Monday, December 22, 2008

This is my 100th post. 
I arrived safely in Arkansas, and then the adventure of the luggage began.

It started at the belt, waiting for the luggage to come out. The people on my plane waited 40 minutes until the luggage rack even started moving. I think that was a record for everyone waiting. 20 minutes later, my luggage still wasn't there.

So then, I proceeded to the US Airways counter, where they let us look in the back room for all of the luggage they had collected. When none of us saw our luggage, we waited in line to talk with an employee individually. For me, this took an hour. Part of the reason was the dear old man in front of me. Like many people over the weekend, he was coming from the north and arriving later than he planned. He was also keen for conversation, and enjoyed talking to those around him. After spending about 25 minutes trying to claim his luggage, he decided to take one more look at the luggage in the back that we had previously looked at. Of course, the luggage was back there, and the previous encounter a waste of time.

I walked up to the ticket counter at the same time as a man on my left, who had missed his flight. Apparently, he was chronically late, and the person helping me knew him by name. Already flustered by the previous man, she unleashed on this guy, telling him in the future, he better be on time, because they knew him to always be late so they had actually held the plane for him. She was so upset, in fact, she typed my phone number in wrong, which I discovered this morning when I checked the status of my luggage on the internet.

Now, this might not seem like a big deal, but 1) I am leaving the address I provided tomorrow and 2) this address does not appear on mapquest or any GPS locater, so people don't know how to get here. And so, I called US Airways...and waited on the phone for an hour and a half. The lady corrected my phone number, but didn't know anything else to tell me.

You'll be glad to know that my luggage arrived late tonight. The driver's truck had overheated, and he called. "Oh, thank goodness,  it says call for directions, and your phone number hasn't been working," was his greeting. 

But I must say, it could have been so much worse.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

May you make another owner very happy, check engine light and all.
And always know that in our hearts, you will always be worth more than $600.

Sunday, December 14, 2008

True story of an incident in a Raleigh movie theater bathroom:

I was about to go see the fabulous movie Australia, and knowing that I was getting involved with a three hour movie about something I'm passionate about, I didn't want to risk any kind of interuption, including a bathroom trip. So I found a stall, and squatted.

Of course, there was no toilet paper. But before I let this ruin my viewing experience, two older ladies (I'm not sure what was going on) went into the bathroom stall next to me. What luck, as there were a total of 4 people in the bathroom and about 20 stalls!

So, I waved my hand underneath the stall and asked for toilet paper. One lady was confused, but the other understood right away.

"Sure, just a second."

And suddenly heard giggling, then "I dropped the whole roll in the toilet! Just a second."

And sure enough, a soggy toilet paper roll appeared on the floor.

But then there was another round of laughter.

"I can't believe it, I just dropped the other roll in the toilet!"

By then, the two ladies were laughing so hard, I thought I might have been stranded. But they came through and offered me the toilet paper, one of them insisting she didn't know how she coudl drop not one but two rolls into the toilet.

Later, after the movie, I returned and found that neither stall still had any toilet paper.

Monday, December 8, 2008

O Tannenbaum!
(the lights are colored, but they didn't turn out in the picture. Also, maybe I should have scooted the Xbox chords out of the way? What can I say, this picture followed a very serious tetris game.)

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Behold my beautiful Christmas present.

Now, hopefully you will not have weird dreams where when you look at the painting and blink, it changes into a different painting, and because of this conclude that you are going crazy and start worrying that you will never live a normal life in society...which is what happened to me on the night I hung the painting.
Today, someone asked me for a dollar so they could buy toilet paper. Who could say no to that?

So if you want to make money off of strangers, there's your pickup line.