Two random conversations-

 Lorrie P.: Hi, my name is Lorrie P.. How may I help you?
 Ms. Wellman: Yes, as I already typed in, I need a room in Philadelphia
 Lorrie P.: We do not have timeshares in Philadelphia but you could visit www.blarriott.com to see what hotels there are.
 Ms. Wellman: …
 Ms. Wellman: why would I do that?
 Ms. Wellman: are you just like aggressively trying not to be helpful?
 Lorrie P.: No, not at all.
 Lorrie P.: The Click to Chat option is here to assist you with navigation of our website, to answer questions and to provide instruction. This being the case, we are unable to process any transactions.
 Ms. Wellman: Golly gee, I’m so glad I pay you guys all this money. It feels so very worthwhile that I get to enjoy this concierge service as a benefit
 Lorrie P.: I can surely look up rates for you
 Lorrie P.: When are you looking to travel
 Ms. Wellman: No thanks, I can google that for myself just fine. Thanks for reinforcing the complete lack of value to doing anything remotely like interacting with people, once again.
 Ms. Wellman: of course, you’re probably a bot anyway.
 Ms. Wellman: O irony.
 Lorrie P.: Wow!
 Ms. Wellman: I know. I, too, find it shocking.
 Lorrie P.: You are welcome to call in that is the best interaction you can get.
 Ms. Wellman: Oho! You won’t trick me that way twice! That was last time!

I disconnected. Can’t wait for my survey.

Then, there was this… placed an order with Hipotle to celebrate my epic laziness AND their new free delivery function. Imagine my surprise when my delivery guy was still ‘Heading to Restaurant’ at the estimated time of delivery. So I called, and after getting nowhere with phone support guy, went to Contact Us on the website.

I entered this-
Still shows heading to restaurant. Now 10 minutes late. Called support and they were super rude. So much for delivery with you guys.

I got this-

Ms,
I’m sorry we let you down. We can do better, I would love to have you back on our dime. I’ll only need your postal address to send you a free-burrito cards (good for any main menu item). Thanks for reaching out to us!

Sincerely,
T

Customer Care Coordinator
Hipotle Mexican Grill

I replied with this-

Hi “T”-

One of the fun things about being me and Rick is that when you wake up every damn day of your life at 4.30 for work, you tend to do that when you AREN’T working as well.

So yesterday, when we were both awake long before we wanted to be, I groaned due to my stomach being acidy per usual.

Rick- Why don’t you take some pepcid?

Me- We ran out like three days ago and it’s not like I can go hit Target right now.

Rick (giggling in the way that only big guys can and eyeing my unclad state)- Well, you could… I’m sure they’d be surprised.

Me- And I bet I wouldn’t have to pay for it. And they’d believe me when I said Oh golly gosh gee, would you look at that, I completely forgot my wallet.

It’s always good to start the day with a laugh.

It’s only June and I’m already sick of politicking. It’s gonna be a long, long year and a half.

I’m tired of the ‘give me money’ and ‘bad big corporations’ and ‘random thing you think so of course you have to vote for me’ nonsense… and it’s only June!

Every single one of the candidates throwing themselves out there is doing it WRONG. I don’t want to hear about how we need to break up Facebook/Google/Amazon/Walmart or build a wall or whatever slogan of the minute we’ve got going right now. I don’t care to hear about your ten point plan that doesn’t include me or the people I care about. I don’t want to hear about how great you are.

Show me.

I want to see someone build an app that shows me how I can feed a family of four in my local area without shopping at Walmart.

I want a hotline to help connect people to careers and support structures that they may not have thought of, and I want to share that number everywhere I can think of so no one has to accept a job at Walmart.

I want an app that lets me donate food that my family won’t be using to people that can.

I want a set of online classes to learn about what I can realistically do to offer support to the causes I care about.

I want to know more about how to build a tiny library or pantry to help my immediate community in need in a real and tangible way.

Use your campaign donations to do all of that, and you’ve got my vote… because you’ve shown me you truly care about people and want to make the little differences that mean big differences.

OK… so here’s the thing. Yes, it’s common for me to go ‘this sucks’.. but then I turn it over in my head and either sigh and accept that it had to go that way ‘for reasons’ even if I don’t like those reasons…

Or I see another way it could have been done just as easily and stay flaming pissed.

GoT writers, I’m still pissed. Readers and followers, I’m sorry that you have to put up with it when you were probably expecting something fun or uplifting. I’d remind you you always have the option to skip the post.

OK.. darkness and spoilers to follow.

I can forgive a lot of things in storytelling… ’cause the script said so’ for unreasonable plot twists, ’cause sciency stuff’ for tech that just doesn’t work that way within reason… and ’cause budget’ when we don’t see dragons for a season or two.

But you gotta stay true to your characters.

Whatever HBO execs may think, we don’t watch the shows for tits and gore and dragons and zombies.. we watch because of these characters that were so carefully crafted to be real to us. We worry for them, we wish we were as glib and clever, we see people in whole new lights that open vast wells of empathy.. and sometimes, yeah, we just love to hate them.

And you just shit on them.

The entire track of Daenerys’s story was to protect innocents. From the time she kept the women from being raped by Khal Drogo’s men to the slave children to her own dragons. And the reason you gave for her internal switch flipping to burn the innocents of King’s Landing for seriously weak and unnecessary.

Let her and Jon have mended their fences and gone into the siege in concord, with the mild disagreement about resting the troops still in the air. Then let it appear from Daenerys’s perspective that Jon and her Dothraki and her Unsullied were in mortal danger, overtired, outmaneuvered and it’s her fault… and she takes the SAME ACTION. So you still get all your horrible gore death and destruction shots.

Then she finds out that wasn’t the case… that she has inadvertently become everything she swore to defeat, always with the best of intentions. Switch flipped.

But you know, that also takes some kind of ability to write realistic female characters and give a shit about truly developing them as three dimensional. And we already know (re: Sansa and Hound conversation this season, random pointless Arya sex scene) that they don’t give a flying fuck about doing that.

I’ll be honest.. if it wasn’t all over tomorrow, I’d be done. As it is.. what I was looking forward to with great anticipation is now covered in shit.

Thanks, guys. You suck.

A couple flights and bad Ubers and we’re home again- spent most of last night passed out on the couch with pups all over me, reminding me that I should never ever leave them. There was one sticky moment… Rick got me a Stitch huggie/clingy thing that was hanging onto my bag when I parked it on the floor by the couch. Bree apparently thought we’d gotten it for her and had the little guy in her mouth, ready to take him somewhere for slow painful death by disembowelment.

I’m glad to report that Stitch was rescued and is safely parked on my desk at this time.

Because Albuquerque, the weather’s drizzly and in the 40s today, so after sleeping in, we went out to see Detective Pikachu, did some shopping that needed doing, holed back up to play video games and watch old TV. (This wasn’t really by my choice, Bree the Corg told me that I needed to be lap accessible so she could spend a lot of time snuggling. I don’t really say no to Bree if I can help it.)

In short, it’s good to be home and it’s nice to know we were missed by our little beasties. I’d had a spate of gardening planned, but the weather seems to be telling me not to mess around with all that, and really, who am I to argue with the weather and the corg?

New adventures on the horizon- heading to Brwyn Mawr in July for our first LARP experience… vending events in June, August, and September.. a new book to write come November… back to Orlando next February for a week of Star Warsy exploration. When I think about how busy the coming months are going to be, I’m a little extra glad that we got to take this breather with just the two of us now.

If for no other reason than I got to do a Spock eyebrow lift at the guy who briefly attempted to sell me on ‘getting to stay at this hotel in Venice where kings and queens have stayed’.  Not saying it’s not a nice place, I’m sure it’s lovely (for a city that has always looked to me like a slowly rotting sinking sewer). But it’s not an adventure on this purple haired girl’s bucket list.

So what’s my point?

Go find an adventure every now and again. YOUR adventure, not someone else’s… you’ll find it rejuvenates the spirit.

Today is rest day. We had some business to take care of, so we didn’t plan any side trips today. We got up at the crack of dawn and watched the sun sparkle in over the water before I drug Rick out to the pool.

Thanks to the super early hour, we had it to ourselves while we did laps and pretended to be like healthy people. It would have been a lot more impressive statistically if I’d thought to wear my Fitbit, but of course I didn’t. To offset the evils of wholesome healthy exercise, we got Krispy Kremes for breakfast and showered up before heading off to the vacation club offices.

Here came the sales pitch. Little secret about me- I don’t like salespeople. Give it to me straight and I’ll tell you if what you’re selling is something I’m buying- but only on my terms. You don’t call me, you don’t come to my home or intrude on my time and tell me I need something. Idiots who do this get to experience the full range of my extensively foul vocabulary… and I don’t think they find it even a tenth as entertaining as I do.

In any case, as soon as today’s guy heard that my ‘bucket list dream vacation’ is to go to Tunisia and had to ask what continent it was on, he knew he was overmatched and was content to chat about landscaping and motion sickness cures for the rest of the time we had to hang out.

Someday these guys are going to learn how to sell to geeks and then I’m screeeeeeeeeewed. I’m aware I’m enjoying a temporary free ride.

Back to home base for a day of laundry, loafing, and TV.

Now, we don’t have TV at home, and I’d forgotten how completely batcrap mfing crazy commecials are. A new drug to stop copious sweating? Side effects include no longer being able to regulate you own body temperature, who the hell saw that coming?!

Oh, and drinking. Last day means taking stock of the pantry… and there was a full magnum of chardonnay this morning. Apparently I’d been a little too generous with the mixer for my spritzers.

Y’all know that I took care of that, right?

Let’s be real… I probably won’t actually kill the whole bottle today, but I will give it a yeoman’s effort.

One Game of Thrones rewatch and three episodes of South Park, and we get the not so welcome news that our flight has already been delayed. Screw it, I’m not changing our Uber booking- more time to look for patches that I haven’t found this whole damn trip.

Watching the water now at dusk out here on our little balcony and listening to a local band do wrong things to Beatles songs… I know this has been the break that I needed. I won’t lie and say I never peeked in on things, but I didn’t eat/sleep/breathe them. Even only checked pup cam once a day, knowing my girls are in good hands. Work hasn’t reached out and I haven’t reached in. Ditto chainmail- it’ll all be there when I get home, and I don’t want to break the spell of peace and calm.

The one promise I really want to make to myself, and keep, is to hold little pockets of time to enjoy the things I found/rediscovered I enjoyed on this trip- Spiderman/Deadpool comic books, Breath of the Wild, Dungeon Mayhem, and most of all, Rick.

He’s an amazingly funny, insightful, sweet guy. And when we’re not both working 10-12 hour days it gets easier to see and remember that. When we got in, he flipped the channel to the Fast and the Furious, and knew that was the right spot. We got back to saying the exact same thing at the exact same time, but he still knows that when I crack my knuckles and sit down to my little minikeyboard, that he’s best off being quiet if not elsewhere.

I realized how much I miss him and how much I miss the me I am when I’m with him. I’m not saying every moment we share is sparkling with wit and verve, but we enjoy them nonetheless.

Before this gets overly sentimental and another Carly Simon standard gets wrecked by the band, I’m packing up this little keyboard and heading in.

I’m not kidding, it’s really really bad. Really.

Watching TV.. which we never do at home. Eggo commercial with husband shoving a forkfull of disgusting, although presumably Eleven approved waffles into wife’s mouth while she’s asleep in the name of breakfast in bed comes on.

Rick: You would kill me if I shoved food in your mouth while you were asleep!

Me: Yes, yes I would. With one exception.

Rick raises an eyebrow Vulcan style.

Me: Alcoholic cheesecake. Otherwise that fork will end up up your nose, sir.

We shouldn’t watch TV.

Reading a reddit article in which a vegan asks a random guy in the food court to stop eating the pepperoni pizza because it’s murder. “I’m not a vegan,” they reasonably reply. “But my child and I are! It’s offensive!” the vegan (supposedly) wailed.

I mentioned it to Rick under the heading of some people’s children.

Rick: I’d pick off every single pepperoni and eat it slowly, with eye contact, then tell the vegan I was OK to eat the rest since it wasn’t a murder pizza anymore.

Now we’re laughing like loons at every pizza commercial that comes on TV. At this hour, that’s a lot.

We shouldn’t read reddit.

A couple things to finish up on Day 2 before we start the fun of today-

Last night Rick and I went down to play Adult Pub Trivia.. and won! There’s nothing like drinking a strawberry daquari and paying for it by knowing a bunch of useless stuff. Our team name was The Bearfu Master is wise, cause we always have a tip of the hat towards our Draz, and I had had four glasses of white wine and couldn’t think of anything both short and witty that Bearfu Master would have said.

Then it was a soak in the jacuzzi in room tub while watching Fast and the Furious 7 (cause I never get tired of watching Roman wuss out on the parachute plan), and bed.

Slept in til 7 local time (so amazing that down everything in there), and lazed in bed reading the second book in the Bobverse series (if you like space opera, you really gotta check it out) and eventually got up to go hit Animal Kingdom. I may or may not have had a custard filled Krispy Kreme for breakfast. Reports vary.

Lucky us- worst. Lyft driver. ever. Picked up a call on his cell phone and proceeded to carry on a conversation in Spanish while acting as though he was allergic to both speed limits and turn signals. Yes, I took the survey, and somehow managed NOT to exit the car while asking him sweetly, “Como se dice asshole en Espanol?”

Cause I’m nice. Sometimes.

Animal Kingdom was amazing. There’s been so much care taken with the park, and how not, considering it’s Disney? However, even on a random Tuesday morning, it was still completely jammed with people.

And they weren’t happy people.

It was almost surreal.. we didn’t see anyone, not even the kids who looked remotely happy. The surroundings were magically beautiful, with some new view around every turn, and everyone was downright pissy. “I thought this was the happiest place on Earth,” Rick muttered to me.

“Maybe that’s just the Magic Kingdom,” I replied, sotto voce.

We shrugged and went on being enchanted, cause screw them. Got in line for the safari ride in which I was run over by a drunk guy with a baby stroller twice before Rick very pointedly moved me in front of him and put himself between me and drunk driver. Apparently that was enough of a statement for a sober member of the party to assume the driving responsibilities… and all was well, til another half hour in line when Drunky McStaggerson decided my butt was the guiderail a couple times.

Between the Ren Faire situation last week (I wore a dragon tail that required constant modelling and attracted much commentary) and this, I swear there hasn’t been so much interest in my ass in years, though Rick assures me it’s always been interesting.

At the end of things (no pun intended), the safari ride was well worth the wait. We saw all kinds of animals neither of us has seen before, including a baby hippo that kind of looked like he was pouting in the corner. Rick pointed out to me later that he was actually riding on mom’s back. I still like my interpretation.

From there we headed to Pandora, found some interesting take on Pandoran cuisine (chow mein with pho cuts of meat on the side) and I’m pretty sure we both accidently ingested cabbage.

We were about halfway through our plates when an older couple sat down next to us. Now look, I know it’s hot and muggy, and tempers were pretty frayed. But from the minute they sat down, Rick and I locked eyes and knew our biggest struggle would be to keep straight faces.

First it was, “Get me a coke.” Husband committed the cardinal sin of getting her diet coke, and he had to keep hearing about it. Then it was, “I don’t understand why we’re making ourselves sick in this heat. We’re not going to get our money’s worth anyway.”

And on, and on. And ON. I texted Rick, “I hope we never end up like these two, omg.”

Again we’re stifling giggles. Rick starts to get up for a refill, I cut my eyes to my cup and tilt my head towards it, he nods and grabs it to fill it too. A whole conversation in gestures. Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone could do that?

But no, now the conversation has gone to how if Husband wants to stay, he needs to pick a show INDOORS cause she’s not gonna make herself sick to make her happy.

Best moment- she’s still chewing on the scar tissue that was this poor man’s ass while he was staring at his cell phone to find an answer to one of her many questions. He held up one finger with a look that said, “Bitch, one more word….”

She obligingly shut up and we enjoyed the two minutes of peace.

A little later we went to leave at the same time the gentleman was looking to ditch his tray, and we helped him find the bins. Somehow we conveyed, “Courage, good sir!” in that oh so brief exchange of smiles and nods and he seemed to go back to his harpy somewhat refreshed. Poor guy.

We found Pandora was essentially closed, so we sighed, shrugged with smiles, and made our way back to the entrance, still noticing how many people were just… angry. Parents, kids, men, women… Rick pointed out once interaction in which the chica had fallen behind her companion and asked for just two seconds.

He sighed as though the weight of the world had landed on his shoulders and counted to two. “See? Not two seconds!!!”

People, man.

So we checked out, came back to home base. Took a swim to cool off, got my first glass of wine, and sat down to catch up my journal entry for today.

Apologies to my mom and stepdad, who got 50,000 pictures of random animals, sometimes with no context.

The rest of the evening is set up to be wine and card games on the balcony, random reading (I got Spiderman and Deadpool vol 2 Side Pieces!), and relaxation.

Cheers, yall!