Category Archives: Anecdotes

Jan 25 2012
8 Comments
Anecdotes, Stories, Travelling, Two minute read

Delta Surprise!

It took hours to absorb enough light for this photo

At the airport in Oklahoma City, I munched on a third Major Milk Makin’ Lactation cookie while contemplating the news of an unexpected 29 hour layover in Amsterdam. “That is a long layover,” I thought. Actually, I was a little angry at the time, so I believe my thoughts may have had some more descriptive words that connoted my irritation.

Apparently something had gone horribly, horribly wrong. I had been so excited about the future just an hour beforehand, gushing about the beauty of life like a simpleton. But now the beginning to my spring semester was darkened, and the shininess of the attending Delta employee’s bald head did nothing to ease my dread, and the fact he implied that this predicament was my fault only served to incense me. “Who made the reservation?” he said. “Does it matter?” I half snapped, half asked politely. A Muppet friend could have made the reservation, but that didn’t alter the fact that Delta had confirmed it and then changed the flight without notifying me. Someone was going to pay for this.

As it turns out, Delta/KLM agreed with me. In Atlanta, I learned that my flight from Amsterdam was no longer scheduled for Jan. 24th at 5:25 pm, but for Jan. 25th at 5:25, and that since it was not my fault, I would be taken care of in Amsterdam by nice people who would put me in a hotel and feed me.

At the airport in Amsterdam, I talked to some truly wonderful KLM representatives, one of which had a voice like the Swedish chef, and eventually wound up in a hotel nicer than one I would ever be able to afford (as an Arabic fellow making $520/mo.) and confronted with a lunch buffet of my wildest imaginings.

Bread! Butter!  Prosciutto! Little things of jam I could steal! Oh happy day! I even got a toiletry bag from KLM filled with, among other things, spray on deodorant with man-smell (the cooling sensation on the pits is quite nice), and a European size XXL white t-shirt, which translates to an American medium. This was perfect, since I didn’t have pajamas in my carry-on.

bunny bunny bunny!

Later that day, I chased and took pictures of bunnies in the hotel parking lot, went to Amsterdam, and ate a 3 course meal by myself while reading A Confederacy of Dunces and watching happy dinner parties in a lovely dining room lit by hundreds of votive candles and decorated with roses. It has been a most wonderful paid vacation.

A word on Amsterdam: at one moment I thought to myself, “If you’ve never considered suicide, try going to Amsterdam in the winter. There are many lovely bridges to contemplate jumping off of after tying a stone to your foot.” I had been to that city once before, in the summer, when it was sunny. I now realize that it may have been the one sunny day they’d had all year. While wandering around Amsterdam, I felt like I was in the surreal, dark world of one of the characters from a Rembrandt painting, surrounded by people who were hurrying to get home to the light and remember a reason for living. But that’s just my impression. The windows of the city are quite lovely though.

Hopefully I will arrive to Cairo for real-sies today.

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Jan 23 2012
13 Comments
Anecdotes, Best blog posts, Serious-ish, Three minute read

Dear Log, Life is Beautiful

one lucky girl and two moochers

Dear Log,

I guess it’s about that time again. I can see my suitcase over there resting near the fireplace. Wait a second…no I can’t. I just remembered I put it in the hallway. But I can see my backpack over there. Next to it are big orange bags of peanut butter M&Ms stuffed in tin cups, waiting their turn to hop in and pile onto the baking mixes I bought after a hungry trip to Wal-Mart. I didn’t know how much I wanted biscuits until I was hungry at Wal-Mart and thought about not having the option of eating biscuits for 4 months and then I realized I would do almost anything for a biscuit. This translated into purchasing the mix.

Mother gave me the peanut butter M&Ms but she doesn’t know I’m taking the tin cups. It doesn’t matter anyways since we never go camping anymore. I’m also taking a ziplock container that my family does use regularly, but what she doesn’t know until I’m thousands of feet in the air can’t hurt me.

Soon I’ll be getting into a big airplane, flying across the pond and then the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea before arriving in Egypt, my dear Egypt, mother of the earth. I don’t believe in the Mayan prophesy of the apocalypse in 2012, but if tiny dinosaurs do flood the earth and devour all living creatures like a plague of adorable but lethal locusts, then I hope they’ll come in late May, when I’ll have returned to America and could see my family one last time. They are good, kind-hearted people, simple prairie folk that enjoy a football game and a cold beer or lemonade. They also hate being referred to as simple people, and it’s adorable when they get mad.

Log, I’ve sure learned a lot over the break. I learned that some people ask you questions about Egypt even though they don’t really care. I learned that my parents sometimes care more about making me feel loved than my complexion so they give me things like peanut butter M&Ms and lactation cookies. I learned that it’s important to force your family to go to breakfast at IHOP at 6:30 in the morning on the day you leave because sometimes there’s a beautiful sunrise and eventually people forget about what an inconvenience the whole thing was.

Most importantly, Log, I learned that relationships are the most worthwhile and exciting thing we have on this earth. Rather, I re-learned this. One bright day I was out run-walking with my two sisters, and I imagined someone driving by and seeing us,  a perfect picture of sisterhood, two blonde ponytails and one brown one swishing in time. In that moment I felt like I was the luckiest girl in the world. I felt so blessed to be outside under the sky with sisters I love so much. Maybe this is just the sleep deprivation talking, but I feel like my travelling has brought me to a place of appreciating what I’ve always had and recognizing it as beautiful.

Log, I’m excited about the future and I’m excited about going back to Egypt because I have family and friends that support me and that my least favorite option for post-Egypt, coming back to Oklahoma and living with my family, is still wonderful.

Drevets out

P.S. I realized while writing this that none of us were wearing ponytails that day. I just remembered it like that in my head. Must be the old age.

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Jan 19 2012
5 Comments
Anecdotes, Humorous, Stories, Two minute read

What is “Fax Machine?”

I’m trying to get back to San Francisco in July. Yes I got back yesterday, but yes I loved it and yes I want to live out there just like the rest of the dreamers in the world. A large man at a bakery told me to come back when I made it big and buy a cupcake from him so now I definitely have to go back. He awaits me with his floppy hat and the cupcake.

Unfortunately, I’ve found myself in the awkward position of having no money. This sad fact has led me to Craig’s list as I search for the likely-lethal ride share possibilities. I’m also considering the safer yet more complicated method of using frequent flier miles, which got me out to SF in the first place.

Scared of Craig’s list, I began trying to rack up my miles in earnest. After cashing in on all possible miles with Delta, I still found myself short a cute 30,000 miles for a reward trip. Disappointed but not yet defeated, I turned my sights towards American Airlines.

I hadn’t earned any miles for my first trip to Cairo last May, which could put me just over 12.5K miles, the minimum amount for a reward trip. “They owe me,” I thought. I also thought, “This will be easy. Flight problem solved. Next step: find a puppy and an apartment.” As I found out later, the puppy will have to wait.

So I hunted through the back logs of my emails, scrutinized all of the numbers that lay within the ones pertaining to flight information, and found everything I thought I needed. Success was at hand. I could see the California sun, the blue water of the bay reflecting its golden rays. I filled in the information for the first leg of the journey, feeling cocky. Then came the second leg, carried by Royal Jordanian.

As soon as I selected the name of that carrier, this message came up: “Mileage credit requests for this airline must be submitted via fax. Please send a copy of your ticket receipt and boarding pass(es) to 1-817-963-7882.”

Excuse me? Did I read my screen correctly? You want me to fax something? As in, use a fax machine to transmit information? How about instead of faxing anything, I build a time machine and go back to rescue American Airlines from where it is clearly trapped in the past. I could bring their executive leadership into the year 2012 where we have things like scanners and internet.

Also, when they say boarding passes, do they mean those pieces of trash with numbers and my seat number on them that I have to show the person in front of the jetbridge in order to get on the plane? The ones I usually crumple, fill with gum, or tear apart before absent mindedly shoving them into the pocket of the seat in front of me? Surely they don’t mean those things?

All of this archaic nonsense makes it seem like they don’t want me to get these miles. It’s almost like they want me to pay for a flight. But I’ve never heard of a large, failing corporation acting against the interests of the consumer, so that certainly can’t be it.

I guess it’s back to Craig’s list.

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Jan 14 2012
4 Comments
Anecdotes, One minute read, Travelling

Another Okie Heading West

As I stood on top of one of the Twin Peaks and looked out over the bright city of San Francisco and into the bay beyond with its rust colored Golden Gate Bridge and the lumpy green mountains beyond that, and looked behind me and saw the setting sun and its reflection in the water so it looked like two suns, and glanced down and saw my lengthening shadow on the earth, and felt the coolness coming from the trees, and considered all the combinations of colors of green and blue and brown and bright that lay before me, I thought to myself that there is no other city I have found in this earth that has such a high concentration of everything I love. Creativity, nature, color, coffee, books, floral dresses, and sidewalks all combined and laid out on a grid set between hills on a peninsula in the bay.

And then I thought that I would like to live in California, if it would have me, and especially if it would find me a place to live and pay my bills. But those might have to be personal journeys. I would make the effort, though. It would be worth it to live here.

Here I come, just another liberal arts graduate with a job in retail.

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Jan 12 2012
6 Comments
Anecdotes, Two minute read

Walking on Feet in San Francisco

I walked almost 8.7 nautical miles (10 miles) today in my Sperry’s and skinny jeans (no prairie dress yet). I wore a black jacket and sometimes it was a little too warm in the sun, but I liked having it for when I was in the shade. I tied it around my waist when I wasn’t using it. As the day wore on I talked louder and more often to myself, to the point where it was nearly a constant conversation, but I feel like you can do that here in San Francisco, where people can be who they want to be. I want to be a wildly gesturing person on the street wearing a puffy black jacket tied around her waist.

San Francisco is easily one of the most beautiful and livable cities that I have ever been too. I’ve been to cities in Morocco or Colorado, for example, that are beautiful to visit and quaint to look at but would likely be quite suffocating to live in, like beautiful quaint hands slowly closing around my throat. But San Francisco’s hands are not suffocating. They wear funky, locally made jewelry and make funny gestures. I like San Francisco’s hands.

When I am in a new city, I love exploring it on foot, without a map or an agenda, and that’s what I did today. I had made a halfhearted plan to go see stuff but then ended up wandering my day away, which I believe is always a good decision. There’s nothing I like more than the feeling of complete freedom, being in a city in the world with no agenda and the ability to follow any whim I have, like to poke around the campus of University of San Francisco, or to hunt down a church spire I saw gleaming far away, or to turn onto a random street because the trees look really fluffy or because the sunlight  is hitting it just right at the golden hour in the late afternoon when everything is beautiful and I have to follow the beauty.

Walking in San Francisco is unlike walking in other cities. I would be walking on a street lined by those beautiful houses that remind me of whimsically decorated gingerbread men and all of the sudden in the distance, the street ended in a crest, over which I could see nothing. Did the world end? Was there a breathtaking view of azure bay water? Yet another park? The urge to climb these hills was impossible to fight, and climb I did, and sure enough, I would be rewarded with a lookout into the distance, either towards more hills covered in trees with bright buildings clustered around the bases or the bay with its islands and other bodies of land reaching into it. I didn’t want to leave the crests.

In San Francisco flowers bloom in the winter. I like it here.

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