You know that horrible feeling when you are *almost* to your bus stop and you see the one you really, really need go past when you are still too far away? That is nowhere near as bad as realizing, an hour away from your connecting flight's departure time while you're heading in the opposite direction from the airport, that you MISREAD YOUR FLIGHT TIME and it really leaves an hour earlier than you thought and, after galavanting around downtown Mpls, you really *don't* have much time to meet your relatives where your train is arriving, book it back to the airport, and somehow make it through the always-endless distance of the MSP airport to your flight in time to see your mother for Christmas.

Thanks to my cousin who knew where the cabs where and the cab driver and the airport cart driver, I made it to my gate about three minutes before my flight was supposed to depart. Thank GOD MSP no longer shuttles you out to the regional planes on the tarmac; you now leave directly from the gate, where we're still waiting to board for some reason. But I made it.

I know one thing: I will NEVER get my flight times wrong again! You would think, with all the bus schedule reading I do, that I would be able to read a simple flight itinerary, but you would be oh so VERY, VERY wrong today. As was I.

All I want for Christmas is a brain. 8)

-heidi, gate B8 @ MSP