Lollygagging

I was supposed to fly home yesterday at like 12:30 PM. I checked out of my hotel around 10:00 AM and decided I would drive from Long Beach to Beverly Hills and then take Santa Monica Blvd. to the beach and take the scenic way back to the airport. I figured that if I got to the airport 45 minutes before my flight, it would be ok, because Long Beach airport is the size of a kernel of corn. I drove through Beverly Hills, saw Rodeo Drive and saw Santa Monica Beach. I was totally surprised by how cool the beach was. I looked at the time and figured I was cutting it close, but I decided I could get back the time I'd miss from taking pictures by driving what seemed like 1/2 inch (on the map) back to 405 instead of meandering along Hwy 1. I walked out on the beach and started thinking how I was going to convince Michelle to come there for our next friend trip. I decided I'd better head back so I ran back to the car and headed for 405. Well, 405 wasn't exactly where the map said it should be. The on ramp for 405 North was, but 405 South, which was the direction I needed to go was on a little street of absolutely no consequence. Luckily, I stopped at a 7-11 to ask for directions. (If anyone doubted that I was female, this positively proves that I am.) I was ON 405 at approximately 11:42 AM. My plane was still scheduled to leave at 12:30 PM, even though I had somehow convinced myself that it may have decided to get a wash and "planicure" and therefore delay it's departure another 20 minutes or so. I was flying down the highway.. "Isn't that a song?" and as I came to the exit that my hotel was off of, I calculated 2 or 3 minutes until Long Beach Airport. Those minutes passed by and .. no airport. I then remembered it was more like 8 or 9 miles from my hotel exit. That meant something like 6 minutes. This put me at the airport at 12:10 PM. I still thought there was time though, because like I said.. it was a really small airport. How hard could it be to say.. "Hey plane.. wait.. I'm right here!"? When I finally did arrive at the airport, I grabbed my bags out of the car, threw away the garbage, because how tacky would it be to leave garbage in a rental car.... and yelled to the girl at the return counter that I was about to miss my flight. She grabbed my key and told me to get my receipt online. I morphed my suitcase into "roll mode" and ran like mad. Unfortunately my suitcase didn't follow and ended up tumbling over and over. I was drug to a stop and finally got the wheels back on track .. along with my pride... and "carefully" ran like hell to the check-in counter. There was only one Delta check-in counter and no Delta employees were there. There was another man waiting there who said he was also on the 12:30 flight. We rang bells, flagged down security personnel, tried to bribe our way through the security check to the gate, which was incidentally 30 feet away, but they refused to let us in. Even though we could see our plane through the fence and people were just beginning to "DE PLANE".. meaning that passengers were still getting off and they hadn't even begun loading our flight, there was nothing I could do. I missed my bloody flight. The next one wasn't until 5:30 PM, which meant I would have to wait 5 hours in a crappy airport until the next flight. I was absolutely LIVID. I used the "F" word at least 30 to 40 times and when the woman at the Delta check-in counter finally arrived, I was very, very rude to her. She asked me which flight I would like to book and as there was only one to choose from, I let her know it was a stupid question. They charged me $50 to "change" flights and when I asked her if I was now checked in, she told me that it was too early to check in. I said to her.. "So, what you are saying is that I can't check in too early OR too late?" I walked away trying like mad not to cry, because I was that pissed off. Eventually I cooled off and I did later apologize to the girl for being such a bitch. I was afraid when I checked my bags that she might lose them or send them to Alaska or something.