Intolerable Aggravation

All I want to do is go on my business trip, come home, and write the story.

All I get is undermining relatives and systemic retardation on the part of travel companies.

Flying from Denver to Phoenix for a few days shouldn't be this much a colossal clusterfuck. Really, people.

I'm done changing plans and accruing penalty fees because the people I depend and rely upon are undependable and unreliable. And useless.

I'm not important enough to have the publication I write for cover travel expenses and I'm not wealthy enough to not care. $100 penalty fees (each way) for changing airline reservations matter to me. Budgeting for little things like restaurant gratuities is very serious business.

So instead of going for next weekend, as was originally planned, I am going in a few days, I'm driving, and I'm couch-surfing at a family friend's house. Journalism is glamorous, nu?

But I will write the ever-livin' Hell out of the story and it will all be worth it. Besides, I'm going somewhere that warns of low temperatures of 70 degrees, in January, and I am taking a race car driving course. There's a good chance that all the stress and strife of this past week, all the yelling at customer service people on the phone, all the threatening to maim my relatives; it just might be worth it.

That is all.