Tag: Iowa

American Airlines SUCKS!

You will not believe the story I am about to tell you.

I left LA at Noon on Thursday…. I got to my parents house at 4:30 on Saturday afternoon..

Where have I been you ask?

Well, lets start at the begining. Got on the plane with no problems in LA, flew to Dallas and we were late getting in there, I run to my next gate and AS I am walking up to the gate, I get a txt message from American Airlines. “Flight Cancelled”… A few seconds later, they announce it. “All flights into Des Moines, Fort Dodge, Omaha, Cedar Rapids, and Minneapolis are cancelled for the night”.

Last flight into Des Moines, and it’s fucking Cancelled. Here’s where the fun starts! I get in line, there’s room on the flights tomorrow at 7am, 9am and 7pm. By the time I get up there.. ALL of them gone. The guy BEHIND me who was smart enough to get on the phone, got the LAST seat on the 7pm flight the next day.

My only option, fly to Wisconsin and then Des Moines at 2pm the next day. Getting into Des Moines at 11:00pm on Friday. Of course, since it was “weather” related, I had to pay for a hotel and what not. VERY annoying.

Friday comes around and I go to the airport, the flight for wisconsin is right next to a flight going to DM, I go and try and get on the stand by list. There’s 40 people ahead of me! Can you believe it!

My flight to Wisconsin was an HOUR late getting out of the gate, due to mechanical issues. We fly to Wisconsin, we’re still an hour late, but I should have JUST enough time to get to my next flight… flaps down… landing gear down… landing gear UP! Flaps up! We’re going back up… We were SOOO close! We circle for a while and then they announce that the Wisconsin airport is CLOSED! UGH! We were so fucking close!

Re-route us to Grand Rapids, Michigan! Whereever the fuck that is!.. We land, NO other flights going out that nght to anywhere. NO direct flights to Des Moines, NOTHING! My only option to get to DM was to try and get a flight back to Wisconsin the next morning, get on a flight to Las Vegas, fly from Las Vegas to Denver and then Denver to Des Moines! NO WAY am I going to take that chance. I opted to take the next flight out the next morning to Minneapolis and then try and figure out a way to get to DM from there.

Thank god the airline paid for my hotel that night. But I still had to pay for food and ANOTHER night of not being home!

Sooo, I get up at 4am Saturday morning, go to the airport, get on the plane and then they make us sit around for MORE MECHANICAL problems!

Finallly we are on the plane to Minneapolis. My parents can’t get out of Iowa, it’s too foggy, there’s no rental cars, so I have to take a greyhound bus… We land at 7:30, and the only bus leaving that morning is at 8:30… I get to a cab, and we start driving, and it starts SNOWING like a mother fucker! My cabby says we might not make it! OH GOD!

Thankfully I made it JUST in time for the bus, I was the last one there! And thank god too because by the time we got to Iowa 5 HOURS later, it was snowing here like a crazy too! 6 inches of snow today they are saying!

So that’s been the crazy travel experience of this weekend! :'( One hellish trip to get back home for christmas.

I should have just freaking gotten a car in Dallas and driven home. I could have been back Friday morning!

One funny thing is that Const and I watched X-Files on Wed night, one about some Amish type people who are killing people. Anyways, some Amish people get on the bus today and one of the kids is Albino and has BRIGHT PURPLE eyes!!! Scary!

I can’t believe though how much this trip has cost me. Over $300 in expenses from food, to hotel to the bus ride home! :'( I dunno what to do about that. I want a FREE fucking flight or something for all this shit. But I just get so pissed that if I call I am just going to yell!

In good news, it’s snowing like crazy here, and it’s sooooo pretty! I just wish Consty was here to cuddle with! 🙂

More About Car Buying

//begin ranting….

GOD! I’m so fucking Indecisive about this SHIT!

Like I said, I’ve been wanting a new car for years! I keep looking and looking. I bargain them down to great prices. But I just _CAN’T_ actually buy anything!

This has to be the MUST FRUSTRATING thing in my life! All over a fucking car!

I just always feel that no matter what, I’m getting ripped off in some way.

Cars are just money pits, no matter how you look at it. They go down in value, they cost soooo much to keep moving in gas and maint and registration and insurance and who knows what else might happen to them! I may as well just throw my money in a black hole!

Jason brought up the excellent point the other day that. “What if you were still in Iowa, what would you do”.. I’d probably have bought a USED Ford or something by now. But my mind is being tainted by the California consumer culture that I’ve fallen victim to.

I keep trying to fight it off. But it’s a losing battle. The only reason I want an entry level luxury car is because EVERYONE else has one. It’s the whole Keeping up with the Joneses shit!

But I’m not going to be able to get over it and move on till I have a new car myself, I’m so sick of everyone making fun of me because my car is such a POS! I make a GREAT living. I’ve saved TONS more money then anyone else in my age range, I could EASILY pay cash for this car and STILL have enough left over for the down payment on the house my dad and I are trying to buy….. Why can’t I just treat myself to this!

AHHH!! And to top it all off, Constantine is just an amazing boyfriend and is supporting any choice I make he says. Which doesn’t make the decision any easier, because if I simply go with the best/most car for the price, that’d be the one that I would hate myself for buying.

Ahhhhahahhahhahhahhahhhhahhhaaaaaaaahhh. I’m gonna go crazy over this!

Why is this one of the hardest things for me to make a decision about. Usually I’m so fucking opinionated that it gets me in trouble, but when it comes to buying my own car, I can’t make a decision if I had a gun to my fucking head.

//end ranting.

Update on the VA House…

So, remember I wrote about all the VA Paperwork we had to fill out a while ago.

Well our offer was rejected. Twice.

There were two initial offers on the house. Our offer which was about $10k less then what they were asking and then another offer which was $5k less then our offer! Well they rejected both the offers with no explanation.

So we resubmitted for $3k less then what they are asking. And they rejected that one with “You’re going in the right direction”.

Obviously these people have never heard of negotiation? Come back with a counter or something! Idiots. So we’re going to let them sit on it for a while. My dad estimates it’ll take about $15k to get it up to livable conditions, so we don’t want to give them anything more then we have too!

One of the houses that we put an offer on a while ago is still on the market as well. I think I’m gonna call my dad and have him resubmit the same offer to see what they say now. It’s been 3 months since we first made an offer, surely he’s a little more willing to sell now. 🙂 Plus with prices going down 5.1% across the country, that’s good news for me!

Also my dad has been working with this guy at Polk County Bank for a while now, he had me fill out an application so that way the guy had it all when we do finally find a place and we can move quick. Well I mailed it all into him and apparently he forgot what was going on because he passed it onto someone else who then passed it onto this girl I used to work with at Liberty Bank back in the late nighties! She called me to get more information and the story she was told was that I am buying a house to move back to Iowa to live in. How do they get the stories so messed up! lol.

Anyways, I got to talking with her about what our price range should really be… Her answer.. “For you guys, basically the sky is the limit”… ::Evil laugh:: They’ll be funding it internally and since our family has been doing business with them for over 30 years and have taken out so many loans from them (mostly business loans like this one), they know we’re good for it. I love small town banks, even if they are a bit stuffy!

Adios!

“Improvement”

The other day I was stumbling and found this thing called “Flash Earth“. Basically it takes all the different satellite sources out there and merges them into one. So I looked up the area behind my parents house… Yahoo has the oldest maps, back before they started building that giant horrible golf course. Then check out Google. It’s so sad that they took all the wonderful farm/forest land and turned it into hundreds of ugly cookie-cutter houses.

Along the lines of maps. I found a Google Blog post about the wildfires here in Southern California. The Maps offer a really neat look at there areas that have burned, evacuation data, etc.

As you all know, my trip to Europe is coming up quick, and we all know I love taking pictures. However, I _HATE_ having people in them. A while back I found this neat way to do it in photoshop, but it was very manually intensive. The other day I found a site called “Tourist Remover which does it for you! I can’t wait to get back from Europe and try it out!

I’m sure you’ve all heard it already, but Dumbledore is GAY!. It’s amazing what the right wing is doing about this. Get over it people, it’s a FICTIONAL person! My god, who cares!

I was also reading the other day about how some woman’s husband was riding in a porsche going over 100mph that slammed into a concrete wall… She sued of course and won 4.5 Million!. Just redic. The guy even signed a waiver! He voluntarily participated in a dangerous event, he KNEW the risks when he started! WTF was this woman thinking. And she’s just putting even MORE grief on the family of the driver who also died because they are paying 49% of that 4.5 million! UGH!

This story also reminds me of another article I read in which a woman was $135,000 in CC debt, spent $400 a month on Starbucks, had 3 cars and SIX kids! I just don’t see how people get into this kind of mess! How can you be so freaking stupid and live like that? I currently have $1,400 in CC debit, of which I could EASILY pay that ALL off in just a couple days… But it still freaks me out that I even have any money on my CC!

The other night Constantine and I watched Mrs Henderson Presents. It was a very interesting movie! I thought it was very funny. I highly suggest going to watch it.

Last night I had my meeting with the Admissions Counselor at the CSU Long Beach for an MBA. Anyways, it seems like I should be able to get in with no problems as long as I do well on my GMAT. The only issue is that I’m not sure I want to be in Cali long enough to get it. Because we’re looking at starting NEXT fall and then a min of 2 years after that. Perhaps I should just stick it out, do my MBA here, then as soon as I am done I will look for a new job and move. Because I am sure that my current company won’t have any use for my MBA nor will they be able to pay me enough to support it. We shall see. I am going to work on filling out the paper work today, I bought a prep book for my GMAT so must start on that. My goal is to take it in early Feb. Filing deadlines is March 30th!

Tonight I will be cleaning my apartment, then tomorrow we are having “Ghetto” dinner party! I can’t wait!

Adios!