About that Hound, Grey
The simple version: I arrived.
The more dramatic and altogether more interesting version, with much ranting at the gods:
- 8:30 p.m. Thursday
- The porter catches me in a conversation that makes me late for my taxi to the bus station.
- 8:45 p.m.
- Fortunately, the bus is also late, so I make it.
- 11 p.m.
- The ticket agent comes on duty and calls me over to her window, where her printer promptly has a meltdown. Boarding card? No such thing! Ticket agent, instead of handing me off to someone whose printer works, insists it will be fixed “any moment now.”
- 2 a.m.
- Searched by x-ray security.
- 3 a.m.
- Searched by security before boarding the plane. Because, you know, I might have picked up something dangerous in the last hour.
- 4 a.m.
- Flight takes off. I go to sleep. Sounds good to me.
- 11:30 a.m.
- Flight lands. Customs doesn’t even look at me. However, I quickly realize that I am carrying a backpack and my purse, pulling along a trunk on wheels, and lugging an A3 bag full of clothes as well. It’s a little… um… heavy. My hands? They are hurting.
- 1 p.m.
- Catch bus to Port Authority, where the Greyhound station is. Have twelve hours before the 1 a.m. bus leaves. The 1 a.m. bus will get to Relative’s City at 1 p.m.
- 2:30 p.m.
- Arrive Port Authority. Imagine New York Traffic. Now imagine it on midday Friday before the Fourth of July. Now you know why it took an hour and a half to get to the P.A.
- 4:15 p.m.
- After almost two hours of running around to every ticket counter in the Port Authority, I have determined that my Relative’s City does not exist. No, really. It doesn’t. I know there is a 1 a.m. bus going there, but not one employee can even find the name of the city in their computer system. I give up and get ticket to Pittsburgh instead. Pittsburgh bus? Leaves at 4:30. After two hours of dragging my above-mentioned luggage back and forth across Port Authority I’m not sure I can feel my hands any more. Oh. Ever walked around with a laptop and a case of CDs strapped to your back while dragging heavy luggage for two hours? No? Try it. I dare you.
- 4:30 p.m.
- Bus line to Pittsburgh is six million miles long and the noon bus to Newark is sitting in the bus slot. Do you think this looks promising? I sure don’t.
- 5:30 p.m.
- Bus to Pittsburgh begins to load. I am next in line to get on and the driver arbitrarily denies boarding to anyone who isn’t going to Newark. Um… yeah.
- 5:45 p.m.
- All of us denied boarding on the previous bus are put on an express bus to Philadelphia, where we will be allowed to board the bus we were just told we couldn’t board. Look, don’t ask me. I don’t make the rules. I just stand in lines for hours and sweat.
- Hours later
- Arrive at Philly. I know you thought the holiday traffic out of NYC got better as the day went on, but you were wrong. More standing in a line that has more people on it than could fit in a single bus, all of whom desperately want to go to Pittsburgh and a good 1/3 of whom are currently pissed off at being chased of their bus for no apparent reason. Good job, Greyhound.
- An hour and a half later
- Watch the original bus we should have been on arrive, board the first 1/3 of the line—none of whom were in NYC in the first place—and leave. I’ll let you fill in the curses.
- Half an hour later:
- Second bus arrives followed closely by a third bus to get us out of there. Smart Greyhound people; they thought to bring on extra buses.
- Fifteen minutes later
- Bus begins to pull away from the station, then pulls back in. Oh yes. The bus is broken. No, I am not kidding you. If looks could kill, I probably would be locked up in a cell right now for murders committed years ago, but assuming I got off those charges, the driver would have been vaporized into nothingness by the collective hate of a bus full of NYC people who have just been delayed one too many times.
- Hours later
- Harrisburg. Uneventful, if only because there is nothing left that can go wrong.
- Hours later
- Food stop. Not uneventful, because the “20 minute” break turns into 40 minutes when a certain Crazy Man orders Burger King right at 20 minutes and apparently orders enough to feed Rwanda. I would have left his ass sitting in the restaurant, but the driver is nicer than me.
- Hours later
- Arrive Pittsburgh. It is now roughly 4 a.m. For those of you keeping score at home, I’ve now been traveling for almost 32 hours. At 4 a.m., there is no way my relatives can pick me up. Guess who will be spending the next several hours at the Pittsburgh bus station?
Mmm hmmm.
Remember the crazy guy? Over the next two hours he told me at least 6 billion times how pretty I was, tried to get my phone number, and insisted he didn’t mean anything when he asked me how “pure” I was. This would be the point where I finally shook him off and got away from him, if you’re wondering.
Also, it helped that he finally caught his connection and left the station.
Hours later… the relatives arrived. For those keeping track at home, we are now at 36 hours of travel. You figure out where I slept; I’m not sure I remember.
Several hours later still, arrive at relatives’ house.
Cambridge, England to Western Pennsylvania, in 40 hours or less. Go Greyhound!
Twelve hours after that, the pain of dragging the suitcases everywhere diminishes enough that I can log on to the computer to check email.
My kind of Living Will
I just found a template for a living will on a discussion board that included the following clause:
If a reasonable amount of time passes and I fail to sit up and ask for a cold beer or wine, it should be presumed that I won’t ever get better. When such a determination is reached, I hereby instruct my spouse, children and attending physicians to pull the plug, reel in the tubes and call it a day.
That’s what I’m talking about. Change ‘wine’ to ‘cider’, though. If I sit up and ask for wine, I think we can all assume I am deathly ill and you’re about to get your inheritance anyway, whether or not you pull the plug.
Terminology in Horse Sales Ads
- Fancy mover
- Has a lot of chrome or lacks any chrome. You’ll be so amazed at how pretty he is, you won’t notice he paddles.
- Lots of chrome!
- White strip around coronet band. Made you look!
- “Bred to jump/do dressage/etc.”
- Lacks competitiveness, but looks good on paper.
- Will take you to the top.
- Of your local barn show.
- Lightly started under saddle. Can go any direction. Will excell in everything.
- No idea what this horse is good for.
- Amazing horse! Your dream horse! Must sell as I have too many other horses and not enough time to develop this one’s potential.
- The worst in the barn, has about half as much training as he should.
- Perfect junior/amateur owner horse!
- Can jump 3’6” without a problem. A few bad habits. You have a trainer, right?
- Gorgeous paint!/Color like you wouldn’t believe!
- One spot of white somewhere on the belly. We’ve added $5,000 to the price.
- Champion!
- Six years ago, at a local show.
- Loss of job/spouse/family’s oil fortune forces sale. Would not sell otherwise!
- I will call you every day for updates and ask to tuck him in at night.
- Great family horse! Bombproof! Our thirteen year-old rides him everywhere!
- Our thirteen year-old has been taking lessons since age two.
- Knows his job and loves to work.
- As long as his job description is “eat more hay.”
- Proven lesson horse! Will teach you everything!
- Too old for our program, and can only jump cross-rails.
- No vices! Cross-ties, loads, great for farrier!
- After sedation.
- Great 4-H project!
- A couple minor schooling issues, but your group leader can help you sort it out.
- This year’s champion in six thousand classes, with a billion points in everything. He can be your next star!
- I just bought a horse that can kick this one’s ass. See you in the show ring!
- Price reduced!
- Turns out no one wants to pay an extra $3000 for a white spot on the belly.
- Price will increase with training.
- You better believe I’m keeping track of every penny spent.
- Will sell to good family only. Prefer show family.
- Tacked an extra $1500 to price because I mentioned the word ‘show’. Will do a more thorough credit check on you than more government agencies. Will require a 10-page contract with buy-back options. His show name must include my/my stallion’s/my barn’s name in it.
You’re Missing the Point
Me, posting on a large internet bulletin board: “I’m happy being single and I wish people would stop asking me when I’m going to get married.”
Length of time before first email response arrives: 2 minutes.
Email’s text: “You’re exactly the kind of girl I want to date.”
Marbung? Cannot compete with Yellow Sauce
The Marbung virus is still rampaging through Angola. Not to make light of the situation, but the yellow sauce I had for dinner scares me much, much more.
Marbung, after all, is thousands of miles away from me; the yellow sauce is possessed and in my room.
You doubt sauce can be possessed?
Last night I brought home an order of tandoori chicken, special rice, and naan. As always, the restaurant included that flaky chip-kinda-thing whose name I am currently forgetting. And, unusually, a little cup of yellow sauce. I can only assume the sauce came with the tandoori chicken, because I’ve ordered everything else at one time or another and never got yellow sauce.
I wasn’t particularly interested in the sauce, so I just put it aside on my makeshift coffee table. I didn’t even bother to take the lid off. I ate, I read, I pondered. I went over to my computer to do some work.
A couple hours later, a strange hissing sound caught my attention. It was almost like someone breathing. I kept looking around to see if an animal had somehow gotten trapped in my room. I know, it makes no sense. But wouldn’t you rather assume something came through the window than imagine ghosts were sneaking up behind you? Me too.
Couldn’t find anything. The dishes from dinner were still sitting on my table, but dishes don’t breathe.
Later… a couple cracks and pops. The search for the animal continued. The echos in this area can be very weird. Sneaky peaks out the window, looking for the “ghost.”
This morning, taking a break, I went to clear away my dishes. And what do you know, the yellow sauce had, apparently, bubbled up in its little cup, which must have caused the hissing noise while the air tried to escape and, when the pressure was too great, it popped through the center hole in the lid and splattered all over my table, causing the second round of noises.
I kid you not. The yellow sauce exploded.
How the hell does a sauce explode when it is sitting at room temperature?
I am afraid of the yellow sauce.