Suitcase Woes, and Cable Car Fun

Going to New Zealand, you cross the international date line, so in addition to being on an airplane forever, you also loose an entire day.  Once you reach your destination, you're very excited to get your things and clean up.  A fine plan, as long as your suitcase arrives when you do...

My co-worker Rachel and I purchased our flying tickets together, and our other co-worker Barb purchased hers separately.  However, surprise surprise, we all ended up sitting in a row together from Philadelphia to LA.  Once in LA, we'd go our separate ways, both ultimately ending in Wellington, the capital of New Zealand.

This was easy enough, and should have involved a nice, dull four-hour layover in LAX.  Instead our plane was over an hour late arriving in Philadelphia, and was a corresponding hour-plus late departing.  And after we boarded the plane, taxing down the runway, the pilot explained how airplanes have fuel tanks in the wings.  This particular airplane, why one of the fuel tanks was broken!  Funny thing, we'd have to stop in Kansas City to refuel, or else the flight would not make it to LA.  So we rode on a busted plane.  Was there no other unbroken plane in the whole of the Philadelphia airport to borrow?  No.

The Kansas City stop took and hour, and once we finally arrived in LA we sat on the runway for 45 minutes while we waited for a parking spot.  This was eating far into our layover time...

Once we finally got off the airplane, we ran out of security, outside from Terminal 1 to Terminal 3, got our new boarding passes and explained to the Virgin Australia people how our flight was late and that our luggage would be hard pressed to make it.  They sighed, said they'd do what they could, and went home (it was 10:00 pm, and they had been keeping the desk open, waiting for only us).  We booked it through security again and ran to the next plane.

After an uneventful flight to Brisbane, Australia, and from there to Wellington, we looked hopefully for our luggage.  No go.  Sadness.  We bought a few small items in Wellington - the Virgin Australia representative said that our bags would probably arrive the next morning, and we figured that as soon as we bought things, they'd arrive.

The next day, no luggage.  No messages from anyone, only answering machines.  Co-worker Barb, whose luggage was also lost, had her bag returned the very next day.  I figure the problem was with US Air, who had shuttled us on that horrid flight to LA.  That they were not communicating properly with Virgin Australia.  But how to contact them from New Zealand?  The solution: email Mum all the details and let her loose on the culprits.

Only Mum knows who she had to scold, but our bags were located and sent on their way to Wellington, arriving luckily the morning of the first day of talks.  Honestly, I think if she hadn't called, those doofuses would still have our luggage, we never would have gotten it.  I never want to travel with US Air again!

For a short and sad time, it seemed that the outfit pictured below would be my New Zealand Conference Outfit.  It's a perfectly fine dress, but in happy times, I would not wear it with blue sneakers.

While our luggage had not yet arrived, Rachel and I attempted to cheer ourselves by taking the Wellington Cable Car to admire the city from the high ground!

At the top were a number of nice overlooks and a huge botanical garden.

Sneakers.  I like you, but not as conference-wear.

An Update and a Promise

Where have I been?  Mostly in my apartment, baking madeleines, hosting my own single-viewer Jane Austen film adaptation movie marathon, the usual.

But more importantly, I was getting ready for a paper that my co-workers and I were going to present at a major conference in Wellington, New Zealand!  

I have well over 600 photographs from this trip, so stay tuned, and sooner or later I'll post an extensive blow-by-blow on my excursion to Middle Earth.  Promise.

Gummy Kitty: Cordelia Cat has a Rough Month

Cords had a rough couple weeks in October, which necessitated two trips to the vet, which, as far is she is concerned, is two trips too many.  Her least favorite thing to do is anything relating to her crate, which means that any vet trip is a nightmare for me too.  And last winter, after she tore up my entire left arm, and Mum's hand, trying to get her in the crate from my parents' for the trip back to Philly, I told her that she was never going anywhere ever again.

Unless it was to the vet.

It was a Saturday evening, and she started gross-drooling.  I don't want to get into details about this, let's just leave it at gross-drooling.  Leaving nasty, uncharacteristic slobbers all over the place, and not grooming as throughly as she usually does.  I do know her teeth are all messed up: she was in a hoard (well over 350 cat roomies) and has all sorts of issues now (very small, FIV, scared of everything real cats enjoy, bad teeth) plus I think she needs glasses and that she's a lefty.  So Monday morning I call the vet and we schedule a check up for the very next day.  

I shove her in the crate and we head out.  She complains the entire trip to the vet, and the entire time we sat in the waiting room.  Last time we went to the vet, Cords attempted to crawl up the wall of the exam room, and ended up suctioning herself to the floor.  The vet was reluctant to pry her up, so she just did the exam and vaccinations on the floor.  So this time the vet opens Cords file and says, "Has her temperament changed since last fall?  No?  Okay, we'd like to give her a tranquilizer so that we can do a proper thorough exam."  Certainly!  Dope that kitty up!

The verdict: Cordie has a number of foul teeth that need to be removed.  Her blood test comes back all well, so we're set to get the offending chompers extracted.  

Everyone at work kept asking, how many teeth?  I didn't ask.  And it didn't really matter.  Like I'd let her keep nasty teeth in her mouth, when they are clearly sore and she's mouth breathing foul stinky breath into my face at night and leaving gross-drool all over my apartment?  

A week after the initial appointment, I shoved a hungry kitty into the crate and dropped her off early at the vet.  I'd be able to pick up my dopey kitty at the end of the work day.  She was dopey, but not like the dogs would be, all knock-kneed and wobbly.  She kept wandering around the apartment wide-eyed like she'd never seen it before.  Like, "Omg!  Is that a red pillow?  A blue blanket?  Madness!"  

How many teeth had to come out?  Seven.  SEVEN!  And since she'd already been lacking teeth when she moved in, she only has one fang left (on the bottom left) and no teeth at all on the top!  Thankfully, this has not affected her eating habits at all.

Gummy

Everyone at work did a simultaneous awwww/lol when I explained how Cordie is now Gummy Kitty. She also inspired the chalk pumpkin up in the staff room.  No idea who the artist is...  there are a couple suspects.

(On a side note, we have such a big number of people sharing the same tiny staff room, purges are a regular event.) 

Jell-os

My friend and coworker Lauren was getting married in early October, so Our Mutual Workplace threw her a wedding shower!  Party Planner Stephanie declared that, due to Lauren's appreciation for and skillful appropriate of its fashions, the theme would be Mad Men.  Excellent - as I had long-ago (right after she got engaged) promised Lauren to make some epic jell-o molds for her wedding shower.

To aid in this endeavor, I had my trusty Jell-O cookbook, procured from the Jell-O Museum!

Even though it would have been period-accurate, I decided to avoid the more sinister savory, mysteriously opaque Jell-os.  I wanted to make things that people would willingly eat, without fear or the necessity of a Triple Dog Dare.

All these Jell-O Molds have fancy names, but I can't remember them.  It's December now, I made these suckers in early December, my head is full of other random things now.

Black cherry jell-o, maraschino cherries, pineapple.  

Interesting fact: you have to use canned pineapple in jell-o.  The fresh stuff has an enzyme or something present that prevents the gelatin from setting.

Orange jell-o, orange juice, melted vanilla ice cream.  

This one was declared the best by all present.  It tasted like a creamsicle.

Raspberry jell-o, raspberries, champagne, chambord liqueur.  

It's a Mad Men party, you've got to have at least one boozy jell-o...

In the foreground, raspberry jell-o, raspberries, canned peaches, Greek yogurt.

This is the same lovely jell-o that I made for Marion's going away party.

Not pictured is a huge boozy jell-o that was actually so boozy that it didn't properly retain it's shape.  In the photograph above, it's the sad orange-ish mound in the upper right.  Peach and champagne.

Interesting fact: three cups of champagne in a six cup jell-o mold means that your jell-o will not set properly, no matter how much you try to convince it to...

West Nile: This is Apparently Where You Get It

Phyllis and I wanted to chill out after our last day working, decompressing a bit before she had to catch her flight home.  I had poked around the internet, and since we had such a nice time touring the Huntsville Botanical Garden, I hoped to find something similar in Jackson.

This was more difficult, but I ended up finding a little garden, the former grounds of a 19th-century mansion.

We told our university clients that we would be garden-visiting, and they were all, "Don't.  You'll get the West Nile.  It's here now.  Did you know that a baby died from it?"

Me saying, "Oh yes, we've had West Nile in Pennsylvania for aaaaaages.  I'm not worried, I don't know anyone who has had it," had absolutely no effect on them.  We would willfully go, get West Nile, and then die just like that baby.

The garden was little and pretty, but jam-packed full of standing water and mosquitoes.  I thought Mississippians knew about mosquitoes... so why all the standing water?  Shouldn't they know better?

Those mosquitoes were everywhere, and I got a zillion bites.  Even still I wasn't too concerned about getting West Nile.  Liang and Dara came to Philly the day I arrived back, for our Regularly Scheduled Roomie Weekend (of Eating).  And I kept telling them that I had West Nile, that I could feel it, but that it got better.

Back to Jackson

So, I was back again to Jackson, Mississippi, at the end of the summer.  Downtown Jackson, with wonderful fifties shopfronts, is still generally a crumbling mess and (from what the locals said) not overly safe.

The hotel was fabulous and beautiful, but observe the downtown outside of my hotel window.  All of those shops are closed, and the second building from the left, the entire roof has collapsed.

My assistant Phyllis from the Huntsville, Alabama, trip was able to come with me to Jackson as well, which was fantastic.  Not only calm and level-headed, she was also ready to do some Mississippi food-exploring!

First stop: the Mayflower Cafe.  Used as a location for some scene in "The Help" but also Jackson's longest running diner.  We got huge plates full of red snapper, recommended as the best local speciality by the waitress, which was fab.  Brockway folks - it reminded me so much of JJs, back in the day when everyone in town would go for the Friday fish specials.

Beat down after the first day, we ended up having dinner in the hotel restaurant with one of my coworkers who was in town.  (We actually shouldn't have been there at the same time, but our client's mistake resulted in our schedules improperly overlapping.)

Final dinner out: Phyllis and I drove out of the downtown to the busier (and less crumbly) northeast section of Jackson, to a new joint called Julip.  You guys: if you're ever in Jackson, get yourself to Julip.

Phyllis' choice: fried chicken on waffles.

Shrimp and Grits.  No kidding, this may have been the best thing I've ever eaten.

Worst Airport Ever

Atlanta.  Nothing about this place is good. 

 

The lights, the muzak, the inefficient seating (why all the footrests?), the unavoidable constantly-running tvs which resulted in me being fairly convinced that I had actually contracted the flesh-eating bacteria, the veggie lo mein that actually resembled an unnatural spaghette bolognese (the only thing Asian about that mess was the name), the lack of Starbucks or any other coffee/tea shop, and the fact that you have to walk half-way down the terminals (ten minutes) before you hit the bank of screens that tell you where your flight is leaving from.

It can be depressing if you're doing lots of travel to the Deep South, as Atlanta is the major midway point for everything in and out of the region.  However, the Charlotte (NC) airport is also a possible connecting point, and I highly recommend it.  Clean and bright, no tvs, multiple speedy Starbucks, and a respectable sushi bar.

(Please note: I'm not a Starbucks person, as I'm not a coffee drinker.  But Starbucks is reliable in that no matter where you are, you know exactly what you're going to end up with when you purchase something.  As per what you purchase, I recommend an Earle Grey tea with added vanilla syrup and cream.  They might be momentarily confused, but it'll always work out.  They'll put the vanilla in, and you add the cream yourself.  Tasty!)