Bad moon rising

January 17, 2008 | Norway,Vacation,Winter

Well, it doesn’t rise so much as circle. It appears from behind one side of the mountain and disappears behind the other.

When it rains, it pours

January 14, 2008 | Traveling,Vacation,Weird things

So I need to call my credit-card company tomorrow and see if someone there will turn on the spigot again. Said someone apparently thinks another someone stole our credit card to buy plane tickets to exactly the destination we so desperately wanted to reach. I guess it’s not completly out of the realm of possibility that some thievin’ Scandihoovian might want to visit Disney World on my tab. But, really. If you were to steal a credit card and buy plane tickets, wouldn’t you pick somewhere like, oh, I don’t know … somewhere other than the same place the person you stole it from lives?

Dammitanyway. I’ve got to figure out what this is all about. Maybe I exceeded my quota of plane tickets.

Update: Oops. I’m an idiot. After a conversation that went something like, “You’re over your credit limit.” “But … but … no, I’m not.” Umm, yes. I am. I apparently missed that the parentheses around the “available credit limit” means the number is, ahem, a negative. Yeah, so I’m the only person alive with such a teeny-tiny credit limit (and only one credit card) that five plane tickets can max it out and break the bank. Sigh. Well, I don’t have TiVo or one of those iPod thingies either. So there.

A day late and a (few thousand) dollar(s) short

January 11, 2008 | Airlines,Blogging,Norway,Traveling,Vacation

But, hey, I’m back! (And, yeah, that’s what it looked like up there. A lot.)

First off, thank you, thank you, thank you to all the incredible guest bloggers for keeping the blogfires burning while I was gone!

I have a ton of photographs to go through, bags to unpack and boxes of Christmas gifts yet to open. I also have massive blog updates to do. In the meantime, here’s an update.

• The good: The travel to our destination went surprisingly well.
• The bad: That’s the last thing to go “surprisingly well.”
• The ugly: Puking (and other unmentionables) started the day after we arrived and ended, oh, about two weeks later after three trips to the on-call doctor and one overnight stay at the hospital for IV fluids and attacking every, single one of us and then some.
• The travel from our destination? FUBAR.
  • Missed the overseas flight — even though we called ahead to the airline (which rhymes with Rocksuckernental) to tell them our first flight was delayed and sprinted the entire length of the airport — by literally five minutes.
  • The plane was still there. They just wouldn’t let us board. So we watched it leave with 12 empty seats, five of which were ours, paid in full.
  • Haris the Gatekeeper said our only option was to show up the next morning and wait on “standby.” Or we could buy new tickets, even though that wouldn’t guarantee our seats. Or we could check out other options with other airlines. And, oh yeah, if that didn’t work out, he would be “happy” to see us again the next morning. (I didn’t tell him where I would be “happy” to see him … you know, burning and gnashing teeth and all.)
  • We spent the next several hours checking our nonexistent options. I will never go to Vegas. (I may be unlucky, but I’m not brain-dead.) Here’s what happened.
    • New tickets with no guarantees — $6,000
    • Hotel room with one bed, one crib and five bodies — $300
    • Three hot dogs, an order of fries, some yogurt and juice from the airport kiosk — $50 (instead of $175 for five burgers and no drinks at the hotel)
    • Less than an hour on the Internet to check in and print boarding passes (without which I am certain we’d still be wandering the Oslo airport) — $30
    • 1 child with a fever, 3 weeks in Winter Wonderland with no snow and Haris telling us the next morning that we “probably would have been fine on standby” (meaning we gambled away the equivalent of, oh, about two months of his annual salary) and the fact that I let him walk away from me and continue breathing — priceless
• How long before I do this again? Infinity. As we said from the security of our seats in the air, “Buh-bye, Oslo. See ya NEVER!”

Pull up a chair and set a spell

December 17, 2007 | Guest blogger,Traveling,Vacation,Weather

I’m going out of town for a while.

As long as the weather doesn’t delay or cancel everything or — worse — kick our butts to a hotel we can’t afford near the airport or — even worse — force us to sleep on the plastic chairs at the airport and lick goldfish-cracker crumbs from the bottom of plastic bags for breakfast, lunch and dinner … we should be good.

A wonderful group of guest-bloggers will keep the blogfires burning while I’m away.

Stay tuned … see you next year!

Know your balls in North Carolina

September 19, 2007 | Military,North Carolina,Souvenirs,Vacation

When we vacationed in North Carolina last month, I drove into town and spent an afternoon shopping for souvenirs and chatting. Well, I did more chatting than shopping, but that was the fun part. I stopped in a shop on Main Street. Its shelves were filled with ceramics, wooden sculptures, glass work and various local artwork. A boy of about 15 greeted me from behind the counter. I told him I was looking for souvenirs made by local artists. He walked around with me. I held something up, turned it this way and that, and he told tell me who made it and where they lived. I swear he said, “Yes, ma’am,” at least 152 times.

We talked about the weather. They were having a heat wave that week. He apologized for the heat. He got me a map and gave me directions to one of the roadside shops that sell gemstones. While we walked around the shop, an older boy passed by without saying a word. As he did, he stepped on the other boy’s foot or shoved him.

“Is that your brother?” I asked.

“Yes, ma’am.” He grinned. (The brother recently joined the Marines and was scheduled to head out soon. I figured he was getting in his last-minute little-brother teasing.)

Then some colorful glass balls caught my eye. I held one up to the light.

“This is nice,” I said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“It reminds me of a witch’s ball,” I said and told him someone once gave me one that was made in Blowing Rock, N.C., and how pretty it was.

He lowered his voice and leaned closer to me.

“Yes, ma’am, but you might get in trouble if you call it that around here.”

Ah, I get it. It’s a friendship ball. The story goes that a witch’s ball (aka, witch ball) attracts ghosts with its bright colors. The ghost gets sucked into the hole and gets stuck inside.

Just so you know, the next time you’re in North Carolina …

This? A witch’s ball.

This? Not a witch’s ball.

PTL and pass the pig — cazart!

August 15, 2007 | Vacation

If you’re hungry for barbecue, they’ve got you covered in North Carolina. So you don’t forget, there’s a dinner prayer right there on the menu.

With a church every mile or so and hand-painted signs …

… nailed to trees along the roads and Walter and Louise helping you remember your Ten Commandments …

… I felt a little dirty reading Hunter S. Thompson’s take on politicians.

… a man on the scent of the White House is rarely rational. He is more like a beast in heat: a bull elk in the rut, crashing blindly through the timber in a fever for something to fuck. Anything! … A career politician finally smelling the White House is not much different from a bull elk in the rut. He will stop at nothing, trashing anything that gets in his way; and anything he can’t handle personally he will hire out — or, failing that, make a deal.

With walks like these, though …

… there was a slice-of-heaven quality about the place.

Note to self

August 14, 2007 | Vacation

Next time? Put the mattresses on the floor the first night. Because, even though everyone will stay in bed the first night (even if they don’t sleep), they will fall out of bed … several times … all night long … by the second night.

That’s the loft in the cabin in the mountains of North Carolina I lived in last week.