3 March 2014 - Oh, Ellen...

First of all, I couldn't resist making a post today simply because the date is 3/3. This is one of the few instances in my time abroad where I don't have to stop and remind myself that England writes the date as DD/MM/YYYY instead of MM/DD/YYYY like America does. It's the little things in life, good readers. It's the little things in life.

Secondly, I have a bit of an "Oh, Ellen" story to share with you all. For those of you who don't know me very well, my life is sprinkled with little awkward moments that people tend to respond to by saying "Oh, Ellen." It's not anything that I consider to be condescending. It's just the only way to respond to them

This weekend, the IFSA-Butler people are taking all of the England student for a three day adventure in Wales. Although most of the transportation has already been arranged for us, the York kids all were told that we're responsible for getting the train from York to Leeds, where we'll meet up with more Butler kids. However, instead of booking my Leeds tickets the moment that I got the e-mail, I decided to sit around playing with my thumbs and reading Harry Potter fanfiction for a week and a half instead.

When I woke up this morning, I thought, "Shoot! I have to book those tickets before they sell out!" So I clicked the link in the e-mail, put in the train time that I needed, and saw that there were still tickets available to be booked. I thanked my lucky stars and booked one. However, whenever I would get to the check-out, it would say, "There are no delivery options available for this journey. Please choose a different time" or something like that. I tried and re-tried the link several times, but every time I got to delivery, the same window popped up. My mouth turned into sawdust. Did I really miss the opportunity to go to Wales because I was too lazy to book my train?!

I sent a frantic e-mail to the Butler people explaining my situation and IMd my one York/Butler friend with little "WHAT DO I DO?!?!?!" messages. For a good five minutes, I just stared at my wall trying to figure out how I was going to get to Leeds on Friday morning.

It was then that I noticed that I'd forgotten to put Friday's date into the date box and that I was trying to book a train for today that was departing the station in 20 minutes.

I booked my train, got my confirmation e-mail, and sheepishly IMd my friend and e-mailed the Butler people about my "false alarm."

Let this be a lesson to you, kids. When you're booking train tickets, the date that you intend to leave is something you want to take into consideration.