Brrr . . . Time to Work from Hawaii

Elizabeth Weintraub in Oakland holding mandarins to her ears for no good reason.

It was chilly in the Bay area over Thanksgiving, as evidenced by the photo of me with the mandarins in Oakland. Yet, as the cold snap heads into Sacramento and Christmas lights are springing up, it can mean only one thing for this Sacramento Realtor: it is time to work from Hawaii. Yup, due to state-of-the-art technology, I can list Sacramento real estate just as easily from my home office in Land Park as I can from a cabana on the ocean at Big Island, so I am off to Hawaii this morning.

After trying to stuff my snorkel gear into my smaller luggage, it dawned on me that not only would it fit oh-so-much better into my larger luggage, but because I’m not traipsing about the South Pacific this year and won’t have to maneuver my own luggage by myself at all, I can pack a much LARGER suitcase. Eureka. Packing is done. No rolling of clothes and sitting on my luggage, tugging on the zipper, ripping the skin off my fingers in doing so. Plop, plop, plop, all packed. Yup, time to work from Hawaii.

Then I realized I had not yet received an email from Hawaiian Airlines announcing the time to check in. That was odd. I went to the Hawaiian Airlines website to print my boarding pass, and it wouldn’t let me sign in. A banner noted the airline had unilaterally decided to change customer passwords. I chose a new password and tried again. Nope, they required more digits, more letters and a weird combination. I hate being told what to do. But if I wanted to sign in to Hawaiian and get my boarding pass, well, must conform. I’m pretty irritated with them by now, when the horrifying thought occurred to me what if the reason I didn’t get an email was because I booked a flight for 2016 and not 2015?

My ergonomic keyboard sometimes causes me to mistype because the 5 and 6 are within the same reach on the left, and no matter how long I’ve had this keyboard, I can’t adjust. I want to type a 6 with my right finger. It’s embedded in my brain. What if I royally screwed up? But my luck is pretty good, and no, I did not make a mistake. I found my reservation. What I did not realize was the airline had changed the departure time. I had chosen a leisurely time to depart, a time that would let me sleep in, but no, Hawaiian changed it, and now I have to be at the airport at 6 AM.

If that’s the worst thing, it’s OK. Because it’s time to work from Hawaii.