While waiting for my coffee drink at a local coffee establishment (local to this planet), I overheard one of the employees complement a coworker: “Delicious suggestion,” he said. Give that man a raise.

Potential Disaster

I almost named my stuffed owl Mohammed - I said almost. Sheesh.

More on the Bear

This bed must have been just right; look how dirty it is (see pillow). Not only was the bed filthy there was also quite a bit of wiry, black hair on it.

One Dumb Thing Leads to Another

Funny thing, embarrassment. If you do something embarrassing, what is the best next step? Should you tell people or try to sweep it under the rug? I am starting to think doing embarrassing things is something I excel at. Usually I tell as many people as possible about the embarrassing or stupid choices I make. Partly, I think, I do that so people do not hear about it through the grapevine. But lately I wonder if it might not be better to keep my silliness to myself (and the few people directly involved in the embarrassing act). That way people don’t start to associate me with embarrassing moments. In fact, I may not actually do dumb things any more than you do, or you, I just advertise it. Take this morning…

Bear News

Here are some photographs illustrating what the bear did while visiting the cabin. I cleaned it up but not soon enough to prevent a mouse baby boom. The first night that I slept there I was nervous about being waken up by the bear but the mice kept me up instead. The next night Alice was with me and, after sleeping for a few hours, the bear woke us up as he/she tried to open the back door. We yelled to scare the bear away and Diego (the chihuahua) looked at us and went back to sleep.
We screwed the shutters shut and put a bed in front of the door. We'll see if it works.

Here is a bear track (with chihuahua tracks for scale) in front of the cabin. More bear news later.

Travelocity or Travelosucky?

This may be boring, self serving and some other adjective, but you never know until you read it (or in my case until I write it). On September 18th I bought a plane ticket to Miami, Florida for December 6-9. The price included airfare back to Boise. It's what we call "round trip." On September 19th, I got a call and an email telling me my flight was not confirmed. It turned out I was booked on airlines that did not have baggage agreements and for some reason Travelocity had to make my reservation into two reservations in order to make things work. I didn’t care. I just wanted things to work. A few days after that I got another email telling me that my reservation was not confirmed and that I should call Travelocity as soon as possible. This time ATA, one of the many airlines that I would be utilizing for my weekend in Miami Beach, would no longer be servicing Washington D.C. You may be wondering why I would care about Washington D.C. My return flight unfortunately takes me (might take?) through Washington. Travelocity said they would contact the airline and the airline would contact me in three days. At least a week later I called back because I had not heard from the airline. This time Travelocity told me the airline would get back to me in two weeks. A couple of days ago Southwest Airlines contacted me and said that they would honor my ATA flight. The problem was and is Southwest does not fly from the Washington Airport that I will be flying into. So I called Travelocity again. After 45 minutes on the phone yesterday the fellow on the phone said, “OK, it’s all fixed. He described my entire trip, ending in Washington DC. I reminded him that I am trying to get all the way home to Boise. I, in fact, have no need or desire to be in Washington D.C. December 9th. I asked for a refund. He said my ticket is nonrefundable. I asked to talk to a supervisor. He said he would transfer me to his supervisor. After about 5 minutes of being on hold he said, “I am now transferring you to my supervisor. You will be on hold for a maximum of one minute.” 10 minutes later I hung up because no one came back on the line. Today I started the whole thing over again. This time a supervisor was to call me, and finally one did! When I tried to answer the call but my stupid phone showed a message that read, “Phone Numbers Only,” and would not let me answer the phone. She left a message and confirmed that my ticket is nonrefundable and that I should call back. No special number or extension. Just call back and start over.
I forgot to mention that today my Travelocity person offered me a flight home from D.C. for an additional $374.00.

This dollar was used to buy fish. Later, maybe weeks or months later, when the previous owner of the dollar bill discovered that he or she had inadvertently spent his or her Danny Glover autograph, I am sure he or she was disappointed. Maybe devastated.

Bear

My sister called today to tell me that a bear broke into the cabin. Diego and I are going to go there in a couple weeks to clean up.