Gone and Back: I spent the first half of last week in Washington DC again -- an occurrence so common that it barely merits a mention. In fairness, however, I have to mention that Northwest Airlines came to my rescue when I screwed up my flight times. I mistakenly thought that my flight left Detroit at 5pm, when in fact it was scheduled to arrive in DC at 5pm. Imagine my surprise when I reached the gate.

But the attendant was on the ball. She got me on standby for the next three flights, just in case. Then managed to get me on the first one and didn’t bat an eye about giving me the only available seat, whish happened to be in first class.

Then, my conference finished early so a hightailed it to the airport to see if I could get on an earlier flight back home and once again, the Northwest agent did me proud. Not only did I get on an earlier flight, but I had a row of seats all to myself.

So I owe Northwest as big a thank you, at least the size of my gripes when they screw up (and that’s pretty sizeable).

I have to say that messing up my flight times really rattled me. I can be fairly spacey, but there are few people who are as consistently on top of their travel arrangements as I am. People who are disorganized tend to have one or two things that they keep in order, just so there is some semblance of sanity in their lives and for me, travel plans are one of those. It made me worry about getting old. It could be an early indicator of Alzheimer’s. More likely though, the reason is simply that I am a complete moron. Which is much better.