Westward Ho
19 January 2010 21:06![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
maystoneOK, get all your "ho" jokes out of your system now. I'll wait. :pause: Aaand we're back.
We went to Fort Worth, TX to celebrate the wedding of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
virtualinsomnia and kernelm, who'd met online as Firefly fans, fell in love, and happily decided to marry. (kernelm also spent some time at our house in Kitchener while he worked on some life direction changes.) They'd set aside a block of rooms at the downtown Hilton for the rest of us Browncoats flying in from all over the US and Canada. Great hotel, really. It had soundproofing. I can forgive a lot if there's soundproofing, but there was nothing iffy to forgive here; we had a marvelous stay. Unlike the Millennium Hotel in Buffalo where we spent Wednesday night. We got to listen to an episode of Law & Order that our neighbors had on in their room. When they turned it off before the episode was over, Dar was tempted to call out, "Hey! We were listening to that!" Heh.
Dar, Maddie, and I were all able to go because Dar found a great deal on plane tickets. The reason they were such a great deal is that they left early in the morning and had a lay-over in Atlanta. We were flying out of Buffalo rather than Toronto thanks to the antics of the Underwear Bomber and the very strict international flying restrictions that ensued. Mark had to work, and the friend who was going to drive us to Buffalo got a job (yay!), so we hired a driver to take us across the border on Wednesday afternoon so we could be at the airport bright and early Thursday AM.
As you may recall, I'm having some issues with Immigration and their screw-up of my paperwork. I was nervous about crossing the border, although I figured it wouldn't be a problem getting into the US since I have a US passport. And it wasn't a problem. The border guard spent all of her time questioning our driver. Ha!
We spent the afternoon at a mall right next to the hotel; I needed a top, Maddie a jacket, and Dar heels. We took a hotel shuttle. It was large mall. The largest mall in the northeast. We were tired already, and we trudged back and forth, back and forth trying to find what we needed. After several hours, Maddie needed to sit down and get something to drink; Dar went with her. I had a few tops to try on. What I heard Dar say is that they were going to the first place on the row that had someplace to sit and drink. What I did not hear her say was that they were going to come back and wait for me outside the store. It took me less than two minutes to realize that the tops were too small, so I was in and out of the dressing room in a snap and walked out to look for Dar and Maddie. I never found them. I hit all the places where you could sit and drink. Nothing. I retraced my steps several times. Still no one. I was exhausted and cranky, and I didn't have a) a cell phone, b) the number of the hotel or the hotel shuttle and c) any US change for a public phone. I had to walk back to the hotel - and it was brutally cold and windy - and if I was going to do that I needed to do it now before it got dark. I thought maybe the two of them had gone back when they couldn't find me, either. So off I staggered into the freezing twilight, only to find that Dar and Maddie were not back at the hotel.
About an hour later I got a call from Dar asking where the hell I was. That's how tired and upset she was, because obviously I was on the other end of the phone back at the hotel room. They'd been looking for me all this time. Had had me paged in the store and in the mall. Had talked to the security guards. One clerk started trolling the dressing rooms expecting to find my dead body. Yeah. We now have agreed to repeat back to each other what the plan of the day is, just to avoid something like this in the future :)
So we managed to get a little sleep before heading out the next morning. Pretty smooth flight to Atlanta, but we almost missed our connection because Delta changed the gate without an announcement.
I wasn't sure what to expect of Fort Worth, but I was happy to find that it was a lovely town (at least the small part of it that we saw) populated with friendly and helpful folk.
We went to Fort Worth, TX to celebrate the wedding of
virtualinsomnia and kernelm, who'd met online as Firefly fans, fell in love, and happily decided to marry. (kernelm also spent some time at our house in Kitchener while he worked on some life direction changes.) They'd set aside a block of rooms at the downtown Hilton for the rest of us Browncoats flying in from all over the US and Canada. Great hotel, really. It had soundproofing. I can forgive a lot if there's soundproofing, but there was nothing iffy to forgive here; we had a marvelous stay. Unlike the Millennium Hotel in Buffalo where we spent Wednesday night. We got to listen to an episode of Law & Order that our neighbors had on in their room. When they turned it off before the episode was over, Dar was tempted to call out, "Hey! We were listening to that!" Heh.Dar, Maddie, and I were all able to go because Dar found a great deal on plane tickets. The reason they were such a great deal is that they left early in the morning and had a lay-over in Atlanta. We were flying out of Buffalo rather than Toronto thanks to the antics of the Underwear Bomber and the very strict international flying restrictions that ensued. Mark had to work, and the friend who was going to drive us to Buffalo got a job (yay!), so we hired a driver to take us across the border on Wednesday afternoon so we could be at the airport bright and early Thursday AM.
As you may recall, I'm having some issues with Immigration and their screw-up of my paperwork. I was nervous about crossing the border, although I figured it wouldn't be a problem getting into the US since I have a US passport. And it wasn't a problem. The border guard spent all of her time questioning our driver. Ha!
We spent the afternoon at a mall right next to the hotel; I needed a top, Maddie a jacket, and Dar heels. We took a hotel shuttle. It was large mall. The largest mall in the northeast. We were tired already, and we trudged back and forth, back and forth trying to find what we needed. After several hours, Maddie needed to sit down and get something to drink; Dar went with her. I had a few tops to try on. What I heard Dar say is that they were going to the first place on the row that had someplace to sit and drink. What I did not hear her say was that they were going to come back and wait for me outside the store. It took me less than two minutes to realize that the tops were too small, so I was in and out of the dressing room in a snap and walked out to look for Dar and Maddie. I never found them. I hit all the places where you could sit and drink. Nothing. I retraced my steps several times. Still no one. I was exhausted and cranky, and I didn't have a) a cell phone, b) the number of the hotel or the hotel shuttle and c) any US change for a public phone. I had to walk back to the hotel - and it was brutally cold and windy - and if I was going to do that I needed to do it now before it got dark. I thought maybe the two of them had gone back when they couldn't find me, either. So off I staggered into the freezing twilight, only to find that Dar and Maddie were not back at the hotel.
About an hour later I got a call from Dar asking where the hell I was. That's how tired and upset she was, because obviously I was on the other end of the phone back at the hotel room. They'd been looking for me all this time. Had had me paged in the store and in the mall. Had talked to the security guards. One clerk started trolling the dressing rooms expecting to find my dead body. Yeah. We now have agreed to repeat back to each other what the plan of the day is, just to avoid something like this in the future :)
So we managed to get a little sleep before heading out the next morning. Pretty smooth flight to Atlanta, but we almost missed our connection because Delta changed the gate without an announcement.
I wasn't sure what to expect of Fort Worth, but I was happy to find that it was a lovely town (at least the small part of it that we saw) populated with friendly and helpful folk.
