amanda_lodden | Mar. 31st, 2008

Mar. 31st, 2008

10 months ago, John and I decided to take a vacation and go to San Jose to visit Tif & Peter. Since Peter is a teacher at a private school that does not have substitutes (other teachers take your classes if you're sick or otherwise out), we timed our trip to coincide with his Spring Break week off, in order to inconvenience our hosts as little as possible. Tif managed to get "work from home" status for that week as well, and all was gloriously planned.

Next time, I'm not planning a goddamned thing. Every day that was a nice, loose "play it by ear" day has been fabulous. Fortunately, those were most of them, and the overall vacation has been wonderful.

The days that *were* planned, however, have not gone at all according to the plan. Our first planned day was a drive up to San Francisco to do touristy things and look at the city, which was planned a whole one day in advance. That was the day my stomach screamed "Viva La Revolution!" and attempted to leave my body via my throat.

Well hey, I've been running on pure adrenaline for something like 11 months now, so it's not super-surprising that my stomach acid levels are a little whacked, especially once I finally relaxed. In hindsight, it makes perfect sense. At the time, I thought it was something I ate, and I was intensely glad that I had been the one to cook dinner the night before, so that no one else could feel guilty about "making" me sick. No biggie. After two way-too-f'ing-early-to-be-awake runs to the bathroom and a lot of Pepto Bismol, my stomach settled down enough that I thought I'd be fine going up to SF. If I felt ill while we were walking around, my plan was to find a comfy spot to sit and tell Peter and John (Tif was still working from home) to come back and get me in an hour or so.

The problem with that plan is that it presumed I would actually make it to San Francisco. I almost did, and then suddenly the urge to be sick was upon me once again. While we were in the car. On the freeway. In the left lane. I asked Peter to find a place to pull over, and less than 30 seconds later, I lost breakfast. Three times.

I will spare you the description of what happens when one attempts to do that. Suffice to say that even if you have your head out the open window, the wind is still a factor. We took the first exit we came to and found a gas station, and the boys cleaned up the car as best they could while I used the restroom to clean me up as best I could.

We opted NOT to visit San Francisco after all, and headed back to Tif & Peter's place. John and Peter went to the grocery store and stocked up on ginger ale and saltine crackers.

Then came several lazy, mellow, play-it-by-ear days, all of which were glorious. Admittedly, I stuck with saltines and blander food than I might have otherwise chosen, and my stomach remained flippy, but otherwise it was All Good. (And truth be told, my stomach has been gurgling and flipping around like a cat trying to convince passerbys to rub its belly for well over a month now-- I hadn't worried about it at all prior to this, because it hadn't done anything worrisome during that time.) In fact, the only real planning involved was in our flight back today, as we figured out who had to leave at what time and what order we should be taking showers in. This morning involved a lot of hugging and "I don't want to leave yet!" and "I don't want you to leave either!"

You see where this is going, don't you?

We committed the Cardinal Sin of air travel, and left the house without checking on the status of our flight first. We gave ourselves plenty of time, leaving for the airport three hours before takeoff. We returned the replacement rental car, hopped on the shuttle bus for the airport with our luggage, and hauled our bags up to the check-in area. Upon which, we noticed the status of the first leg of our San Jose-Chicago-Detroit flight:

Canceled.

The folks at the airline attempted to find us another route home, but as they had a full flight of people also trying to get places near Chicago, the best they could offer us was San Jose-Los Angeles-Dallas-Miami-Detroit, with the Miami to Detroit leg being a red-eye flight.

While I would very much like to see the entire USA before I die, I do not particularly want to see all of it in one day. I'd also like to leave the airport to do it. We asked what the options might be if we left tomorrow instead, because if I have to waste an entire day, I'd just as soon do it with friends instead of sitting around listening to TSA advisories. Then we called Tif's work number to clue her in to the fact that we were not, in fact, on our way home. She was on a conference call, so we left a message with one of her co-workers. Then we rented another car. Then we called Tif back, because we were the last people out of the house, and being considerate we locked their door rather than invite burglars in to ransack the place. Tif was still on the concall, but on the second call I happened to get one of her co-workers that I had met during our stay, explained the situation to him, and got directions from the airport to their office so that we could pick up a housekey. We also went out to lunch with Tif and CJ-of-the-good-directions and Matt and Jim, because it was About That Time when we got there. (Amusingly, our "no planning for you!" karma rubbed off on lunch, too, as the Japanese restaurant they picked was closed today for no apparent reason, and we ended up at the Mexican restaurant next door to it.)

Now I am sitting on their couch waiting for Peter to get home and possibly have a heart attack, as he has been unreachable all day (oddly, teachers tend not to answer their cell phones in the middle of class) and is not yet aware of our new flight status. I'm trying to decide if it would be entirely too mean to stand right next to the front door and say "Boo" when he comes in. I think it might be.

I would like to take a brief moment to give some free publicity to Enterprise, as they were exceptionally nice. When we swapped out the first rental car (which smelled far too bad to continue driving) for a different rental car, they told me that I'd have to pay for the cost of having it detailed, which is a perfectly reasonable thing. They also told me that the detailing cost would be added to my final total when I dropped the replacement car off at the airport, as by then they would have had it done and would know the exact cost. When I dropped the replacement car off at the airport, they did not charge me the detailing fee, and when I asked about it they said "Nah, we took care of it." They also did not charge me for gas in the first car, which I did not refill like I was supposed to because the non-airport Enterprise location closed a lot earlier than I expected and we got there with only two minutes to spare. Then, when we came back to rent a third car an hour after dropping off the second car, they gave me the "extended rental" price per day ($35) instead of the "single night" price per day ($60). Seriously, if you ever find yourself in need of a rental car, I highly, highly recommend Enterprise.

In poking through some old emails, I came across an old argument, in which I countered a "well, it sure sounds like [insert nonsensical bullshit here]" comment with the following:

Based on how it SOUNDS, I can conclusively say that beer bottles contain
extraterrestial life forms. How do I come to this conclusion, you ask?

People who claim to have been abducted by aliens often experience a
"loss of time"-- periods where time passes, but they do not experience
it. Similiarly, many drunk people come to at a completely different
time than they expected.

People who claim to have been abducted by aliens often claim that they
were dropped off at a locale other than where they were abducted from.
Similiarly, drunk people often wake up in the morning in a strange bed,
or not in a bed at all-- *obviously*, those who wake up somewhere other
than in a bed were abducted by aliens who have not studied humans enough
to recognize our sleep-cycle rituals.

People who claim to have been abducted by aliens often return with
additional implants that they have no memory of receiving. Similarly,
some drunk people wake up to find that some of their body parts have
been pierced or marked without their knowledge.

People who claim to have been abducted by aliens often claim that they
were probed anally as part of experiments on the part of the aliens.
Similiarly, drunk people often have severe rectal pain, or diarrhea
(consistent with stretched rectal muscles).

There you have it. Enough evidence to say that people who think they
are merely getting drunk are in fact being abducted by aliens.

This is why I love poking through old emails.

In poking through some old emails, I came across an old argument, in which I countered a "well, it sure sounds like [insert nonsensical bullshit here]" comment with the following:

Based on how it SOUNDS, I can conclusively say that beer bottles contain
extraterrestial life forms. How do I come to this conclusion, you ask?

People who claim to have been abducted by aliens often experience a
"loss of time"-- periods where time passes, but they do not experience
it. Similiarly, many drunk people come to at a completely different
time than they expected.

People who claim to have been abducted by aliens often claim that they
were dropped off at a locale other than where they were abducted from.
Similiarly, drunk people often wake up in the morning in a strange bed,
or not in a bed at all-- *obviously*, those who wake up somewhere other
than in a bed were abducted by aliens who have not studied humans enough
to recognize our sleep-cycle rituals.

People who claim to have been abducted by aliens often return with
additional implants that they have no memory of receiving. Similarly,
some drunk people wake up to find that some of their body parts have
been pierced or marked without their knowledge.

People who claim to have been abducted by aliens often claim that they
were probed anally as part of experiments on the part of the aliens.
Similiarly, drunk people often have severe rectal pain, or diarrhea
(consistent with stretched rectal muscles).

There you have it. Enough evidence to say that people who think they
are merely getting drunk are in fact being abducted by aliens.