In Which Our Heroine Is Not Dead

13 June 2003

We got my parents and grands in safe, though not quite when we hoped for them. Here is my free advice to you (as if I usually charge you): do not use Travelocity. Do not. Do not. There has not been an aspect of their reservations so far that was not messed up. Plane, rental vehicle, and hotel room. All messed up. Somehow the minivan rental became a Dodge Neon rental. The two-double-bed hotel room for four adults (all of whose names had to be listed on the reservation) became a one-double-bed hotel room for four adults. (Unlike the Neon, that one was fixable. Thankfully.) I don't even know what happened with the plane. It was not pretty. It's a very good thing for the Travelocity people that my family is nice, or else the Travelocity office in San Francisco would have had a much less pleasant day. Also it's a good thing for them that edged weaponry is not allowed on airplanes these days.

But they're here, they're safe, and that's what matters. (That and hoping that Mark's relatives didn't also use Travelocity.) The absence of minivan, however, meant that there was no way we could take a single car to get Mark and go for Cuban food in Palo Alto last night. So Timprov rode with my folks in the rented non-minivan, and I drove my grandparents in our car. And Grandma is now telling everyone that I am a "damn good driver," because the driver of a green minivan attempted to kill us on the way onto the Dumbarton Bridge. This other driver decided that he needed to be in the carpool lane right that very minute, despite the fact that I was already there. I swerved and braked and came very close to hitting the concrete median divider, and the minivan still nearly hit us. I attempted to lay on the horn, but it's not in the same place on the Saturn as it was in the Grand Am, and it's much harder to hit, so I could only give a belated blast. But the look Grandma gave the other driver as we passed him on the bridge was enough to wilt entire gardens.

I'll be boiling things this morning (potatoes and more eggs, for potato salad), and then we'll head out, the folks and the grands and me. We're going up to Sausalito. Timprov has volunteered to make dinner, so that's one less thing on the agenda for me. I'm tired, is what. I should have slept later, but I didn't.

Hey, you know what annoys me, as a verbal tic? "Can only be described as." Will Shetterly's blog quoted someone who claimed that his was the only possible description for the area between Israel and the Gaza Strip, and immediately, contrarily, I came up with two other descriptions. So it could not, in fact, "only be described as" what he said. I realize that this is nitpicky and horrible. Oh, and above, I said I attempted to lay on the horn -- I know that if I was going to attempt to make myself horizontal on the bed, that would be lie. But is laying on the horn more like laying on MacDuff? Err, make that laying on, MacDuff?

Ahem. Right, then. I think this may mean it's time for me to get back to food preparation and try to get my brain organized. I don't know when the rest of the family will come over from their motel, but I might as well be at least a little ready for it. Like, clean and stuff. I don't know if I'll be updating tomorrow or Sunday. We've got a few things going on. We'll see. Don't worry if I don't, all right? It's nothing catastrophic (at least, it had better not be). It's just busy around here.

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