Well, having a stable Internet connection is really not that easy here, so sorry if I haven’t been updating like a fiend right out of the gate- I assure you it’s not from lack of events!

I should be on a flight to Honolulu right now. I’ve had a pretty weird morning. Let me explain.

My flight itinerary was something like this: departing Hawaiian Airlines at 8am for Manila May 13. This ticket was booked in tandem with a friend named Megan. We would fly Hawaiian Air together, stopping over in Honolulu and then continuing on to Manila, switching terminals and Ninoy Aquino International and then onto Mactan International. Boom- all in a day’s work. Shaka laka.

This first sign of problem came when a few days ago, Megan said she hadn’t booked her ticket. But no problem! She called the travel agent and the woman booked the ticket for her, although now it was more expensive. That should have been my sign. Because we’d received travel confirmations from the agency, reservation numbers and all. I had spoken to the woman, Melanie, and told her that Megan would be paying separately, but that my mother would be taking care of my ticket. Me + Megan = departing May 13. Mom = departing May 17. Megan = pays her ticket. Mom = pays her own ticket and MY ticket. I can see where somebody might have difficulty following all this, but, like I said, Megan and I received travel confirmations, so it is somewhat understandable that we thought our tickets were already arranged. In Megan’s case, since she knew she had to pay for her own, and hadn’t, it was a little strange that she didn’t remember it til quite late. I assumed my mother was paying for my ticket.

Here is where it was complicated.

I thought my mom had purchased my ticket already. Because I had discussed that with Melanie, the owner of FilAm Travel. We had discussed how my mom would pay my ticket. So, I hadn’t paid for mine. Do you get a sense of where this is going? Because at 6:15am I went to the counter at Hawaiian Airlines, where they laughed at the sheer ridiculousness of the fact that I was dressed and packed and ready to board a flight for which I HAD NO TICKET. (Shout out to Hawaiian Airlines for being so cool with it, aside from the laughter.)

I called my mom to ensure this is what had happened, 6:20am on mother’s day.

Mom: “WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON’T HAVE A TICKET? Jesus Christ-”

The added insult (or injury) is that my mother booked her ticket with Melanie of FilAm Travel. In all of that process, Melanie never stopped to ask my mom if I was still planning on going, or why I hadn’t paid for the ticket, or anything really. When Megan called to book her ticket, it never occurred to her to ask if we were still going together. A triple bonus score goes to the fact that my mother asks to look at my credit card bill. She assumed I had paid for my ticket on the card, but never put it together that my bill had never exceeded $700 (yet my ticket was originally $1200).

After about twenty minutes and holding up a lot of other passengers (who were all really nice about it actually), the woman at the counter (should’ve gotten her name! she was great) booked me a ticket for the next day. So I fly tomorrow at 8am, arriving 24 hours behind Megan. I hope she’ll be okay in Manila airport. I know she will be, but I feel very responsible for not being with her. Extra humiliation score for having to go up to her WHOLE FAMILY and be like “Yyyyeah, so, you know how I invited your daughter to vacati0n with me in a tropical paradise? So I’m not going with her…..that’s cool, right?”

Maybe somewhere I bear responsibility for this. I’m not trying to weasel out here, but honestly, I thought the travel agent had done her job and booked my ticket. Hashtag crazy unrealistic expectations much? Where I went wrong was, apparently, not to double check that the confirmation number I had was actually a confirmation number.

Then I left the airport in Sean’s ridiculously big truck and we went to Dunkin Donuts. Day is getting better. But yes. Maybe the next time you make your reservation, you will do it through the airline on anonymous robot servers that get shit done.

Back to bed!

GAY MARRIAGE RAR

The intarwebs have been all a-twitter (haha, get it) with President Obama’s announcement that he’s for gay marriage. As one of my friends rightly pointed out,

 It’s not courageous to say what everyone has known you long believed. And it sure as shit isn’t courageous to do so one day after your words might have had an effect on a law that is going to hurt thousands of citizens that are, day by day, more courageous than you.

I like Obama, but I like him less than I did 4 years ago. I still like him better than Romney, or most Republicans, for that matter. But, whether or not it’s a truly courageous act aside, it’s still an important step for an American President to take- because we as a nation are pretty far behind on something that most twenty-somethings and European nations no longer worry about. I’ll be working with a political blog, Truth Is Relevant, starting this summer. So I guess these crazy leftist thoughts will have someplace to be later.

Microgreens! Eee!

I saw something VERY cool on Good Magazine today: microgreens! An artist named Jenna Spevack has taken gardening and turned it into interior decorating.

To quote the article, “She started thinking about how to grow food in a New York City home, but in a low-maintenance way, one that would fit in with the busy lives New Yorkers tend to lead. The sub-irrigated system she used to grow the greens in the show is made of a chafing dish, the type found in high school cafeterias: Water goes into the bottom pan, soil and seeds go into the top pan, and hemp rope wicks water from the bottom pan into the soil, keeping it moist. If the grower forgets about the plants for a week, they’ll do fine.” This sounds like an awesome Instructable or DIY and I hope that this summer I will get a chance to try something similar out.

MERCH?

Last but not least, I came across some cool new pieces to add to the shop. Would anybody be interested in me carrying these necklaces or rings? They’re by an artist (or studio- I can’t be sure) called Pavla Designs in Tianjin. Buying in bulk gives me a great price, and I’m thinking of retailing them for $4 (rings) to $7 (necklaces). They just seem like very, very cool pieces.

Let me know what you guys think or who would want to buy them! In the future I will have to have some voting mechanism….

Funny thing happened to me today; unfortunately I don’t have any photos to accompany it, but quick little story.

So I had rented a Zipcar to go to out 20 miles west, where my mother and uncle reside.

Me: (getting out of the car, wearing pretty nice Y.U.P.ie clothes like a black button up shirt, slacks and heels)

 

Mom: (coming across parking lot) Wow! You look nice! (pats my arm) You know, white would really look much better.

Nice little lunch with them at a Thai place (ironic- I go to Thailand in less than 3 weeks) and have a good time. My cousin and his wife are expecting a son in a few months, so everyone is pretty excited about that, and we gossip about the nefarious state of the world etc. I leave at 2 because I need to return my Zipcar at 3.

Zipcars are fairly useful if you don’t have a vehicle. You pay $7 an hour, don’t have to pay for gas, and on your merry way you are. The problem I have with Zipcar in my town is that the locations you pick up and drop off at are all close to campus. That’s great if you live on campus. I do not. So while I have returned my car with 5 minutes to spare, I’m now 1 mile from my house, at 2:55pm when the Arizona heat is at its finest, wearing long pants and a black shirt with heels. I walk one block and start sweating. The rest of the journey home would not be pleasant. Hm…

There is a bus stop on campus that I like to use when I’m going to and from class, so I head there. But damn- my bus pass has just expired on May 6th, with the end of the school term. Cash? How much is the fare? Luckily, at the stops Valley Metro has posted their phone number. So I call.

Operator: Hello this is Phoenix Public Transit, how can I help you today?

 

Me: Hi, funny question- how much is a single ride fare?

 

Operator: $1.75.

 

Me: Is it all right if I don’t have exact change?

 

Operator: (sounding wary) In most cases yes, but you will not be able to get your change from the machine.

 

Me: That’s fine, I have $2. I just can’t walk anymore because I’m in heels.

 

Operator: (laughs all the way through saying goodbye and hanging up)

 

There you have it folks, slice o’ life. Working on new merchandise for the shop…

Well, it took a few weeks and a lot of help from Livenjoi’s creator, but we are out of the gate! We can take credit cards (by using Paypal’s system) and now I can focus a little more on writing, photos, and finding the next round of merchandise for the shop.

I’ll add a little bit about myself in case anyone has wandered over this way yet. I’m a graduate student in Tempe, Arizona, and one of my big interests is entrepreneurship. You can read more about my shop’s mission here but basically, I’m trying to provide cool knickknacks for far less than you would get at a big chain. Eventually, I would LOVE to have 10% of profits go to charities or groups in Tempe that work with the homeless. But right now I’m just seeing how far I can get as I am.

In less than a week I fly to the Philippines as well. Hm. I used to do a lot of international travel, which has influenced my taste. I will try my best to bring back some interesting trinkets from the Orient!

In the meantime, anybody have good WordPress app rec’s for the iPad? I’d love to be able to keep up blogging on that thing.