I feel like I’ve had a near miss with a heart attack. The Bears just pulled off a crucial victory against the Bucs in a nail-biting overtime struggle, clinching home field advantage throughout the playoffs. The road to Miami is indeed going through Chicago.

You know, it’s not often that the Bears nearly lose because of their D. But today, they did. What the hell was going on? The corners were doing very little against Tampa’s receivers, and Rattay was getting first down after first down. Not to belittle Tampa Bay’s truly heroic effort in the second half, but the plain fact was that overtime should never have happened, had the defense been playing like they’ve played most of this season. Geez.

That said, BEARS!!!

I hate hate hate flying there. And if you hadn’t already known I’m from Chicago, you would have realized it immediately from that statement.

Here I sit, in Oakland Airport, signed on to what must be the suckiest^* airport wi-fi network in America^**, after having found out that my flight to O’Hare has been—big surprise here—delayed.

Problem is, I’m having a devil of a time trying to find how delayed it is. First, I went to the Oakland Airport website, which only says that the flight has been delayed. No amended departure time, no nothing. Well, that’s helpful.

OK, then I figured I’d try my airline’s website, which doesn’t work properly in Firefox, the browser I am forced to use because of the aforementioned Suckiest. Airport. Wi-fi. Network. In. America. Grrr. Anyway, the airline seems to think there is nothing wrong and that the flight is taking off on time. Sigh. No help there.

So then I turned to that old standby, Google, and searched for “flight delays”. The first hit was the flight delay website for the FAA. It said that flights coming into O’Hare are being delayed an average of 1.5 hours due to—scratch that, make it a little over 2 hours…fricking awesome—weather, and directed me, get this, to my airline’s website for more information, which I already know won’t be there.

This just in…What the?! Now the Oakland Airport website says my flight is not delayed, and is leaving from a different gate^†. Huh? Sigh. I love flying. And by “love,” I mean that I’d rather have my fingernails removed with flaming hot pincers and be flayed alive than have to fly to Chicago in the wintertime.

^* Yes, that’s the technical term.

^** I’m talking about the Sprint PCS wi-fi network. Problem 1 is that their website doesn’t work in Safari. Which makes me crazy. But that’s a rant for another day.

^† I would just like to mention for the record that the only way I would have known about the gate change is by looking at the airport website. There are no monitors in this terminal with flight information^‡, and there was no one making an announcement over the PA. In fact, there is no one at the new gate to ask what is going on, and my supposedly on-time flight is supposed to be boarding in less than 20 minutes. These people are real professionals.

^‡ I would also like, for the record, to formally apologize to my roommate, whom I disagreed with just last night when she said that she hated the Oakland Airport. I said that I didn’t have a problem with the airport itself, but that I hated flying into it because it’s always a big pain in the ass to try and get home from there. Well, now I agree with her. I hate this airport.

Update 12/16/2006 12:51: OK, now the airline website says the flight has been delayed an hour—thought the airport website says that the flight is on time. And only now has someone arrived at the gate to answer questions, etc. Christ.