Friday - Let the vacation BEGIN

April is my month of vacations. Sweet! Maybe I'll be coming to a town near you.

Exercise!: Last Friday I woke up around the crack of dawn and headed to the gym for a light workout of the rowing machine. (It's called I need to go the gym a certain number of times each month and last night I ran up big hills and then had beer. I'm doing my best.)

Provisions: Next was a quick trip to the Co-op when I realized I had no real food for breakfast and I'd probably need something for lunch as well.

Dentist - oh fail! No one knows why I scheduled a dentist appointment today. It was a quick one though. He just had to polish the fillings he put in earlier this year so they stop shredding my dental floss. Thank you!

More provisions: Clerk at Walgreens - no we don't have a travel section. Me: Yes you do; it's right here.

Airport: Thanks to Bonnie for leaving her family long enough to take me to the airport. Gramma called while I was about to go through screening so I called her back once I was through security and talked for a while. I enjoyed my gadgets and listened to all kinds of music. I snapped this photo of a fellow passenger. It made me smile that her wardrobe and the way she carried herself it was like she was already in New York.

Musical gates and musical planes: We started at C22, all ready to get on a flight that appeared to be on time. Then the gate agent made this announcement like the plane just accidentally went to another gate and would we all walk down to C16 and boarding would be basically on time. At that gate they announced the plane we were scheduled to take needed some maintenance and we'll have to use the plane from the next inbound flight which is a few minutes away. A few minutes later gate agent kindly asks us to haul ourselves back to gate C21. We were delayed like 45 minutes I think. (Good thing I had a nice lunch!)
Final announcement from Gate Agent was "plane side checking luggage is not an option. If we hand you a pink tag and advise you to check your luggage you must do so or step out of line so we can board other passengers". Hilarious.

Welcome to New York - Mark came to pick me up at the airport. We headed back to the apartment and stayed in for the night. I got to meet Little Cousin and hang out with everyone. Fantastic.

This guy thinks he's the welcoming committee.

Here's the other welcoming committee!