Please do tell. Many of us here in North America are not that familiar with European air travel* and – don’t take this the wrong way – would be interested to hear about your suffering.
* - Well, except maybe my son, who has done so much international travel that he’s sort of jaded by it, yet I’m not sure that he has fully taken to heart some of the things I keep telling him. He lost an iPhone to a pair of professional pickpockets at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, and then promptly got relieved of an expensive pair of Bose noise-canceling headphones at Madrid-Barajas Airport. I think maybe he’s got the message now. European cities tend not to have much violent crime, but they have the world’s experts at relieving visitors of their valuables.
My gf taught Kizzy “reverse”. First she trained her to sit at a specific position; left, right, or middle. The “sit, middle” is basically my gf straddling Kizzy with the dog sitting facing forward.
From there she taught her “stand” then “stand walk”, where gf walks, straddling Kizzy, who walks forward under her.
Then, “stand reverse” or just “reverse” where they both walk backwards.
Kizzy does this “trick” now flawlessly, but it took about 3 weeks of practicing 10 minutes twice a day.
I’ll get up at 06:45. That is way too early for me. I’ll take the S-Bahn at 08:05 in Bahnhof Zoo to the airport. 58 minutes. There are faster trains, but not that early in the morning. Don’t ask me why. I’ll take only hand luggage, because the airport is understaffed and checking your luggage takes hours. Literally. I’ll go straight to the security control, where unfriendly staff will make me take off my shoes and will look suspiciously at my apples. The scanner will identify them as water, I guess. Which they mostly are, granted. But not liquid water. I will take three pre-filled contact lenses recipients, one for each night, because if I take the bottle with the soaking liquid they will claim it is over 100 ml and will take it away from me. Don’t ask me why there are no small bottles. The toothpaste is OK: 75 ml. Lufthansa is cancelling many flights, I hope they don’t cancel mine, but Frankfurt should be OK. I’ll be there in under one hour, then I will have to rush to the Strasburg gate. I cannot miss this plane, there is only one flight every month, extra for the plenary session of the EU Parliament. The flight will be full, I hope I still manage to put my (little) luggage in the overhead compartment. Then I will hear again over crappy loudspeakers with feedback that there are so-and-so many emergency exits, how to buckle the seat belt, that smoking is forbidden and that there are smoke detectors in the lavatories, blah blah blah… (the same crap they have told me just the flight before and dozens of other times). I (6’4") will be in seat 20E, a middle seat. The Frusthansa website did not allow me to change that. It will be tight, I hope my neighbours are smallish. Bet they will not be. After one hour we will arrive. There:
There will be no taxis left, I sat too far in the back of the plane for that. In the meantime it will be around 14:30 and I will not have had any food. That will be over seven hours since I left home, Strasburg is 500 miles away. A car would be almost just as fast. When I finally arrive in the city (sic!) the restaurants will be closed, but my room may not be ready yet. It mostly is not. The cleanig ladies are entitled a lunch break when they are needed. They know we are coming, it’s a ritual. I will have an argument with the check-in clerk about this and about the complimentary breakfast that I don’t want. I don’t want it because the Parliament will reimbourse me 17 € less per day if I get offered a breakfast, and I only want a coffee and a croissant. That costs me 3 € in the bar around the corner, but the clerk will tell me that it is for free and that the computer is set like this and that the invoice cannot be changed. That is going to cost me 17 x 3 = 51 € out of my pocket. Instead of 9 €. It’s a computer thing, there is nothing that can be done.
I still have not worked: that is the next thing. At least I like my job. But it will get late. Did I mention that it will be hot? And humid? Never mind…
Some people like Strasburg. I am not looking forward to it.
I’ll tell you about my journey back another day. Maybe I’ll take pictures to explain more graphically.
I do all my banking and paying bills online. For most of the bills, I use my bank’s website to access the bill and to pay it.
Now for the last entire week, every time I try to log in to the bank’s website, I get an error and can’t log in. When I click the “need help logging in” link, I get a message that there is a problem on the bank’s end. GRRRR! At least the rent comes out of the checking account automatically so that it will not be late. But some of the other bills will not be paid on time!
I’ve been known to post my minirant threads on the first day of the month in China. Odd thing is that part of the United States welcomes the month earlier than China does.
What better day for the A/C to crap out and start blowing hot air than July 2nd in the US? For additional fun, it’s constantly blowing even after turning everything completely OFF. And just in case that wasn’t enough fun, I work from home and I’m training someone tomorrow, which is going to be a super busy day due to the holiday today. Watch that be the only day the fixit guys can come out to work on the A/C.
Silly me. They won’t come out tomorrow. They’ll wait about three weeks to come out like they did last time.
My A/C started blowing hot air on the only 100F day we’ve had this year. We don’t get them very often. I expected a full replacement and concomitant wait as the unit is about 30 years old. The A/C guy replaced a capacitor. Apparently this is pretty common. He had the part on the truck and was done in 20 minutes. I hope your A/C is as easy to fix.
Fuck me. I accidentally ran over a raised road divider on Friday night. Only when I went to go out today did I discover that my muffler is now loose. I decided to drive anyway (maybe foolish) because the roads here are pretty smooth. Now I rescheduled my Saturday oil change appointment for 7:00 in the fucking morning and I’m going to face a repair bill of unknown size, especially since I don’t know what else I could’ve damaged. On an old car too.
Apparently, the jackass morons in the next complex over are completely unfamiliar with the concept that people within half a mile just might possibly need to sleep so they can go to work in the morning. They’re setting off stuff that’s so loud car alarms in the vicinity are going off. I hope that won’t lead to the employed not being able to GO to work in the morning because their car alarms going off in response to the racket killed their batteries. (Not a problem for DH and me, we don’t have that sort of alarm)
I have a baby. I was tempted to run through the streets, him shrieking in my arms, to let people know exactly what their very loud and very illegal and very ill-advised* celebration was doing. Instead, I nursed the baby, calmed him down, 4 times last night.
In other news - I have depression. I have had depression a long time. I’ve already talked about it here. My medicine was adjusted about 7 weeks ago and, last week, I was finally feeling some relief from the constant dark cloud and intrusive bad thoughts and generally feeling horrible. Well, guess whats back this morning? I feel like shit. I hope its just because I got a terrible night’s sleep and not because the treatment isn’t working.
I live in a trailer park. The houses are very close together. The whole place is just asking to be burnt down.
ANY time I don’t sleep well (like last night), I feel like crap the next day. It’s a little scary, because I pretty much have a whole day of cold, flu, or covid symptoms.
Thanks for your post, slalexan, because now I realize I’m more depressed, too…
TODAY’S TO-DO LIST:
Must NOT get in fight with wife.
So must not talk to wife (other than to warn her).
Must not interact with the public.
Must not listen to inner voice (he’s a mean drunk today).
Same with me. Don’t let a bad night’s sleep trick you into thinking your medication isn’t working.
I also did not sleep well because my neighbors were trying to illegally destroy our neighborhood with explosives past midnight. I am not feeling my best today, but I’m at work and trying to fake it.
Thanks to the sleep comments here, I made sure to catch a nap before dinner, and I feel almost functional.
And it was a good reminder to stay away from people today. I worked on a project in the back forty, and ran errands by myself (even did self-checkout wherever possible).
I have no intention of ever watching a Minion movie in my life. I don’t give a shit how many commercials for other products feature those grotesque creatures. I don’t care how many television shows work them into their programs. I will not watch your freaking movies and cannot imagine a strategy that would make me watch one. Go give it up and give us our normal commercials and programs.
So my boyfriends ceiling started leaking. The man said it was the pipe condensing. When I got there, the fan was running and no drips. As soon as bf added the cold setting of the thermostat, the dripping started again. Right over his tv and computer. I told maintanance and hopefully it will be fixed. Maybe the a/c cold setting is causing it.
