Don't hate me but I'm at the gym lounging in the hot tub while posting.

I officially hate Cashmere.

I'm at work, bored, but can't leave.

{{{Sean}}} Flight~ma.

There's snow on the ground. I'm not sure I'm ready for this.

Yeah, my policy with travelling is to arrive hours ahead of time (2 hours is my minimum) and be friendly and smile and be agreeable, no matter how crazy the request is. I used to get all wound up about it, but now I just want to make it through the gauntlet. I find that I do so much better being the one person out of 20 in line who say "Thank You" to the TSA agents. I may not really feel like thanking them, but if they thing I get it and make their job a bit easier they are the ones that can grease the wheels.

Once I'm through everything if I've had problems I write a letter or e-mail of complaint.

Going through metal detectors is the only benefit to carrying a purse - all my keys and change are already in there, so I don't have to empty pockets. And I'm with ND on the being nice to TSA people ... if they aren't being nasty for no reason.

I try the same thing, ND. It usually works. I just bumped up against a gal who refused to give in to the niceness and I had to ask for her manager, which pissed her off - and then he told her to do what I was asking, which really pissed her off. No amount of politeness could counter that.

ETA - We're kind of loving the low dollar because it's easier to pay off Boy's student loans. Our bad.

Oh, that's totally understandable. I'm just grumpy because it makes the writers conference I want to attend in Canada next year more expensive, and a trip to Europe just that much MORE impossible any time soon. My absolute dream trip is to pretty much spend all the summer of 2015 in Europe (2015 because of the Waterloo bicentennial), so I've got, oh, 7 1/2 years for the dollar to gain some strength. And if it's really going to be the whole summer instead of just three weeks or so in June, I'd better hurry up and become a successful author.

Sigh. 7 1/2 years. I guess that's do-able. Wish I could pause time for a bit, though...

Yeah, I've been there with gate agents. Sometimes you have to go over their head and they use whatever little power they have. Write a letter to United with her name and the name of her manager who helped you. Quite often you'll get a flight voucher out of it.

Oh, Sean, that sucks ass! Neither you nor S needs to start out a long holiday weekend with that kind of hellish airport waiting-game stress. Ugh.

And OMG Stephanie, they lost Ellie's car seat? I would've gone feral on them at that point.

And oh, Suzi, and oh, K-Bug. Much too much drama, especially for a trip that didn't really give her what she needed anyway. And a plague of boils on the check-in witch.

Because I'm completely self-obsessed right now, for which I apologize: I did miscalculate, but in the wrong direction; the offer said nothing about a yearly salary, just an hourly rate, so I calculated that rate x 40 x 52 for a rough yearly salary. However, counting up the actual hours recorded on my pay stubs for the past 12 months and calculating from that precise number, the new rate works out to about $3,700 more than my current salary -- I was wrong on the yearly total, but close to exactly right about the $200 more a month.

I'm going to send the counter-offer before noon today, but, upon reflection, I think I'm also going to call the on-campus folks I'm still waiting on -- I do have one more small question about the job, but mostly I want to see if they say anything about how close they are to deciding or what my status is WRT the first company (both places know I have another prospect). Good idea? Bad idea? Spectacularly bad?

One thing the institute director said during the interview struck me, especially in light of the 12/3 start date Offer #1 is asking for: He asked when I'd be available to start. I said I'd have to give my present boss two full weeks because I wouldn't feel right unless I knew he was settled with a replacement, pending stuff was cleared away and taken care of, and everyone was comfortable. And he said, "I'm glad you said that. If you'd said you could start tomorrow I'd have worried, because if you'd do that to your present boss you could do it to me."

I really rather liked that -- both his appreciation of my sense of loyalty, and his being savvy enough to recognize that it'd ultimately benefit him as well.

When travelling with a baby, I have found that the TSA people are almost always extremely nice. More than once, I've had one of them fold up my stroller or lift a bag on the X-ray thing or something similar.

My one recent bad experience - Ellie left her show on the flight. (well, i guess I did.) Of course, I couldn't just go back and get it and it was late at night and no one was at the American counter. I actually caught one woman as she was leaving and she (somewhat understandably) did not care at all. Finally, when I was almost in tears with the TSA person, she took me to the American baggage office who called someone who got Ellie's show.

(Joe's solution was to buy new shoes, which sounds so reasonable now but at the time I just *needed* that shoe.)

eta:

And OMG Stephanie, they lost Ellie's car seat?

They gave us an infant seat (Ellie was 23 months at the time) and we squished her into it and dorve home very slowly and then didn't leave our friends' house until they brought it the next day.

JZ, call the other place. Tell them you have received an offer and you want to know how close they are to making a decision, before you decide whether or not you are going to take the other companies offer.