"Having a GRAND time - The Official GF Chat Thread"

[Lives4Disney]

Channing, you were the first person I thought of when I was reading that article on the SW planes. Can you believe they did that! I have never flew SW. We usually stick with USAir.

OMG...thanks for thinking of me!!

When I started flying them almost exclusively years ago, they had the best safety record of all. I felt most comfortable with them over AA or UA or Delta. OMG>...I just saw snippets of the info here and there....I halfway want to Google it and find out more, but I think I might have a hideous panic attack while waiting in line to board if I know too much....but then again, I might if I don't know what's going on, too.

I flew Delta to HI a couple years ago and there was info all over about all their problems....I had a mega panic attack while waiting to board. Of course the flight was delayed, had to be de iced....then had to attempt take off THREE TIMES because the pilot said they were going over the numbers and the plane might be TOO HEAVY (ummm...TMI, buddy...TMI! ) .....if they couldn't get the right wind on the 3rd attempt they'd go back to the gate. I was looking around this huge HEAVY JUMBO heavy jet thinking AM I THE ONLY ONE PANICKING??? It appeared so. PLUS....I knew how much luggage I brought haha....... When we made it into the air, the pilot said the Tiki Gods were with us. That ruined my whole HI stay....I spent my whole vacation worried about the take off on the flight home.

 

[Lives4Disney]

Kristin, I hope you're right about that JOjo....she is such a pistol sometimes. She has serious attitude....(b)attidude. She is "BORED with WDW"...she's "been there too many times". OMG. The best one is she says, "the rides are childish".... She brings me down. Here I am staring at a messy house and tons of laundry and packing etc....and she doesn't want to go...it's "boring".

Half of her school class - twleve kids - have been home sick this week. I feel so screwed....although DH had his flew toward the start of Feb and all thru that month, so hoping we are in the clear here and maybe we had it before and are immune?? I heard Airborn was a fake. Just heard that lately! I will have to check into that. I always wipe the seats and tables on the plane...I am neurotic about the girls washing their hands, too, on vacation. I have had MANY vacations ruined by illness. Lessons learned.

It is helping me stick with it just feeling like their is a little group doing the WW with me.

My DH takes meds that make him CRAVE sweets. He is a butt....he orders cases of Mallocups and chocolate from England. He is not heavy at all ....If he does gain somehing, he stops drinking sugared drinks for a week and he drops it like that. Men!

 

[Cinderumbrella]

OK, not to scare you are all, because this is rare, but I had the worst flight ever out of Denver about 7 years ago. (Back in my Pre-Mommy working days, I flew all over the country for business about 2.5 weeks out of each month.)

It was an afternoon flight leaving Denver to O'Hare. Weather in CO was great, storms were heading towards Chicago. We take off and it is a normal flight. I was flying with 2 other people from my company, but we are not seated together. I am on the aisle, a gentleman flying to Indy for the Colts game is in the middle and I forget who was on the window. The serve us lunch, but it starts to get rough (this was just after 9/11 so we still got food on the plane, but with plastic silverware). The pilot climbs in altitude over the storm, but warns us it will be bumpy from here on out (We still have well over an hour left in the flight). I gave up on my food quickly because it was so rough. The poor FA's were having a terrible time even standing trying to collect the food. They put on the movie (Heath Ledger's A Knight's Tale) and I try to watch that. The pilot orders the FA's to stay seatbelted except for an emergency. The whole plane if bouncing up and down. People all around us are getting sick. The pilot comes on and says we are nearing OHare and are getting ready for decent, but it is going to get worse (WTH!! This is bad enough!!) Looking out the window all you see is clouds. He keeps trying to go down, but the plane won't do it. At one point we start diving towards the ground and we actually broke through the clouds and all you see is cornfields If you have ever flown to OHare, there are NO CORNFIELDS ANYWHERE NEAR IT. I am actually panicked at this point and me and the guy next to me are holding hands and he starts the Hail Mary. The plane shoots straight up in the air and after about 30 seconds the pilot comes on and says "We've finally been granted a diversion and are heading to Minneapolis since it is the closest airport with any openings..." So now after I compose myself (which takes several minutes) I use the plane phone to call DH and tell him (since he is circling OHare in the car waiting for me to land). I am crying, telling him what has happened. Once we finally make it to Minneapolis and we land, the entire plane starts clapping (The only time I have ever experienced that before was when I flew home from NM on Sept 14, 2001, on the first flights the FAA allowed after 9/11). Then the pilot tells us the REALLY scary part. There was a microburst and we FLEW through it, which caused the plane to dart down. There was damage to the plane and we needed to switch planes in MN.... We made it home safe and sound about 4 hours later than we were supposed to. I went to work on Monday and told my boss I needed a break from business travel for awhile since over the span of 1 month I was stuck on the road during 9/11 and then this happened. I was granted a whole 10 days off before I had to go to Orlando for business

BTW: To this day I can't watch A Knight's Tale and I have never seen how it ended...

 

[PrincessPaczki]

OMGosh, I'm sorry, I did'nt mean it that way. Everything will be fine, and I can't believe that you will be there in 6 days. I actually have trouble flying because my throat locks up or something really weird and I can't swollow without it hurting. It has only happened twice so I am starting to panic about my upcoming business trip to Ft. Lauderdale. I will be flying!

 

[Lives4Disney]

OMGosh, I'm sorry, I did'nt mean it that way. Everything will be fine, and I can't believe that you will be there in 6 days. I actually have trouble flying because my throat locks up or something really weird and I can't swollow without it hurting. It has only happened twice so I am starting to panic about my upcoming business trip to Ft. Lauderdale. I will be flying!

Oh, no...I was laughing (and I appreciate you thinking of me) because I have been a realy SWA cheerleader. I love them. I was just reading on the Transpo board about it. They are taking a bashing (cheap fares = cheap maintenance/cutbacks etc) BUT they were always more reasonable and they had the best safety, so I do't buy that. I bet it's not just SWA, either, with these issues ...they are just the ones that got busted. I wonder about the pilots, though.... I know several (fly for other airlines) and they wouldn't treat their lives and their passengers' lives so recklessly.....I know they have say in the airworthiness of the planes. I wonder how they are feeling. I still think SWA has a great safety record and as Kristin said, they will probably be under the microscope so extra careful.

PrincessP....have you tried something like Sudafed?? Does it close due to stress or is it a pressure thing?? I get pain sometimes in my eustachian tubes so Sudafed helps...or just Advil before the flight.

Kristin your story gave me goosebumps....ick. We have had some bad bumpy air, and sometimes had trouble landing due to high wind, but not like you had ....also, many times we've had other pilots in the passenger seats and I watch their faces.

OK...the View is on...pulling myself away from the DIS...into the kitchen...time to straighten up. See ya later!!!!

 

[Cinderumbrella]

Kristin, I hope you're right about that JOjo....she is such a pistol sometimes. She has serious attitude....(b)attidude. She is "BORED with WDW"...she's "been there too many times". OMG. The best one is she says, "the rides are childish".... She brings me down. Here I am staring at a messy house and tons of laundry and packing etc....and she doesn't want to go...it's "boring".

Half of her school class - twleve kids - have been home sick this week. I feel so screwed....although DH had his flew toward the start of Feb and all thru that month, so hoping we are in the clear here and maybe we had it before and are immune?? I heard Airborn was a fake. Just heard that lately! I will have to check into that. I always wipe the seats and tables on the plane...I am neurotic about the girls washing their hands, too, on vacation. I have had MANY vacations ruined by illness. Lessons learned.

It is helping me stick with it just feeling like their is a little group doing the WW with me.

My DH takes meds that make him CRAVE sweets. He is a butt....he orders cases of Mallocups and chocolate from England. He is not heavy at all ....If he does gain somehing, he stops drinking sugared drinks for a week and he drops it like that. Men!

She sounds like a hoot!! DS goes thorugh his I am going to disagree with everything you say moods as well. We were talking about WDW a couple of days ago when he was in one of those moods and he said "I don't think I want to go back this year..." and I asked "Why not?" DS "I just don't..." I said, "OK, Mommy and Daddy will go and you can stay home with Grandma and Grandpa..." The little smart alec says "No, Grandma will just take me there then..." And I said "So you want to go with Grandma and not us?" and he said "No, I want to go by myself..." So I said, "Fine, how would you get to the airport?" and he launches into this whole tirade about how the limo would come get him, he would take his shoes off at security, get on the plane, then take the elevator to the ME area and tell them to take him to the GF and "the nice people at the GF" would take it from there

Ditto on the MEN!!! comment. I have to stop eating carbs and work my butt off to lose 5 pounds. He gives up MCD's and icecream after dinner and loses 25 without breaking a sweat

 

[Cinderumbrella]

Kristin your story gave me goosebumps....ick. We have had some bad bumpy air, and sometimes had trouble landing due to high wind, but not like you had ....also, many times we've had other pilots in the passenger seats and I watch their faces.

I was listening to the pilots and air traffic control for awhile figuring as long as they are calm, I am calm- but once it got really bumpy, they turned off that station and then I really got worried!!!

Still, after all that, I am not a nervous flyer. I think having to get on a plane immediately after 9/11 prevented that. I was 1000 miles from home, and flew alone, so renting a car and driving back was not an option (like some of the others in my company did). They put me in 1st Class and I drank at least 3 vodka on the rocks with a twist in the first 45 minutes of that flight!!!

DS is the cutest on planes. He took his first flight at 2. When we start down the runway for takeoff, he puts his hands up in the air like it is a rollar coaster!! People behind us always get a kick out of it!!

 

[Fishy&2guppies]

So after my vacation week of stuffing my mouth full of food, I went to my WW meeting and I had gained 5 lbs. So I am hitting it hard this week and writing down everything and exercising. My husband comes home yesterday with 62 boxes of Girl Scout cookies . He is a girls scout cookie freak. Not to mention the fact that he is super skinny and doesn't gain any weight. He freezes them and eats on them for months. So now I am stuck here at home with 5 lbs, I am trying to loose and 62 boxes of girl scout cookies

 

[PrincessPaczki]

62 boxes of cookies, I would need to have a lock put on the freezer. Yum! That's like pure torture!

 

[PrincessPaczki]

Channing, thanks for the tip. I always have Sudafed on hand. I'll give it a try.

 

[Lives4Disney]

Fishy...I gain 5 lbs EVERY darn trip. DH loses 3. I was just cleaning up the kitchen and sooo tempted to just grab a little something to munch on....I was good though...I thought of this little WW group here. I am drinking a Diet Pepsi Lme instead. You have to fight off that 62 boxes and I am struggling with cases of Mallo Cups & Cadbury stuff calling to me!!!

 

[Golfing Goofy]

Just want to add to the illness list. One of my boys has been home sick for the last few days, so it must be going around the entire country. Its so nice to sit here and catch up on your conversations. He went back to school today and I don't have to be getting up every two minutes to bring him something to drink , to fluff up his pillow, to bring him a new book, etc. AACCK. I couldn't even get on the computer for more than a few minutes before I was being paged....



I never knew we could take tamiflu in advance. That is good to know. We leave in a few days for spring break. We are going to warmer weather! I cannot wait. (I wish it was to WDW.)


Kelly: I hope you get better!

You guys are great at motivating me with the eating. I need that extra push. I don't know why it is so hard. The best thing for me is to write everything down. It is like golf: if you cheat, you are only cheating yourself...

62 boxes of girl scout cookies? May the force be with you.

 

[Golfing Goofy]

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/calorie-calculator/NU00598
This is a link to estimate the number of daily calories your body needs based on your gender, height, weight etc. To lose, you subtract 500 calories from the daily amount for a 1 pound per week loss.

Have a great day everyone!
Kristin

Thanks so much for that link!! That really helps!

 

[Tinkaroo]

She sounds like a hoot!! DS goes thorugh his I am going to disagree with everything you say moods as well. We were talking about WDW a couple of days ago when he was in one of those moods and he said "I don't think I want to go back this year..." and I asked "Why not?" DS "I just don't..." I said, "OK, Mommy and Daddy will go and you can stay home with Grandma and Grandpa..." The little smart alec says "No, Grandma will just take me there then..." And I said "So you want to go with Grandma and not us?" and he said "No, I want to go by myself..." So I said, "Fine, how would you get to the airport?" and he launches into this whole tirade about how the limo would come get him, he would take his shoes off at security, get on the plane, then take the elevator to the ME area and tell them to take him to the GF and "the nice people at the GF" would take it from there

I think the next question should have been - "and just how would you pay for it?"

 

[Tinkaroo]

Congrats to all those who are doing so well with the weight loss!

Fishy&2guppies - OMG - here's some to combat those GS cookies!

For anyone worried about SWA - they've been covering the story pretty extensively here in Dallas, since they're headquartered here. As of the news story last night, they had grounded the questionable planes, and were putting them through the required inspections. I believe they had already returned nearly 30 of them to the fleet as of yesterday, and were still working through the inspections of the remainder.

Maybe I'm naive, but I truly wouldn't be too worried. While I do think it's irresponsible of them to not have done it by now, I think they've learned their lesson and have an uphill battle to get their good image back, and I know they will take that seriously. I, too, feel they're likely not the only airlines to do things like this. I still prefer SWA over the other airline I also have to fly (American).

Channing - sorry that JoJo is being a pill. I'm with Kristin - I think she's just copping attitude because she's not getting what she wants. She'll get over it. Otherwise, why don't you tell her she can stay home and do laundry and clean house, and you and Lucy will see her in 8 days?

Did you see that they have a new Hannah Montannah make-over at the BBB at DTD (it's not available at the MK one)? (Not to feed her fire, or anything...)

 

[arbonnette]

I am sort of ignoring the flying talk. I will say a little prayer and hope for the best. I HATE to fly. Hate the plane smell, feel motion sick, hate the food (or lack of it!) hate it all. I have a really bad Delta story on a flight from Brussels to Atlanta where DD got violently ill and no one would even give me paper towels to help her and then got annoyed with me because DD (2 at the time) was sick.

We were supposed to go to Europe this summer on an ABD trip, and can't due to it being booked and I am secretly GLAD that I don't have to FLY that long anytime soon. Sad to be glad to miss a Europe trip, but that is really how I feel!

Channing, Jojo's displeasure with WDW is how I FEAR she will get if we go too often. That is what happened with my niece and nephew who are 14 and 12 now and "so over" WDW because it is for babies. OMG! I would go every month if I could!!! My parents wanted to take them with us over our Feb. trip for Mardi Gras and my SIL said no because they have been there done that!!! Who says no to a free RPC trip for a week?!? My parents would have paid for them.
Btw, Hannah has not done BBB and I am avoiding it because I can't stand the extensions hairstyle and that is what she wants to get. So to avoid a fight, we just haven't been yet! Tink, I did see they have a new HM one ...

Kristin, 21 kids?! DD has 14 and I get overwhelmed when I help the class. That is why I am not a teacher. I went to help for art class today while it was fun to be with DD and her friends, I was so glad to leave after 45 minutes! Everyone seemed to have snot everywhere. We got flu shots and so far so good, but if you get one of those virus strains that weren't included in the shot (which everyone seems to be getting) then you are definitely out of luck.

Thanks for all the WW/weight loss encouragement. So far so good today ...

 

[Tinkaroo]

Kristin - that was one SCARY flying story! I'm so glad that you guys made it through that.

I've never had any truly terrible weather/turbulence/aborted landings or take-offs (knock on wood), but the worst time I ever had on plane was flying from Boston Logan back to DFW one-month to the day after 9/11.

I was traveling with a group from work, and we noticed a group of suspicious gentlemen in the AA terminal. They all arrived together (they were of Middle Eastern descent), but as soon as they got into the waiting area, they all split up and sat in different areas (and it was a big space). They call for our flight to board, and they each get up at separate times to board (and of course, everyone is so freaked after 9/11, that unfortunately, everyone in the lounge area is watching them, too.).

A few in my work group had been upgraded to 1st Class, so they got on first. The rest of our group boarded later, and I had one of the attorneys begging me to just get off and take the next flight out, they were acting too suspiciously, etc. We all get on the plane, and 2 of these guys are sitting in the first row on opposite aisle seats in First Class.

As people are boarding and passing these guys, everyone is visually upset (the rest of the gentlemen were spread throughout coach). I literally was sitting in my seat thinking about what I could use as a weapon if necessary, people are calling their families, etc.

We're getting ready for take-off, and the pilot comes on. He proceeds to tell us that "he is a former fighter pilot for the US Navy, and his only job today is to get us to Dallas safely, and that is exactly what is going to happen. If anyone feels differently, they can get off the plane, because nothing less will be tolerated." We all kind of sit there stunned, and then we pull away from the gate and are on our way.

The flight went uneventfully (thankfully!). When we got off the plane, the 2 attorneys that sat in 1st Class sat in the 2nd row, right behind one of these gentlemen. They said he did not turn a page in the magazine he was "reading" for the entire flight.

 

[princessesrule4]

As far as flying, I used to be a FA so I have lots of flying stories but I won't won't go into them... ... I actually have had pretty good experiences for the number of flights I've been on!

Everyone sounds like they are doing great on their diets,etc. I'm good as long as I don't think about Cadbury eggs, Reeses eggs... ...
We are going to Disney's VB next week so I'm hoping I don't gain but I probably will! Hopefully just a pound or two! I've got to have a disney cheeseburger and Mickey bar!
I should have started WW in January but at least I have a little buffer from the 8 I've lost over the past 5 weeks! 10 more pounds to go... yuck! Y'all are keeping me motivated though!

 

[tinklvr64]

Hi Gals...I am sneaking on to catch up all day yesterday and this morn
I did really good yesterday~due to my stomach being very upset. No flu just no gallbladder related issues. I hardly had anything to eat yesterday, so today I am back on track!
I have a good SWA story...we were going to Disney and son about 11 at the time had a slight fever that morn...got on the plane up in the air and looked over and he started to throw up(thankfully most landed in his blanket) all over his shirt..The one FA was soooo nice and brought me towels in the bathroom to clean him up with (imagine that in one of those bathrooms ) but he couldn't wear his shirt anymore. I asked her if they had any SWA shirts I borrow or buy~no they dont carry that sort of thing on the plane. So we were going to wrap him up in a blanket, and the FA came back with one of her t-shirts out of her luggage (it was a large sleepshirt Florida Gators). WOW that was so nice.. I asked if I could send it back to her, but she said no it was not a problem. I asked if I could do anything else for her, and she gave me her name to send in if I should write a letter which I did and gave her props That was truly going over and above.

It feels like spring here in Chicago this gives me encouragement to lose weight!!

Dawn

 

[praline3001]

Thanks for the lovely story Kristin...
WENCH
I too hate flying and that story is why
I saw the SWA story and that is the airline Savannah and I will be flying in June. Hopefully they will be nice and safe by then
It was the only airline I could find out of New Orleans that was flying a direct flight....

Jojo will get over it. Explain to her she could always stay home and go to school and do chores all week

I was trying to catch up on housework today so I grounded myself from the computer until my jobs were done
Sorry to hear about all you sickos.... we got sick right before our trip and Ryan got sick while we were there! We had to do one of those doc calls and everything
It all worked out and he got better pretty fast.

I hope you start feeling better Kelly!