L’il sis got her tax return and can now buy the tickets. Their first leg was easy but the quickly processed. I should have just stayed out of it. But the next thing I know, I am offering to buy all the flights for all 3 of us. Back and forth and back and forth again. We even faced time.

I clicked submit and moments later after our good nights, I went to confirm the flights and one of the legs is wrong. #903 instead of #905. Granted, it will still get us home but the difference is an extra 10 hours that we were planning for D. I have dreamed of D for a while. (For longer than B). If it was just me, this could have gone on the same line as S. There but not really. Hmm. Luckily, it is within 24 hours so free cancelations. 🙂 Yay.

Logged into Orbitz but no number. And no cancellation link like they said there would be. Tried calling the airline but no quick connection to customer service. Hmm. Then while the systems recite all the locations they fly to, I found the number from the email confirmation. Orbitz saving the day. Awesome. But boo to CapitalOne for rejecting the 2nd itinerary charge. (Actually I don’t mean it. I love you CapitalOne… It’s been a stressful day.)

We are now moving onto Barclay’s with Apple Rewards. This girl is racking points like crazy 🙂 But you rejected me too… Thankfully, the fraud email came though and after a quick call, the charge was allowed to go through.

Of course. Gmail is again delaying my emails, so that took another 10 minutes waiting for the confirmations to come through. But all is good. Onward trips.

But anyway. On the bright side. Everyone I worked with today provided great customer service. Assuming, the fraud warning was removed from CapitalOne.. Hmm.

Now, I just need to figure out how to get from B to P. (Because P to C is already booked.) HarHar.