Pointless Phone Palavers & Packing

Melange

[mey-lahnzh, -lahnj]

A mixture; confusion

So today was the last day before I leave for Turkey. Which meant it was busy!busy!busy! But really it was a semi-successful semi-productive day. Which is really an A+ in my books, so I'm happy.

So I had(still have!) quite a few odds and ends of things to do. Like calling the LA County Jury Service people...which really resulted in 6 calls, being put on hold for 20+ minutes and being told that being out of the country thousands of miles away from LA County is in fact not a valid excuse for postponing Jury Duty.

The conversation went something like this....

JD Lady: You can't postpone your duty past September.

Me: I'll be in Europe until mid-October.

JDL: You can't postpone it.

Me: Uh...so what do I do if I physically can't be in LA?

JDL: Uh.......?

Very helpful. Her response eventually was: you can be fined $250-$1150 and become sanctioned. (Doesn't sanctioned sound like a privilege and not a penalty? Like, "she was sentenced to death, but at the last minute she was sanctioned"). Then she said I should have taken care of jury duty earlier (I was initially called to do it last August). It went like this....

JDL: You should have done this. Why didn't you do this earlier?

Me: I was in Wisconsin.

JDL: And before that?

Me: I was in England.

JDL: And before that?

Me: On an island of 6,000 people 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador?

As you can see, this was a very productive use of my time. But....I got it all worked out eventually, with some....creative thinking we'll say. ;) (And they said my Creative Writing major would never be useful!)

Today I also discovered that if you have a flight with United Airlines and want a Vegetarian Meal option you can't in fact chose that online even if you search their site for half an hour. What do you have to do?

Call their toll free number, twice, have a pointless conversation with a computer until you end up yelling, "Meal options! Meal Options!" for five minutes and the automated systems says "I"m sorry I don't understand. I'll connect you to an operator now", then talk to a very nice man with a very thick Indian accent and have a ten minute conversation with him about vegetarianism.

Duh.

Anyway, what I also did today was pack! Which brings me to the word of the post.

I think the picture really says it all. As you can see my cats thought they would "help" me.

That or perhaps they wanted to come to Turkey too?

And alright, I have a bit of a confession. For the 3 weeks I've been here I kept thinking of books I wanted to bring to Turkey with me. And then I would tell myself to be realistic and decide not to take those books. So I thought I was in good shape--I was bringing only a few books, right? And this is what my book stack looks like....

In my defense, some of the books are to read to the kiddos. But I also have a 600+ book about Ottoman history. But I need that. Right? Really what's surprising to me is how much nonfiction I have--that one about Ottomans, a travel book, the best of science writing in 2010 and a book about string theory. Yup, that's what my summer reading looks like.

Anywho, I take off tomorrow at 5:55. I have a 10 hour flight to London, a 4.5 hour layover (and I have a fiver from last time...think I'll be able to be something for only 5 quid?) and then a 4 hour flight to Istanbul. Then an hour drive to my family's house.

Phew, I'm exhausted just thinking about it.

Next post will come to you from Istanbul!

Ciao!