To be updated with substance and a delightful anecdote when I get to the Bradley airport.

Bye, friends
——–
Home now. Free internet in Philly was not really free so I just opened word to type my intended blog post. I NOW PRESENT TO YOU WHAT I HAD ALWAYS INTENDED!
~~~

By the time this gets posted, I’ll be snug and content in my room back at home.
HOWEVER, I promised an update from an airport, didn’t I?
So I am sitting here in the Philadelphia International Airport, where they offer free wireless to “college students” and yet have run out of vouchers for free internet-ness and don’t think they’ll get them in until next week.
Big load of help that does me.
But I digress. Today, I was going to document a rather stressful and frustrating event that happened nearly one year ago (Right now it’s like two days off :P)
So Finals last semester, somehow my psychology 11 final got pushed to being scheduled for the morning of that last Friday of finals. I end up booking a flight out of Hartford for around 6:30 AM on the next Saturday.
Here’s what goes down.
I’m fantastically unprepared for this final based entirely on memorization, so I awaken at 5 in the morning (after sleeping at 1) on Friday to cram whatever I can into my feeble mind. I gloss over, I repeat, I mnemonically memorize whatever material I could inhale during those four hours before the exam.

The exam comes and goes, and I make it back to my room with that delightful feeling of completion that comes with the end of things.

However, as a naïve freshman, I underestimate the load of packing.

I begin at two in the afternoon, my shuttle leaving at 4:15 AM. I begin the packing process and unfold boxes, sort my belongings, start lists which I don’t bother finishing, all while jumping around North saying hello and goodbye to people as the hours wear on.

By 10 PM, I realize I’m going to probably be pulling an all-nighter in order to finish my boxes. I WAS RIGHT! I finished finally at three in the morning, to the semi-dismay of my roommate. (Except after watching what I went through, he decided he should perhaps start as well)

So, I don’t bother sleeping. I sit at the desk beneath my bunked bed, clicking away at my laptop, sipping a soda until I have to pack that too and head for the shuttle. Kendra Allen helps me out with my luggage.

And so the shuttle leaves Converse and I conk out. I wake up only upon arriving at the airport, as the car swings into terminal set A.

I pull out my belongings, an overweight green duffle, a heavy black solid suitcase, a carry-on, and my backpack. Unable to pull three things at once, and being yelled at by a security officer, I drag the carry-on and the suitcase 10 feet before retreating for the green duffle, pulling that 20 feet, then the other two 20 feet, systematically moving them slowly to the check in gate.

The entire process was delightful

Still, after the hassle of getting checked in and things, where apparently I used my father’s credit card and I sign in order to pay for the fee of overweight baggage (By the way, that policy changed, it’s friggen expensive now >( ), I head through the security check point and to my gate. I am with people who I know, their flights boarding and leaving at the least, 20 minutes before mine.

We keep one another awake.

Then they leave.

Then I fall asleep.

Surrounded by people everywhere in the seats around me, I wake up bleary-eyed looking to my gate to see if there’s any hustle or bustle, the middle-aged couple ahead of me call my attention and say “Hey they were looking for a kid at that gate over there, maybe it was you?”

Deliriously, I go “ok thanks” and walk over.

I ask the stewardess if the flight has boarded
She goes “Are you Esteban Parker?”
‘Yea’
“Hey, Tammy, this is Esteban Parker”
‘Oh, this is the kid?’
“Yea. Fred, this is Esteban Parker”
and this goes on until I get introduced to practically all the stewards working at the gates. Finally she tells me, I missed my flight. They called my name seven times, they knew I was asleep, they ask why anyone didn’t wake me up (even those around me THANK YOU PEOPLE FOR WAITING UNTIL I WOKE UP ON MY OWN you could have poked me) and in my dismay and sleep-deprived panicked state I become bleary eyed and start bawling. However, the stewardess’s cruelty ends there, as she immediately begins booking me on the next available flight that’ll get me to the west coast, keeping me in the terminal for another three hours.

And after a few more introductions, she tells me to go back to sleep, because now that the workers know my face, they’ll make sure I’m awake for the flight this time.

That was traumatic.

But for that, I now make sure to sleep even just a little before the shuttle, and to bring more effective distraction than Pokémon Diamond and my iPod. Hartford’s free wireless, though horrendously slow, usually does the trick.
And for that to have happened on my way home for the summer was sheer dumb misfortune. Still, everything came out well in the end, and my layover was shortened so I made it home only an hour later than I was supposed to. Of course, I appeared at the airport located 30 minutes south instead of 20 minutes north of my home. Good ol’ Bay Area.

Oh, and my checked bags? They left without me. My parents were kind enough to perpetuate the spoiling of their only child and pick them up from the north before coming for me in the south.

Alright. My next flight boards soon. Then, I’ll sleep some more, I’ll pull out one of my favorite game series of all time to peruse while I’m awake, and I’ll finally be back to the warm California weather for two weeks.
ALTHOUGH YOU KNOW, I DON’T REALLY WANT TO BE. Crazy as it sounds, I wanna be back at Amherst right away, doing Hughes or anything, really.

Oh, and my last post garnered a fairly critical response from one Michael Britt, who went “wtf” and spelled my name Estaban in a text message to me after reading about my jubilee at the bird outside my window.
HERE’S SOME MORE EXPOSITION ON THE MATTER WHILE I WAIT FOR MY PLANE TO BEGIN ITS BOARDING PROCEDURES.
I lived in Newport 210 for the past year, which gave me a fantastic view into the wooded area located behind President Tony Marx’s house, also between the Cadigan Religious Center and Newport. Same block that Professor Miller lives on too, but stories for another time.

Anyways, the clearing that is surrounded by shrubs and tall trees (are some of them poplars? I was never a good tree identifier) makes for a delightful area for our local natural denizens to frolic in. As last summer ended, I saw many bunnies and squirrels and chipmunks tromp on through that area, along with many birds perch on the trees outside my window. THE
BEST THOUGH WAS THE HAWK

Yea, the Hawk that we see flying around the campus sometimes? It perched right outside on the tree by my window for a good hour or so. I didn’t get any pictures as I didn’t have my camera then, and due to the slowly falling foliage, I thought at first it was an owl. When I made out its features though, I was enthralled.

See, because in my pursuit of being a biology major, I started as the animal nut back at the age of six or seven, and learned so much arbitrary trivia on creatures that could have filled many a Wikipedia page with delightful data.

And throughout all this, birds were my absolute favorite class of animals. They were always so awesome and I loved how some of the tiny ones looked so cute (HUMMINGBIRDS EEEE) and how eagles looked so majestic and so I thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed being witness to them at any time.

It helped that my first video game was Sonic the Hedgehog, so I became a fan of speed, and thus the fastest animal in the world belongs to the birds: The Peregrine Falcon, reaching diving speeds of up to 250 miles per hour. (Variations from 245-255 depending on what you read)

(I also liked Cheetah’s too, for that reason)

Anyways, so when a bright red Cardinal sits in the green tree outside my window while I’m furiously banging at a keyboard trying to finish a History paper, I go googley-eyed and gawk at the poor bird while spazzing like an epileptic.

Jamie Mattison was witness to all this, as she sat on my bed trying to start her Neuro open book final.

Thus, unable to share my sudden glee with just one person, I threw up an AmhPub post.

This is because I’m of the mind that the AmhPub is far, FAR too seriously taken, right now. Sure, the thoughts of others might be good to provoke discussion, but a blog was never meant to be a public forum. It’s a public journal, and another mechanism by which we learn about one another and keep in touch with friends.

But, that’s a topic for another post.

I would have taken a picture of the cute tiny thing, but when I got my camera out, it flew to a slightly higher branch, and kept going higher until I had to arch my neck painfully while laying my head on my desk just to see it.
It was still really cute though. And it sang its bird song for about 20 minutes from the high branch before leaving.
That also reminds me, a few weeks ago when I made the sunrise post, that was in part because the morning songbirds and pigeons and things kept attacking and attaching themselves to my open window. IT WAS CUTE how they would use their talons and feet to grab a hold.

But the window opens up slanted, so one of them fell off. I did not hear a thud, though, and the sight of a bird slipping
down was still too cute to provoke concern from me, in the end.

Alright. I’m done gushing about birds. And my section is coming up.

See you all later!

(P.S.: Unfounded Revenge/Smashing Song of Praise from Mother 3/SSBB mix is still awesome)

(That gives me an idea too; one of my upcoming posts shall be a SONG POST! Anyone have a problem with sendspace?)