Farewell, worst day ever

I have declared yesterday to be the worst day ever. Perhaps the worst 2 days ever, or more accurately, the worst 24-hour span ever.

Yesterday started fine, but the threats of a winter storm made me decide to leave work early. My one o'clock meeting was cancelled, but my noontime gathering of friends to read an old radio script was a highlight of the day and I just couldn't miss it. In hindsight, perhaps we should have postponed our fun.

I hit the road a little after 1, around the same time as everyone else in the state. The traffic reports at the time were reassuring, but what I was seeing with my own eyes was not. I moved about 6 car lengths in an hour--and we're not talking on the highway or even on the roadway--I was still at the top of the driveway of my office park.

Hours went by and progress did not improve significantly. Soon it was dark, and I had barely made it halfway down the hill. At this point, the traffic reports were starting to reflect a negative situation on the highways, but I thought I had invested so much in my commute and if I turned around, I might have to wait in the same long line at a later point in the day. I decided to stick with it.

And stick with it, I did. After about 6 hours, I made it to the real road. At 8 hours (after having moved 100 meters at most), I noticed that my car was acting funny. I realized that the red light that kept popping on and off on my dashboard was actually a low-battery warning. And I realized that the lights in my car (as well as my headlights) were dimming and then brightening and then dimming again. I am not a mechanic, but I knew that something was wrong.

I called B, and he said I had to turn around and go back to work. "Go back?!" I said, "I spent 8 hours trying to get here!" He explained that the symptoms indicated a failing alternator, and I might not have much time left before my car died. I didn't want it to go in the middle of the street, so I took his advice and went back. I still hadn't been making any progress on the road, so it was somewhat liberating to drive a whopping 10 miles per hour to get back up to my building, even if it was through 6 inches of snow.

I found lots of coworkers who had seen the unmoving line of cars and decided to wait out the storm at work. At least I wasn't alone. I made my way up to my office to try to figure out a plan. I have AAA, but not the premium program, so I could have my car towed only 3 miles, not all the way to my house (note to self: will be upgrading to the premium plan pronto--it allows up to 100 miles of free towing). So if I was going to have my car towed, where would I tow it to? And could a tow truck even make it through the gridlocked traffic?

As it turned out, it didn't matter because the AAA number was busy every time I called, and at that point, I still wasn't sure what I wanted to do with my car. Technically, it was still running, so a tow might not even be necessary if I was going to take it to the garage up the street. I prepared myself mentally to sleep at the office until one of my coworkers who waited out the storm and who lives in a neighboring town from mine kindly offered to drive me home--so nice! We left around 10, and by that time, traffic had cleared up considerably (though the roads were not in great shape because the plows had been unable to get through the gridlocked traffic to plow them). I was home by 11:30 or so.

B had a slightly easier travel adventure, even though he was making his way home from NYC. Yesterday morning, I watched the travel forecasts, and they said that NYC would be a mess by lunchtime--I knew there was no way that his plane was going to leave the ground. I called him around 10 and told him to get on a train, and he was able to hop the 1 o'clock train. And thank goodness he did--all of the flights were cancelled.

When his train reached the city, he hopped the commuter rail out to our town, and I was supposed to be there to pick him up. Needless to say, that didn't happen. Luckily, one of his coworkers lives in town and was home and has a 4x4 truck--his coworker picked him up from the train station and drove him home, and he was back well before 8.

So we both got home last night--but neither of our cars did. Mine was at work, and B's was at the airport. We planned to get a cab to the train station to take the commuter rail into the city and then make our way to the airport, but all of the cabs were booked. I had the idea of taking an airport shuttle, and they were able to squeeze us onto a van--hooray! The driver was perplexed to see that we didn't have any bags until we explained our situation.

We picked up B's car and then stopped at a store to buy a new battery for my car, a transaction complicated by my coupon and the sales man's inadequate understanding of fractions. Then we made our way to my office building (I can't look at those roads in the same way) and located my car under a big pile of snow. Amazingly enough, with a little cough and whimper, she started up, so B pulled her out of the snowbank and then turned her off and went to work on the battery. Within 20 minutes, her new battery was installed, and she roared to life with an enthusiasm not seen in years.

Our next stop was my mechanic. We called him earlier in the day to ask for advice, and he said that even if my alternator wasn't working, my car would make it the 37 miles from where I work to where I live on a new battery. We stopped in and he did a quick test to see if the battery was charging--it was--hooray! The alternator was fine. My six-year-old battery, and the 8 hours of idling, combined with my charging my phone in the car, was the problem. I had actually been planning to buy a new battery, just as soon as B was home and could help me through it. It just happened sooner than either of us planned.

Now we--and both of our cars--are home, recovering and safe, and we're preparing for this weekend's storm. And hoping not to have another worst day ever.

I wanna talk about me

A couple weeks ago, I helped a coworker format the manuscript of his father-in-law's memoir. He had been after his FIL for years to record his memories in one way or another, and putting pen to paper (well, he was more technical than that and used a computer) was how he chose to do it.

I got to thinking about it, and while my life has not been nearly as tumultuous as my coworker's relative (I am, after all, only 25 at heart), I have lived quite a life. I decided it was time to start writing some of it down--on a computer, that is.

The first step was to take a little walk down memory lane, and let me tell you, it was not as easy as I thought it would be. I don't mean that I had trouble remembering--I just didn't want to remember everything! A good story requires some sort of conflict, and going through all of it in my mind at once was overwhelming.

Sitting down to write the first sentence wasn't easy, either. I had been crafting paragraphs in my mind during my ride home, but when I sat down in front of my computer, writer's block set in. I wrote a few sentences but was dissatisfied with their blandness. I forced myself to keep going and write a straight account--even if it was boring and could have come from a user guide--and then I went back and made my sentences more clever sounding.

One great aspect to memoir writing is that you know the entire story from the start, so you can start at any point and write until you get bored, and then you can start on another section, and it's easy to pick up where you leave off. I haven't written much in my memoir, but I started with the night that B and I met--a very happy moment, in hindsight anyway. At the time, he scared me and I vowed to avoid him as much as I could. Luckily for both of us, I didn't keep that vow.

Landlocked for now

It's no secret that I've been bitten by the travel bug, and I've recently been contemplating a trip to Germany to visit Christmas markets. They are outdoor shopping markets full of hand-made Christmas-related goods and fun and festive foods like pretzels and spiced cider and probably sausages (which I could pass on without much regret). Unfortunately for me, the Christmas markets in Germany only happen during December (unlike American radio stations, which think that Christmas begins immediately after you throw out the rotting jack-o-lantern that you carved for Halloween, Germans believe that Christmas should be limited to only one month of celebration). I was seriously tempted to go this year and went as far as researching airfare for sample dates in December. And, not surprisingly--who really wants to go to Germany in December; it's wretchedly cold and dark--airfare was a bargain.

Then I remembered one teeny tiny detail--I had no passport! We mailed them off for renewal the day before Thanksgiving, and I thought the likelihood of receiving them back before January was slim--no chance of an international trip for at least a month. But then we both received our passports in the mail yesterday! It was a turnaround of 19 days, and I am impressed.

However, there isn't any time for a Germany trip. All of our weekends are booked, and the only open timeframe is between Christmas and New Year's, and by then the markets will be closed, and I am certainly not going to Germany in the winter just to wander around and be cold--I can do that for free here at home. And the Auntie Anne's kiosk at the mall has a near-unlimited supply of pretzels should I get a craving.

Luckily, I have our Italy/Greece/Croatia/Germany trip next year to look forward to. And B has been hinting that he might be interested in a trip to Japan afterwards. He also pointed out that there is a Disneyland in Japan. My interest is piqued...

One more Christmas task

The stockings are hung, the lights are up, Gretel is decorated, and the shopping is finished, but one final task remained--writing the Christmas cards. Now that we are married and have collected everyone's addresses, we feel like adults, and adults send Christmas cards.

I love buying Christmas cards. They come in all shapes and sizes and have fun pictures and messages and sometimes there is even glitter (and when there isn't, I have been known to add my own). However, sending cards is not as easy as buying them, so I frequently buy but then do not send them. This slackertude served us well this year, however, because we had almost 50 cards to send and didn't have to buy any.

The hardest part of sending Christmas cards is writing addresses, and we found a shortcut around that hassle--we printed all of the addresses on address labels. If I were really snazzy, I could have done a mail merge to move the addresses from our wedding spreadsheet to Word, but I've never done a mail merge successfully on my own, and I decided that copying and pasting was the faster option.

We printed return address labels for our names (with fun and different clip art--everything is more fun with cheesy clip art), so the only writing to do was inside the cards--febulous! Now the final step is to drop them in the mail and hope everyone likes them. And then buy cards for next year during the post-Christmas sales, of course.

Gretel 2007

This weekend, B and I are buying our Christmas tree.

It's not our first Christmas tree--we got that tree the first year we were dating, back in 2004. B proposed buying a 3' or 4' tree to add some festivity to my apartment. But when I saw the beautiful 7' fir at the store, I just couldn't resist. No surprise there.

All of the ornaments on that tree came from a Target Christmas spree and were plastic (I was living with 3 cats at the time and was concerned that they would break and then eat glass ornaments). The tree might have been sparsely and cheaply decorated, but she was beautiful and we loved her. We decided to name her--and all subsequent trees--Gretel.

Gretel's decorations have improved over the years--we buy ornaments whenever we go on vacation, and we have also been known to stock up on ornaments for next year in the after-Christmas sales. But we still have the plastic snowflakes to remind us of our first tree.

This year, I thought it might be fun to get a live tree in a pot and then plant it somewhere after Christmas. The location of "somewhere" had not been determined--our backyard is teeny and technically not even ours. But I liked the smaller-footprint idea of borrowing a tree and then replanting it, rather than dumping its carcass in the woods. I even found a Christmas tree farm in town that sells potted Christmas trees for much less than I would have expected.

Unfortunately, it's just not going to work out. I did some research online, there are problems galore with my potted-tree plan. First of all, a potted tree can only be in a house for 5-7 days max--and I want the tree to be up for all of December. Second, unless your tree is grown in a pot, its roots were partially destroyed when it was harvested, and the likelihood of the tree surviving that and the shock of suddenly being indoors followed by the shock of suddenly being in the freezing cold is not good, even for the sturdiest of Christmas trees.

I've come up with a compromise--we're going to get a normal-sized cut tree (Gretel), and we're going to get a small (maybe 2') live tree (Gretelette?) that we'll keep inside for December and then will move outside to our back porch (and hope it can survive the sudden cold).

No such thing as a free lunch

The airline wouldn't let me book our tickets because the miles are in B's name, so I gave him the confirmation number, and he called the airline to finish the process. And what a process!

I expected a $15 fee for booking on the phone with an agent. But it turns out that we have to pay all of the taxes and fees associated with the flights--and we are taking a lot of flights! The total cost was around $300 for the two tickets--not quite the freebie flights that I was hoping for! I suppose that a $300 bill is a lot better than a $2,000 bill, but not nearly as boosting to one's bargain-hunter ego as a $15 bill would have been. Chalk it up as a lesson learned--and it's time to amend the cliche: "There's no such thing as a free lunch--or a free flight."

And in other weirdness, they're mailing us paper tickets for the flights. Travel gurus say that you should always have paper tickets because they are the best way to get on another flight if your original flight is cancelled. But honestly--where am I going to store paper airline tickets for the next 9 months? My mind immediately leaps upon the worst-case scenario--what if we lose them? I will have to call the airline and find out if other tickets could be issued to us at check-in. Perhaps I will be grateful for this seeming inconvenience when the time comes.

The joys of awards travel

B's frequent flier miles and hotel points are a perk (perhaps the only perk) of his frequent travel. We recently decided to put them to good use for a European vacation next year.

Since the dollar is currently in a rather sad state, the hotel points are generally best used for European hotels. Our honeymoon hotel rooms would have cost many thousands of dollars had we paid for them out of pocket--but the points allowed us to sleep for free for 13 nights. However, for this trip, we decided to "sacrifice" some of B's hotel points and transfer them to airline miles to allow us to redeem the points for free airline tickets.

The decision to transfer the points is cost-effective because we're flying during a very expensive time. The flights that we need are currently close to $1,000 per person (!!)--way more than I am willing to pay. Paying with points will be a huge cost savings. I thought I had it all figured out. Then I called the airline to book the flights.

The cust serv rep was trying to send us on a flight with connections in Philly (and sometimes Laguardia) and either Germany or Amsterdam--yikes! I said, "It's just so inefficient! I know there are direct flights to Germany!" She kindly agreed to dig deeper and was able to get us on my first-choice flight on the way over. However, the flight back was not so simple.

There were two options--fly with 2 connections (3 flights) in a single day, or have an overnight layover in Germany. "Hrm," I thought, "Germany..." So now we have a layover in Frankfurt, and we'll have the remaining 2 flights the next day. B has predicted that our bags will be lost. However, I think I trust the airline system over the Italian post office.

Speaking of Italy--that's where we're going! Venice, Florence, and Cinque Terre! And then we're going on a cruise through Greece. And I have a lofty goal for this trip--I don't want to check any luggage on the way over. Can our intrepid traveler survive for 2 1/2 weeks with the clothing in a single suitcase? Stay tuned. The packing list is about to get a whole lot shorter.