October 12, 2009

It was one of those weekends

You know the kind where nothing goes according to plan. I thought Friday night we might catch a movie. Instead, Frank worked late, I made dinner and we had a quiet night.

Saturday, I went to Gilgrease Orchard to pick apples and eggplant, but it’s the end of the season. I came home with 6 apples, apple cider and a honey dew melon. It took me an hour to get home because of traffic and road construction.

Normally, it wouldn’t matter, but I was in a hurry because Frank had called to say the hot water heater was flooding the garage. Before he left for work, he turned off the water to it and hooked up a hose to drain the tank. Thankfully, he had it under control because it took me forever to get home. All was ok when I arrived.

Except for having no hot water, of course. It’s always amazing to learn what you take for granted. I couldn’t run the dishwasher, I couldn’t wash sheets or towels, we can’t even take a cold shower because we have single knobs in every shower they don’t allow enough water pressure when using only cold water. At least the tub has two knobs, we’ve been able to use that for “bathing”. It’s damn cold, too. Fortunately, we live in a warm climate, I realize the water sitting in the pipes could be much colder if we lived back east.

We should have a new water heater today, assuming we can get cash together. Today is a holiday and we can’t just run to the bank. Ahh! The timing, gotta love it.

But that’s not even the end of the hassles this weekend.

Mike was due to arrive at 6:00 Saturday night, but his connecting flight from Austin was delayed. His flight came in at 7:10 instead. Normally, it wouldn’t be much of an issue except we made dinner plans expecting him to be in at 6:00. We were all quite hungry when he arrived. We waited at the carousel for his bags but they never arrived. We went to Southwest’s office and they told us they might be on flights arriving at 8:10 or 8:40. I asked if we could grab dinner and come back, they said that wasn’t an option because they close at 9pm. Meanwhile, Frank went back to the car we knew the meter would be expiring. He was too late a ticket had already been written. Meter maids waste no time writing tickets these days. He waited in the car and was hounded by security endlessly, you can’t wait here, you need to pay, you have to move, etc. 9:00 rolled around by the time the last flight’s baggage made it on the carousel. Mike’s bags weren’t on either flight. We ran into the office before they closed and they then had a record of one bag, it would arrive 9:15am Sunday. They assumed both bags were found, but only one made it into the system. I told them we’d be back in the morning to pick up his luggage. I told Mike I wouldn’t be taking him to my mom’s that night as planned, we’d wait until tomorrow after another trip to the airport. We met up with Frank just before 9:30, two hours wasted. We were beyond hungry. We were famished.

We went to Buffalo Wild Wings for boneless wings and beer. Service was terrible. When our waitress finally brought our order, we had no silverware. She left us sit for 5 minutes staring at our food while we waited on utensils. Then, we finished our beers and asked for water. It took another 5 minutes before she brought them to us. You'd think they'd be a little quick on their feet, we order hot and mango habanero for goodness sake, to leave us with nothing to drink is pretty cruel. I don't know why but service is always terrible at that location (Hualapai/Flamingo), but it is. We quickly remembered why we carryout from there.

Sunday when we returned to McCarran, Southwest had retrieved one of Mike’s bags, the other was still missing. They have no record of it. Thankfully, the bag found is the one with Mike's stuff in it. The other was a bag Amy packed with misc stuff for my mom. We made the claim. If they find it they can overnight it to my mom's house. Or I could pick it up at the airport and receive $100 travel voucher. I opted to do the latter. I tried to get Mike drink tickets for the aggravation, but they said all they can offer is the voucher if I pick up the bag. I haven't heard from them yet. Once this is done, I figure we'll write a letter. We wasted 2 hours on Saturday, got a parking ticket, and had to make another trip on Sunday only to find out they only had one bag. I wished they would've just offered us the option to come back on Sunday rather than wasting all that time Saturday night.

They called today they still have not found his bag. They hope it will turn up.

With any luck, it will be found. And we will have a new hot water heater installed this afternoon. A hot shower would be a great treat tonight.

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