Always be prepared.. for anything! Weigh your options, would you rather have a heavy handbag or would you rather be soaked through with water, have blisters all over your feet, be freezing from the cold and dying of starvation and thirst? I am always trying to lighten my handbag. Taking out whatever I can and whatever I think I quite possibly will have no need for. Its like the second you sit down to dinner, a telemarketer will always call or when you finally give up on someone showing up and you lay down for a nap, your doorbell will ring. If you leave the house without an umbrella (and usually its the day you actually take the umbrella out of your bag), it will without a doubt rain.
We are going on a beach vacation next week so we are trying to eat healthy, be a little more active, you know those last ditch efforts to make yourself feel as great as you possibly can even though two days before you will probably gorge on all the high carb foods you can find and inevitably be bloated up as big as a Macy's Day Parade balloon. Well we decide to take a little walk. Nothing major, just a walk around our little town. I wore flip-flops,.. flat-soled, hard wooden-bottom like flip flops. I knew it might mean disaster but it was a leisurely walk so no big deal. I previously took out my zebra print cushioned insoles out of my bag (stashed there for those just in case moments..you never know when your feet will rebel against you and demand a change of texture) so as to "de-junk" it. Our walk started out innocent enough, we followed the water for a little ways and it didn't feel as if we had walked too far. We continued on our walk, i began to recognize things we had driven past in the car in ANOTHER town! The weather was nice though and it was a nice easy walk. We started passing things on the ground that said 3.5 km, 4.5 km and I joked that the walk was so nice but it wouldn't be so great to walk it back if we got too far. We kept walking.. eventually passing 6.5 km, 7.5 km and began hearing strains of music from the big international music festival that was going on.. a music festival that was NOT IN OUR TOWN! My feet started to hurt at this point, just a little bit then suddenly a searing pain. Soner suggested we turn back but I knew I wouldn't make it that way so we forged ahead hoping for a train station to take back to Belfort. I was willing to pay whatever it took to take the train back. Luckily we did manage to find the train station and we managed to sneak on to the train with the hordes of other people boarding (apparently with the concert ticket stub you could ride the train for free and I guess no one would be in that town for the weekend unless they had attended the concert so...we got very lucky). So as it turns out I have big blisters on the bottom of my feet from walking in my flip flops! I've never had blisters on the bottom of my feet. I didn't even thinking you could get blisters there. What an odd place. Moral of the story, the minute you make a conscious decision to leave something at home you would typically have with you is the minute you will need it. Oh and don't walk over 2 miles in hard soled flip flops much less the estimated 5.5-6 miles we walked (Thank you Google Maps for showing our walking route with mileage)!
Monday, July 6, 2009
Friday, July 3, 2009
Lucky Pennies
See a penny pick it up and all day long you'll have good luck. Do you still have good luck if it was your penny you are picking up?
My trip back to France had already started a bit rough, my flight was delayed (only by about 15 minutes though), I realized I shrunk my jacket and my Kindle did not work. Upon arriving to the Atlanta airport, I went as quickly as I could to my terminal and gate only to find it was also delayed by 30 minutes. Mom suggested I buy a few books at the bookstore since I no longer could take my Kindle on vacation in a week so it kind of worked out perfectly that I just so happened to still be in the US and capable of purchasing English books. The books in the International terminal do not seem to cater to those in search of girly books though. If a physcologist were asking me to think of the first thing that comes to mind when she says "International Terminal," I would say "shopping!" Every International Terminal is always filled with big bookstores with lots of books and magazines, sunglass stores, Duty-Free shops, the works... Not Atlanta! Maybe I was wrong and Terminal T is not the International Terminal. As it turns out..I just looked it up..it is not the International Terminal. No wonder I was a bit depressed at the offerings of T Terminal. It is just a boring ol' terminal. Anyway, so I'm at the "bookstore" and the lady hands back my change and I drop the penny and the dime but woohoo!, the penny is heads up. This is good luck, right?
So I have decided if you drop your own penny and it is heads up, DO NOT PICK IT UP! You are only in for disappointment. My trip home only got worse. My flight ended up being delayed until 9:50 (we were supposed to depart at 8:40). I don't think the plane actually departed until 11pm. At least I got an exit row seat though! My lucky penny is working! Ah but I forgot how freakin' cold the exit row seat is so I tried to tighten myself into the tinniest ball possible and sleep an off and on sleep where I missed dinner and breakfast. My pillow would get so cold if I did not have my head on it that I started having to put it under me even for the few seconds I would move around so it would not be too cold to lay my head on. We finally arrived to Paris at 1pm..about 2 hours before my train would leave as opposed to the 3 hours and 40 minutes I should have had to make it all the way from the outskirts of Paris to the train station. Yeah so I get my luggage fairly quickly, condense it from 3 to 2 bags and am on my way! Woohoo! I can still take the bus and make it instead of spending beaucoup money on a cab. Lucky Penny is NOT working again! Out of all the suspicious looking people, the sweet, slightly rough and tired looking girl (me) gets stopped by customs as everyone else, 100s of people, walk right on by. I have to lift all my heavy luggage onto the scanner to be scanned before I left out and she had to check through my carefully packed bags. At this time, it is too late to take the bus and a taxi is my only option. Online it said it would take about 20-30 minutes to make it to the train station without traffic. It took my taxi (without traffic) about 45 minutes but 57 Euros later, I was finally at the train station before my train had left so that was a plus. One day, I will have someone explain how my amount owed went from 49.10 euros to 55 Euros then to 60 Euros all in the matter of 30 seconds. He said 55 Euros in French and then 60 euros 2 seconds later in English. Maybe he thought he could rip off this poor tired American girl. All I could come up with was 57 Euros so apparently that was good enough... It should be! That one stupid cab ride cost be 80 US$. As much as my 4 hour train ride cost but at least I made my train and secured my luggage and I was good to go except that it looked like someone threw up on the corner of my seat and had not been cleaned up but at this point I was hot and sweaty and did not care and oh by the way Mom, about those trains being air conditioned...this one had air that barely crept out but at least I had air. The cab driver wouldn't even let me open the window in the cab and he turned the air on only in the front while I am dripping sweat in the back. Lovely! Train ride wasn't terrible though..I was only 5 minutes from home I thought until Soner had to call and burst my bubble and tell me the board actually showed my train was 40 minutes delayed. I am alive though and clean after a very long shower.
Moral of the story, I will never pick up a so called "lucky penny."
By the way, every guy that chalks it up to "experience" ought to be shot and then taken on their own "experience" trip. I have never had a woman tell me "oh well, it was an experience" especially when another woman is at their breaking point and just pushing their luggage out the train door just to be out of the stupid train. Thank you Dad and Soner for letting me know it was an "experience." I will plan a great experience for just the two of y'all and I'll even let you two enjoy the "experience" together instead of having to deal with it by yourself, in a foreign country without a normal working phone or people who even speak halfway broken english.
My trip back to France had already started a bit rough, my flight was delayed (only by about 15 minutes though), I realized I shrunk my jacket and my Kindle did not work. Upon arriving to the Atlanta airport, I went as quickly as I could to my terminal and gate only to find it was also delayed by 30 minutes. Mom suggested I buy a few books at the bookstore since I no longer could take my Kindle on vacation in a week so it kind of worked out perfectly that I just so happened to still be in the US and capable of purchasing English books. The books in the International terminal do not seem to cater to those in search of girly books though. If a physcologist were asking me to think of the first thing that comes to mind when she says "International Terminal," I would say "shopping!" Every International Terminal is always filled with big bookstores with lots of books and magazines, sunglass stores, Duty-Free shops, the works... Not Atlanta! Maybe I was wrong and Terminal T is not the International Terminal. As it turns out..I just looked it up..it is not the International Terminal. No wonder I was a bit depressed at the offerings of T Terminal. It is just a boring ol' terminal. Anyway, so I'm at the "bookstore" and the lady hands back my change and I drop the penny and the dime but woohoo!, the penny is heads up. This is good luck, right?
So I have decided if you drop your own penny and it is heads up, DO NOT PICK IT UP! You are only in for disappointment. My trip home only got worse. My flight ended up being delayed until 9:50 (we were supposed to depart at 8:40). I don't think the plane actually departed until 11pm. At least I got an exit row seat though! My lucky penny is working! Ah but I forgot how freakin' cold the exit row seat is so I tried to tighten myself into the tinniest ball possible and sleep an off and on sleep where I missed dinner and breakfast. My pillow would get so cold if I did not have my head on it that I started having to put it under me even for the few seconds I would move around so it would not be too cold to lay my head on. We finally arrived to Paris at 1pm..about 2 hours before my train would leave as opposed to the 3 hours and 40 minutes I should have had to make it all the way from the outskirts of Paris to the train station. Yeah so I get my luggage fairly quickly, condense it from 3 to 2 bags and am on my way! Woohoo! I can still take the bus and make it instead of spending beaucoup money on a cab. Lucky Penny is NOT working again! Out of all the suspicious looking people, the sweet, slightly rough and tired looking girl (me) gets stopped by customs as everyone else, 100s of people, walk right on by. I have to lift all my heavy luggage onto the scanner to be scanned before I left out and she had to check through my carefully packed bags. At this time, it is too late to take the bus and a taxi is my only option. Online it said it would take about 20-30 minutes to make it to the train station without traffic. It took my taxi (without traffic) about 45 minutes but 57 Euros later, I was finally at the train station before my train had left so that was a plus. One day, I will have someone explain how my amount owed went from 49.10 euros to 55 Euros then to 60 Euros all in the matter of 30 seconds. He said 55 Euros in French and then 60 euros 2 seconds later in English. Maybe he thought he could rip off this poor tired American girl. All I could come up with was 57 Euros so apparently that was good enough... It should be! That one stupid cab ride cost be 80 US$. As much as my 4 hour train ride cost but at least I made my train and secured my luggage and I was good to go except that it looked like someone threw up on the corner of my seat and had not been cleaned up but at this point I was hot and sweaty and did not care and oh by the way Mom, about those trains being air conditioned...this one had air that barely crept out but at least I had air. The cab driver wouldn't even let me open the window in the cab and he turned the air on only in the front while I am dripping sweat in the back. Lovely! Train ride wasn't terrible though..I was only 5 minutes from home I thought until Soner had to call and burst my bubble and tell me the board actually showed my train was 40 minutes delayed. I am alive though and clean after a very long shower.
Moral of the story, I will never pick up a so called "lucky penny."
By the way, every guy that chalks it up to "experience" ought to be shot and then taken on their own "experience" trip. I have never had a woman tell me "oh well, it was an experience" especially when another woman is at their breaking point and just pushing their luggage out the train door just to be out of the stupid train. Thank you Dad and Soner for letting me know it was an "experience." I will plan a great experience for just the two of y'all and I'll even let you two enjoy the "experience" together instead of having to deal with it by yourself, in a foreign country without a normal working phone or people who even speak halfway broken english.
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