Oh, thank god! *sob*

Wow, you wouldn’t believe where I am right now. I’m sitting in the “Internet Cafe” display at the Samsung Digital Adventure in the Everland Amusement park in Korea. This place is just a giant commercial for Samsung, but it’s still fairly neat. At any rate, it’s giving me the opportunity to post this quick blog.

So, I’m alive and healthy, but I’ve got to run now, ’cause everyone’s waiting on me.

See y’all in a few days.

So very very tired. This has been a very tiring week.

Hm, as soon as I’d finished writing my last post, the airline called me back about my international flight.

Agent: Ma’am? I was wrong about your ticket. It’s non-changeable. What you’re going to have to do is turn in your current tickets for a refund, pay the $100 refund penalty for each ticket, then buy new tickets.

Pamela: Oh…. How much more is this going to cost us?

Agent: Well, we have a special fare right now….

Much to my relief, the new tickets are going to cost the same as the originals. What’s just silly is that they can’t apply what we’ve paid for the first tickets to the second set of tickets. So, we have to go buy more tickets, then wait 3 wks for a refund on the originals.

Whatever. That’s still much better than paying $1,000 more without a forthcoming refund.

Ever been so stressed out, that once relief finally comes, you feel like you could just throw up and sob and cry? Well, it looks like this whole travel/passport nightmare may have a happy ending, even though I’m left feeling nauseous.

Dale’s passport arrived today. According to tracking, it was “delivered” around 9 am. Our doorbell never rang. Checking the front steps turned up nothing. But when Dale checked the mail at noon, he found it in the mailbox.

Thanks for nothing, you cock sucking piece of shit ass fuck US postal service!!!

*ahem* Just had to get that out of my system.

Well, I just got done rescheduling our flights out. Contrary to what we’d believed and been told, rescheduling didn’t end up costing us hundreds of dollars. Changing the flight from San Francisco to Seoul is going to cost us $75 apiece, not the $800 we’d been told previously! And when I first talked to the Southwest rep, she told us we’d have to buy new tickets, and since we couldn’t get the advance purchase discount. She checked, and the flight we wanted was going to cost over $600 more, and that’s with the credit from the original tickets. $600!! The original tickets for both of us were only $480.

Pamela: But what if an emergency came up, and that’s why we couldn’t leave on time!

Agent: Well, normally that’s only if there’s a death or illness in the family….

Pamela: But, we couldn’t leave because my husband’s passport hadn’t arrived yet, and we needed the passport because once we get to San Francisco, we’re going to Korea!! *whimper*

Agent: “Let me talk to someone and see what we can do….

Pamela: Oh, THANK YOU!!

That blessed woman came back to tell me that they could get us on an earlier flight for only $20 more apiece! I could have kissed “Dana from Little Rock!”

Thank the powers that be for minor miracles.

Dale and I were discussing this passport fiasco:

Pamela: I can’t believe this has happened. I mean, first the passport center takes so long to issue your passport, then the post office doesn’t deliver it on time!

Dale: Yeah, it’s a conspiracy.

Pamela: Holy shit! I bet it is! And I bet Kaycee’s behind it!

Dale: *laughter*

We’re still here, and the passport still isn’t.

We haven’t left yet. Why haven’t we left yet? Because Dale still doesn’t have a passport! It’s been in Austin since 6 am, but it still hasn’t reached us.

I’m freaking out here, people, bad! We were supposed to catch at 9:20 am flight to Oakland, CA, this morning. Tomorrow, we’re supposed to catch a 1:10 pm flight to Seoul, Korea.

Missing the Oakland flight wasn’t too bad (aside from costing us another $300), because there were a bunch of other flights we could catch later in the day. At least, that’s what we thought this morning. The number of flights available has trickled away with each hour. The last flight we can catch today (without coughing up an assload of dough) is only two hours away. If we miss that flight, we’re going to have to get up at 4 am to get the first morning flight.

And that’s still only if his passport arrives. If it doesn’t show up today, I’ll be taking that early flight by myself, but Dale won’t be able to get another flight to Korea until Friday, he’ll have to spend the 13 hr flight alone, and he’ll arrive on Saturday, missing the main purpose of this trip, which is to celebrate my grandmother’s 80th birthday. Oh, and we’ll have to shell out more money to change his flights.

We’ve already spent close to $300 to ensure that our passports would be ready on time. Granted, we waited until it was getting close, but that’s because we weren’t sure we’d be able to go (both of us having been laid off recently). Still, we went to the passport office on May 1st. I only needed a name change, but this is Dale’s first passport. We paid to overnight our passport applications to the appropriate places. We paid the appropriate expedite fees (so it should have taken only 7-10 days for Dale’s passport). And we pre-paid the return postage, again overnight express.

My passport was returned in about a week. By last week, we were getting pretty nervous about Dale’s. The tracking number for the outgoing package confirmed that it had been delivered at 10:00 am May 2.

Friday, May 18th, Dale called the passport information line (which is either $1/minute or a flat $5 which has to be charged to a credit card). The woman he spoke to had no record of Dale’s passport application. He stressed the urgency of the situation, and all she told him was that she’d send a message to the processing office to have someone call us.

Is it really necessary for me to say that no one called?

We spent all weekend plugging the tracking number into the web site. “There is no record of that tracking number.”

Yesterday, Dale called the passport information center again (another $5 call). The woman told him that his passport had been completed and sent out via overnight delivery. According to the tiny print on the back of the receipt, overnight express packages are guaranteed to be delivered between 10 am and 3 pm. According to the tracking number, the package arrived in an Austin post office at 6:11 am. Dale called that post office and was told that the package was “en route” to our post office. No, they didn’t know when it would arrive, and no, we couldn’t go to our post office to pick it up.

It’s now 4:55 pm and the fucker’s still not here.

The damn package made it to Austin in 24 hrs. How long can it possibly fucking take to get it across Austin??

Whatever the fuck is going on, it’s driving me crazy. This fuck up has already cost us several hundred dollars, and it’s going to cost us several hundred more, at least, in new plane tickets. It may completely fuck up my family’s plans in Korea, disappointing my mother and grandmother, among others. And you know what we can do about it?

Probably nothing. Sure, we can claim a refund for the postage fee ’cause the package wasn’t delivered on time, but the chances of getting any sort of compensation for the other monetary costs is slim. I mean, this is the United States Post Office. That’s bad enough. But right now, what’s driving me crazy is the wondering.

“Will it get here in time?” “What will we do if it doesn’t?” “How upset is Mom gonna be?” “Why the fuck did we wait so long to take care of our passports??”

I think I’m gonna barf.

And with that, I’m off to pack. *sigh* I’m supposed to leave for the airport in less than 6 hours, and Dale and I are far from ready to go.

I don’t expect to have internet access while I’m gone, so consider this my last post until at least May 31st.

Have fun while I’m gone, and here’s one last link for your amusement (swiped from little.yellow.different.).

You know it’s been a bad day when the highest point of your day was getting a kitten to poop.

Oh, I did panic when I came back upstairs and couldn’t get my computer to power on. Adam and I checked all the power cables, then I realized I’d been pushing the reset button.

*sigh*

Oh wow, that was a heck of a storm that just passed over us. Wind, rain, hail. Power went off twice. And the storm knocked a screen off one of the upstairs windows on the front of the house. It fell over two stories and got a huge dent in the end that hit the ground. I hope it can be fixed easily.

Dale’s brother was out driving around when the storm hit. Adam just told me that there’s a downed tree blocking 3/4 of the only road that leads in and out of this neighborhood. Our front trees look fine. I don’t know if the trees in back lost any limbs. I hope not.

Overall, I guess we’re lucky to have suffured no more damage than a downed screen.

For those of you who’ve asked, the font used for my title graphics and navigation is called Abbadon.

Man, I thought I just kicked total ass on q3ut. I got on to some server and was 1 on 1 against some guy. I proceeded to utterly kick his ass, ending with 23 kills and 5 deaths to his 6 kills (someone else was playing him before me). I thought I was such a badass, until Dale and Kevin pointed out that I’d been playing a bot.

*sigh*

I’ve actually updated my journal, adding two entries, for April 26 and May 17. (Warning, the May 17 is depressing and may not be entirely coherent. Well, the other one might not be coherent either.)

Well, it’s finally all done. Dale and I have round trip tickets from Austin to San Francisco, and round trip tickets from SF to Seoul, Korea. Man, my bank account is weeping. This would be costly enough if Dale and I were both still employed. Ahhhhh, the things we do for family!

Oh, goody! Blogger is working for me again. Thanks, Ev!

To all you moms out there, Happy Mother’s Day!