A Temporary Glitch

It was bound to happen.

I am not terribly good with numbers. When I was younger (younger grade school, that is), I was, but then once I hit the Sixth Grade it all vanished. For years I blamed it on Geometry. That's the year we got into theorems. And, for the life of me, I didn't then and still don't, see the point of proving something that has already been proven.

But it was also the year after I had my major fall from the galloping horse during that summer. The worst spill I ever took. To the extent that I lost consciousness for a bit, and became a little scared of horses after that. Well, lo and behold!, while doing all kinds of tests on my melon to try and find the cause of my seizures, the docs have found some "abnormalities" in my brain exactly where I landed during that fall. And numerical reasoning is one of the skills controlled by that particular region. So maybe I'm not just stupid - maybe it's physical.......

Be that as it may, I do have trouble with numbers. In different ways.

Last night, I finally stopped at the store to pick up more ink for my printer to print out all my rail and hotel and airline reservations. Just in case. Not that anything would happen, like a lost reservation, but it is best to be prepared. Up until now, I haven't even looked at the confirmations. Just noted mentally that they had arrived and put them into a separate folder so I wouldn't accidently bleep them off my screen while doing one of my infrequent but intense computer cleanings.

Rail was fine. Hotels were fine. I've made some reservations for activities - all good. Which left me, late at night, with only the flight home to double check. Printed it out, scanned through it quickly, and noticed that the date of return WAS MARCH 6TH NOT MARCH 13TH. Crap - I had gotten the weekends mixed up.

I figured - eh, no problemo. Just go to "Delta.com" and change the date! Not so easy. For the first several tries, the website refused to accept my confirmations of who I was. I was getting ready to call them for help, but noticed that if a customer makes a change on the website, it is free. If they involve a ticketing agent, it costs $150.00. For that kind of change, I can spend a LONG time trying to figure things out!

Finally got through. Whew. Told the site I wanted to change the date of my reservation. It gave me several options. I picked one, and got the dreaded message, "Unable to complete your request." Do you think you can just back up and pick another flight? HECK NO!!!!! You are obliged to start from Square One.

So I did.

And picked a different flight.

With the same result.

I went through all the flights and got exactly the same result with each of them. By this point, I've been working on this dang problem for close to an hour and am starting to think that the $150.00 would be money well spent. More than that, though, I'm also thinking that there is a troll lurking in the website itself.

So I took a very deep breath and called their Customer Service number. And was put on hold, listening to staticy music that kept cutting in and out. It might just be me, but I don't have a great deal of confidence in the ability of a Tech department to resolve a problem if they can't even keep their Muzak running correctly. But I digress.

A Customer Service girl (why do they always sound like they are about 20 years old??????) finally answered. In a tone of voice that implied I had woken her from her nap. I went through the whole problem and was treated to a lengthy period of silence. That was finally broken by her statement that my ticket was nonrefundable and I couldn't make any change in it whatsoever. All I could do was buy another ticket.

Great.

So how much is THAT going to set me back? Ticka Ticka Ticka on the computer keys, and her voice comes back, suddenly sounding incredibly perky, saying, "That will be only $800.00. Can I book your reservation right now?" I won't repeat my direct answer to her, but the gist of it was that I would fly Delta when the Vikings win five Super Bowls in a row and Bud Grant wins Best Comic Standing.

There are few things in life that can make a person feel more helpless than knowing they will soon be thousands of miles away from their home base and they have no way to get home. After a couple of deep breaths (VERY deep breaths), I looked at Amtrak for the return trip. Incredibly inexpensive, but all that they had available was coach seats. I am at that stage in life where just the thought of riding in a train seat for close to 30 hours (and trying to sleep in said seat) just held no appeal.

Thank goodness, William Shatner popped into my mind. Checked his website and found a flight on Sun Country for $330.00. On Sunday. March 13th. Later than my original one. It is still a $330.00 mistake, but it is a hell of a lot better than an $800.00 mistake!

It took me most of the rest of the evening to stop hyperventilating.

And I won't even go into what I had to do this week to get my meds all taken care of. But taken care of they are, and I am very happily ensconced at a new little pharmacy.

And in about eight hours I will be very happily ensconced in a rail seat, watching the world go by as I officially begin my vacation!