Jessica and Karol do Dallas.

Two months ago.
Karol: Hey, you wanna go to Dallas for a conservative film festival?
Jessica: Yeah!

One month ago.
Karol: Hey, remember that film festival in Dallas? You still wanna go?
Jessica: Yeah!

Two weeks ago.
Karol: We really need to book our trip.
Jessica: Yeah, I know, we’ll definitely do it this week.

One week ago.
Jessica: We really need to book our trip.
Karol: Yes, definitely in the next day or two.

At 2am, 40 hours before we would be scheduled to leave.

Plane ticket, Expedia, check.
Hotel, Priceline, check.
Rental Car, Priceline ($11 a day!!!!), check.
Film Festival VIP Pass, check.

Karol: Wow, we’re really doing it!
Jessica: Yeah, I know!

I’ve been flying a lot within the US the last couple of years and have been mostly flying out of LaGuardia or Newark. I always held JFK in higher regard than those two, for reasons now unclear to me. LaGuardia has curb-side check-in and you get a printout of your ticket by swiping your credit card in a machine. The whole check-in experience runs no longer than 10 minutes, and that includes checking your bag. Newark is a slightly more annoying airport, being in New Jersey and all, but it too features this curb-side check-in and handy dandy swiping machine. At JFK, no such service. We got dropped off at the gate for our airline: Northwest. However, inside the terminal, our flight was missing from their screen. I got on line (I’m still in NYC, when I land in Texas, it can be ‘in line’) in front of the Northwest counter, and Jessica went to find out where we should go.

I was standing and looking around when I saw a cylinder shaped bag on the ground. A cop saw it at the same moment I did, and radio-ed it in. Then, I watched while he gave a lost person directions, let people step over the abandoned bag and generally engaged in conversation with people around him. No one ever came to look at the cylinder while I was waiting for Jessica to return.

She came back with the news that, despite our flight being on NWA, we most likely had to take a different airline at a different terminal. We walked up to the NWA ticket counter and were told they needed to see our tickets to be sure. Um, tickets? We booked online and assumed that JFK had the swipe-y machine and we could print out our tickets that way. ‘So, you don’t have your tickets?’ said the unsmiling woman at the counter. ‘Uh, no’ said Jessica, rifling through her bag in search of tickets she knew were not there.

But, we got here. And so far, we’re completely in love with Dallas, despite getting lost again and again between the airport and the hotel and missing any possibility of hanging out with various bloggers. We’re really looking forward to the film festival, wish y’all were here.