I think the official military term is “Clusterf–k.” (I’ve read enough romance novels to learn a thing or two. Did I just admit that out loud?)

Halfway to the airport, David (my future roommate) says, “Did everyone get a confirmation email for your flights?” My current roommate, @hashtagBrandon says, “No, did you?”

Uh oh. A sinking feeling gravitates toward my stomach, and I am frantically trying to keep the panic at bay. I was the one responsible for booking the tickets and so slowly, while praying every single second that everything would be ok, I pull up the email for @hashtagBrandon’s flight…for tomorrow. Twenty-four hours AFTER David and I’s flight to JFK. Crap.

$550 later to fix that little mistake, I find out from the people at the JetBlue counter that they could’ve flown him standby on our flight FOR FREE (thanks a lot JetBlue –you SUCK).

Around that time, I was hit with another bought of shivering, complete with teeth chattering. I felt like death and pretty sure I looked close. Yep, I had the flu, on my way to a non-stop 3-day trade show in NYC. Awesome.

Boarding our red-eye flights, we settled in and spent the next sleepless five hours wishing we could sleep. Landing at about 5:30 AM, we wandered around the brightly lit streets of Times Square and looked for food. We get to the hotel and I find out that I booked the hotel for 3 days and not 4 days as we needed. So I spent most of that day scrambling to find us a hotel for Saturday night. I wasn’t cut out to be a travel agent obviously. And then we proceed to try to wait in the lobby until a room was ready for us. Hours later, exhausted and grumpy, we finally get to sleep a bit, grab a bite, and got ready for the big day the next AM.

The trade show was super fun. We had a great sales team and worked our butts off, forgetting to eat and literally having no time at all to eat. By the third day, we were depleted of all energy and I had completely lost my voice, but I felt a lot better. The three of us were glad we had planned to stay a few extra days in the city as a brief vacation to see the sites.

Then we heard that a hurricane was coming in…(to be continued)