American Bible Challenge AKA, You Don't Know Jack About Jesus

So remember way back at the beginning of the summer when I want to that tryout for a new game show? Hosted by Jeff Foxworthly? About the bible? You can read about my adventure here.

 Anyway, so the show premiered, Yay!! It made it to the air, how wonderful is that? I watched the first episode and you know what? It was a good show. The first thing that struck me was how relatable the people were on the show. I felt like these people I could have easily met at a BBQ or church picnic or, if we are honest with each other, neighborhood bar.

The show consist of six, yes six, rounds. I felt this was a bit much but they do have an hour to fill. The first four rounds are there to prove who really knows their bible and who just memorized the answers to Trivial Pursuit. The fifth round is where the questions really get hard and eliminates the weakest team. The six round is a classic game of who can answer the most questions in one minute. The questions are all from one subject, this week Women of The Bible, and the teams are given about thirty minute to study and refresh.

I enjoyed watching the show and got a nice surprise that I could hang with the trivia until the last round. I'm glad it's a good quality game show and hope it becomes a regular occurrence.

 Here is a trailer for the show if you still haven't seen it:

Southwest Airlines, I accept your apology.

The view on my way back to Dallas.

So remember that post I wrote earlier this month about my experience flying into Chicago? If not, you can read that here. It's a detailed account of everything that went wrong and the letter I wrote to a SWA senior vice president about how disappointed I was with Southwest.

Thanks to a Facebook friend, who sent me a link to this blog: How to Complain To Airlines, I decided to act like the rational person I kept insisting I was and send a strongly worded email to the airline. The email I sent is based on the letter in my blog, the main difference being length, as the email form had a character limit, and an additional request to reimburse me the extra cost I incurred getting to my destination. 

So what happened you ask? A few days after I sent the email, I got a reply from Tenicia, who works at Southwest. I fully expected for her to apologize and tell me how sorry she was for my bad experience and then deny my request for reimbursement. And this of course happened. What happened next is what took me by surprise.

She told me she was going to refund the purchase of my plane ticket. Not give me a voucher toward my future purchase but actual refund my money. I was surprised by the offer but cause most airlines will do anything to not give you your money back and actually this is what I wanted, my money back. Of course I was skeptical as she said it would take one to two billing periods to process the refund. I thought for sure my request would get lost in piles of electric paperwork. So it was a pleasant surprise yesterday when I checked my credit card account and discovered Southwest had already processed the refund (It took about a week from the time the email was sent to the time I got the refund). I wanted to hug Southwest for being decent human beings.

I know what you're thinking, "You're content to just get a refund for a botch plane flight?! Why aren't you suing for partial ownership of the airline?" The answer is yes, a refund is good enough and here's why. The cost of the plane ticket was close enough to the extra cost I incurred that a refund was good enough to satisfy me. That and thought I was made to feel like I didn't matter, the fact that I got an actual person to send me an email and tell me, "I'm sorry. We totally dropped the ball on handling this well," made me feel like a person again.

Yeah, this unplanned diversion changed my vacation plans but nothing too terrible happen and it gave me a chance to have a bit of an adventure. On my impromptu road trip, I got to visit eight states and spent sometime driving through some beautiful parts of the good ole US of A. Was the drive from Nashville to St. Louis to Minneapolis tedious? Of course but I got to spend it with two of my favorite people and now we have a story to tell about the vacation that started with an unplanned road trip.

So Southwest Airlines, I accept your apology. You owned up to making a mistake and did what you could to make it somewhat right. Will my next plane trip be with you? Probably not but the one after that probably will be. Here's to having unplanned adventures and being a decent human being.

The true cost of Bags Flying Free

Every year for the Fourth of July, I go to Chicago to visit family. Also around this time is my cousin's neighborhood famous birthday party. Celebrated with ridiculous amounts of food, friends and fun this is an event I greatly anticipate attending. I mean who wouldn't like a party with tons of home cooked food and a corner fireworks show that could at many moment light someone on fire?

This year, the weekend prior to the Fourth was also my family's reunion in Minneapolis. This was the first time in decades I had been to this family's (my father's mother's side of the family) reunion and my first trip to Minnesota. I'd planned to fly into Chicago the day before the reunion and drive to Minneapolis for the weekend. This solved the problems of a) having a car, as we would rent it in Chicago and have it for the length of our trip and b) being able to afford to fly to Minneapolis (as the air fare was twice the cost of flying into Chicago).  But everyone knows about best laid plans – rarely do they usually don't go according to, well, plan.

The night I left Dallas, June 29th, there was a freak thunderstorm in Chicago and it knocked out the power at both airports, Midway and O'Hare. My plane was diverted to quite possibly the worse airport it could have been diverted to, Nashville, TN. What's wrong with Nashville, you ask? It's an airport in a small market. All the flights out of the city were already sold out before I was stranded there. So me and 300 other people were trying to get to Chicago on eight flights already sold out.

Remember my great plan to drive to Minneapolis from Chicago? Now, not happening. I'm not used to being stuck anywhere without a backup plan, blame girl scouts or too many crime shows but being prepared is important to me. This was the first time is years I had a problem I didn't have a solution to. I felt helpless and forgotten and the airline I was flying, Southwest, did little to help me feel otherwise. Here's the letter I composed to sent to their Customer Service department. I tried to find an email address associated with an actual human being who would read it in a timely matter and respond but apparently company email addresses are a trade secret at Southwest Airlines.

So here, for the internet to read, is my letter of disappointment. I won't say I'll never fly Southwest again but I can tell you my bags flying "free" will no longer be a reason I go to them first.

Dear Teresa Laraba, SVP of Customer Service, 

As the Senior Vice President of customer service and a person who is very proud to work for a company known the world over for its customer service, I would like to inform you of the trip I took Thursday June 29th.

I left Dallas at 8:30 pm on my way to Chicago, IL. I am sure you are aware of the Wright Amendment preventing Southwest from flying directly out of Love Field into Chicago's Midway airport. This meant my plane into Chicago had to come from Houston's Hobby airport. My flight left Houston around 10pm and once it was in the air, a severe thunderstorm in Downtown Chicago causes Midway (and O'Hare) airports to shutdown. This caused all incoming flights to this airport to be diverted. The flight I was on was diverted to Nashville, TN. Before the plane was unloaded, we were told that all the flights for the next day were already sold out and that the line we needed to stand in to talk to a Southwest representative  already had 300 people in it.

After waiting in this line for two hours, I was told by the gate agent the only way I could fly out of the airport was to fly standby and I was not guaranteed a seat on a flight to Chicago until Saturday evening. I was also told I could not stay in the terminal over night as the airport was closing. I asked where I was supposed to go for the night, and the gate agent shrugged her shoulders. By this time it was 3:30 in the morning. I was tired, as I had worked all day, and extremely frustrated to be in a city where I knew no one, had no way of leaving and was apparently going to be until Saturday night.

Because I had no place to sleep that night, I stayed up and waited in the ticket counter line so I could speak to someone as soon as the counter opened. I should mentions one of the reasons I chose to fly instead of drive from Dallas to Chicago was because of time. I needed to be in Chicago before 8:00 am Friday, June 30th but had to be at work on Thursday, June 29th. If my schedule was not time sensitive, I would have driven to my destination. Now, because my flight had been diverted, do to an event no one could have prevented or predicted, I missed my deadline. 

When the counter opened at 4:30am I spoke with an associate and asked her if she could put me on standby to any flight going to Minneapolis, MN. She refused to do this, and told me Southwest is only contractually obligated to get me to Chicago. I told her I needed to be in Chicago June 30th by 8:00am and since that was an impossibility because of the storm, now what I needed was to be in Minneapolis as soon as possible. She told me the reason I missed my window was not the fault of Southwest and that Southwest only had to get me to Chicago, the earliest time available was a 9:55pm flight Friday, June 30th, evening and there was a possibility that I might get a seat on that flight.  

I told the associate I was aware of the fact that no one asked for the storm nor was I blaming or trying to hold Southwest at fault for this event but want I needed as a customer was to be in Minneapolis, not Chicago, tonight. She told me I didn't understand, that Southwest wasn't responsible for getting me to anyplace but Chicago. I asked her if she would please speak to a manager about this issue as I was told something different by the gate agent the evening before. She did ask her manager and once again told me I didn't understand, that Southwest was only obligated to get me to Chicago. 

This was when I walked away from the ticket counter as the associate didn't seem to understand my needs as a customer. It was 5:00am Friday morning at the time and I had been up for twenty four hours, I had been stranded in an airport that I was incapable of leaving for probably two days, I was offered no hotel or rest area to stay in until I could arrange for alternative travel and most disappointingly, my problem was not seen as important enough for someone to help me find another solution to my problem. Thought the storm inconvenienced a large number of people, all I wanted was some service and to know I mattered as a customer. This Is not how I felt at any point in time that I was stranded at the Nashville airport.

In order to get to my destination, I had to find alternative means (renting a car and driving) which caused me to incur an additional cost of $202. This made me rethink my decision to fly with Southwest knowing that if I had taken American Airlines, Delta, or United, not only would I have had been put in a hotel over night, I would have had a seat on another plane, what another airline if necessary, the next day. I am also aware that this type of customer service would have given to me at no additional cost.

After the poor handling of this situation, I can not say that Southwest will be an airline I do business with for quite sometime. You have lost my trust as a company that can fulfill its promises on service agreements. I know this was an event no one expected but the handling of this situation was extremely disappointing and frankly not worth the $60 in additional baggage fees I "saved" by flying SW.

Sorely disappointed,

Sydnie Montgomery

Dreaming A little Dream

*Sorry I didn't edit it before. I was in a rush but that isn't really an excuse. Here, version two. I think it's a bit better. Also, I must tell you about my night watching the hipster and the homeless in the social tango of friday nights in Dallas.

The fire red sky peeks through my blinds, teasing me awake. My eyes, forever obedient to the light and not my brain slowly open to a dimly lit room filled with grey shapes tinted in faded greens and blues. I turn to glance at my clock, worried I'd over slept and it's green eyes whisper, "It's three oh eight, sleep child, sleep." My rushing heart calms and I turn back to the soft mountain of pillows that makes up my headboard.

I wonder if the special ops people in my dream got out of the building before the missiles blew up the floors we were on. As I slip back into oblivion, the panic I felt in the dream becomes thick and oppressive. I feel a need to rush but I'm not sure what I should be rushing to. I see people in front of me surrounded by mountains of broken armor and debris. They are talking but it's hard to make out what the subject is. They don't seem to notice me. This makes me wonder if I have some kind of optical camo or if I'm just not worthy of their attention. I notice how this is the case in most of my dreams. They madly kick and rake the piles with their hands looking for something. I walk past them and one of them mumbles something about survivors and loose ends. I make my way out of the room, which is so large the scale frightens me. It would appear the room was full of people before it was full of unwanted remains.

I walk down a flight of stairs wide enough to drive a vehicle down and find a team of people who are familiar to me. They seem to know me more than I know them. They ask if I am okay, I assure them I am fine, one man in particular seems concerned with my well being. He is rather striking with intese grey eyes and a chin that last saw a razor a few days ago. He looks tired and holds my gaze longer than what's comfortable. No one says anything for a heartbeat before he suddenly starts barking orders to the small team. Team is almost a stretch as there are only five of us. I have a feeling that recently our team was much larger. The three other people rush to obey and I am left with the man with the commanding eyes. He says nothing to me but we look at one another, our eyes unable to look away from each other. Nostalgia rises in my chest as he steps closer and I know I meant something to this man. I look at his face and his eyes are red around the edges, recent tears hiding in his crow's feet. I open my mouth to say something but one of the team returns. They are talking but I can't understand what they are saying. Someone is playing the piano. The rest of the team returns quickly as the music gets louder. I start to feel like someone is pulling me from another dimension. At least, I imagine this is what it feels like to be pulled from another dimension.

The room starts to fade from around me. The team doesn't seem worried and neither do I. The music is getting louder as the room vanishes and again my eyes slowly open to a loud rumble from the other side of the window. The melancholy piano beckons me to awake and I reach for my third hand, alarm clock and general life device, my phone. I silence it into letting me dream for fifteen more minutes and caress the softest of my pillows as I reach for oblivion again. The storm clouds outside lull me to a dreamless sleep.

I miss the man with the intense eyes. I wonder of he misses me.

Showing Love

photo credit Michelle at maladjustedmedia.com, from this blog post

Fridays go one of two ways at work for me. Either they are full of unrealistic amounts of work that need to be finished before I leave or they are painfully dull as I will have nothing to do. Okay, that is slightly untrue, but from my perspective it is. Last Friday, June 8th, was somewhere in the middle of that scale, full of waiting on other people so I could finish assignments. While I was waiting, I came upon this article on HuffPo | Religion. I mean with a title like Jesus in Drag, how could I not read it?

What I expected to be an article that bashed the church for its non acceptance of gays or about some radical protest that included drag queens dressed as Jesus. What I got was the story about how a straight man, Timothy Kurek, learned to step outside his comfort zone and identify with the gay community. He did a social experiment were he lived as a gay man for a year and at the time he wasn't planning on writing a book but as the year went on, he felt compelled to share his experience with others.

What struck me about the article was his description about being in the closet and how detrimental it was for him:

The combination of knowing I had to constantly hide my true attractions and orientation, with the reality that I couldn't even hope for the possibility having a relationship, was overwhelming. And what I went through is NOTHING compared to the experience of the average gay and lesbian. They were never able to say "only 12 or eight or six more months of this before I get to be me again."

As a women who doesn't have to hide the fact that I'm attracted to men, I still have a hard time approaching men to show them I am interested. Mostly because I'm scared they won't be interested in me but also I'm afraid their reaction will include ridiculing me for being interested in them. If I was attracted to women, I have no idea how I would handle it. How could I handle constant rejection from people passing me on the street? Have you seen the way people look at LGBT couples as they walk down the street, it's terrible. If I did approach a woman I thought was attractive and she reacted violently to my interest, how would I handle that physically and emotionally? Reading that article gave me new respect and love for my gay friends. It also reminded me that I have a lot to learn about relating to people and showing them Christ's love.

I'm a firm believer in the fact that we serve up the bible in America with a generous slathering of cultural bias. We spend so much time using the bible to justify our ridiculous live styles, we miss the real truth present in it. We have become so weighted down by possessions and expectations that if someone were to live their life according to the principles in the Word, we wouldn't recognize it as biblical living. We would either put that person on a pedestal and tell them how much better they are than us and how we could never do what they do or we would write them off as crazy, telling them they are taking the bible too seriously and avoid them so we wouldn't feel guilty when they came around.

I'm not saying because of this article I'm going to sell all my possessions and tour around the country yelling scripture from the top of my lungs but it has made me keenly aware of how I view people and how I treat them when they are in my presence. Here's to showing people the love of Christ and making good first impressions.

Gramblings! It has begun.

For what seems like ten years, me and my friend Mattie have been talking about starting a podcast. We also talked about making a transmediated Pride and Prejudice and seventeen other projects but of course all those things had to take a back seat to school. Now that school is over, we have this interesting thing called leisure time. Time to do one of those seventeen project and the first one we picked is the podcast.

You should know that Mattie and I are basically the same person. We like a lot of the same kinds of things, laugh at the same jokes and genuinely enjoy spending time together. When we first met, we would spend a long time talking in the parking lot after class because we like making each other laugh so much. It was after one of these many parking lot conversations that we had the idea that we should record our parking lot talks and put them on the internet. We started calling these talking sessions Gramblings because they were general ramblings we had while in grad school. We recorded the first one this past Saturday and had so much fun we went over our agreed upon time limit. 

So for your listening pleasure, here is the first episode of Gramblings. It's work and kids safe so listen whenever you want. Or RIGHT NOW!

You can follow us on twitter too, @wearegramblings.

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American Bible Challenge Hits Dallas

In an effort to achieve one of my goals I talked about in a previous post, I ventured out to Vista Ridge Mall Saturday to take some pictures. I was informed that an open casting call was taking place for a new game show on The Game Show Network. It's going to be hosted by Jeff Foxworthy and the title of the show is American Bible Challenge. From the sound of it, the show is going to feature contestants from around the nation who know the bible the best.

Having not heard of the show before, I did what every person who uses the internet does when they need information, I Googled it. What I found was various blogs and articles asking more questions than providing answers. I did find the basics of the show, those being that eighteen teams of three will compete for a charity that will be the beneficiary of the competing team's winnings. How these teams will compete, how long the show will be on and how much bible knowledge you need to know to actually get on the show Google couldn't tell me. I decided it was time I go see for myself. I recruited my mom and her best friend to join me and we headed out to Lewisville.

When we got to the mall, the audition was easy enough to fine as it was located just inside a popular mall entrance. We first saw a crowd of around two dozen people standing, in movie queue formation, to the right of a pair of well lit stages. The stage on the right was small and had a background with the logo of the show repeated on it, like you would see on a red carpet. A few feet to the left of this stage was a much larger one framed with boldly designed banners announcing the presence of GSN and the American Bible Challenge. To the left of the main stage was a table covered in American Bible Challenge swag and signage and next to that table was a table for the local christian radio station. As contemporary christian pop music blared, we absently took up the clipboards we were handed and strode to our place in line.

As we filled out the forms, the standard "we want to get to know ya!" kind, we struck up a conversation with the lady in front of us. Her name was Clara and she was from Lewisville. She'd heard about the audition on the radio and wanted to participate because it was something completely different. She also wanted to support anything that would encourage people to see Christ in a positive light as she felt society has been discouraging people to have faith. She had one more reason she wanted to audition for the show, a reason I sympathize with, and that was she wanted to see a Hispanic person competing. I looked around and out of the thirty or so people present only half a dozen were people of color. Knowing that Dallas has a huge African American and Hispanic church going population, it was sad to not see more people who looked like me.

We waited in line for about ninety minutes and I got a chance to  take a few pictures. Unfortunately, we didn't get to try out for the show as my mom had an appointment to get to. We left Clara and told her we would be rooting for her if she ended up on the show. All in all, it was a good idea to try something new.

So, you wanna be on tv?

Mom filling out the forms.

The eager crowd. 

This lady looked fabulous in her pink.

KLTY was there giving away a lot of prizes.

American Bible Challenge Swag.

She was delightful, the table attendant.