I hate to post my own crap when I haven’t read anyone else’s blog in, like, a week, but I have to tell you this ridiculous story:

My friend Kim was in town from Boston this weekend and took me to the Fashion District on the west side of Midtown to meet another friend on Saturday afternoon. I was wearing a red and black plaid wool cape that might be a little bright for some people’s tastes, but as we walked down 37th Street, we saw store after store selling the gaudiest, most rhinestoned, way-more-over-the-top-than-my-cape-type dresses you’ve ever seen. They were only fit for something like a Miss America pageant–definitely not opening night of the Met nor singing a bluesy number on top of a piano at a lounge–so we were discussing how not one but a whole block of them could possibly stay in business. Out of nowhere, and certainly not prompted by anything we said or did, a man spoke to us. He was probably 40 and sat in his car along the curb, smoking a cigarette. Not missing his front teeth or anything but trashy enough that I could imagine him alone at a stripclub in Jersey on a weeknight. I didn’t understand what he’d said at first and didn’t have time to properly react, but two steps later, I realized that he’d called from his car, “Plaid is totally out this season! Don’t you read Vogue?“

I bought a plane ticket to Ohio for two weeks’ worth of Christmas presents, Christmas parties, and Christmas-themed desserts at chain restaurants several weeks ago for $291.90. The night before the snowstorm hit, Delta canceled my flight but politely allowed me to reschedule myself for the next day. I was slightly disappointed in the delay but used the night to make a lot of unnecessary noise in Kamran’s apartment while he studied for his final exams.

Three hours before my flight on Sunday, I packed the last of my things, put on really comfortable underwear for the flight, and began saying goodbye to Kamran. Which mostly involved lots of “I don’t want to go!”s and “Let’s get back into bed and not leave for two weeks!”s. I WAS KIDDING. But moments before I left, I happened to check my flight status to see if there was any residual delay from the day before and found that it had been canceled.

Even though the streets and the runway had been cleared for 18 hours.

The Delta website wouldn’t let me reschedule again, so I called customer service, and after listening to twenty minutes of “White Christmas” and other ironic holiday hold tunes, I found that the earliest flight they would fit me on was on DECEMBER 25TH.

I called Orbitz, who I had used to buy the flight, and after twenty more minutes, the slightly-more-helpful customer service rep said I was approved for an automatic refund if I wanted to cancel the flight and start over with another airline. She said her computer wasn’t showing flights available until the 23rd, but the Orbitz website was listing flights on the 21st, so I gave her the exact flight numbers I wanted to book. She acted like this was all fine and dandy but then said, “Now, you know it’s a $25 fee to book over the phone, right?” EXCUSE ME? No.

So I selected my flights and tried signing into the site with my account to pay for them, but it said customer service was already logged in, which meant I had to manually enter my payment information. By the time I did that, my flight was gone. I chose another one and tried the same thing, but it was gone again. And again. Finally, though, I managed to snag a flight at 3:25 p.m. today, three days later than I was supposed to be home, for $452.

The great part is that when my first flight was rescheduled, my best friend, Tracey, said she was going to drive the ten hours from Ohio to pick me up, and we laughed. Turns out it would’ve been way faster. Hahahahahaha . . . ha . . . ha . . . ha.