Anna's Adventures at JFK Airport

My BOS->JFK flight landed at 12:40; the seatbelt sign went off, cuing the usual mad rush to get everything out of the overhead bins AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE (which never made any sense to me. It's not like it gets you off the plane any faster.) The frenzy was interrupted by a flight attendant, who came over the loudspeaker to announce that we were "about to take off."

...sorry. Come again? Everyone froze and stared at each other. It was a nice three-second bonding moment with my fellow passengers.

The flight attendant came back over the loudspeaker and said "oh, sorry, I mean...about to open the doors. Sorry."

Nice going, flight attendant lady.*

I got off the plane and made a beeline to 1) pee, 2) get lunch at the food court. While in line for pizza (as an aside, WHY DOES THIS JFK TERMINAL HAVE MORE BARS THAN RESTAURANTS?) shouting broke out from the main concourse, and all the employees from the various food court stands sprinted over. Hordes of curious passengers ran after them. Reluctant to lose my spot, I took a couple of steps and peeked out - two guys were having a pretty serious shove/fist-fight, and got dragged apart by their friends. It was intense.

*It occurred to me that we could actually have taken off, flown back to Boston, and flown back to New York with plenty of time for me to make my connecting flight. The other passengers might not have been so cool with it, though.

First thought:
Of all the places to have a big man-fight...the airport terminal? Really? Right in front of the departure boards?

Second thought:
Maybe they're upset because their gate got moved, or something.

Third thought:
But...the airport terminal? Really?

Final thought before nomming on pizza:
Police!

The police came over, and pulled the two fighting guys + their friends aside; I noticed that there was one woman among them, with a little boy wearing a big gangster hat clinging to her leg. It broke my heart a little. I was briefly tempted to kidnap him and raise him myself, but I resisted, 90% because the police were right there, 8% because two of the kid's companions had just been fighting in the airport terminal, and 2% because kidnapping people is wrong.

...anyway. A preview of my summer: I have another 2.75 hours before my flight to DC (yay 3.5-hour layovers!) - my friend will pick me up, we'll do something fun tomorrow morning (it's a surprise, and apparently it's epic, so I should have a good story for you all soon), and Saturday afternoon I will be reunited with my best friend from Middle School. Her family is throwing her older sister a graduation (from the Naval Academy) party, which is super-weird since I remember that same sister's 8th grade graduation party.

AHHHHHH! When did I get old?

Saturday night, my friend will drive me to Charlottesville, and I'll spend Sunday settling in before starting work at the NRAO (National Radio Astronomy Observatory, pronounced NUH-RAAAOO with the vowels at the end as drawn out as possible) first thing Monday morning. My research project description is currently: "pulsars." Whatever that means. I'll find out soon enough.

I (and everyone who's still in Boston) have lots of awesome stories to catch you up on - I'm going to split them up into individual posts so that this doesn't become a novel.

To balance all this babbling from my end, POST! POST LOTS! Every time I check this site and find no new posts, I will cry.