I’m in San Francisco for the librarians’ conference.
Because we were flying out of Midway, on separate flights, because UW-Madison’s and the ALA’s Concur systems wouldn’t let Mark & I book together, I went as far as Chicago on Wednesday. We went out for burgers with John, and as I was getting on the L to go home, we got a text from Emma that Al had left his iPhone in a cab. Sent him the info for our joint account, for getting a new phone; exhorted him to do Find my iPhone and turn it off. Worried about how exposed my data might be, from his phone …. And there was a happy ending: Al’s good fortune was that his phone was found by an Australian tourist, who started calling his favorites and got Emma. Al had the phone back by after work on Thursday.
Mark had a direct flight to San Francisco on Southwest. I had a stop on Minneapolis on Delta. Delta kindly turned my 3-hour layover (lay away, as Al used to call it) into a 4-hour one, and then it stretched to almost 5-hours – first we were leaving at 5:45, then 6:36, then 6:54. I decided I might as well buy a $50 day pass for the Delta Sky Club – by the time I bought wifi and food in the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport, it probably would’ve been $30, anyhow. I got a bunch of grading done in my online course, and rewarded myself with a glass of wine and a cookie.
Finally made it to San Fran, and had a pleasant – but expensive – cab ride in from the airport. I had a Greek taxi driver, and after I had told him I was here for the librarian’s conference, he asked how hard it would be to start a book club – for Greek books. What he really wants is a book exchange, so I told him about the Little Free Libraries. We talked about what a big weekend it was for San Francisco, Gay Pride, baseball, 30,000 librarians, Grateful Dead. He had come to the US in 1963, and said he guessed it was the hippie days here back then, but he kind of liked it better than today. “People talked to each other, and not their phones”. I didn’t mention that I was supposed to go to one of the Dead shows, but as we were driving I was thinking I’ll be able to do this – navigate my way in a zipcar to Levi Stadium.
It was still dark on Friday morning and I was lying in our hotel bed when I realized that I’d left the dead tickets and my parking pass on the shelf at home.
I cursed for awhile, looked up FedEx rates and services on my phone, and then texted the neighbor who is feeding the cats to see if she could FedEx the tickets to my hotel.
She texted right back, went to our house, called, and I talked her through where the tickets were. By the time Mark had left for conference – he’s going earlier than I have to, to set stuff up – she had texted back that the tickets should be at my hotel by noon tomorrow, $59. Cheaper than the cab ride from the airport.
Let’s hope this one is a happy ending, too. I keep comparing this to our last TIFF trip when I forgot my passport, and had to get it sent. That was a real shitshow to get to me – but it was international, and we were staying at an AirBNB without a hotel front desk to receive the package, like I have now. We’ll see.
Whoo hoo – I’m going – maybe by myself, but I’m going!
FedEx-ed dead tickets
Thanks God for helpful neighbors, and FedEx. Maybe it all makes sense, since one of my last remaining Dead shirts is a black sweatshirt that on one side has an old FedEx logo, but it says DeadEx, and on the back it says, “when you absolutely positively have to be there every night”. I wear it for cookie baking during cookie season. Not finding any images of it on the Internetz; I’ll have to take one myself later.
