Everything was going smoothy, according to plan, just the way we wanted to take over the wor — er. I mean, just the way we wanted a lovely innocent vacation to begin. Until Monday. It all started on Monday.
Nick and I met some friends for a stroll through the locks and a quick dinner on the west side of Seattle. Spoiler alert: Nothing good every happens on the west side of anything. Always live in your dream house. Unless you can live on the east side. Then live on the east side.
While strolling through the lock, I suddenly realized I was missing my phone. This realization came momentarily after a random bloke bumped into me, and my best guess is that he swiped the phone from my back pocket. If I had known at the time, I would have kicked him in the head, but I think sometimes people get arrested for that sort of thing, so maybe it’s best that route was not taken.
Needless to say, the phone — brand new and still being paid off — was never seen or heard from (by us) again. Perhaps it was stolen, perhaps it fell into the wet abyss and entertained the school of salmon swimming below (oh THAT’s why they were swimming in circles!).
So, let’s think about this for a moment. It’s Monday, July 4th. It’s a holiday, everything is closed, and I’m leaving tomorrow, Tuesday July 5th for a week long adventure at Space Camp for which I would very much appreciate having a phone and being able to contact people. Like my sister who is supposed to pick me up at the airport.
So, come Tuesday, I left work an hour early, dashed to the Verizon store, where it took a whopping 120 seconds to transfer the plan back onto my old phone which thankfully I still had, add a protection plan that I explicitly told them I did NOT want (seriously — why does this always happen to me?) and then I was outta there!
I pack my stuff at the speed of light, and Nick (being the gentleman that he is) picks me up and we head to the airport. I get through security, get to my gate, look at my phone (which is already half dead because it’s an ancient iPhone 4) and I have three hours to kill. Resigned to the fact that I’m not going to get any sleep and I will be incredibly grumpy in about 60 minutes, I settle in for the wait.
My ears pick up something next to me, disbelieving what they just heard. I must be hallucinating, I’m so tired, my mind is making up things. There’s no way I could have heard what I think I heard. I turn my eyes in the direction of the voices and they find a group of older teenagers (maybe young college students… maybe) who each have a hand of cards in front of each of them. They are arguing about whether so-and-so said “Point Taken” which apparently is their way of ending “Point of Order”, and every so often someone touches their cards and an extra card is handed to them with a “Penalty for touching your cards” which starts the whole argument over again, because if Point of Order was actually ended, then there would not be a penalty for touching the cards and the person who gave the penalty would actually get a penalty for giving the wrong penalty.
Ah, Mau. The best game on Earth — or at least when you’re stuck at an airport for three hours with nothing better to do.
When, finally, no one wins the game (does anyone ever actually win this game?), we board the plane and we’re off! We land in Chicago amid the craziest turbulence I have ever experienced (some people were screaming – I was maniacally laughing… on the inside), and I find my next plane is delayed two hours or so. Well that’s grand, because I was already supposed to land at 10:30am, and then start the 8+ hour drive from Columbus to Huntsville, so now, when I land at 1:00pm, that will mean… You can see the Pink Elephant’s post for the corresponding picture of what that means.
Luckily, I had a car charger for the phone that is now completely dead because it’s an ancient iPhone 4, and at least some luck was with us, because I found an app with all science related trivia that actually works on iOS 7. Woopdidoo!
The rest, is history and is explained in the Pink Elephant’s prior blog. And now it’s the end of Wednesday July 6th currently 900 degrees, 700% humidity, and 10,000 decibels worth of tree frogs are singing around us. The “Lisa has been awake clock” is currently set at 43 hours and counting.
ZZZzzzzzzz,
Black Sheep
The Mogren Space Case 