ROAD TRIP! With DAILY updates. Oh and speech disability='I speak spanish' to Amazon

We are off on a ROAD TRIP!
I made a promise that if I was still alive I would be at the Eisner awards with a friend. It has been an up and down year and we are heading down budget style but when they announce the winners we will be there (or recovering nearby). I didn’t really get that it was attached to Comic-Con, the giant comic/gaming/book convention annually held in SanDiego (where anime is just a poor cousin…alas). But no problem as doing different things is the challenge of being human: change and grow.

So we are going on the road in about 36 hours, except I have to sleep 4 times in that period, and pack some clothes, and a few other things, you know, books, oxygen, moisturizer, um, dunno. I spent the whole evening figuring out how to use the PSP I have for hand therapy (that sounds really dirty doesn’t it?) for storing videos from youtube. Wow, way to suck up….oh 7 hours, EEEEPPPP! Oh well, I have about 20 videos and um, nothing else. Not even a corset: time to attack the closets and cupboards.

Oh, we are driving because I am a ‘frail thing’ (how exactly does a frail thing gain all this water weight, even the doctors say it is, they just don’t know how to get rid of it – oh wait, that’s because it is a side effect of congestive heart failure – which I figure can’t be THAT serious, I mean, they would DO something like, give me a ‘decongestant’ or is that something for allergy season?). Specifically a frail thing that can’t survive a take off (maybe, let’s find out!). I also will be posting EVERY DAY or TWO DAYS so tune in, okay? We are driving down to keep me in the air conditioning. I may have a survey of the hell hotels of the west coast, but Linda says ‘think the 1/3rd rule!’ – and so I do. After trying to gain strength and then getting whammed by the heat instead I am scared to go outside. Now that is reason enough TO GO OUTSIDE. Face my fears.

Linda is still applying for jobs, and with the heat gone we are both a bit more sane. Also, I don’t think about doing icky things to myself to stop the whole pain thing (imagine a life where all you can remember is a) heat hell b) not sleeping c) extreme pain d) seizures and other pain things. It makes life look, well, not one I would advertise. But I am EFM and I am on the road. HA! If someone can loan me $5 I can buy some postcards (all the money went to the trip and um...I dunno, it just GOES. That happen to anyone else? I use the library and they end up charging for LATE fees whether you are conscious or even in the hospital or not, boo to them!).

This is the garden I would LOVE to visit on the way to Comi-Con, however, being not only a continent but also an ocean away, I would need Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang as my vehicle to see it on a road trip. Too bad that, you never know when you need to learn about poisonous plants, and they always suspect everyone ELSE but the woman in the wheelchair (insert odd crackling laughter here).

We went by the James Bay Market to talk to my favorite potter, who has made this vase. Apparently it is NOT a blue vase (no this isn't the Matrix), but it is a titanium vase which due to the infusion of titanium which actually absorbs instead of reflects light, the blue is what colour escapes. So it is every colour BUT blue, or the blue like in why the sky is blue and is a vase which is an optical illusion having shifted the colour spectrum through the materials. I think that was the explanation. She uses a lot of different minerals, in order to get special effects, and I never heard of a pottery vase made with titanium before. Maybe someone scientific out there can explain it better?

We did about 50 postcards this weekend, and I did a postcard project blog post about the postcards up to this month, over at the postcard project. This was a ‘children’s week’ where we do a lot more of the children’s postcards, because it is cool as a kid to get a postcard. On the trip I hope to get more good animal postcards because we pretty much are cleaned out, that and really good stickers, which most of them we got sent to us somewhere near San Fran, so will go search there. Actually, I hope we get lots of really interesting postcards as we go to the Redwoods and other Big Tree National Parks, and Yosemite on the way back. Also to the Oregon Coast which is supposed to be gorgeous (I hope THEN it is sunny). And of old San Diego, I hope it is still as I remember, the old Well Fargo building.

Anyway, I am outta here. I will try to update tomorrow about how I lost almost an entire DAY (night and then day) trying to get Amazon.com to understand me. As Amazon does not have a policy for people with speech disabilities or impediments, I found out. And some call centers in some countries end up being a comedy routine of ‘who’s on First’ which goes on and on. At one point I kept trying to say, “I have a SPEECH impediment” and they kept going, “Spanish, you want someone to speak Spanish?”

As the day goes on I can be hard to understand unless you have been around me a lot. The tongue and throat muscles get weaker the more I talk.

I eventually said, “Non Espanol!” then asked, “Can you understand me?

“No,” the second person said (the first had said I was static and hung up on me), “I can’t understand you.”

I paused to ponder how they could answer that question so perfectly if they couldn’t understand me?

“Supervisor!” I said (It might have been closer to ‘Uper’isor’ but they got it and said, “Yes, I will transfer you.”

Thank GOD! I thought.

“If you could just outline to me verbally what you want to speak to the supervisor about.” They continued.

I pulled the phone away from my ear and looked at it. Dude, stop using the manual, PLEASE!

That was only part of call two of six.