Kathy Lin

This year, travel during the holidays finally screwed me over. I guess I’ve been pretty lucky these past couple of years but bad luck crushed me yesterday. I was heading out to Berkeley to have dinner with Keen; Chris and I left my parent’s place in Antioch at 6 PM for a 7 PM dinner. Things were looking bad when the Contra Costa police closed off EVERY lane of westbound Highway 4, which is the ONLY highway leaving the suburbia middle-of-nowhere land my parents live. Chris and I were forced off of the highway onto a road called Railroad Avenue. That exit is about 3 exits from my parent’s, so we were sitting there for 2 1/2 hours to travel about 7 miles.

Sadly enough, a woman was killed trying to cross Highway 4 after a minor car accident, at least according to the Contra Costa Times. What would possess her to try to cross three lanes of traffic moving an average of 60 mph is really beyond me.

So, our ETA in Berkeley at 7 PM was grossly mistaken and I didn’t get to see Keen at all, which was a real bummer. I ended up going straight to the Oakland airport, getting there at 9:30 (had to stop at the In N’ Out for a quick dinner). My flight was at 11 PM. I can only imagine what would have happened if I left my parents place later than 6 PM. Apparantly the highway was closed for eight hours.

Turns out it didn’t matter that I got to the airport on time because my flight was delayed by an hour anyway. The JetBlue flight to JFK that left from the gate I was waiting at never took off. They sat on the runway for 2 hours before deplaning right before the Dulles flight was going to board. So they had to move the JFK plane to another gate, but they had already told all of the passengers waiting for Washington Dulles to move to another gate. We all got called back but ended up waiting for luggage after we had boarded. I guess we were in the air at around midnight CA time. I didn’t bother staying awake because the guy sitting next to me looked like the chatty type. I wasn’t in the mood to chat, if you know what I mean.

I opened up my bleary eyes at 8 AM, EST after a few hours of sleep. I had a short debate with myself as to if I should go to work, but I decided I wouldn’t be that productive … Turns out my sisters didn’t fare much better in the travel department. As I was driving hom from the airport, I got a call from my older sister who said she finally made it back home after at 16 hour train + bus ride. Then my twin sister called me to tell me she had to divert to another highway (because of snow in Southern California — very weird) and then had to divert again because of a bad accident, which made her usual 8 hour trip into a 12 hour trip. Yippee.

But at least I didn’t lose my luggage.

Kathy was not amused by my post.  Scad.  She was less excited than I thought she would be.  Harumph.

Kathy is still logged onto her website on my computer, meaning I can type whatever I want. I am slowly losing interest in the things on my computer, yet Kathy is still setting up my mom’s new Dell. In other words, I am bored. There is all kind of junk on the computer and Kathy looks like she is typing into a terminal or somethin’ I don’t understand. I might have to go hang out with the chats (Tobie and Ian) who are napping on the bed. That, or play Animal Crossing DS. Maybe I have some brown flowers to water. Sorry if this post isn’t as witty as Kathy’s. Heh. Kathy is funny.

Greetings to everyone from Antioch, CA. This is a city that my parents like to think is near the San Francisco Bay Area, but probably has the culture and the people of Middle-of-Nowhere, USA. Blythewood (where I grew up) was more charming, because at least people in Blythewood had seen Asian people.

Anyway, I’ve taken a gratuitous amount of time off of work to be here, although I have a conference call set up for Tuesday morning. That wasn’t my idea, but of course I don’t have the power to stop it :). Besides that, it’s been very relaxing. I’ve had to do some last minute shopping despite my very careful planning. Oh, well.

So far Chris is here with her two cats, which makes for a pretty full household. Dan ( + children) and Meilee & Jim are going to be showing up at some point today. Dan requested that we hide all the gifts so that it looks like Santa came, except I have no clue where to put them. My parents don’t have a lot of excess closet room.

Hope everyone else is having a good time this season. The time off of work is always nice. After New Years there is that terrible drought of no company holidays, so I’m enjoying this while I can. Even though I just checked my work email (lame!).

Happy Holidays!!