carbonel | Entries tagged with travel is a broad

So. My company scheduled an all-hands meeting outside of London for a week at the end of July. In early August, my nephew was getting married in Istanbul (her family is from Iran, but lives in Istanbul). It made no sense to go home in between.

So on July 23, I flew to London. I met up with other people from the company at Heathrow, and we got an Uber to the site, which is out in the country and has lots of outside space. This turned out to be very useful. The meetings went well until the third day, at which point two of the major contributors both tested positive for COVID-19. After that, we carried on (minus them) outside. There was one more case, but that was it.

After the conference, I headed to London on Friday. I met

helenraven at Waterloo Station, where she lent me her spare Oyster card and Kew membership card, and pointed me to the correct bus to get to my hotel. I had a hotel reservation at the Crescent Hotel through Booking.com. The location was great and the price was right. Sadly but not unexpectedly, there was no air conditioning, though there was a fan in the room. The one difficult bit was that the shared bathroom and toilet -- which I knew about -- was a floor and a half away, so I really tried to not need to go there in the middle of the night. I had a very pleasant time walking around Bloomsbury and going to museums.

On Saturday, I spent the day at Kew Gardens.

On Sunday, I met

helenraven for lunch, and then we went to the Globe to see The Tempest. It was a bonkers production, with Prospero as an entirely unsympathetic beach bum sort of wizard, but quite good. We were groundlings, which made for a great view but sore feet by the end.

On Monday, I went to the British Museum.

On Tuesday, I met a friend from Ravelry one day and we went to the V&A in the morning and the Science Museum in the afternoon -- and then spent a couple of hours in a pub drinking cider (me) and ale (her) and chatting.

Wednesday was a day of indulgence. I went to Harrod's for afternoon tea, and in the evening I went to the Shaftesbury theatre to see &Juliet, in which Anne Hathaway decides to do some revision on R&J. Very silly, but also some very good messaging.

On Thursday, I went to the Natural History Museum in the morning and the Wellcome Museum in the afternoon, where I saw Napoleon's toothbrush and Darwin's walking sticks, among other items. That evening, I had dinner at

helenraven's (tomato galette) and dropped off some of my luggage that I didn't want to shlep to Turkey with me.

On Friday, I flew to Istanbul. I allowed four hours -- one hour to get to the airport and three hours at the airport. I needed it all. I lost about twenty minutes to security because the agents wanted a prescription for the bottled water for my CPAP. I ended up tossing that. I'd run out of actual distilled water by then, but it was purified water. The flight was uneventful, thankfully. Uber is hooked into the local Yellow Taxi system, and I was able to get a taxi from the airport to my hotel. For slightly complicated reasons, I made a hotel booking for my first night at close to the last minute, and just picked something from Booking.com that was cheap and in the right area. I lucked out. It was clean, modern, and had working air conditioning.

On Saturday, I left that hotel and went to a Marriott-affiliated one that I stayed at the rest of the time. It was also quite nice, but at about twice the price. I signed up for an all-day tour on Sunday, but there wasn't anything available that appealed for Saturday. I decided to go to the Grand Bazaar. Getting there via Uber/Yellow Taxi was no problem. I spent a couple of hours walking around. I bought a glass of orange juice that I saw squeezed in front of me -- delicious. I bought a few other things, but mostly just rambled and looked. Unfortunately, getting back wasn't so easy. The Yellow Taxi drivers kept canceling with Uber, and I eventually paid a comparatively exorbitant amount to an off-meter driver. After some recovery time, I finally managed to get an Uber driver to take me to the bride's apartment, where there was a gathering. I'd met some in person and some through Zoom, but a lot were new to me.

On Sunday, I took a group tour. In the morning, we went to the Hippodrome, the Blue Mosque, and the Hagia Sophia. Lunch was included as part of the all-day tour. In the afternoon, I had a guide to myself because I was the only one who'd signed up for the tour of the Topkapi Palace. It's an amazing place and full of artifacts, though my major interest was its connection to Pawn in Frankincense, the fourth of the Lymond Chronicles by Dorothy Dunnett. My step counter said I walked around 16K steps, and I was a bit sunburned.

Monday I mostly spent recovering from Sunday. I spent some time at local cafes, but didn't do any official touristing.

Tuesday evening was a night-before-the-wedding river cruise. It was four hours of loud music and dancing and hors d'ouevres and drinking. Once the sun set, it cooled down a bit and was quite pleasant. It was a couple of hours too long for me, but I'm not much of a party girl.

Wednesday was the wedding. My nephew had arranged a shuttle for a bunch of us, including the bride's parents. This turned out to be convenient, because the half-hour trip took almost four times that. Partly it was the horrendous traffic, but partly it was that the driver went to the wrong place. It was a wrong place with the same name, so understandable, I guess. The wedding was lovely. It was secular, but incorporated some of the traditions of the two different cultures.

On Thursday, I flew back to London. I got to the airport way too early because I misread the departure time. I was feeling a bit off, but I assume it was due to being underslept and overheated. The flight was uneventful, and once we landed I made my way to

heleraven's place where I was staying the night. I also collected the luggage I'd left there and recombined everything. I probably should have used my last COVID-19 test at this point, but I didn't think about it. If the US were still requiring a negative test before flying there, things would have been different.

On Friday, I flew back to the US. Tedious but uneventful. After I got home and rested for a while in the air conditioning, and rehydrated, I realized that it probably wasn't just heat and travel stress and potential dehydration that was making me feel off, and I used one of my home COVID-19 tests.

The pink line lit up very quickly, and I discovered I had a slight fever (100.2). After a couple of ibuprofen and some rest, I felt much better. I didn't sleep very well that first night, but that was probably jet lag.

Friday, I felt almost well (and spent the day working, in fact). And now, Saturday, I feel almost recovered, though I'm still testing positive. I'm somewhat congested and my throat is somewhat scratchy, but my temp is normal. I feel as if I'm in the recovery phase of a cold. So I decided to skip Paxlovid, because of the trade-off of side effects. I hope I don't regret that.

(I keep sniffing a bit of chocolate just to make sure my sense of smell is still working. That's one of the nonlethal symptoms that scares me the most.)

And that's how I spent my summer vacation.

She arrived in Chicago on Saturday. She is dealing with jet lag and cranky about the cold, but otherwise well.

She plans to head to Florida soon to visit her sister, who lives there.

I find a certain irony in the fact that the impromptu cruise from Copenhagen to New York, taken on with about a month's notice, went off without a hitch, whereas this one, that was well-planned months ahead, foundered on the grounds of external complications. Best laid plans, and all that...

Crossposts: https://carbonel.livejournal.com/268725.html

As of today my mother's ship is safely docked in Singapore. They are letting people disembark without any checks other than the now-routine fever ones. She will be going from the ship directly to the Singapore airport on February 14 and flying nonstop from there to San Francisco (and thence to Chicago, which is home). Apparently whatever pressure the ship's owners brought to bear did its job.

She'll probably go somewhere warm for the next several weeks (she hates winter), but there are lots of warm places without the danger of coronavirus.

Current Mood: relieved
Crossposts: https://carbonel.livejournal.com/268330.html

Last night, I was thinking that I should probably try to cancel the cruise, under the circumstances. (I could envision being kindly escorted to my cabin every time I coughed.) And then, overnight, the final shoe dropped.

While I was sleeping, the ports of Manila (the next stop) and Taipei (the new stop where I was supposed to join the cruise) closed to cruise ships. My mother, who’s already on the ship, says she has no idea where they’re going next. She says the ship was supposed to reprovision in Manila, and they’re likely to run out of strawberries and blueberries. I told her that should be the worst thing that happens to her. It’s about the only funny thing about the entire situation. So I am not flying to Taipei, and I’m not going on this cruise. So it goes.

At this point, I’m in recovery mode. I need try to get refunds for the airfares. The United flight went through the travel agent, so she needs to handle it. I'm waiting for a callback from Delta. The actual cost of the cruise will be dealt with between the cruise company and the insurance company, but something will definitely happen with that as well.

In the meantime, there were two events -- a spinning retreat and a convention in LA -- in February/early March that I hadn’t been able to go to because of the cruise, and I’ll be checking to see if I can make either of those happen.

And if all goes well, there will be a replacement cruise next winter.

My thanks to everyone for the kind words yesterday. I am actually feeling considerably less stressed about things than I was yesterday. No more decisions to be made, just managing what's already happened.

Current Mood: calm
Crossposts: https://carbonel.livejournal.com/267870.html

I am having a total meltdown about such stupid stuff.

I may have to cancel the cruise I’ve been looking forward to for months because of last week's bronchitis (or cold or whatever). My mother says they won’t let me on board if I’m coughing, even if the cough is the aftermath of something totally unrelated to coronovirus. Hong Kong was already canceled, and with the additional cost for the ticket to Taipei, I’m already out $1,600 for airfare in all, plus the cost of the cruise. Vacation time is already planned. But honestly, everything going on with it has been so stressful (mostly related to coronovirus) that I’m ready to cancel if I could be assured that the cruise line and insurance company would make good on everything.

I do volunteer copyediting for an online publication, and I’m late on that because I was sick. I’ve finished editing the last article, but I don’t want to do the final bits to put it all together. Maybe later tonight.

Maybe I’m not as recovered from being sick as I thought, because every little thing that went wrong today had me stress-crying.

And this is all so minor compared to people with real problems that I feel guilty about feeling upset, too. I just want it all to go away. If the cruise doesn’t happen, maybe I’ll hibernate for a week. I don’t have seasonal affective disorder -- normally I like winter -- but maybe this is the classic midwinter blahs.

Current Mood: depressed
Crossposts: https://carbonel.livejournal.com/267527.html

On Monday afternoon, I started coughing. I attributed this to my having inhaled some baby powder, but it kept going on and on. On Monday night, I took my temperature, and it was 100.2. So definitely not the baby powder. I revised my theory to acute bronchitis.

Tuesday was miserable. I took aspirin and Sudafed, but it didn't seem to help the fever, which peaked at 102.4. I didn't eat anything, though I did try to keep hydrated by drinking water.

On Wednesday, the aspirin finally seemed to do the job, and the fever got down to 100.0. I ate some chicken soup. It stayed down, but that's about all I can say for it.

Today, Thursday, the cough has turned into a productive one, and wow does my diaphragm hurt when I cough. I ate my last can of emergency for-sickness can of chicken soup. The fever is mostly gone, but I hurt all over. I worked a half-day -- the downside of working at home is that I can do that sort of thing instead of just hibernating.

Tomorrow, I would really like to feel healthy again. I can cope with the sniffles and coughing, but I want the brain fog to be gone. I also wish to be able to develop some interest in food. At the moment, nothing sounds good. (Would that I could invoke this feeling at will without being sick; it would be great for weight control.) For people who know me, the best exemplar of just how miserable I've been feeling is that I've done zero spinning since Monday night.

In the middle of all of this, I had to cope with a change in travel plans. In mid-February, I was originally supposed to fly to Hong Kong, spend a couple of days there on my own, then meet my mother on a cruise and continue with her to Singapore. Except that because of the coronavirus situation (12 confirmed cases in Hong Kong), the cruise line decided ("in an abundance of caution," said the email) to cancel the Hong Kong stop and change it to Taipei.

So I had to be functional enough to consider the options. Delta has good flights to Hong Kong and from Singapore (from and to MSP). It does not have good flights to Taipei. There's a good chance that either the cruise line or the insurance policy I purchased long ago will cover the cost, but only at the original level -- and the reason the Delta MSP-TPE flights are so expensive is that only business class seats are available. It turned out that the best option was to throw away the MSP-Hong Kong segment entirely, and buy a new one-way MSP-TPE flight on United. Delta wouldn't give me any credit for the unused leg, because the current price for the one-way fare is more than I paid for the entire ticket, but the agent was willing, under the circumstances, to convert the open-jaw fare to a one-way.

I'm seriously bummed, because I was really looking forward to those days in Hong Kong, but there's nothing I can do about it. I'll only be on my own in Taipei overnight, or I would try to get together with

jiawen.

And I'd damned well better be completely healthy by then.

Current Mood: sick
Crossposts: https://carbonel.livejournal.com/267390.html

The subject line is a misnomer, because I never actually set foot in Chicago over the weekend. But I'm not sure if Glenview, Skokie, and Long Grove are meaningful places, and everyone knows Chicago.

On Wednesday, I took the train from St. Paul to Glenview, which is a suburb of Chicago.

The train leaves at 8 am. I'd allowed plenty of time to get to the station because there had been a snowstorm the night before, and six to eight inches had fallen (and were still gently falling). I drove carefully, and had no problems until I got to (IIRC) Jackson St., which is the street just before one turns right to get to the train station parking lot. That's an uphill street, and I had to stop about a third of the way up because there were cars scattered all over the street. Apparently a number of cars had only got halfway up and then weren't able to get sufficient purchase to continue. I sat there for about five minutes while various cars maneuvered without a lot of success. Finally one of them gave up and backed into the driveway of a parking garage, apparently willing to wait until someone came and Did Something. That left a clear if sinuous path for me, and I decided to take my shot. Despite not having snow tires or four-wheel drive, I made it up the hill without any spinning or skidding.

The rest of the trip was uneventful. I brought my miniSpinner and got a few hours of spinning in. I'd lost my good headphones, though (the really ones were stolen out of the car a few years ago), and eventually my ears hurt enough that I gave it up and read instead on my iPad.

My mother met me at the Glenview station and took me to her home, which is a condo in Skokie. We had dinner a few hours later at a local sushi place. It was rather startling to see no snow at all; it had faded out out halfway through the train trip.

The next day, we went to the bowling alley. This is a tradition that goes back over 50 years, started by people from Habonim (a labor Zionist organization). Originally it was the women shooing the fathers and kids out of the house so they could cook, but these days it's whole families. Usually I bowl a couple of lines with my nephews, but they weren't there this year, though I'd see two of them later. So I hung out and watched people bowl and chatted with people I only saw once a year.

Shortly after three, my mother drove us to my niece-in-law's (if that's a term) mother's (Jenny's) place. We'd been at my sister-in-law's for Thanksgiving for many years, and my mother's before that. But my SIL's Thanksgiving was down to nine people last year, and felt very thin on the ground. Her oldest son (my nephew) and his wife (Elisha) are expecting their first child, so it seemed an appropriate time to make a change. There were about 20 people there, and the place was large enough to accommodate all of us easily. Jenny had called me a week or two before to make sure I understood I was personally invited, not just an add-on to my mother's invitation, which I really appreciated. She asked about family traditions, and I told her that our family usually said the Hebrew blessings appropriate to the day and read Emma Lazarus's "The New Colossus." She asked me to bring a copy, and I said I could look it up on my phone.

In the event, that never happened. There were appetizers (including a yummy baked brie with apricot jam), and squash soup, and then a buffet for people to help themselves, and one thing just sort of faded into another. It was a very congenial time, though. I baked a pumpkin bread that the recipe claimed to be better than Starbucks'. I don't know if that's the case, but it did turn out quite well. (This is the one that was a quarter-cup short of pumpkin. I used an eighth of a cup less of flour, and it was fine.) We all hung out afterwards for a couple of hours, and I kibitzed a game of Aggravation that was being played with adults and kids. Next year, if all is well, there will be four generations present -- my mother and Jenny's mother will both be great-grandmothers.

On Friday, my mother and I had lunch with her Hadassah group. It meets every Friday at a restaurant. Last year was rather sad, because the restaurant they'd been meeting at for years -- The Bagel at Old Orchard -- was closing soon after, and this was the last time. We all said goodbye to the waiter that had been our usual one, with hugs and some cash for him to remember us by. He's now at another restaurant and doing well, I hear. This time it was just five of us (it's usually about double that), and we tried a new restaurant, Sweet Basil Cafe, that replaced the Ruby Tuesday that had been there. The menu is huge and the food was very tasty, but there were several glitches in the serving process -- always a danger with new restaurants. I ended up taking half of my California panini home with me, and ate it on the train the next day.

That evening, two of my three nephews and their wife and girlfriend (respectively) came over for Shabbat dinner, along with a cousin my age who lives alone. We had to do a quick reset of the table because we'd set it for eight, then belatedly did a recount and realized there were nine -- which meant putting out an extra leaf for the table. It was a dinner intended to clear out the fridge and freezer, so rather eclectic -- two kinds of soup, salmon, brisket, corn casserole, ratatouille, cranberry sauce, and applesauce.

On Saturday, my youngest nephew and his girlfriend were supposed to come over to bake mandel bread with my mother, but his mother played the mom card and the two of them hung out with her instead. So my mother and I just hung out and occasionally chatted, and left for the train station shortly after one.

When I took the train from Chicago last time, the train was almost three hours late because of mechanical problems. This time, it was right on time. Once again, I got some spinning done, though not as much as on the way down. A woman on the train recognized me (or my e-spinner) from last year, which was amusing. The train was about 15 minutes late, but I was home by 11 pm.

Today I'm spending the day lounging around, catching up on email, and doing laundry. Tomorrow I fly to Boston for work. My cat hasn't forgiven me yet for the current abandonment, and she's going to have another one to be angry about soon. So it goes.

Crossposts: https://carbonel.livejournal.com/266158.html

In early August, my mother had minimally invasive heart surgery to replace an aortic valve. I went down to Chicago to stay with her during and after. There were a few moments of unusual interest, but she survived and recovered -- though she's not walking as well as she did pre-surgery.

Before the surgery, she'd asked me if I was interested in a repositioning cruise from Copenhagen to New York. I've always wanted to do one an Atlantic crossing, so I said yes, but that perhaps we should wait and see how she recovered. She agreed. (There was also the issue of getting two weeks off from work with virtually no notice.)

After a few days at home, she brought up the cruise again. I checked with my boss, and we agreed that I could do it as a working vacation, doing a few hours every day. With that approval, we bought our cruise tickets and I bought tickets for the flights. The flights cost about the same as the cruise itself. Repositioning cruises are usually a bargain because of all the days at sea, and this one especially because be bought tickets so close to departure. (Other people got much better deals for flights, and I now know a few other things to try if I do this again.)

On September 6, I flew to Copenhagen (via Amsterdam), arriving the next morning. My mother and I met at the airport. Cell phones make things so much simpler. We went to our hotel, stashed our bags, and lingered over tea until our room was ready. After a brief rest, we went to Tivoli Gardens, which I'd been wanting to do since at least 1979 -- I was in Copenhagen then, but only a few days after the park closed for the winter. It really is a garden -- the grounds are beautiful, and everything was very colorful. I went on one ride, but mostly we walked around, then had lunch. I managed to fall off the curb while hailing a taxi, and got an impressive soft tissue injury. It's mostly better now, but still slightly painful.

We had dinner at one of the many outdoor restaurants along the canal. The weather was a little chilly, but the patios had heaters. I had mussels (moules) and fries (frites), and a tiny can of Diet Coke.

The next morning, we wanted to go to a museum before we headed to the ship. We were interested in the Danish Jewish Museum, but it didn't open early enough. Instead we went to the Glyptotek, starting at their exhibition of 19th-century French masterpieces. We wandered around at a few other exihibitions, then went back to the hotel and then to the ship.

Here's where Big Brother comes in. This was a cruise on the Princess line. As soon as we bought our tickets, Princess started sending us emails about the exciting new medallion system. The descriptions were vague and confusing, so it took us a while to figure out what the medallions were good for. Turns out they're a replacement for the "cruise cards" that normally let you on and off the ship and act as an on-ship credit card. They're RFID devices (or some such) that can be read by scanners placed all over the ship. The good part of this is that you can use it to locate friends and family all over the ship. (It's a 3,000-person ship, so just wandering around is a losing proposition.) In theory, the medallion can also be used to buy items, but the actual infrastructure for that was incomplete, so it only worked at fixed locations, and everything else you had to sign for. The bad part, of course, is the creepiness feature.

Having the medallion did expedite boarding the ship. From getting onto the gangplank to being in our stateroom was 20 minutes or less, and a good chunk of that was just the walking the length of the ship, since our stateroom was near the very front of the ship. Normally it's at least twice that, with one memorable (not in a good way) cruise taking almost two hours, with most of that spent standing in line under a hot sun.

The next day was Kristiansand, a small town in Norway. It was raining, and no one had much to say about the place, so we stayed on the ship. That was convenient for me, because I was able to get some work done. In addition to my regular job, I needed to complete a freelance project. That one was supposed to have come to me in August, but it fell behind schedule sufficiently that I had to do it all while on the ship -- or tell them I couldn't. In the end I got it done; it helped that they decided what they really wanted was a light edit, not a thorough line edit for consistency among all the contributors.

After Norway, we sailed to Scotland, with a day at sea in-between.

In Scotland, our port Greenock, which is the port nearest to Glasgow. We shared a taxi into Glasgow, and after a pub lunch, rode a Hop On Hop Off bus around the city. Those buses worked very well for us, because I hadn't been there before and it was good to see the highlights. Also, my mother's mobility is limited, so a bus is better than any walking tour. We stopped at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum and admired the stuffed critters. We didn't have enough time to do much more before we had to take a taxi back to the ship to be back in time for departure.

The next day was Dublin. The day was cloudy, and it often looked as if it was about to rain, but I only had to pull the poncho out once for a few minutes. We had lunch at a pub and though I'm not much of a beer drinker, I did have a half-pint of Guinness, because I've been told that it's never quite the same is it is right near the Liffey. It was very good, but a half was enough for me. I did try writing my initials in the foam, and it worked (or at least the B worked; there wasn't room for more in my half-pint glass). After that, we took the Hop On Hop Off bus around the city, but didn't stop anywhere.

The day after was Cobh, which is an island port with access to Cork, about half an hour away. Also Waterford, about two hours away. We didn't go to either place. Instead, we took a local tour around the town (no Hop On Hop Off; the town was too small). It's a pretty little town, with an impressive cathedral for its size. The other claim to fame is that the bodies from the Lusitania are buried there. The first 20 or so were buried in individual graves, then the workers realized that there wasn't enough time, and the remaining 100 or so are buried in three mass graves. Originally many of the bodies were unidentified, but names were added as they became known. We had lunch at a nice sunshine-y bistro, but apparently we were some of the last customers -- the owner said the place was shutting down in a few days. I couldn't tell if it was permanently or just at the end of the tourist season.

After that came five days at sea. I had hoped that I would get a lot of spinning during that time, but between my regular job done long-distance, plus that freelance copyediting job, and two trivia games a day (my mother, a woman we met who'd been on Jeopardy and formed a core team, with others joining us ad hoc), I was lucky if I got in an hour a day. My electric spinner was a definite conversation starter, though. Our trivia team did quite well. We didn't win all our games (maybe a quarter of them), but we were almost always in the top five or so. Most of the prizes were (as the cruise crew running the games cheerfully admitted) exceedingly mediocre (coasters, notebooks, bags, and wine corks), but the games were fun.

One standout was a "name that tune and artist" game, where we played with a roadie (for AC/DC, IIRC) who knew all the songs but one. Instead of a mediocre prize, we ended up with two bottles of decent champagne, and the bunch of us spent a pleasant hour knocking off the contents.

The last couple of days at sea, the Internet became exceedingly slow. Apparently our semi-Great-Circle route took us far enough north that we couldn't connect to the good satellites for Internet and had to use the not-so-good ones. Or so our captain explained over the intercom. I assume it's somewhat more complicated than that. I did manage to get the freelance job done by the last sea day, which was a relief.

The next day was Halifax, Nova Scotia. There's a large port complex there, but we decided to save that for after we'd done our main touristing. Since Halifax has a Hop On Hop Off bus, we took that. One of the stops (an unofficial one) was at a glassblowing and glass cutting facility. I would have liked to stop there, but my mother (I thought) wasn't interested. It later turned out that she'd dozed off and missed hearing the commentary, but we didn't have the time to go back to it later. We did stop at the Maritime Museum and spent an hour or so there. There were exhibits (with memorabilia) about both the Titanic and the Halifax Explosion of 1917, when two ships (one laden with munitions) collided, exploding and killing around 2,000 people.

After that, we went back to the port complex and had lunch. I had a wonderful lobster roll, consisting (best I could tell) solely of fresh lobster, a bit of mayonnaise, and a toasted bun. Then we walked around and looked at the tat. One stall was selling maple sugar in the shape of leaves -- three for a dollar (CAD) or five for three dollars. I didn't query his math, just gave him the dollar.

And then back to the ship. It was the second formal night, and there was supposed to be the final production show, which I'd really been looking forward to from the description. Unfortunately, they had technical difficulties, and after we'd been sitting there for about 20 minutes, they regretfully canceled.

The next night was our final day at sea, and including packing up. At least packing in that direction is a finite task, as opposed to packing for embarking on a trip.

And on Saturday, September 21, we landed in Brooklyn. Disembarkation was slow, but I got to my shuttle and thence to my plane back to Minneapolis in decent time.

And a few days ago, I received notification that my status on Princess Cruises has been upgraded from Ruby to Platinum. I've paid a $100 deposit for a future cruise -- if I don't use it in two years, I'll get the money back -- because there are some serious perks for doing so. (What actually happened was that my mother paid the $100 deposit twice, intending them to be for two future cruises, and one of them was accidentally credited to me instead. But I'd been thinking I should do the $100, so we decided I should keep it. Which means I need to send her a check for $100.) I'd be happy to another repositioning cruise, but ideally with a different route next time.

Crossposts: https://carbonel.livejournal.com/264355.html

I've been back for a week and a half, and I finally caught up with reading DW. I'm still behind on Ravelry, and will probably have to declare bankruptcy on a number of threads, which I really hate to do.

I was on the long-planned cross-country train trip with Pat WINODW. We started in Chicago (having driven down there from Minneapolis) and took the Southwest Chief to Los Angeles. It wasn't as spectacular as the California Zephyr (which goes through mountains) would be, but it allowed us to take the Coast Starlight up the California coast to San Francisco, which was spectacular. After a couple of days in San Francisco, continued on the Coast Starlight to Portland. From there, it was the Empire Builder to Glacier National Park (the original inspiration for the trip), and then continuing on the Empire Builder back to Minneapolis. (Pat's father drove her car from Chicago to Minneapolis.) It was an amazing trip, and I'd love to do something similar with the California Zephyr and maybe the cross-Canada train. But next year, my mother wants to do a road trip to South Dakota and Yellowstone, so that will have priority.

Because of the train trip, I only got to the Minnesota State Fair once this year, as opposed to my normal two or three times. The day before I left was my only day to drop items off for the Creative Activities competition, which I did. I entered four skeins of handspun in the four classes: fur/hair, wool, silk, and art yarn. I won first place ribbons in the fur/hair category (a skein of white lace weight cashmere plied with white silk) and the silk category (a gradient skein spun from hand-carded silk). I also won the Weavers Guild "best fine yarn" award for the silk skein. The wool and art yarn skeins won fourth and third place ribbons, respectively.

I'm hosting our tea group this Saturday, which was probably a mistake because I haven't had time to do the amount of cooking I'd really like, what with catching up with everything else. I'm about to head out to go shopping, and will see what TJ's and Cost Plus World Market can save me from preparing myself. Thankfully, I did plan ahead sufficiently to have the monthly cleaning person in yesterday, so while the place is sadly cluttered, it is reasonably clean. I'm hoping we're still doing this four years from now when I'm retired, and (at least in theory) will have time to spend the week preparing.

And coming up in a couple of weeks is a three-weekend-in-a-row marathon: the Minn-stf fallcon, Scintillation (convention in Montreal), and a spinning retreat in Alexandria, MN. I'm really looking forward to all of them, but not to the recovery period afterward.

Crossposts: https://carbonel.livejournal.com/259873.html

Tomorrow, I'm flying to Orlando. I was supposed to fly to Nassau, but there was this hurricane, and the place I was supposed to stay is still closed from the damage. So, instead, I'm flying to Orlando. On Southwest.

On the previous flight, the one to Nassau that was canceled, I'd paid $15 for priority seating, mostly because my mother had it, and I knew she'd be aggravated if I wasn't able to sit near her. Unlike many other airlines, Southwest doesn't charge change fees; it's just that the prices of flights increase as departure time draws near. I was lucky; it only cost me an additional $20 to change my Nassau flight to an Orlando one. But I didn't pay the $15 for priority seating on this one (the $15 I'd paid on the other flight was lost).

Instead, there I was at my computer 24 hours before the flight, because that's the deal with Southwest. If you haven't paid that $15, you take your chances with all the other people who are trying to check in at that magic 24 hours, because your number determines your order to get on the plane and select a seat.

My plane leaves on Sunday at 9:25. At 9:24, I started clicking the refresh button. I got the "it's not 24 hours yet" red warning. I kept clicking. 9:25 passed. 9:26. 9:27. I started clicking every minute or two instead of continuously.

I started feeling paranoid. I checked my ticket again. Yes, it's really leaving tomorrow, at 9:25. And Southwest showed the ticket on the website, so it hadn't been magically canceled.

At 9:55, half an hour after I should have been able to check in, I called Southwest. It took a few clicks through the phone tree, but I got an agent without waiting, and explained the problem. She asked which flight I was on, and I told her. She explained that tonight is the end of Daylight Saving Time, which means the clock goes back, and I'd have to check in at 10:25 instead of 9:25.

I waited the 25 minutes, clicked refresh a bunch of times, and got an excellent number on my first flight and a decent one on the second flight. Paying the $15 probably would have been less stressful on me, but I call it a success.

But honestly, Southwest, a note on the website for 24 hours, reminding people about Daylight Saving, would have been a thoughtful thing to do, not only for check-in, but for the people who don't want to arrive at the airport an hour before they need to.

From 1966 to 1973, most years I went to YWCA Camp Newaygo (in Newaygo, MI; thus the name) during the month of August. It was an all-girls camp, not at all fancy, but I learned camping and swimming and a bit of horseback riding there. It also had its own traditions and songs, and I loved going there. For complicated reasons, I never worked there as a counselor, which is something I regret.

The camp went through some difficult years in the 1990s, and the YWCA almost sold the site to a land developer. The story goes that the bulldozers were in place as the reprieve occurred, but I don't know if a story improvement loan was invoked for that. In any case, a consortium bought the camp, and it's now part of a nonprofit called True North. There was recently another major land purchase, and the camp now owns a mile of waterfront, and is thriving.

There's an alumnae reunion every five years, which unfortunately always seems to conflict with Fourth Street. I was at the reunion in 2006, but missed the last one. This one I decided to attend, though I was sorry to miss Fourth Street.

I flew into the Muskegon airport, which I'd never known existed before this, but turned out to be more convenient than the Grand Rapids one, and got a ride to camp with one of the camp staff. I appreciated that, since otherwise I would have had to rent a car.

When I was there in 2006, there was the start of a major capital campaign to renovate and add on to the lodge. I wasn't there in 2009 for the grand opening of said lodge, so this was the first time I'd seen it. It used to just be a big assembly room and dining room, with some basement areas for storage and miscellaneous use. (I remember learning table tennis in that basement.) Now the basement is a ground floor -- the hill it was on was dug out -- and there are several dorms, plus bathroom and shower facilities.

The weekend was jam-packed with activities, starting of with a canoe/kayak/tubing trip on the Muskegon River (I canoed), lots of singing, zipping on the three new ziplines, a wetlands trail walk (built over a sphagnum bog; there's a portion where you can see the 50-foot pole emerging unoxidized from the muck), water sports, and a trip to see the new properties.

It was great to see some old friends the years I attended, and see that some old traditions remain and some new ones have been established. I noticed that some of the camp songs had been visited by the folk tradition. Some had new words, and a lot of them had actions to go with them that had never existed in my time.

And then, sadly, things ended after lunch on Sunday, and I got a ride back to the airport from someone driving in that direction. My plane didn't leave until 6:20, so there were several hours sitting around at the airport. There was one other person there, and I later saw him stretched out sleeping on the floor. I was tempted, but didn't follow suit. Muskegon to ORD was a short hop, then I had another hour and a half to wait at ORD. That flight was full, and I took a bump to the 10:30 flight in exchange for a travel voucher.

I finally got home shortly before 1 am. Morwen immediately showed up demanding food. I'd left food for her on Friday, but it was probably long gone by the time I got home. So I fed her, and brought the suitcase toward the bedroom to extract whatever was necessary so I could go to bed.

And here's where the icon for this post comes into play. Normally I use the kitten-with-mouse icon for life's minor annoyances. This time, I'm literalizing the metaphor. As I walked into my bedroom, I saw something on the floor. At a second look, it was a nice, plump mouse. I shrieked. I didn't mean to; it was totally involuntary. At a third look, it was also very dead. No marks, no blood, but also no movement. I went into the kitchen to get some paper towels, and told Morwen (who was still chomping away) that she was a mighty hunter, though of course I have only inferential evidence that she was responsible for the corpse. I gathered it up in the paper towels and took it outside to the garbage can.

In the 14 years I've been living in this house, I'd never seen a mouse until now. I guess a dead mouse is better than a live one, but I hope one dead mouse doesn't mean a colony of live ones I don't know about.

I'd rather not be flying to Fort Lauderdale, FL, tomorrow. But that's where I'm going.

My father, who is almost 82 years old, has been declining for the past several years. Honestly, it's a testament to medical science (in a good way) that he's even alive. He survived lung cancer, a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurism, and a heart murmur that required valve replacement twice. Plus a pacemaker and atrial ablation surgery. But it looks as if this is the end. My parents are spending the winter in Boca Raton (yes, it's a cliché), so that's where I'll be.

My mother has contacted hospice services and is meeting with them today. I hope he'll be able to stay at the apartment until the end.

I'm not sure what my plans will be. I have a one-way ticket to Florida, and the next leg will probably be a flight to Chicago for the funeral. Funny how it's so much easier to worry about logistics than emotional issues.

Oh, and I went to China. I'll be posting about that at some point, most likely.

I'm flying to Chicago for Thanksgiving. My parents wanted me to come in today, so I'm flying on the busiest day of the year. When I went to do online checkin, I discovered my flight (United 3458) is delayed about an hour -- 5:45 instead of 4:42. All well and good. I called the taxi company and asked the driver to come an hour later than originally planned.

Then I got an automated e-mail from United, notifying me of the delay. But the e-mail also said: "Please be at the gate for boarding prior to the original scheduled departure time of 4:42 p.m., as the departure time could be revised again."

So I'm supposed to show up at the airport already knowing I'm going to have to sit around for an extra hour, on the off-chance that my late plane is less late than predicted?

Bleah.