With Two Weeks To Go...

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.”
-- Mark Twain

When people find out you're traveling, they want to know all about it.  As I've been planning my trip, when I tell someone that I'm going alone, they have varying reactions.  The most common reaction I've gotten is some combination of staring and worrying for my safety.

"Are you crazy?!"

Well, short answer? Yes. But not the kind of crazy that you're thinking.

Every time I've had to fly, I've gone alone.  I've usually had someone waiting for me at the terminal -- I flew to Wisconsion and Seattle to visit an ex a few times, I had friends meeting me in San Diego and Riverside, while I didn't have anyone at the airport for me in Vegas last June I met up with people later, and when I went to Washington DC in high school, I had a group meeting me at the airport.  And yes, there actually is safety in numbers -- it's not a cliche if it's true.

However, the nice thing about this whole info-tech age we're living in?  I'll be connected.  I'm bringing my Kindle-turned-Hitchkhiker's Guide that accesses email and wikipedia and social media, and Starbucks are all international and offer free wifi.  My new phone is a 3G smartphone, so I'll be able to be contacted (even though I know the roaming fees would kill me).  I picked out places to stay in that are highly recommended, and most have security on-site (the little B&B I'm staying at in Bath has no security, but the owners live on-site).  My family has traveled extensively and despite what they think, I actually do listen to them from time to time and have picked up tips here and there on what to do, how to behave, where to stay and when to listen to that little voice in your head when it says not to go down that dark side street.

I'm going to London, not to Giza.  Sure, there's a chance that something could happen; there's a chance something could happen to me while I'm here in my hometown, or when I'm in New Orleans for a weekend.

I'm not stupid.  Not completely, at any rate.

View of Balboa Park from the Skyfari in the San Diego Zoo, June 2009

Another reaction I get a lot is "Oh, you won't have as much fun if you go alone."

Allow me to respond with a resounding bullshit.

Would I like to go with a travel buddy?  You bet.  I'd love to be able to wander through the British Museum with my parents and grandmother and aunts and uncles; have a pint at a pub with my brother and cousins; go see Much Ado with my geeky, theater-going friends (you know who you are!); share a breathtaking, panoramic sunset view on the London Eye with a partner.  But the timing, the cost, the lack of travel partner able to afford or get the time to go...  It doesn't work out like that.

I know there will be moments when I see something and say, "Oh, I wish [insert name here] could see this!"  I think that's part of traveling, of going away.  Absence and the heart and all that.

The thing about going somewhere with someone else is both a pro and a con.  It's a pro because no two people are exactly alike, they don't have the same likes and dislikes, you do things you wouldn't think to do.  One of my favorite day excursions I've ever taken was when I went to the aforementioned wedding in June, and it came up completely at random; I'm on my way to the airport, a family friend said to me, "Oh, you should try to get out of the city and go to Hoover Dam if you have the time."  The idea hadn't even crossed my mind, honestly.  I ended up renting a car and driving down to the Dam, then around Lake Mead for the day.

Yes, I didn't do the whole Vegas strip thing -- In fact, the only time I went down the main drag was when three of my fellow bridesmaids and one of the groomsmen went to the Charthouse for dinner the day after the wedding.  Quite a few people have scoffed at hearing that.

I like to think that I found more of myself out in the sand and heat and desert scrub than I would have found losing my money in some casino.  And now I have a reason to go back; to do the casino crawl.

In the funniest twists of fate, I'm actually going to be meeting up with an old friend while I'm over there -- she's an army wife, currently living in Germany, and she booked her Much Ado tickets for the same weekend I did! I think we'll probably do something ultra-geeky together, like hit up the Doctor Who Experience or something.

Lake Mead, taken on the Nevada/Arizona state line on top of Hoover Dam, June 2010

One across-the-board reaction I've gotten from everyone, however, is, well, jealousy.  Some of it's not real jealousy; maybe more envy, want, desire.  But some are jealous, and seem actually, honestly offended  that I'm going.


I know I'm not explaining it very well.  Let me try again.


There's a difference between saying "Damn!" because you're impressed and "Damn!" because you're mad, or in pain.  It's the inflection, the tone, the context of the conversation.  You see this often with swear words -- take something as simple as "shut up".  If you're telling a friend about a crazy event, and they're sitting there going, "Oh my God, shut up", you know to keep going because they just don't believe what you're saying.  If you're giving your opinion on a topic and someone says, "Oh, just shut up", you get mad because they're insulting you, they don't want to hear what you have to say.

So when you, person I do not know -- or at least not that well -- look at me and say in a nasty, nasily voice, "Well, must be nice!" when I say that I'm going on my trip?  Why, yes.  Yes it is.  I'll bring you back pictures.  Yes, this is a hell of a luxury.  I'm well aware of this.  Bringing up children and bills does not make me feel guilty, nor does it make your life mean more than mine.  It makes you look petty and, well, jealous.

So, you know, shut up.  You're supposed to do all this stuff when you're young, anyway.

Entrance to the San Diego Zoo, June 2009

I've also been told that I should See America First, with that backwards undercurrent of patriotic fervor that insinuates that I don't love my country because I'd like to go Elsewhere.  I have seen America -- I've stood on the shores of the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Gulf of Mexico, and I've crossed over into Canada for about 30 minutes.  Granted, I haven't seen all of the middle part, but I'm working on it.

I'm prefering to think of myself as an abassador!  Not to brag too much on myself, but I'm fairly intelligent, well-read, well-adjusted for the most part. Polite, friendly, outgoing, go-with-the-flow...  We as Americans NEED that image.  Going overseas and bitching about getting a full English breakfast in a restaurant in London a) makes you look like a dumbass and b) makes us all look dumb. It's like going to your friend's house and bitching because they don't have your sheets on their beds. Why the hell did you bother leaving home in the first place?


Honestly, in all, I'm rather glad I'm going to be traveling by myself. I get downright cranky when I'm trying to make trains and airplanes, and I don't like people seeing me when I'm like that -- at least, not people I know. I'm going to be doing what I want, when I want to. That sounds like a great vacation, does it not?

I just wish justifying and explaining it wasn't such a chore!

Carelessness versus Cost Efficiency

"To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness." 

-- Lady Augusta Blackwell, The Importance of Being Earnest

CAUTION: This post will contain swearing, pinpointing where I live, and the put Continental's dirty laundry on blast. That's right. I'm naming names.

Ever heard the story about the Origin of Love? It's a story from Plato's Symposium, about how humans used to be very different than how they are now: Two faces, four arms, four legs, and three races (male/male, male/female and female/female). The gods grew scared of our power and angry with our insolence, so to punish us they split us into two -- two arms and legs, one face, and a belly button scar to remind us that we'd been cut in half -- and scattered us apart from each other.  And if you're lucky, really truly lucky, you find the other half of your soul. The person who gets you, completes you, loves you fiercely and completely and utterly.

A few of my friends have been privileged enough to find their other halves. You probably know people like that -- the couple that is disgustingly, adorably perfect for each other, the two that make you just fucking green with envy at how wholly at peace they are.  One of these rare whole people couples is getting married this weekend, and they graciously invited me to join in their joy.  This joyous (re)union is taking place in Riverside, California.

I'm down in Southwest Louisiana.

Slight logistical problem, no?

So. I arranged to stay with some friends (another disgustingly whole couple).  Got a dress -- got two, actually.  And I booked my plane tickets.

Oh, plane tickets.  What the hell.

My local airport is Lake Charles Regional Airport.  The nearest 'big' airport -- one where I can get straight point a to point b flights out -- is Houston International, which is three hours away.  And that's three hours without a traffic jam, without a wreck on I-10, without rush hour traffic.  Normally it's about three hundred dollars more to save on the headache and fly out of LC, but this was one rare occasion where it was actually cheaper.

I try to be a responsible flier.  I know that sometimes flights get delayed due to forces outside everyone's control, so I like to have two, three hours worth of layovers if I have to change flights.  My flight to California had a three-hour layover in Houston. 

 A man with a metal briefcase in an airport. Two things being like this: bad spy movies and good political thrillers.

Allow me to pause for a SPOILER ALERT:  I do not know everything.

Sure, I like to pretend that I do, but there's scads of stuff that I don't know.  I don't know how to fly a plane, or cook a gourmet meal, or write computer code.

What I do know? Is customer service.  I've been doing what boils down to customer service since I was TWELVE, and yes, I'm including 'teaching' in the lump sum of 'customer service'.  It's a skill that I am proud to (mostly) possess -- the ability to say just the right thing at the right moment, to sense when someone needs help with something and to know when to back down, and how to do it all with a smile on my face.

I know that times are hard.  They're tough all over.  Companies are trying to cut costs everywhere while trying to not pass it on to the consumer, but in the end everyone still gets shafted:  No one is hiring, no one is promoting.  No one wants to work with the company because "Every time I go there, the service sucks!"

Now.  Allow me to explain why I've gone on this lovely little rant.

From what I later came to understand through talks with fellow travelers and overheard from workers talking to each other, Continental had four flights coming out of Lake Charles today -- the first one this morning, the second one at about 2, the third at 5, and the last one at 7.  The first one got canceled. Unfortunate, but these things happen. Some people on the 5 PM flight came in really early and were offered seats on the second flight.

... Which also got canceled.

Now, Lake Charles is a small airport, and in the past they have canceled flights due to underbooking. However, they have since signed contracts with airlines to shuttle pondhoppers from Lake Charles to one of the hub airports.  The weather today was partly cloudy, and it rained for maybe ten minutes today.  THERE WAS NO LEGITIMATE REASON GIVEN AS TO WHY THESE PLANES WERE CANCELED.

When I arrived well over an hour before my flight at 5, the SOLE CUSTOMER REPRESENTATIVE was hard at work at the Continental desk. See, all the people who had moved from the 5 PM flight to the 2 PM flight lost their seats -- and everyone who had been put on standby when the first flight got canceled snapped up their (now vacant) seats.

Fifteen minutes before my flight is scheduled to go out, we get the announcement -- delayed until 9 PM due to repairs.  And while I am thrilled that they're doing repairs on an airplane, they HAD TO WAIT UNTIL FIFTEEN MINUTES BEFORE WE'RE SCHEDULED TO LEAVE TO TELL US THIS?!

There is a fine line between cost efficiency and carelessness.

THIS WAS CARELESSNESS ON THE CORPORATE LEVEL.

We all run down to the customer service desk, where there are now four people working -- and three of them are from the American Airlines desk, helping out the Continental woman.  Why? Because they've critically understaffed the desk and she's drowning.  I stand in line for an hour waiting for my turn to reschedule my flight because let's face it -- I'm missing my connecting flight at 9; even if I could possibly get on the 7 PM flight, I would land at 8. If it wasn't delayed. And that's land -- they don't count the twenty minutes you have to taxi and sit on the tarmac in their time schedule.

I'd like to take this moment to thank the literary gods for inventing the ebook.  Yes, it's killing the printed word, but you helped me pass what would have been a very terrible hour waiting in line pleasantly rereading fluffy, smart ass Gerald Morris Arthurian romances.

When I get to the front, the American Airlines representative informs me that the 7 PM flight is (over)booked (which I know already) so I have two options: Fly out at 9 and stay overnight in Houston, or fly out tomorrow.

Had the flight been out at 7 AM, I would have been in Houston for the night.  But the flight was out at 9:30.

THAT IS HALF A DAY IN AN AIRPORT.  Or, alternately, a hotel in Houston. At six on a Friday night. By the airport.  I'm looking at $200 -- easy.  $200 that I, frankly, don't have.

I'm not doing either.

There was a flight out of Lake Charles at 9:00...  But when the guy mentions it, the Continental rep next to him snaps "DON'T OVERBOOK MY EARLY FLIGHTS".  When he says that they've booked 31 out of 36 seats, she says, "THAT'S OVERBOOKED, DON'T GIVE IT TO HER".  It was like hearing the evil queen in Snow White lecture the looking glass over who was the prettiest woman in the land, and I'm not exaggerating by much.

By this time, I honestly don't fucking care.  I really don't.  The wedding's taking place on Sunday, so I can fly in on Saturday and then come back on Monday.

So I'm booked on a flight out of Lake Charles at 2 PM.  I'll get into Riverside at 7:30 tomorrow night.

The guy, to his credit, was nothing but nice.  I did thank the guy for his help, apologized for my bad mood -- it wasn't his fault Continental is being stupid after all, he doesn't even work for them -- and made sure to get the number of the reservations desk.  Because I'm getting some compensation out of this.

I'm FUCKING MAD because I had been looking forward to spending the weekend with three of my favorite disgustingly whole couples, and meeting my little nephew for the first time.  And am probably going to use the cleaned up version when I write a sharp note to Continental.

To top it all off?  I overheard the Continental rep say that the 7PM flight was going to be delayed as well.

TWO CANCELED FLIGHTS AND A THIRD THAT NEEDS REPAIRS?!  THIS IS NOT CUTTING COSTS, THAT IS CUTTING YOUR THROAT, CONTINENTAL.  People don't like to travel nowadays because of the expense.  Giving people the runaround isn't going to make us jump through hoops to fly with you again.

Tomorrow morning, I'm getting up early and calling the Lake Charles terminal and asking if they honestly, truly think that the flight will go through today.  If they say no, I'm getting my ass into the car and going to Houston.

I am not happy, people. This is bullshit. And if something goes wrong tomorrow, I may seriously end up in jail.  Any volunteers for my one phone call? I'll pay you back for my bail.

The Great Fire of 2011, or Why the Month of May is FIRED

“If you are going through hell, keep going.” 

-- Winston Churchill 

Keep Calm And Carry On, motivational poster by an unnamed British civil servant, 1939, in the event of a German takeover of England, rediscovered in 2000 in a used bookstore
Now Panic and Freak Out, parody motivational poster by artist Olly Moss, circa 2009

Allow me to introduce a new word into your vocabulary:  Hurrication (v.) -- when one evacuates their place of residence for a hurricane and ends up staying in a hotel or with extended family for an unspecified amount of time.

There are trips that no one intends to take.

Natural disasters are...  vicious.  Sometimes -- floods, hurricanes -- you get warning. Other times -- tornadoes -- you're lucky to make it out with shoes on.

On May 2 at 9:25, we were having a terrible thunderstorm.  I know it was 9:25, because Mom and I were watching Law and Order: LA, and while they hadn't quite caught the criminal yet, they were really, really close.  Lightning struck a tree in the yard across the street, and when the current grounded, it went into a water main and into three houses.  The house the tree belongs to lost their ice maker in their fridge. The house next to us lost a TV and a fan.

In ours, it made nearly everything plugged in spark out. The desktop, I am not kidding you, let off a five-foot arc of bright blue electricity when the screen blew out, from its position on the former kitchen table to halfway across the living room, three feet high and even with the middle of the fireplace.  The TV in my mother's room died, while our big screen up front just got really snowy.

It also set the hot water heater on fire.

Mom had been in the back, laying down and watching TV; she got up to come finish up the episode up front with me.  Thank God she did.  We started smelling smoke, and I naturally assumed that it was the desktop and started unplugging it.

And then the smoke alarm in the hallway started going off.

Now our hot water heater resided in our laundry room, a little closet-sized room in the middle of our hallway.  Fire in a small, contained space caught fast.  The next thing I know, my mother's yelling for me to call 911.

This is going to sound awful, but I laughed.  I really did.  I couldn't see the room, just a little bit of smoke.  I honestly thought she was overreacting -- which really isn't all that much of a stretch if you know her.  She tends to get a little bit jumpy every now and again, bless her.  It's probably a good thing that she did.  I had been on my laptop at the time, so I snagged that, threw on some sandals and called the fire department.  Mom grabbed our purses and her gradebook (she's a teacher, it's almost the end of the year...  that would have been a terrible thing to lose).

Mom is, by this time, hysterical.  And I'm actually starting to get that way because there's all this smoke pouring out of the house.  Monday is traditionally my father's poker night.  It's me and Mom and a fire.

So my mother does the sensible thing and calls my father, yells that the house is on fire.  Then hangs up.

She then proceeds to call one of our neighbors, Ms. T.  Her husband Mr. T (who is not black, but he does kick ass) and her two high-school aged sons come running over to help.

By this time Mom is seriously flipping, and she remembers that our next door neighbor is a volunteer firefighter.  She sends me over -- she is refusing to leave the house -- and I said to the person who opened the door, and I quote, "Can we have some help, please? Our house is on fire and my mother's losing her mind."  Our neighbors have been giving us headaches throughout the years, especially since the two sons have acquired strays that live with them now and they can get rowdy on occasion, but bless them, all of them came running out with fire extinguishers to help us.

The Ts and our neighbors probably saved most of our house by doing that.  They didn't manage to put it out before the smoke completely drove them out, but they got it under control long enough for the fire departments to show up.

Did I say departments?  Yes.  Four of them.  We had four trucks from four different cities/districts/areas show up in under 10 minutes from the time I called 911.  The first two that turned up were the volunteer departments.

One of the girls next door came up and put her arms around my mother and prayed with us, which didn't really do anything for me, but it made my mother feel better.  We bundled her up and the two of us walked across the street to Ms. T with one of the boys.

Ms. T, by they way, has the most adorable granddaughter. Her mother was a friend of mine when we were younger, and the baby is the spitting image of her mother at that age.  She was sort of exactly what was needed, because she looks up at me and goes, "What happened?"

Me: "There was a fire, baby girl."

Her eyes got even wider.  "Is everyone okay?!"

Me: "Yes, honey.  The firemen are doing very good jobs and putting the fire out."

Deep sigh of relief.  "Okay.  Wanna play Barbies?"

Yes.  I actually did.

The paramedics turned up and listened to all of our lungs because we'd been exposed to smoke, but Mom was the only one who was wheezing, so we got to have a trip in an ambulance.  It's 10 by this time, and I'm just realizing that holy crap, I have work the next day.  I played a little phone tag and managed to score my manger's phone number, explained the situation, and told her I was very sorry but I wouldn't be in.

The paramedic told me that I was the most apologetic fire victim he'd ever heard.

Mom was fine -- it, of course, took us two hours for the doctors to figure that out -- and in the meantime I managed to talk to Midassa and her darling partner Walkabout Man, both of who made me laugh at a time when I dearly needed it.  I was in the middle of posting a story when the lightning struck, so they teased me mercilessly about angering the gods with my mad writing skillz.  My vote is that I've attracted the attention of a trickster god.  I would so be one of their favored, don't you think?

So... Yeah.  Since then, we've been living in a hotel.  A month on a fold-out couch is not good.  My hips and back will never be the same.  But next week, we get to move into a new rent house, which is about five minutes away from our house.  We'll be able to keep track of everything while we're rebuilding.

Insurance is taking care of a lot of stuff. Most of our stuff, actually.  They've been really stellar.

The bookshelves in our living room.  The fire -- or at least heat from it -- spread through our attic and out the vents.  The paint (and the wood paneling under it) bubbled up from the heat.

We lost a lot of things in our attic.  Pretty much everything over eight feet got heat damaged and is going to be lost.  A lot of heirlooms are gone, but we keep finding little treasures here and there; pictures, baby clothes.  Mom found a St. Francis cross she'd bought when she was a student in Italy and blessed by Pope John Paul II after his coronation that was perfectly fine, while the lamp two feet away was completely burnt out.  I freely admit that Faith and I have been at odds for years, but it makes her happy and I can't begrudge her that right now.

After something like this, everything you can save is precious.  You go through your life, piece by piece, and decide what you want and what you don't, what you can save and what you can't.  I love this, but I can't save it.  I hate this, but it's all I have left.

We also got two inches of water in the house.  Remember when I said that the electrical current came up through the water pipes?  So it was like Heaven and Hell fighting for our souls, heavenly fire and the Kracken, the seas boiling.  All that was missing was a demon with a tire iron.

 A picture taken from the source of the fire. Yes, that is sunlight coming through my roof.

Despite all that damage, though, most of our stuff is merely smoke damaged.  Merely being relative, of course.  Porcelain, white clothing, pine wood, it soaked up all that smell; but  apparently they can get the smell out of books and DVDs (almost all of mine were saved due to clothes that weren't in the closet hanging over my books and moving my DVDs into a new bookshelf; I lost a few books I was in the middle of reading, but that's easily replaced).  Stuff I personally lost was mostly tech, and honestly needed upgrading anyway.

I was honestly okay with everything -- someone has to be the stable one -- until I found out that we're going to level the house.

Right now, the structure is good, even with holes in the roof and my bedroom window knocked out to allow water and smoke out of the residence.  Four contractors have come through and said no matter how much money we put into the house, without leveling it we will be limited on what we can get back in resell because there will always be a question of structural integrity.

So...  I'm homeless.

Home will never, ever be the same again. Sure, we'll rebuild, and quite a bit will be put back the way it was -- we really had a gorgeous house -- but...  It won't be Home.  It won't be familiar.  Midassa says I should pretend like I slipped through a different universe, that the Doctor made everything just a little different.  Trust me; I wish I was traveling.

I wish that my heart wasn't breaking.

I wish I didn't feel like I was homeless.  I've had friends who've had it a lot worse than me in the past couple of years -- the economy has been highly unforgiving to many people I know.  I just feel so helpless and alone, and I feel terrible for feeling this way.  I'm alive.  I have my family.  I have most of my stuff.  Home is what you make of it, blah blah blah.

I. Am. Homeless.

I was fine until I heard that.

The current view out of my bedroom window.

It does get better.  It's been about a week since my parents decided to level everything, and I'm not so shattered anymore.  It'll be much better once we're in the rent house.  I'll have a decent night's sleep, for one, and that always makes everything better.  We're doing mattress shopping this long weekend; I'm going to go find the biggest, comfiest one I can.

And damn the expense.  Insurance is paying for it, anyway.

Charting the Course

“Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.”
-- Paul Theroux

Someone, somewhere, has said that planning a trip is half the fun of traveling.  It was that, or party planning, or wedding planning...  Something like that.  I'm not sure who or where or what was being planned that was half the fun of the event, but I can say this, with absolute certainty:

These people?  Are full of crap.

Planning is torture, especially for someone as impulsive and flighty as I can be.

At this point, I feel that I would be remiss if I didn't explain the whole impulsive process that's taking me overseas.  Those of you who don't know how nerdy I can be, strap in.  It's about to get real.

So I'm a big Doctor Who fan.  Please don't run away, I promise not to go on and on about it (at the moment).  Anyway, one of the actors who played the Doctor, David Tennant, is also well known in the UK for being a Shakespearean actor.  He's actually a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company based out of Stratford-Upon-Avon, and he starred in Hamlet a few years ago with Sir Patrick Stewart, who played the evil King Claudius (better known in the States as Picard from Star Trek or Xavier from X-Men).  I've seen the movie adaption the BBC made due to the popularity of the run, and if you're theatrically inclined, I highly recommend it, if only for the To Be Or Not To Be soliloquy and Claudius' prayer scene.

But I'm getting off on a tangent.  I apologize, I do that from time to time.

For Christmas this year, I decided to gift myself with a passport.  I had multiple reasons behind this move: One, it never hurts to have another form of ID.  Two, my mother and grandmother went to Ireland last year, and I want to be ready if I get a phone call from my grandmother going, "Ireland, next June!"  Three, a passport is good for ten years.  If I get one, I'll use it before it expires.

Traveling overseas, for me, has never been a question of if but of when.

Two weeks after I applied for my passport, I found out that Tennant was doing a production of Much Ado About Nothing with his former Doctor Who costar, Catherine Tate.  Tate is a comedienne who is better known in the UK because of The Catherine Tate Show, and she's honestly one of the funniest people on the planet.

So. Two of my favorite actors, in my favorite Shakespeare play.  And did I mention that they're playing Beatrice and Benedick, the two best characters ever written?

Confession time: I want to be Beatrice if when I grow up.  Okay, actually I want to be Emma Thompson, who played Beatrice in Kenneth Branagh's adaption, but that's an unattainable dream; I'll settle for being the fictitious, sharp-tongued little shrew.

When I found it out, I announced at dinner, "Going to London this summer!"  My family thought it was a joke; and to be honest, I was only joking at first.

Then I started actually looking into it, and could afford to go.

So now here I am, with a plane ticket and a play ticket and a vague idea with what I want to do while I'm over there.

Taking a break after the first day of Comic Con, June 2009, San Diego, California (I believe we were at The Blarney Stone Pub, and I was well over the age of 21)

I'll admit it:  When I bought the ticket, the parental units were not pleased.  But I knew Mom, at least, was on board when she looked at me and said, "Got us an appointment to go see a travel agent!"

That's right.  Us.

The agent...  Well.  Not to knock the South, but sometimes getting all dressed up for work doesn't seem to cross some people's minds down here.  Mom and I hit up the agency when, apparently, all the agents were out conducting field research; there were -- maybe -- two people in the entire office, and neither of them were dressed in what you'd expect an agent to be wearing.  I have never been to a travel agency personally, but I've peeked through windows on occasion and I've seen My Big Fat Greek Wedding, so I was expecting...  Business casual.  Possibly a suit and tie.  At the very least, a clean pair of jeans or khakis and a polo.  Something that makes you look professional, or at least trustworthy with someone's travel itinerary.

What I got was a gray tee-shirt and cotton shorts.  Actual shorts, not British it's-really-underwear shorts.

He was friendly enough -- teased me a little about going to London, mostly because he lived in France for a few years and that mutual French/English hatred is dying a long, hard, slow death.  I admitted to wanting to go to Dublin, and he rolled his eyes in that typical tourist sort of way.  I'm sure everyone who goes to London who has even a distant relation to anything Irish feels the pull when you're that close to the homeland.  He conducted a quick-spot interview, asked what hotels I had looked at, places I'd like to go, et cetera.  I mostly have NO CLUE as to what I'm going to be doing, but I pretty much know how long I'm going to stay at one place before moving to another, and I have plenty of room to change my mind and spend another day at one place if I just fall absolutely in love.

"Well, it sounds like you don't want a lot of structure," he said, my mother nodding along in agreement next to him, "and it pretty much sounds like you've figured out what you want.  But what I'm going to do is give you some itineraries.  Read over 'em, get some ideas, and if you find an actual tour that you'd like to go on, let me know and we'll book it."

And then, and then, and then.  He dropped the f-bomb.

Now, given the chance and pushed in just the right direction, I can swear like the proverbial sailor.  Most of my writing is littered with cuss words.  What can I say?  I work blue.  More and more, I find myself biting my tongue in public, around children...  At work....

Because it's not.

Bleeding.

Appropriate.

Anyway.

He got up from behind his desk and started listing the tour companies he had information on, and when he listed one, said -- and I quote, "I'll be happy to have that one off my hands, it's as heavy as a f*@#ing Bible," as he walked out the door.

Mom and I are sitting next to each other on the couch.  I can't quite bring myself to look over at her, because I know, I know, I know the look that is painted across her face -- that wide-eyed, gobsmacked, My-Ears-Must-Be-Broken-Because-There-Is-No-Way-You-Actually-Just-Said-That expression.

In emoticons, it looks like this:  O__________O

I meanwhile, decide to focus on the small desk clock, a red London phone booth with a clock face set in it.  Because I know if I look over, I'm going to bust out laughing.

Like this:   XD

"... Did he just say f*@#?"

"Yes.  Yes, he did."

"Good thing your grandmother's not here.  She really hates the f*@# word."

We then proceeded to spend the rest of the time while he was getting the f*@#ing brochures feeling the plants in his office to see if they were real or not.

I am pleased to announce that he'd opted for the economical, easy-to-maintain silk ivy in a pot of moss, so no poor potted plants are subjected to profanity on a daily basis.

Digging to China

"The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land."

-- G. K. Chesterton

My idea of camping is only two towels in the bathroom at the holiday inn.  So the prospect of going overseas with naught but a carry-on bag, a checked backpack with a week and a half's worth of clothes, and as much cash as I can fit in my wallet is a bit daunting.

Taking the advice of the Newandtheral, more commonly referred to as Walkabout Man, I've decided to start some training.  Right now, it's just a bit of walking after work, but when I get my backpack, I will be loading it down and walking with it so I don't throw my back out my first day there.

Let's face it: London?  Is big.  And taxis are expensive.  And public transit is confusing.

I work 50+ hours a week between the two jobs, so finding time to do all this walking is daunting.  I know I should have been doing it for a few months now, but I've been putting it off.  Right now, however, it's perfect; it's just cool enough in the evenings to keep the mosquitoes away, but warm enough that all I really need is long sleeves and jeans, and maybe a hoodie.  Wednesday I plugged in to some Groban and went for a quick walk before dinner.

It was dark, granted, but the street's fairly lit between the lights from the other houses on the block, and the moon was out.

I love walking after sunset.  Especially when the weather's crisp at night, like it is right now; the stars are clearer and it's easier to pick out the constellations, and when the moon's full, the world is gilded in silver.  The moon's waxing currently, so Jupiter was easy to make out, lingering on the western horizon like some overdue evening star.

Someone remind me to look up at the stars when I go over to England, please?

Thursday I had about an hour between my jobs, so I went down to the lake and walked about for a while.  I haven't been down there in at least a year, maybe two, when Midassa and Tracy and I were all walking together.  The renovations were really lovely -- they've been doing some revitalization since Rita hit back in 2005.

Lake Charles at sunset, looking towards Sulphur, Louisiana, March 10, 2011

Sometimes it's easy to be hard on your own hometown.  Don't get me wrong; some places deserve it.  My grandparents lived in a town with a population of about 200, and it was so infinitely boring out there when I was growing up.  Now, when I go to small towns for my job, the little brick-and-mortar main streets bring back a lovely wave of Americana nostalgia.

The point I'm trying to make is this:  Travel always ends at home, sure.  But it begins there, too.  All you have to do is something out of your regular routine, or just slow down a little bit and look around.

Didn't we all start digging our way through the earth to China in our own backyards as children anyway?