Tag: travel

12 hours to liftoff, leak discovered in #8 internet pump

223/365 - my bank sucks

Some despicable creature used my (just re-created!) debit card number to buy $700 of whatever at a goddamn Wal-Mart in Morgan Hill, CA, causing the number to go dead just before I go overseas for two weeks.

This has resulted in yakety-sax with harmonizing sad trombone for the last two hours, including a conversation with my bank about Japanese addresses, two disconnections at critical parts of a discussion with them, a number of deadlines and minimum service times just exactly out of reach, use of the entire week’s supply of foul language, and a thing where I bumped my elbow on the door.

Rays of sunshine: my bank caught it and I’m not paying for this troglodyte’s Wal-Martery; I actually have money, it’s just going to be a bit harder to get at; I’m going to Japan, dammit.

That war on bank fraud? We’re not winning!

DEAR LAZYWEB (TRAVEL)

Hello all.

I am going to go on a trip with my mother overseas. I have no idea where we should go. I partly grew up in Europe but haven’t been to Paris or London or Venice since the Carter administration.

I’ve never been to Asia, Australia, Africa, or any of Eastern Europe. She was in Russia pretty recently and isn’t into that, but otherwise she’s amenable to suggestion.

I’m interested in what the group mind thinks. We both like old stones and culture vulture stuff and music. She likes theater and I like more popular music and jazz stuff, but neither of us has some consuming interest that demands satisfaction. In general culture wins over nature with us.

I’d love to see Venice again, and Europe in general draws me back. My French and Italian are awful (she’s better) so it would be easier but less exotic to be somewhere that would deal with a monolingual American idiot. We should avoid war zones and places where a woman in her 80s with crappy arthritis would find it tiresome to get around, even with her son helping.

OPEN THREAD YO. Where should we go, and why?

I gave up at friends/?skip=430

I am back from SF which was lovely. I ate and drank well, and enjoyed the company of many good people. Special thanks to zebulon_y for the use of a couch much longer than is considered polite. There is pork on the way.

I won’t try to summarize the trip because I am lazy.

If anyone huge happened in my absence, I may have missed it because skip=430.