Author: Elaine

Why I don’t like connecting flights

Jack called this afternoon to tell me that his parents, who were on route from Maryland to Colorado Springs, had to make a connecting flight in Houston Airport yesterday. Unfortunately, the flight to Colorado Springs was cancelled due to Rita. Fortunately, while my sisters-in-law were scrambling to find a flight for them out of Houston, my in-laws were able to walk onto a flight to Denver.

I got spoiled the two years we lived in Dallas: we could find a direct, non-stop flight to almost everywhere.

Hurricane Names

The Washington Post article Rita Is Gaining Force in the Gulf answers a question I had about Hurricane Names: what happens in a very active year when there are more hurricanes than allotted names.

But there is a finite number of preselected names — 21 — each summer, and after Rita, only four are left this year: Stan, Tammy, Vince and Wilma. If that list is exhausted, the meteorological group will have to revert to a backup plan: naming storms using the Greek alphabet, beginning with alpha, beta and gamma.

Out of Touch

For the second weekend in a row, we lost our connection to our wireless Internet service provider on Friday, and it didn’t come back up until late Sunday. Since we live in a rural area, our so-called high speed options are severely limited. DSL is not an option because we live too far from the central office. There is another wireless provider advertising in the area, so it seems to be time to check it out: when you are paying for seven days a week service, and only getting four days, it starts to get old.