Doesn't Matter

So on Wednesday afternoon, at work, I vowed that I would check into Southwest Airlines online to reserve my spot for my flight the next day.  If you don't know, Southwest has a policy whereby people line up to get onto the plane in order of checking in.  You can check in online as soon as 24 hours before your flight time, but I think you can buy a spot earlier than that.

I thought it would totally be easy for me to check in because, hey, I work in front of a computer all day.  But even though I wasn't swamped with work, it slipped my mind; I only realized I effed this up driving home.  I was checking online on my phone at dinner, a full, oh, two hours after I could have done it, and I got, like, B44, which was the fourth regular queue of people, not including families and members of the military.  Naturally, I got a middle seat.

I did not want that to happen on my return flight, but because of my sightseeing I wasn't sure if I could get online as soon it reached T-24 hours.  I had a host of things I wanted to do today -- watch soccer, eat at Arthur Bryant's, finish up the tour of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum I had to cut short when I was in Kansas City 2 1/2 years ago, then prepare for the Kansas City Comets game.  However, I woke up from consciousness at 8:30 only to go under until 10:30, so soccer was out.  I then got out of the hotel room late because I was working on my fantasy football team.  Ate at Arthur Bryant's at noon and not 11, when they opened.  (Aside: Arthur Bryant's is OK, even good, but not great.)  Got to the NLBM at 1 and not noon, when they opened.  But finishing up the back half of the tour was a lot easier done than said; didn't realize I was nearly done with it anyway.

So I'm here, at the library now, blog posting this.  Got here about half past 3.  After dinking around the Internet for a bit, I checked in at Southwest.  Didn't realize that my flight leaves here at 3:30 -- 3:25, to be exact.

I looked at the time.  I checked in at 3:44, only 19 minutes after I officially could.  And I got ... B21.  The third queue, sure.  But I only moved up 23 spots?  Moreover, the best I could do 19 minutes into check-in time is B21?  Are that many people purchasing a priority spot?  If so, why was I so pissed at myself?