TSA Inconsistencies & The Difficult Flight

I booked the flight home for first thing Tuesday morning because it was literally half the price.

We stayed with my Aunt Carole, and I had a really, really nice evening with her.

The flight was at 7am so we had to be there at 5:30.... but I woke up at 2am and could not go back to sleep.

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TSA is extremely inconsistent in their security protocol.

At JFK you still have to take off your shoes, which is the dumbest thing in the whole entire universe.

They make you take out your ipads laptops etc from bags.

I have to check my suitcase because solvent and "artist pigments in vegetable oil", but I will NOT check my box.  TSA security historically thinks my pochade box is suspicious because it contains magnets.  So at JFK I took that out to avoid getting searched.

There is a body scanner at JFK (but not at Charleston).

Neither Daya nor I took out our ipads and they re-directed our bags, removed the ipads, and ran our bags thru the scanner again.

In Charleston they make you walk near a dog and you don't have to take off your shoes.

Or your ipads.

Or anything, for that matter- you aren't allowed to open your bags at all.

I love consistency.

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We got on the plane and they had a problem and rebooted the plane.

Then apparently there was a ton of paperwork to do after that, so we took off 40 minutes late.

We were in a small commuter plane.

The people directly next to me and  on the whole row in front of me was a couple traveling with three very small boys. I was braced for a super crappy flight....especially on no caffeine but the parents were so obviously trying to reduce any annoyance their kids caused to others it was impossible to be annoyed.

The mom was pretty stressed out.

I can empathize.

The dad got up every 5 mins or so to fix whatever issue the boys in front of him had.

I was exhausted on their behalf.

Also, I love window seats because of the clouds!

Clouds look like snow or alien landscape.

Since the plane was one of those small commuter plans, my box wouldn't fit inside my pack in the overhead bin, so it rode with me.

We landed a half hour late and then waited for another half hour because no one was there to help park the plane at JFK. It was completely ridiculous.

We were still sitting on the plane at 10am and Daya had to be in school at 12 for class and tech rehearsal. And we had to go home first.

We finally made it home around 11:30.

If everything had been on time we would have gotten home right after 10am.

TSA did not search my suitcase on either flight.

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I was so, so happy to be home!

In the afternoon I took a short nap and woke up from a terrible nightmare... I was home but it was a small house with yard... and i was going outside to make food and a really weird looking man was ambling around, trespassing. I told him to leave and he wouldn't, he became belligerent.

I was afraid of him and went inside and called 911.  As I was on the phone with the 911 operator he came inside my home looking for me- but I was hiding.

I woke up in such a fright, it took me several hours to shake the feeling.

Something about that man was really scary.

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Jackie texted because we were supposed to do Taco Tuesday but we both forgot... she was in the neighborhood so I went to see her and say hi. That was really nice and helped make that bad feeling go away.

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And then it was time to order my replacement knife.

This required going back to the Source Tek order I made 13 years ago, which I found...!!! because I wanted to see the measurements for my broken knife.

The reason for this is my particular knife was discontinued in 2010 and I got one of the last ones.

Holbein did release an updated line and my new knife should be almost exactly like my old one, hopefully.  Blick had a slightly better price than Jerry's.

So sad, goodbye knife!!