When life hands you lemons, make peppermint hot chocolate

This morning, the Guv and I woke up at 4:30 a.m., ostensibly to load the car and hustle the kids out the door at 5 am for the airport.  I showered quickly, dressed, packed up a few last things... and at 4:47 a.m. had the genius idea to check the flight status.

Cancelled.

Huh?  Other flights to the East Coast were operating as scheduled.  Weather delays looked possible, but we'd even called Continental at 11 pm last night to find out the status -- thinking and fearing that our plane might have been the one that veered off of the runway in Denver.  Continental said "weather" was the cause.  We said, "from where was our plane coming?  Because we're on the first flight of the day, and that's the one flight for which the plane is usually sitting there ready to go."  [The Guv should know from his seven years of commuting out here!]

Continental refused to provide the origin of our plane -- something they've always done in these situations.  Was it the ill-fated Denver flight?  We don't know.  (Our hearts go out to those affected by that horrible accident.)  But we are mad as all get-out at Continental, because we are increasingly of the mindset that we could've been rescheduled last night and avoided what we're looking at now: arrival in Vermont near midnight on Christmas Eve.  Near midnight -- when the rental car counter is closed, when the grocery stores will be closed, when we'll wake up Christmas morning happily in our house but foodless.  We're not quite sure how this is going to pan out. 

Being the hero, the Guv tried to buy us some one-way tickets to New Hampshire; we'd be on that flight right now.  They were high, but not sky-high -- and since we could travel home on half of our tickets previously purchased with reward miles, we thought we could do it in order to get to Vermont for prime, uncrowded skiing.

Then Continental kiboshed us again.  Reward tickets (purchased with airline miles) must be used round trip -- even when half of the flight is cancelled.  The Guv is a Continental "Star" -- the highest level of frequent flier status -- but that mattered not at all in the end.   We decided not to lose both north of a grand and a hundred thousand miles and, instead, took the Christmas Eve flight.

Since it's supposed to snow again at Christmas, we're hopeful, but doubtful.  We may miss Christmas in Vermont, courtesy of Continental Airlines.  There are so many points in this saga where Continental could've given us other and better options that we're pretty bitter.

So a big "Bah Humbug" to the airline that still uses high fuel cost as an excuse to charge for checked baggage.

Meanwhile, we just had a nice "afternoon tea" of homemade peppermint hot cocoa, waffles, apples and cheese, and we're heading to the movies.  Tomorrow's another day -- a day in which we'll try to figure out how, God willing, we'll get both groceries and a ride to our Vermont red cottage in the woods.  I believe we can do it -- perhaps by hitching a ride on Santa's sleigh?