Writing in Circles

I’ve never really been frightened on an airplane. Sure, there are little bumps of turbulence that make my stomach jump into my throat and I get a little woozy when the plane makes a sharp turn…but really no fear.

That was until my last trip.

After a weird ride from New York to Dallas (some lady actually offered my husband $20 for his seat so she could be near the front and get off the plane faster, and I actually shed tears when my laptop ran out of battery power) we arrived back in Texas….a bit frazzled and ready to get home.

We had a short lay over at DFW and then it was back to the plane for what we thought would be a quick, easy 30-minute ride to Austin. 

We board, get situated and we sit, and sit, and sit some more. Nothing is happening. On top of it all, the airplane’s air conditioning was not working. Sitting in a metal tube which is parked on concrete, in the hot Texas sun is torture in my book. When I got on this plane something just didn’t feel right about it. It seemed old, and dark and dirty….some old shitbag airplane that American Airlines had dusted off to make short little trips between Austin and Dallas all day.

So when the pilot came on to tell us that the crew was busy fixing some “discrepancies” with the cargo doors, I wasn’t surprised. He promised us it would only be 20 minutes and we would be on our way. Well, 30 minutes goes by and the discrepancies….whatever that means… aren’t fixed. The pilot actually came out of the cockpit, addresses everyone of the plane and said he was just as frustrated as we were and he’s actually going to go down and see what’s going on.

I stopped looking at the clock, but I was told we sat there and waited for about 2 hours, in the heat. The pilot finally comes back up and says the doors were fixed and we will be on our way. We pull away from the gate, get about 20 feet away and we stop. Again, we were not moving. We sit for several minutes and the pilot comes on again. This time a member of the ground crew spotted a “scratch” on one of the wings and the pilot has called out someone to check it out before we can go. URGH!

By this time we could’ve been almost back to Austin if we had just rented a car and driven ourselves home. So I guess someone finally came out and inspected the “scratch” …. whatever that means…. and we finally had the thumbs up to leave.

“I want to assure you that this plane is 100% safe to fly,” the pilot added before we took off.

Hmmm….something about that statement actually is not very assuring.

So here is when I almost freaked out. As we took off, something just didn’t feel right. I’m no seasoned flier, but you know what a taken off is supposed to feel like. There’s some shaking and you feel this weird sinking, pulling feeling in your gut. Well, that didn’t happen. It felt like we were just barely getting up off the ground, almost gliding through the air. On top of that there was this horrible BURNING SMELL.

And there is something you never want to smell on an airplane….it’s burning. I clenched my husband’s hand and buried my face in his shoulder. “Are we going to die?” I asked. ‘No,” he said half convincing.

Finally my nerves calmed, those trusty fight attendants came around and gave us a Coke and some scammed snack mix from first class (mind you, we haven’t eaten or drank anything in like 3 hours) and we finally touched down in Austin. I’ve never been so glad to be home.

This was definitely a trip to remember….for all the wrong reasons.

I’m not a frequent flier. The longest airplane trip I’ve ever actually taken is about four hours and I usually only hop aboard these Death Tubes about once or twice a year. I’m not horribly afraid of flying. I’m usually fine with it. I do get a little hot and board and my butt begins to go numb about two hours in…but that’s the trade off for not having to drive….right?

My latest trip to New York forced me to get in, strap on and pretend that defining gravity at 35,000 feet and 500 mph with a bunch of sweaty strangers is A-OK.

This marked my first experience with American Airlines. The company hasn’t received a lot of good publicity recently for charging people to check bags and actually making people pay for those shitty airplane meals they serve on longer flights. But the flight was cheapish and served its purpose so my husband and I just decided, what the hey….roll with it.

Things were going OK until we hit our stop in Raleigh/Durham. I have NO idea why we had to stop here on the way to NYC…but we did. We didn’t even get off the plane…but had to just sit there for about half an hour. After killing time on the tarmac in North Carolina (my first visit to this fair state….but I’m sure there is more there to offer) we were finally on our way. We actually had to move seats because for some reason our seats for the first flight were not the same as  the second leg of the trip….but oh, one minor inconvenience….roll with it.

We taxi out to what we all expect is the runway…but things started looking suspicious when we saw like six other planes just sitting around….going nowhere. This is when the pilot gets on and tell us we must wait…indefinitely until Laguardia gets unclogged. Apparently this is typical for the airline industry (and not American’s fault)….but this was the FIRST time I’ve ever just had to sit on the runway and wait….little did I know this was just the beginning. I again decided to just roll with it.

So finally we get up in the air and everyone’s a little bit cranky, including some of the flight attendants (I think that’s what they are calling themselves now days).

One crusty air hostess got a little impatient with one passenger as he tried to stow away his laptop upon departure. She kept angrily saying, “you must put away ALL electronic devices.” And the guy apparently wasn’t moving fast enough. “Sir,” she snarled. “Put up your computer.”

“You aren’t being very nice,” the passenger said.

“I AM being nice,” she said.

“No you are not,” the passenger rebutted.

“Whatever,” the stewardess said before stomping off in a huff.

What happened to the glamorous days of flying? When people got all spiffed up to fly and stewardesses wore scarves and cute little hats and said hello and goodbye and “thanks for flying with us.”

Now days everyone is just angry, rushed, scared and just plain ol pissed off….including those damn flight attendants. I know it must be a stressful job…pouring out diet cokes, passing out peanuts, being rude to people. But c’mon, show a little heart.

I think my next vacation will be a road trip.

Stay tuned for FLYING THE NOT-SO-FRIENDLY SKIES (PART II: THE TRIP HOME)

So after 30 years of life I finally made it to the Big Apple. This was my first trip to the big city and it was every thing I thought it would be. I’m ready to go back.

My husband and I made a long weekend trip for my big 30th b-day. We stayed at the ultra nice and hip Tribeca Grand. The hotel was awesome. The rooms are small but stylish (stainless steel sink and white noise speakers). Staff super helpful and friendly (said hi every time we walked in the door) and a very cool lounge/restaurant/club The Church downstairs ($15 martinis, but what the hey, we’re in NY).

We saw some great art at The MOMA, ate a hotdog, went to Central Park, saw the Rockefeller Center, went to see XANADU (yes, the very silly Broadway take on the horrible Olivia Newton John movie from the 80s) But it was great. 

Oh, and also spotted my only pseudo-celebrity while riding the subway! It was Austin Scarlett - the flamboyant style maven from Project Runway (or at least I thought it was him. he had on huge sunglasses and a big straw hat).

Third Day we were kind tired (damn you $15 martinis!) and decided to be lazy tourists and take a double decker bus around town (I thought this might be a quick, easy way to see the sights of New York). Maybe this was not the best idea. After standing in line for about an hour just to get on the bus we quickly figured out we could’ve just walked to the first stop on the route and hopped on there (duh).

We hopped off the bus and did a little shopping in SOHO and then hopped back on later to catch a few more sights. We eventually ditched the bus and walked through China Town and Little Italy (where I snacked on an Italian ice) and wound back at our hotel.

On the night of my birthday we took a night sail on the Hudson River. It was a really awesome way to get a view of the skyline and The Statue of Liberty at night.

It was an awesome trip (save the horrible plane travel to and from, but that’s another post).

Like I said, I’m ready to go back and see and do even more!!

This week I received my custom order of Moo minicards. If you don’t know Moo, it’s a cool UK-based printing company that lets you upload any image and they will print it for you on a variety of items like note cards, greeting cards and stickers. I really don’t know why they call themselves Moo, but I like it….it’s how cows say, “hi.”

I grabbed a few images off of Everystock, tweaked them on Picnik and voila, my own customized biz cards (the images also can be found on my header here and on my about pages). Moo prints the cards in batches of 100 and you can choose various images to come in a batch (I chose 3). These cards are not the typical size of your run-of-the-mill business card, but pretty nifty at half the size (about the size of a Band-Aid). I think they stand out a little more from stodgy old business cards. I also ordered a cute little felt holder to keep them in. 

Not feeling creative? Moo has lots of designers who have ready-made products with tons of cute designs. Happy Mooing!

Thanks to Travel Obsession for the fun photographic survey. It’s a fun little game and a good time killer.

Just follow the simple rules below.

a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd’s mosaic maker.

1. What is your first name? 

2. What is your favorite food?

3. What high school did you go to?

4. What is your favorite color?

5. Who is your celebrity crush? 
6. Favorite drink? 
7. Dream vacation? 
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What you want to be when you grow up? 
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One Word to describe you. 
12. Your flickr name.

My friend Kristi and I enjoyed people watching, networking and noshing on free food and drinks during a night out at a magazine party on Sunday. The magazine is Rare, a cool little glossy that I write for from time to time. If you live here in Austin check out this month’s issue which I write about the Continental Club and Bahaia, a belly dancer but she’s not any of these interesting people in the photo below.

Anyways, the rooftop party celebrated the Rarest of Them All issue and brought together all types of vendors like the people from Emerald City Press below, artists, dancers, musicians and all-around hipsters. We soaked up the beautiful skyline views and stalked waiters passing around yummy little bites of food.

What a great night!

Summer is here. It may not be official but it’s freaking hot out. To beat the heat I headed to my apartment pool on Sunday to catch some rays and cool off. But this idea was apparently not unique. Everyone….I mean everyone had the exact same thought, blew up their favorite floaty, put a cheap six pack in a cooler, slathered on some SPF 30, tossed a gossip mag in their beach bag and headed to the pool.

With no seats available at the very crowded pool I just jumped in and floated around taking in the sights.

There were divorced dads playing Marco Polo with their pre-teen daughters who were in visiting him for the weekend.

There was the Lesbian beach party-a-go-go on one end. Grrrls in wife beaters and board shorts sipped wine coolers and traded not-so inconspicuous hugs and kisses.

Tubby teenage boys whose voices were in mid change squirted each other with water guns.

One guy with some sort of hand injury wrapped his hurt appendage in a Zip Lock baggie and then braved the waters to toss a Nerf football around with his not-very-impressed girlfriend.

After awhile all of the people watching became boring and I called it a day. Can’t wait for the next pool day.

Today marked the first day of my mini-vacay between my old job and my new job which I start on Monday. So I switched my alarm clock off, slept in and kicked off my time off with a little outlet mall shopping (so much for my goal of cleaning out my closet).

I don’t really understand the outlet mall system. Is it stuff that is out of season, irregular or just plain ol stuff that doesn’t sell at regular stores? I don’t know, but if you don’t watch out you wind up paying full price for stuff. 

Just when I was about to give up I ran across a couple of cute day dresses at the ESPIRT shop for under $15 each. I couldn’t resist when they fit and I realized I could walk out the door with them both for 30 bucks. It gets super hot in the summer around here and most of the time pants of any sort just won’t do, so these will be perfect.

The dress above was listed on the ESPIRT Web site for $59.99. I haven’t found any major flaw with my outlet purchase so I guess I just was lucky.

I love watching sad and/or depressing stuff on TV. It started with a COPS obsession a few years ago. Anytime I heard that stupid theme song, “Bad boys, bad boys…” I knew I was in for a good 30 minutes of watching people with screwed up lives. I really don’t understand my facination, but usually when the remote is in my hand I gravitate to the real life murder mysteries, addiction documentaries or touching shows about old people.

My latest guilty pleasure is Intervention on A&E. The dramatic program follows around people with various addictions - heroin addicts, anorexics, meth heads and my personal favorite…shopaholics. I love the idea of the show, they try to help the addicts by sending them to some nice sounding rehab place in Arizona or on the beach somewhere. Take tonight’s episode with Emily the anorexic twin who obsessively exercises and thinks that her skeletal frame looks fat. Her family steps in and helps her out and she gets better.

Last weekend I stumbled upon another tear-jerking documentary. Hear and Now the “deeply personal memoir” on HBO tells the story of a couple in their 60s who have been deaf since birth and they decide to undergo a new medical procedure that will allow them to finally hear. Their emotional journey of hearing music for the first time or the sound of snow crunching below their feet was great. This doc had two of my favorite elements for depressing TV - old people and medical conditions. It’s the perfect recipe.

Last night I popped in my latest Netflix order, P.S. I Love You. I think I was only five minutes into this bad boy before the tears started to flow. Another favorite recipe for sappy sad viewing - dead spouses. This movie focused on a dead Irish husband and his lovely wife. I get a little misty-eyed just thinking about it.