Vacation.... Lampoon style
This is the story of Char's vacation. I would heartily recommend booze while reading, or at least chocolate. Take a moment to stock up. This might be a longish read.
Our story begins three days before Char was originally scheduled departure date of Dec 20 with the frustrating message on her iPod to connect to her computer and 'restore' to original factory settings. The only problem with this was that the computer completely refused to acknowledge the presence of the device, so there was no way to comply with the directive. Now, said device was under extended warranty, but with no earthly way to possibly have a replacement under warranty in the time between then and leaving. I don't know about you, but for Char the main time she needs said iPod is long drives to doctor's appointments, eternities in waiting rooms and VACATIONS. Duh?
Off to Best Buy to purchase a brand new iPod. Much soul searching ensued as she debated for the iPod Touch she lusted for and a 120gb classic. $150 more for 32gb touch vs the 120gb... wow. Ok, 120gb it was. One added expense not needed paid for and then happily loaded up with her favorite tunes.
Skip to the next morning, now two days before scheduled departure. Its Thursday and Char is busily working her way through a list of finish this and finish that prior to leaving SL to head out when she gets a nice blue screen of death and cannot restart her computer, not even into safe mode. Gee, hard drive is dead. Spends the rest of the afternoon on the phone with Dell while multitasking on her old slow laptop giving Nevar, Amethyst and others last minute info and handing off this task and that she can no longer possibly hope to handle. Takes more than 8 hours to get the tech to agree that gee, the hard drive really is hosed and agree to send a replacement. Its 10pm or so at night when the last call is handled and no hope of the drive arriving before Saturday. We won't talk about backups. No we most definitely won't talk about backups.
Somewhere during that day, the Mother In Law (henceforth referred to as MIL) calls warning that a cold front is headed through and that if they can possibly arrive Saturday instead of Sunday they will avoid any risk of ice on the highways. Oh, yeah, great, throw the whole schedule off. Darn weather.
By the time hubby was home on that Thursday, Char was resigned to already being done with work so what the heck, if they could get out the door Friday, why not? Mad scramble to also pack Thursday night and Friday morning and out the door by 3pm. Meant for a late arrival at first night's stop, fall into bed and head out in the morning. The car stereo in the new to us used vehicle that came with an aftermarket radio installed by prior owner has started acting up. Best quote of the day, heard by a half asleep Char 'Gee, southern New Mexico looks a lot better at night'.
Lets pause briefly to discuss a curiousity about Char. If she is in a moving vehicle for longer than 30-40 minutes, even as the driver, 98% of the time she's going to fall asleep. She has it on pretty good authority that this isn't the healthiest thing for her to do while driving and so she pretty much sticks to one of the many passenger seats and tries not weigh down anyone's shoulders. In the absence of her sparkling wit and conversation, this leaves the driver with two teenage boys with noses buried in hand held gaming devices and his stereo to keep him awake, alert and entertained. No stereo is a PROBLEM.
Saturday is one very very long drive to reach the MIL's house. The stereo officially dies early on and its a long boring drive. Can you see added expense number two on the horizon here?
Arrival time is officially into Sunday, 1am or so. Char enjoys some amusement as they pull into the driveway and her cell phone, currently in a purse buried somewhere under blankets and jackets starts ringing. Only one person could be calling: someone currently inside the house. She fails to get to the phone in time, calls back and calmly asks her MIL to please open the garage for them. It was 1am, it seemed funny at the time.
Sunday we awake with much grumbling to the usual call to breakfast. Picky eaters aren't exactly thrilled with the dry cooked scrambled eggs but try not to grouse too much. It quickly becomes evident that Char and family have pretty fixed views on how life, the universe and everything should work and so do the in-laws... more so than in any prior visit. From Char's perspective they've gotten 'settled', hit 'old age', possibly something on the order of 'inflexible' and maybe even a touch of 'cantankerous'. They think Char and family are just plain weird, probably obsessive, and Char hates to think of what other adjectives they might apply.
Char and family head out on that windy cold Sunday they didn't want to travel on originally to go 30 miles to the nearest Best Buy (hmmm... trend here?) to look at car stereos and try to figure out what to get the in-laws for xmas. After having already endured a couple hours of "look here at this picture, this is your...", Char decides one of the cool digital photo frames might be really suitable as a gift. Yes the MIL has a digital camera and is computer literate, even if she still believes in dial-up, though Char did sense she was softening on the issue, just intimidated by having to notify everyone of her new email address and so on.
They can't install the new stereo until 5pm, which would bend the MIL all out of shape cause you just know she's got plans for what she's making for dinner. Scheduled install for Tuesday and did some other shopping we didn't need to do but got some great bargains at the local closing Circuit City. Being a geek can get expensive. Being a geeky family even more so.
We get through Monday with only minor tensions and impatience on both sides. Tuesday heralds the next trip to Best Buy and we get the stereo installed, the kids each get a bonus game for being good sports, we have lunch out since there's time to kill while the stereo is installed and Char gets a great book on how to make the most of her digitizing tablet with Photoshop and Painter. Life is good. Expensive, but good.
We meet the in-laws for dinner on the way back, our treat, and its pretty good food despite being Mexican food joint in small town Oklahoma. Loved the way they did the steak for the fajitas. Head home, bring the packages and leftovers in and Char hears this nasty sound of an iPod hitting the ceramic tile floor as hubby puts the food on the counter. His turn. Dead and parts rattling inside.
Now lets remember the 'weird' and 'obsessive' sort of adjectives the in-laws have for Char's family and picture Char trying to explain to these older, great depression minded in-laws that they are turning around and going BACK to Best Buy and why. I mean the great new car stereo with the auxiliary input jack for the iPod really doesn't do the driver a whole lot of good without his iPod, right? Their expressions were priceless.
Head back down the road to Best Buy, during which drive, Char restarts the whole debate with herself about iPod Touch vs Classic. Much discussion with spouse ensues. The question is semi-answered as they watch the last Touch in the store walk out right ahead of them and Char finally uses some bit of common sense, hands her brand new iPod off to spouse and decides to save for the 32gb Touch. They buy a nice case for the iPod and head home. Gee, 30 miles one way to get a case they could probably have gotten down the road. Life is grand. On the other hand, it was a pleasant drive, the kids had stayed with Grandma and they ended up having a nice long conversation with the in-laws when they got back that had no tension or anything whatsoever present.
Christmas Eve. Char wakes feeling 'off'. Nothing specific wrong, just drained and it gets worse as the morning goes on. She falls into bed for a nap sometime after lunch and has to be shaken awake for dinner. After dinner she crawls back into bed, really wanting to just stay there the rest of the night, but the kids finally hit a wall and go off on each other (verbally), badly enough that the younger teen was really shaken and needed some chill time. So Char drags herself out of bed, pulls on warm enough clothes, grabs her laptop and they head to the local wireless hot spot, the local McDonalds. This is closed, of course, for the holiday, so she parks and fires up the laptop, launches second life, gets a moment of bliss as everything loads, all her message windows ding to life and then...
... the wonderful warning of 'gee, you dippy dame, this is an ancient battery with no life left in it and there's no way it can run anything for longer than three minutes without shutting down, so watch me shut down NOW!'
Black screen. There was nothing to do but laugh about it, no matter how frustrating on some levels it was. Much joking between child and parent ensues and they head to the only store left open in town: Walgreens pharmacy. Wander around store, nothing interesting, especially not anything as interesting as say a car outlet to ac adapter... they settle for a soda and a choco taco each and head home, remembering to bring something for brother too so there's no hurt feelings. The rest of the evening is pleasant and everyone heads to bed by 11pm knowing morning will come early for presents.
Two hours later, Char wakes up feeling very explicitly not good in ways that involve spewing vile things from both ends and spends the night unpleasantly dealing with the stomach flu until around 4:30am or so when everything is finally emptied to the point there's nothing left to do but lie down and be miserable. Kids are up at 7am to open prezzies. An hour or so later, Char is back in bed and sleeping until its time to start packing to be ready to leave in the morning... assuming she can leave in the morning. For reference, Immodium works great once the bulk of the virus is purged from your system. Don't try it sooner or you'll be sick forever.
Out the door by 6am on Friday. I think MIL was just as happy to see Char & family go as they were to leave. She didn't even try to take the normal goodbye pictures. With the aid of some dramamine, Char was fine. Spouse gets a speeding ticket in some county or other in Texas. Added expense #??? Don't tell me. I really don't want to know.
After everything, by the time they got to El Paso, Char just wanted to be pampered. They ate at Macaroni Grille, a family favorite, and ensconced themselves at Embassy Suites. They were comp'd the highspeed wireless, given a cup full of chocolates for the kids to share, had a nice wide screen tv with Cartoon Network and even caught the last call of the nightly happy hour. Life is good sometimes. In bed by 11pm or so. A couple hours later...
Here comes the youngest, crying that his chest hurts. Daddy gets up and asks him to show him where, just barely below the rib cage, presses to ask if that hurts and the poor kid barely makes it to the toilet to vomit. His turn. Another sleepless night for just about everyone, including mom making a couple of stupid barefoot runs in 30 degree or under weather to retrieve a couple stray items (thermometer, immodium, whatever) from the car.
Much later start than planned heading home, but by 11am child was fit to pile into the car and Char and family finally begin the last leg of the journey home. Char slept her way through it so can't tell you much about it except that if the car stopped she got out and used the facilities or ate or both as circumstances dictated. There was something vague about maybe having been flashed by photo radar going through Tucson area, but that's a wait and see if something comes of it or not.
Obviously, I'm now home safe and we're all more or less sound. The cats were all alive and happy to see us, all seven of them. Someone expressed their displeasure with our absence by peeing on my bed, but fortunately on a pile of bedding that didn't soak through to mattress level. The two human members of the family who had thus far escaped the stomach flu appear to have it now and are less than thrilled. For some reason they blame me. Honestly, if I was going to pick something to infect people with by getting it first, I'd rather have pneumonia than the stomach flu. It wasn't intentional, honest.
I'm trying to get my computer fully restored to full operating potential. How quickly I'm fully functional will depend on whether I can salvage any data off the old hard drive. This is my next project. If I can't, well, remember we weren't going to talk about back ups, right? It'll be a lot of reconstructing on some things that I would prefer not to have to try to reconstruct, but once I know for certain one way or the other, I'll be back to work and will use a lot of mirrors and sound effects as necessary to make it all happen.
I missed you all and I promise, next year we're staying in town for all vacation time. We might risk a weekend to someplace within a day's drive time, but I'd consider that a definite dubious 'maybe'.
I hope my story makes all of your holiday stories seem bright, cheery, happy and fun by comparison, even if they didn't seem that way at the time. And I hope the coming New Year is a great one for everyone.
*hugs*
Char
Our story begins three days before Char was originally scheduled departure date of Dec 20 with the frustrating message on her iPod to connect to her computer and 'restore' to original factory settings. The only problem with this was that the computer completely refused to acknowledge the presence of the device, so there was no way to comply with the directive. Now, said device was under extended warranty, but with no earthly way to possibly have a replacement under warranty in the time between then and leaving. I don't know about you, but for Char the main time she needs said iPod is long drives to doctor's appointments, eternities in waiting rooms and VACATIONS. Duh?
Off to Best Buy to purchase a brand new iPod. Much soul searching ensued as she debated for the iPod Touch she lusted for and a 120gb classic. $150 more for 32gb touch vs the 120gb... wow. Ok, 120gb it was. One added expense not needed paid for and then happily loaded up with her favorite tunes.
Skip to the next morning, now two days before scheduled departure. Its Thursday and Char is busily working her way through a list of finish this and finish that prior to leaving SL to head out when she gets a nice blue screen of death and cannot restart her computer, not even into safe mode. Gee, hard drive is dead. Spends the rest of the afternoon on the phone with Dell while multitasking on her old slow laptop giving Nevar, Amethyst and others last minute info and handing off this task and that she can no longer possibly hope to handle. Takes more than 8 hours to get the tech to agree that gee, the hard drive really is hosed and agree to send a replacement. Its 10pm or so at night when the last call is handled and no hope of the drive arriving before Saturday. We won't talk about backups. No we most definitely won't talk about backups.
Somewhere during that day, the Mother In Law (henceforth referred to as MIL) calls warning that a cold front is headed through and that if they can possibly arrive Saturday instead of Sunday they will avoid any risk of ice on the highways. Oh, yeah, great, throw the whole schedule off. Darn weather.
By the time hubby was home on that Thursday, Char was resigned to already being done with work so what the heck, if they could get out the door Friday, why not? Mad scramble to also pack Thursday night and Friday morning and out the door by 3pm. Meant for a late arrival at first night's stop, fall into bed and head out in the morning. The car stereo in the new to us used vehicle that came with an aftermarket radio installed by prior owner has started acting up. Best quote of the day, heard by a half asleep Char 'Gee, southern New Mexico looks a lot better at night'.
Lets pause briefly to discuss a curiousity about Char. If she is in a moving vehicle for longer than 30-40 minutes, even as the driver, 98% of the time she's going to fall asleep. She has it on pretty good authority that this isn't the healthiest thing for her to do while driving and so she pretty much sticks to one of the many passenger seats and tries not weigh down anyone's shoulders. In the absence of her sparkling wit and conversation, this leaves the driver with two teenage boys with noses buried in hand held gaming devices and his stereo to keep him awake, alert and entertained. No stereo is a PROBLEM.
Saturday is one very very long drive to reach the MIL's house. The stereo officially dies early on and its a long boring drive. Can you see added expense number two on the horizon here?
Arrival time is officially into Sunday, 1am or so. Char enjoys some amusement as they pull into the driveway and her cell phone, currently in a purse buried somewhere under blankets and jackets starts ringing. Only one person could be calling: someone currently inside the house. She fails to get to the phone in time, calls back and calmly asks her MIL to please open the garage for them. It was 1am, it seemed funny at the time.
Sunday we awake with much grumbling to the usual call to breakfast. Picky eaters aren't exactly thrilled with the dry cooked scrambled eggs but try not to grouse too much. It quickly becomes evident that Char and family have pretty fixed views on how life, the universe and everything should work and so do the in-laws... more so than in any prior visit. From Char's perspective they've gotten 'settled', hit 'old age', possibly something on the order of 'inflexible' and maybe even a touch of 'cantankerous'. They think Char and family are just plain weird, probably obsessive, and Char hates to think of what other adjectives they might apply.
Char and family head out on that windy cold Sunday they didn't want to travel on originally to go 30 miles to the nearest Best Buy (hmmm... trend here?) to look at car stereos and try to figure out what to get the in-laws for xmas. After having already endured a couple hours of "look here at this picture, this is your...", Char decides one of the cool digital photo frames might be really suitable as a gift. Yes the MIL has a digital camera and is computer literate, even if she still believes in dial-up, though Char did sense she was softening on the issue, just intimidated by having to notify everyone of her new email address and so on.
They can't install the new stereo until 5pm, which would bend the MIL all out of shape cause you just know she's got plans for what she's making for dinner. Scheduled install for Tuesday and did some other shopping we didn't need to do but got some great bargains at the local closing Circuit City. Being a geek can get expensive. Being a geeky family even more so.
We get through Monday with only minor tensions and impatience on both sides. Tuesday heralds the next trip to Best Buy and we get the stereo installed, the kids each get a bonus game for being good sports, we have lunch out since there's time to kill while the stereo is installed and Char gets a great book on how to make the most of her digitizing tablet with Photoshop and Painter. Life is good. Expensive, but good.
We meet the in-laws for dinner on the way back, our treat, and its pretty good food despite being Mexican food joint in small town Oklahoma. Loved the way they did the steak for the fajitas. Head home, bring the packages and leftovers in and Char hears this nasty sound of an iPod hitting the ceramic tile floor as hubby puts the food on the counter. His turn. Dead and parts rattling inside.
Now lets remember the 'weird' and 'obsessive' sort of adjectives the in-laws have for Char's family and picture Char trying to explain to these older, great depression minded in-laws that they are turning around and going BACK to Best Buy and why. I mean the great new car stereo with the auxiliary input jack for the iPod really doesn't do the driver a whole lot of good without his iPod, right? Their expressions were priceless.
Head back down the road to Best Buy, during which drive, Char restarts the whole debate with herself about iPod Touch vs Classic. Much discussion with spouse ensues. The question is semi-answered as they watch the last Touch in the store walk out right ahead of them and Char finally uses some bit of common sense, hands her brand new iPod off to spouse and decides to save for the 32gb Touch. They buy a nice case for the iPod and head home. Gee, 30 miles one way to get a case they could probably have gotten down the road. Life is grand. On the other hand, it was a pleasant drive, the kids had stayed with Grandma and they ended up having a nice long conversation with the in-laws when they got back that had no tension or anything whatsoever present.
Christmas Eve. Char wakes feeling 'off'. Nothing specific wrong, just drained and it gets worse as the morning goes on. She falls into bed for a nap sometime after lunch and has to be shaken awake for dinner. After dinner she crawls back into bed, really wanting to just stay there the rest of the night, but the kids finally hit a wall and go off on each other (verbally), badly enough that the younger teen was really shaken and needed some chill time. So Char drags herself out of bed, pulls on warm enough clothes, grabs her laptop and they head to the local wireless hot spot, the local McDonalds. This is closed, of course, for the holiday, so she parks and fires up the laptop, launches second life, gets a moment of bliss as everything loads, all her message windows ding to life and then...
... the wonderful warning of 'gee, you dippy dame, this is an ancient battery with no life left in it and there's no way it can run anything for longer than three minutes without shutting down, so watch me shut down NOW!'
Black screen. There was nothing to do but laugh about it, no matter how frustrating on some levels it was. Much joking between child and parent ensues and they head to the only store left open in town: Walgreens pharmacy. Wander around store, nothing interesting, especially not anything as interesting as say a car outlet to ac adapter... they settle for a soda and a choco taco each and head home, remembering to bring something for brother too so there's no hurt feelings. The rest of the evening is pleasant and everyone heads to bed by 11pm knowing morning will come early for presents.
Two hours later, Char wakes up feeling very explicitly not good in ways that involve spewing vile things from both ends and spends the night unpleasantly dealing with the stomach flu until around 4:30am or so when everything is finally emptied to the point there's nothing left to do but lie down and be miserable. Kids are up at 7am to open prezzies. An hour or so later, Char is back in bed and sleeping until its time to start packing to be ready to leave in the morning... assuming she can leave in the morning. For reference, Immodium works great once the bulk of the virus is purged from your system. Don't try it sooner or you'll be sick forever.
Out the door by 6am on Friday. I think MIL was just as happy to see Char & family go as they were to leave. She didn't even try to take the normal goodbye pictures. With the aid of some dramamine, Char was fine. Spouse gets a speeding ticket in some county or other in Texas. Added expense #??? Don't tell me. I really don't want to know.
After everything, by the time they got to El Paso, Char just wanted to be pampered. They ate at Macaroni Grille, a family favorite, and ensconced themselves at Embassy Suites. They were comp'd the highspeed wireless, given a cup full of chocolates for the kids to share, had a nice wide screen tv with Cartoon Network and even caught the last call of the nightly happy hour. Life is good sometimes. In bed by 11pm or so. A couple hours later...
Here comes the youngest, crying that his chest hurts. Daddy gets up and asks him to show him where, just barely below the rib cage, presses to ask if that hurts and the poor kid barely makes it to the toilet to vomit. His turn. Another sleepless night for just about everyone, including mom making a couple of stupid barefoot runs in 30 degree or under weather to retrieve a couple stray items (thermometer, immodium, whatever) from the car.
Much later start than planned heading home, but by 11am child was fit to pile into the car and Char and family finally begin the last leg of the journey home. Char slept her way through it so can't tell you much about it except that if the car stopped she got out and used the facilities or ate or both as circumstances dictated. There was something vague about maybe having been flashed by photo radar going through Tucson area, but that's a wait and see if something comes of it or not.
Obviously, I'm now home safe and we're all more or less sound. The cats were all alive and happy to see us, all seven of them. Someone expressed their displeasure with our absence by peeing on my bed, but fortunately on a pile of bedding that didn't soak through to mattress level. The two human members of the family who had thus far escaped the stomach flu appear to have it now and are less than thrilled. For some reason they blame me. Honestly, if I was going to pick something to infect people with by getting it first, I'd rather have pneumonia than the stomach flu. It wasn't intentional, honest.
I'm trying to get my computer fully restored to full operating potential. How quickly I'm fully functional will depend on whether I can salvage any data off the old hard drive. This is my next project. If I can't, well, remember we weren't going to talk about back ups, right? It'll be a lot of reconstructing on some things that I would prefer not to have to try to reconstruct, but once I know for certain one way or the other, I'll be back to work and will use a lot of mirrors and sound effects as necessary to make it all happen.
I missed you all and I promise, next year we're staying in town for all vacation time. We might risk a weekend to someplace within a day's drive time, but I'd consider that a definite dubious 'maybe'.
I hope my story makes all of your holiday stories seem bright, cheery, happy and fun by comparison, even if they didn't seem that way at the time. And I hope the coming New Year is a great one for everyone.
*hugs*
Char
posted by Charlene Trudeau at
10:40 AM
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