After reading this Best of Holidailies recently, I’ve been thinking about how gift-giving happens in our family, with my Santa-believing, starry-eyed-over-Christmas kid.
Back in the olden days, when the Kid was a baby, it was absolutely true that you could give him a box and he was happy. (more…)
My dear friend in Hungary sent me some awesome winter photos, taken this week. It’s wonderful to know that somewhere there really is a winter wonderland. I love the idea of a white Christmas, but really am glad I don’t need to dress in two pairs of socks, long underwear, shirt, sweater, vest, etc. (more…)
Have you ever wondered if you can change your mind about a trip, even though you bought a NON-REFUNDABLE ticket? Me too. So I read the fine print on AA.com:
Fully or partially unused refundable tickets may be submitted to American Airlines for possible refund. Many tickets contain fare restrictions that limit their refundable value and require fees and/or penalties to be deducted for any refund of the original ticket.
If your paper/printed ticket passes refund eligibility and you submit the refund request, you will be required to mail in your original coupons to American Airlines at the address below before your request can be processed.
In other words, good luck with the refund for a refundable ticket. Maybe we will, maybe we won’t.
Non-Refundable Tickets:
Non-refundable tickets cannot be refunded.
Roger. Got it. Hence, the name.
But there’s more!
For non-refundable tickets issued on or after
However, for non-refundable tickets issued on or before
· If the new ticket has a higher cost than the original ticket, you will have to pay an additional amount (the fare difference plus a change fee).
· If the new ticket has a lower cost than the original, you may receive a transportation voucher for the full value of the fare difference (plus pay a change fee).
Contact our Reservations agents when you are ready to make your new travel plans. They will advise you of the applicable procedures and fees.
So they are not “refundable” but they may be “valid.” Alrighty then!
There will not be a quiz. But there may be applicable procedures and fees.
Today, I wrapped presents. I did eight or nine presents in 26 minutes. I think that was my best time ever, and I attribute it to the kitchen island being cleared away for wrapping, and the deadline of school pick-up to motivate me to wrap rather than stash all the unwrapped things yet again.
My first job was wrapping presents for a department store. I filled in for someone whose full-time seasonal job it was. She needed an afternoon off for some reason. I was the lowly temporary inventory clerk/daughter of the Personal Shopper, who was game to help. It was a wonderful afternoon.
People would come, hand over their sweaters, socks, belts, stemware, and pick a number from the 15 or 18 choices on the wall. The wrapstand had as many rolls of thick, shiny classy paper, in the latest colors and traditional red, gold and green. A cutter was built in so one could roll off the right amount of paper and then give it a satisfying RIP. The coordinating ribbons and the assortment of gift boxes were below in labeled bins. Once carefully tissue-papered and tucked into the right gift box, a present was a perfectly symmetrical object that could get wrapped with precisely creased and triangulated paper. Double-stick tape was hidden in seams. We also had tissue paper with the store logo, foil embossed stickers and other stick-on flourishes that gave it a department store finish.
Et voila! The finished present was good enough to eat or put under a designer tree. Rarely did anything come to Gift Wrap that couldn’t be boxed, wrapped and ribboned. Those dizzy women who swoon at the sight of a jewelry store box, or a Nordstrom’s sticker… that was our audience. We were going for the status and brand-conscious woman (both giver and receiver) with our shiny paper. It was a creative process using precision and pre-fab design, but still it was a triumph to stack up the boxes for customers who waited (im)patiently for their merchandise.
I haven’t ribboned, bowed or labeled any of the packages I did today. I got stopped and now wonder how did I give things from “Santa” all these years, while using the same paper as those packages from “Mom”? How is that not a total tip-off for the Kid? Maybe it’s just more of the Santa mystery. This year, I’ll be a little more cautious. Santa is going to make liberal use of the stocking hung by the chimney with care.
Really, I have no idea how to make it so people can comment. Obviously some are, so it’s possible. But I don’t see a setting anywhere to change.
Perhaps one has to register as a subscriber to my individual blog in WordPress? rather than simply have one’s own WP account? If you have good ideas, do let me know… you can always reach me at tw@iamthiswoman.com.
Following suit from Planet Pooks, a drabble is an extremely short work of fiction, exactly 100 words in length. Here goes.
Dale rode his Harley back to the muffler shop to see if there was beer left in the fridge where they kept leftover take-out pizza, raw meat for the dog, brake fluid and more beer.
“Dale! Git that pitbull back to the back because if the constable sees us with any, there’ll be hellfire to pay!” the ancient woman grizzled, jamming her Tiparillo between toothless gums.
“Grandma, I thought you was gonna quit smoking once you got paroled!”
“When reindeers fly, I’ll give it up.”
Dale popped a top to toast her early release, saying, “Hallelujah, Christmas is almost here!”
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Thanks, Holidailies for the “Best of” tag. I raise my can of Pearl to you!
Dan Fogelberg died yesterday. And I am sad.
This article gives a briefing. His official website has a link to The Living Legacy, a fan site I believe.
I saw him in concert with a girlfriend in 1979. We swooned - it was an acoustic solo concert. Piano and guitar. For two hours, he enthralled us. We were two girls at the stage door, waiting with the 30-some others. Then we saw his limo pull out from another door. Oh well… only years later, after living with a musician, would I understand why he ducked us.
I listened to his songs in college, those angsty years. I gazed at his beautiful face on the album cover. I fell in love with a Dan who looked a lot like him (though he couldn’t sing). I shed many cathartic tears, and was completely astonished at just how apt so many of his lyrics were to situations in my life. Surely no one else had EVER felt what I felt! and here was a song that described the feelings to a T! amazing! (Sketches and Same Auld Lang Syne, to be exact.)
One time, I went home with a date after a truly fantastic dinner out… he sat down at his piano and played one of Fogelberg’s songs… it must have been his best “line” because it worked. I fell for him right then and there. Music is so powerful, and as cheesy as some find his work to be, it was significant to me for a good long period of my life.
I think I’ll trot out the LPs and play them on my record player tonight (yes, I still have one!)
Go in beauty, Dan. Your creativity, work and music are here to remind us of your gentle spirit.
This time of year, I savor all the books that trot themselves out into the displays, advertising, front list and “must-read” conversation of people I know. I may not ever get to read all the books I want to read, but that would be a dark day, if it ever came. There are so many wonderful books out there, and so little time. So little time. I wonder why I have cable TV at all.
A few years ago, I had a crisis brewing. My eyesight. Where before I could squint at a book in any position in bed, in any kind of light, into the wee small hours (the wee-est smallest hour is 1 a.m. by the way), I began to have trouble. First it was my neck which went all screwy in graduate school. Then it was my wrists and hands that fell asleep from holding a book. Then my eyes… headaches, holding the book farther away, etc.
I finally succumbed to reading glasses, and to reading less to save my neck and wrists… complications of keyboard RSI and not enough yoga, massage and too much stress. But reading less adds to my stress…
No more. I am dedicating myself to my book friends again. And will find that balance point. My 2008 resolution is simple: read more. That’s all. Everything else in my life has come from that - the writing, the stories, the friends, the career. READ MORE. (more…)
Let’s just say that THIS is a holiday classic in our house now. This links to a 49 second version (apparently videotaped from a computer monitor? does anyone have copyright to this?), but really to get maximum effect, you have to listen to THIS CONTINUOUS LOOP until your ears bleed. And whenever the phone does ring, it helps if the whole family starts singing and/or bouncing like cute little badgers.
Seriously, the first 40 times, it’s really cute and funny. The Kid is enjoying all the other versions, such as the Potter Banana Phone and the Simpsons… but I have housework to do. Come to think of it, so does he!
It’s all around us all the time. But this time of year, the matters of life and death are on our minds more poignantly, and I have to wonder why. Both in a shake my fist at the sky kind of way, and a tender headtilt “there, there” kind of way.
Death. A car ran a red light last Monday and could have killed me, had I not been distracted as my light turned green. I finally putt-putted out into the intersection, only to see a silver streak of sedan go zooming in front of my car with six feet to spare. Another two seconds either way, and someone would be dead. I drop off the Kid at school, and then get dead. Not a great way to start the week, in thought or in actuality. (more…)