Leftovers

I think I had forgotten what Thanksgiving weekend means. It is the holiday that lingers long past the day. Food is followed by more food until it seems that not eating is an act of rebellious self-expression (or desperation).

After turkey dinner on Thanksgiving proper, we had ham for variety the next day. This was all followed by the inevitable: turkey chili, turkey soup, hot turkey sandwiches. And remember the ham? We also had frittata with ham and pea soup with ham. And LK and I will be taking ham sandwiches on our train ride to New York tomorrow.

There was also a fair amount of dessert left over after the big feast. As Linda noted when reviewing the family feast, "Only the Kennedys would have four pies, a cake, ice cream and whipped cream for a meal for 10 people." You would think by now she would have learned that my family has its priorities and adheres to it.

Today is also the first day that hasn't featured non-stop sports on television. Football, football, football, and more football is interrupted only briefly by a basketball or hockey game. It got so bad that LK - who normally is able to ignore whatever sport is on the TV - finally was forced to notice. Mind you, her comment was not about a particularly good play but about the looks of one of the Miami Heat players: "I don't care how rich or famous you are," she said. "That hair and those tattoos make him look like a big twat." Frankly, she was right, and it was encouraging to have her finally share a game on the tube with us.

Even the news was about sports this weekend as every news organization worked hard to figure out if Tiger Woods' wife had a mean slice when she swings the club.

The orgy of food and televised sports left me pretty much brain dead. I thought of blogging, but my blood sugar levels were not conducive to writing any posts. Besides, every time I thought of doing it there seemed to be a great pass play and I wanted to watch the six replay angles.

One of my favorite bloggers, the Poker Shrink, perhaps said it as well as could be on his blog, "Keeping Your Head in (All) the Game(s)". I love his writing and urge you to check him out. Recently he's been wandering the US and avoiding poker. His promise last week to write about Dante has been deferred a couple of times, the last with this post yesterday:

Due to circumstances beyond our control and a deluge of tryptophan. The Circles of Hell, particularly the one concerning gluttony will be delayed one more day. Tune in tomorrow when MSG swollen fingers will attempt to return to issues of portent and blah-blah-blah.

I know what he means - even if I did have to look up the meaning of tryptophan. Oh well, Thanksgiving is now well and truly past. Bright and early tomorrow we're on the Amtrak to the Big Apple. Where we undoubtedly will eat and drink a lot.

Sleepless Over Seattle

Happy Thanksgiving.

We are up and drinking lots of coffee getting ready to drive to Rutland this morning. A big family feast at Bob and Deb's awaits this afternoon.

The trip from Honolulu to Rochester was uneventful - and pretty much unsleepful. Neither of us got more than an hour's sleep in the red-eye so we were completely knackered by the time we landed here around 9:30 yesterday morning. It's getting to be our travel pattern - Hello, great to see you, please wake us up in a couple of hours.

I partly blame LK because she broke one of our traditions in Honolulu.

An odd thing happens when we fly United in the US. For the past many years, all of our miles on United and its Star Alliance partners has meant that our United frequent flyer cards are at a gold level. We know we will lose them soon enough now that our business travelling days over, but it's been a nice plus in recent years.

Whenever we travel, we have shown those cards and they have gained us admission to the lounges for Singapore Airlines, Thai Airlines, Air New Zealand, Lufthansa and several others. For some reason that I still cannot fathom, the United Airlines card that gets us into lounges from London to Bangkok won't get us into the United Airlines lounges in the US. Odder still, had we joined, say, the Singapore Airlines frequent flyers instead, that card would get us into those lounges.

Oh well, we've learned to adjust. For years, whenever we fly out of Honolulu on United we no longer try to crash the lounge. Instead we go straight to the bar near the gates and order a Mile High Mary. This is a very large Bloody Mary in a water tumbler with double shots of vodka and spiced quite hot. It is garnished with a lemon, a lime and a dill pickle. OK, I cannot figure out the pickle, either, but it tastes pretty good and it counts as one serve of vegetable in my diet.

So waiting to leave Honolulu, we had our MHM, and I was getting ready to complete the tradition for the overnight flight - which is to have a second MHM - when Linda suggested we didn't need it. I pointed out to her that I wasn't thinking so much of need as want, but LK held firm. Wanna share one? I asked. Nope. I bowed to the pressure and passed on the refill.

Which was all better for us and healthy and all that stuff, I know. But then both of us were grumpy and tired from not sleeping on the flight when we arrived here yesterday. I believe it was our punishment for not completing the MHM tradition. I can only hope that Linda has learned her lesson.

Anyhow, gotta run. Long drive ahead this morning.

Leaving On a Jet(Star) Plane

We arrived in Honolulu this morning. A classic Hawaiian morning, beautiful blue skies, the temperature warm but not too warm, the light sparkling on the water. We did what you would expect. We went to bed at 9:30am.

That overnight flight from Sydney is just so tiring. Even if you get plenty of sleep, you don't get enough. And when you get into Honolulu at what is still 4am in Sydney, you're tired. So catching up on a few more zzzz's is first on your mind. And what good news to get to our hotel and discover that our room was ready even at 9.

We are in Hawaii because Jetstar had a fantastic deal about six months ago, and we couldn't pass it up. From here, we can use frequent flyer points, so it's a very economical way to go.

Jetstar is the airline Qantas created a few years ago to be able to compete at the budget airline end of the market. Some bright sparks at Qantas had decided they could do the impossible - make money by providing even crappier customer service than they normally provided.

The deal we took was for very inexpensive seats in what Jetstar calls StarClass. I am pretty sure they meant to call it StarkClass, but must have felt the K was unnecessary. Their web site points out that your extra bucks get you several great benefits. I was particularly attracted to the promise of wider seats. Having now spent almost 10 hours in one of those wider seats, I can only think that had we flown economy I may have had a permanent impression of the seat recliner button on my left cheek, because this boy's chubby cheeks weren't ever going to be sliding around in those StarClass seats.

We also got free food. I won't do cheap airline food jokes, but I haven't thought about our trip a few years ago aboard Polish Air Lot. I did last night.

Jetstar does not have stewards and stewardesses. They are customer service managers. To their credit, they do (barely) manage customer service. One particularly cheerful young woman customer service manager managed to give us the wrong immigration forms (no big deal), the dessert we didn't order (not that serious) and walked away during breakfast service forgetting to give LK her coffee as we were waking up (potentially life threatening mistake - she's lucky LK was in the window seat and couldn't crawl over me to get to her).

It wasn't all that bad - just not all that great. But things got better once on the ground. At the taxi rank, the luck of the draw gave us a stretch limo, so we at least got to the hotel in the taxi equivalent of StarClass. And as I said, the room was ready early. So we've now had a snooze, the sun is shining brightly at midday, and we have 24 more hours here in Honolulu.

Homeward Bound

389 years ago the Pilgrims travelled the rough Atlantic to reach Plymouth. After a near-death experience, they survived and celebrated their first harvest with a feast which continues today. Thanksgiving.

This afternoon LK and will travel the skies over the Pacific en route to our families. After what we assume will be a much more pleasant experience, we will wander around Honolulu for a day. Doing what retired folk do - picking up the best fares, using frequent flyer points - we have a layover in Hawaii. However, there are far worse things in life than having to spend a day in Honolulu.

On Tuesday we fly overnight to Peg and the family in Rochester, arriving Wednesday morning. Thursday - Thanksgiving Day - we will drive to Rutland to have a major feast with the family at my brother Bob's.

All of which means, there isn't much flexibility in today's to-do list.

So in an hour I will bring Streak to the vet's where the cattery will pick her up for her holiday at the upscale cat hotel. (At least that's what I keep telling her it is. I am not sure she believes me, since she just stares blankly.)

I need to get prescriptions filled at the pharmacy. I need to go to the bank to fill out some forms that will come due while we are gone.

I've already had the mail held, but need to stop the newspapers and also ring the security company and the gardeners to set up for while we are gone. I need to forward phone calls to my Skype number so I don't end up paying outrageous international fees.

Oh yes, we also need to talk to our lawyer and accountant. We sold the house Saturday and have to get things in motion with them. And we want to send a thank-you gift hamper to Mary-Anne, our agent.

What else have I forgotten? Oh, who cares? We're heading home for Thanksgiving.

Going Once, Going Twice...

That's Mary-Anne.

She sold our house this morning. For more than we were willing to take.

I feel bad for ever doubting her.

Please ignore all previous posts on the subject.

Think Harry Belafonte, instead: "All together now. All day, all night. Mary-Anne."

They're Showing Our Cops

Mary-Anne finally called around 12:30 to discuss my e-mail cancelling the auction.

I know myself too well. All she has to do is tell me she is so sorry we were upset, and I will tell her don't worry, we didn't really intend to cancel the auction, we were just letting you know we didn't like Damien's attitude, we need love, we are pathetic, so sorry to have wasted your time.

That's why I asked Linda to answer when the phone rang.

Apparently just about the first thing Mary-Anne said was, "It was Damien, wasn't it?" Almost as if she assumes we are the sort of people who would jeopardize a major thing like selling our home just because we didn't like some guy. Which, of course, is the case.

Once Linda confirmed that, oh yes indeedy, it was Damien, Mary-Anne told LK how he had ignored her strong advice to treat us as intelligent, experienced, knowledgeable, witty and gracious people who understood the process of selling, etc. Or something like that. She vowed to LK that Damien would have nothing to do with the negotiation process. That was her job, and she knew what we needed and wanted and would do her best to deliver it. Don't you worry about Damien. He's nothing more than a carbuncle on the rump of the sales process.

Mary-Anne said she had been out all morning trying to drum up more interest in the auction. Excuse me - not THE auction, OUR auction. She also explained that cancelling the auction would send a terrible message to the one very hot prospect she has. LK didn't mention it to me, but I suspect she may have also mentioned her children.

LK told her she wanted to chat with me about it, and would call back quickly. We chatted, she called back, and the auction was on again.

I don't believe Mary-Anne actually used the term "bad cop" to describe Damien, but she may as well have. It is pretty obvious that being the good cop has its advantages. Like being able to blame everything on the bad cop. Like making sure the people you're double-teaming still love you even if the bad cop goes too far. If you're really clever about it, you can even get them to believe that you two weren't working the act together.

And being the good cop even means you get to be the super nice person who celebrates the making-up-after-breaking-up by stopping by with flowers after you've agreed to continue with the auction. Hydrangeas, LK's favorites. How doe Mary-Anne do it? She's not a good cop - she's a great cop!

Auction in less than 16 hours.

Cold Feet

There is a reason a groom's friends take them out for major drinking the night before the wedding. For many guys, if they were to just sit around thinking about what they are doing the next morning, the chances are probably 50-50 they will be a no-show. It's not because he doesn't love his fiancee, although he would know he is risking their love not surviving his cold feet. And it would be with full awareness of how many people will be so pissed off if he cancels the wedding at the last minute.

He would do it because in the base of his male brain a little voice would be saying there's no turning back after tomorrow and all the negative things that you chose to ignore during your months of euphoria will start to look a lot more significant when you get on with life.

By the way, I sent the following e-mail last night:

Hi Mary-Anne

Linda and I have spent most of the evening discussing Damien's remarks this morning, and we do not think we have confidence in going ahead with an auction.

Damien started out the meeting by telling us his estimate of the property's value was well below our hopes, and quite frankly that has made us reevaluate our thinking on the property.

We are happy to wait until the property is able to attain the sort of value we require, and we both think an auction which sets a lower bar is an atrocious marketing statement.

We want to cancel the auction on Saturday.

Of course, you can still sell the house through the period of the contract, but when the contract ends we are removing the house from active consideration and will wait until the market is such that we can achieve the amount we feel is fair for for the house.

I know you will want to discuss this further, but we believe the best course of action is to cancel the auction.

Regards

Don

Sure, part of this is just our reaction to their tag team effort to get us to lower our expectations. And sure, it won't take much more than a salesperson's sincere and solemn vow to do their best for us to change our minds. But after feeling like we were being played by the people we are paying to represent us, LK and I thought it might be a nice idea to try to raise their expectations rather than lower ours.

I suspect Mary-Anne will be getting into the office any minute now. I'm waiting for the phone to ring.