We saw Lyric Theatre‘s production of Ragtime today; it was the opening, so the audience was filled with people carrying flowers to give to cast members after the play. And the cast members deserved those flowers – the performance was terrific, and I was especially blown away by the actors who played Sarah (Ayana Brewer) and Coalhouse (J. Demetrius Olivier).

There are four more performances between now and August 5; if you’re in the San Jose area, go!

Beyond that, it was mostly a day to catch up with things like the paper mail. There were two checks to take care of – a small ($10 or so) refund from State Farm and a four-figure rebate for our heat pump installation from SVCE. I deposited them at my credit union and was surprised to discover that the funds from the rebate check were immediately available for withdrawal but that the $10 from the State Farm check wouldn’t be available until Tuesday. Seems backwards to me.

Speaking of backwards, Delta has been sending us notifications all day about changes to our flights from Pittsburgh to Atlanta to San Jose, which is interesting and annoying since we’d cancelled them and gotten refunds issued. I guess we would have been stuck in Pittsburgh or Atlanta if we’d accepted their original offer to reschedule our travel. Thanks, Southwest!

We set the alarm early this morning because we had to be out of our stateroom by 7:30am. A few seconds after it rang, Diane looked at her email and yelled “our flight is cancelled!”.

Delta had, indeed, cancelled our Pittsburgh-Atlanta flight; they’d rebooked us, but we’d have to spend more than seven hours at Pittsburgh airport, wouldn’t get home until after 10pm Pacific, would have a very short connection in Atlanta, and would be downgraded to coach with no indication of a refund. I was not happy.

I looked at alternate flights on Delta – they were all for tomorrow, we’d still be downgraded, and we would definitely not get credit for the downgrade. I was not happy.

Neither United nor American had any good options, so I tried Southwest. They had seats available at better times than our original Delta schedule – no first class, of course, but Business Select was available which gave us head-of-the-line boarding. I grabbed it and tried to cancel the Delta flights online. No dice.

We took the ship’s bus to the airport. My first stop was the Delta “Sky Priority” counter. The agent there was able to cancel our flights and issue a refund to our credit card; it took about five minutes.

We had a real Pittsburgh lunch at the airport; we ate at Primanti Bros.. Having fries in the middle of a sandwich seems like a strange idea, but it tasted good; I’d go back.

Having A1-A15 boarding passes on Southwest is a definite advantage. Most people use it to sit in the first couple of rows; we used it to sit in the two-seat exit row (no middle seat!) on both flights. The first flight (on a 737 MAX 8) had a two-seat row on both sides of the plane; the second flight (on a 737-700) only had one.

The flights were smooth; we left Midway about 30 minutes late, but we still got home sooner than we would have on our original itinerary.

Delta even credited us with 7500 miles as an apology.

Thanks, Southwest – I’m sure glad I didn’t have to consider taking Spirit to get us home!