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2001-08-24 Reservations are in place for our trip, finally. Not without a lot of time on the phone and on the Web trying to figure out what a good place to stay would be in cities we've never seen across the whole of our continent and an ocean. Yikes. And I do mean we spent a lot of time. I think after dinner Saturday night I spent two hours on the Web. That morning we looked at hotels for a couple of hours until my parents arrived. And we were back on the phone talking about it for another four or five that night. Finally we agreed on a place, which one site said was fully booked, but had rooms available through Travelocity. Interesting. So I made the reservation, and we were set -- for Barcelona. Of course, we still had to figure out where else we were staying, but that was a start, right? The next morning Travelocity called to let me know that the hotel they let me reserve the night before had no rooms available. Typical. We spent four more hours trying to make a decision again. The first one was so belabored, you'd think we'd have had a list in mind. (To our credit, we did; but once we realized that we weren't being given up-to-date info, suddenly we realized all the hotels on our list had no vacancies, either.) Why did they let us book a hotel with no basis in reality? I'm glad they were quick to find the error, but still. After that I think I got a little bitter about the whole thing. My mood soured. I started thinking about the bottom line and getting this done and, well, I got desperate. I've never been a great fan of Microsoft, but...I used Expedia, a Microsoft Web property...and to add insult to injury...I used Internet Explorer when I booked it. Because I use it all the time now. I'm so ashamed. Yes! My passport is here! (At this writing, we're pretty sure that's what the U.S. Department of State has for me in the big envelope at home; either that or I'm being deported.) After my dad was kind enough to drive to the county registrar and get my Birth Certificate (it's not too far from his office, actually) and then drive it up here to the city, they left without letting me pay back my father, or even buy him lunch. As they were leaving it came out that they were heading back to catch the big game between the two local Pro Football teams on TV. Ah, that's why. I'll still have to take them to lunch, but it might not be until I come back. That monday after they came by I stopped in the passport office to deliver my Real Embossed State-of-California Hunky-Dory Certificate of Live Birth (all the more smirkingly named after having discovered the Marc Almond song Unborn Stillborn.) Even though it wasn't as satisfying as handing it to a human, the drop box that the handsome and un-selfconsciously masculine security guard pointed me to was much more calming to me than mailing the thing. I wish that I could just accept that the US Postal Service is unlikely to lose or damage my Birth Certificate in the mail across town...that I could trust that my luck, which nearly always seems to pull through at the last minute, will probably hold out a little longer. I worry pointlessly. It would save me time and effort if I didn't feel like it took so much for something to be done to my satisfaction. I never claimed I wasn't obsessive, nor did I ever deny being a control freak. Besides, you didn't see how many versions of the cover letter I wrote that morning to go along with it. So by Tuesday I was completely spent, completely demoralized, and was facing three very full weeks of work about to kick my ass. I stopped at the Boyfriend's house after work to drop off his books on Spain and we basically hashed out the remaining two days and our driving and train routes across Spain in an hour. Maybe an hour and half. What can I say? I was done. I used to have what I called "San Francisco Moments," when I'd see something or do something and suddenly feel an intense understanding, appreciation and connection to the City that I loved for a long time. The Boyfriend had an "Internet moment" that he shared with me. He stopped for a moment and pondered aloud how incredible it was not just that we were renting cars and finding hotels from his home office, but that we were doing it in cities we've never seen across the whole of our continent and an ocean. One of the things I love most about him is his perspective. I saw it immediately: of course he's right. I don't normally think about the rest of the planet in concrete terms of cars and hotels and actual people, just as thoughts and information I see on the Web. Suddenly the scale, the immediacy, the proximity of the Internet seemed tangible...we might as well have been standing at the counter halfway around the world. Incredible. And next month, we will be standing at that counter, halfway around the world. Incredible.
2003-03-29 - Moving Notice |
