Category Archives: Trips

When it rains, it pours

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It has not been the greatest few weeks. In fact, it’s been a downright terrible two weeks, in many ways, with the exception of the rather awesome wedding.

The bedbug bites haven’t gone away yet, and in fact actually look a little angrier. But at least I haven’t gained any new ones since getting home.

It seems unlikely at this point that they will be faded by the time I have to get married. Fortunately there aren’t many on my hands, and I’ll be wearing long sleeves, but still. Argh blargh.
Time to look into makeup, maybe? Anyone know what kinds of concealer work well on arms for bug bites?

But on the other hand, Greg woke up on Friday with a couple of bites, and even more on Saturday. (His upper arm now looks a lot like mine.) Cue the freaking out that we missed something in our large sterilization campaign upon coming home. (It was a rather unhappy Saturday.) We spent most of the weekend cleaning the apartment for the inspector and trying in vain to find evidence of bedbugs.
Further research, however, shows that bedbug bites can take up to 14 days (!) to show up. So it’s entirely possible that we don’t actually have bedbugs, and all the bites are actually from the hotel in Florida. (This is supported by the fact that I have gotten no new bites since coming home, and he’d shown only two bites when we left Florida.)
We have an exterminator coming tomorrow to do an inspection to hopefully confirm the lack of bedbugs (or find evidence and put a plan in place). So that’s fun. But expensive. So yay for that.

Particularly so because OMG WEDDING THINGS is happening. There seems to be a pretty infinite list of last-minute things to do and the fact that I’m getting married in less than two weeks is finally sinking in. Super stressed out in general about that and trying to get everything done.
Fortunately, all the big things are done, so regardless of how much we drop the ball in the upcoming weeks, there’s still going to be a wedding. So that’s comforting at least.
(I kind of want to do a breakdown of all wedding costs once they’re finalized, but it looks like we’re going to be between $22k and $23k overall. Which is way over our initial estimate, but rather in line with our revised expectations. It’s been really weird spending money like this, and it isn’t something I want to get in the habit of doing, but hell if it hasn’t been really freeing to just be able to throw cash around on wedding-related things.)

I read an article today about how criminals were signing up accounts on the IRS website for people, downloading previous years’ tax returns, filing fake 2014 tax returns, and pocketing the improper refunds. So I went to sign up on the website… only to be told that the account already exists. So it seems very likely that I have been identity thieved, and I’ll have to contact the IRS tomorrow.
I would just freeze my credit, but then that would interfere with mortgage applications in the event that we actually do find a house to buy. Argh.
(If you want to sign up an account for yourself for protection, go to http://www.irs.gov/, click the “Get Transcript of Your Tax Records” link under “Tools”, and click the “Get Transcript ONLINE” button.)

Hopefully tomorrow brings good bedbug news and IRS resolutions. But I’m not counting on it. :\

Florida, wedding, bedbugs (D: D: D:)

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We just got back from Florida from Mark and Zoë’s wedding. The wedding was really nice, and it was awesome to see everyone again.
(Photos from that will be up at photos at some point.)

But the awesomeness was rather eclipsed by the finding that our hotel (and our bed) had bed bugs. The first night I didn’t get too many bites, and found them the next day and assumed they were from random flying things since we’d been outside most of the day. The second night I guess they all found that I existed, and all of this happened:

(My forearm is about as bad, and my other arm is only slightly less unhappy. Also my feet are super sad.)
Mostly confirmed with bloodsplatters in the sheets and bug poop in the mattress edges.

So instead of coming home and being able to relax and get ready for work tomorrow, we’ve spent the past 4.5 hours sorting through things, running clothing through the washer and dryer, running other heatable things through the dryer, and manually inspecting everything else (like cameras, lenses, laptops). Also, amusingly, my wallet and iPad case are currently in the freezer. (Apparently sustained cold for a few months will kill everything too.)

If anyone has suggestions on what to do about the backpacks, that’d be useful. Right now our plan is to run one through the dryer and put the other (that has gel straps) into a sealed plastic bag for a year along with our dress shoes.

Phoenix, San Francisco

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Work wanted me to make a trip out (as seems to be the norm every February), but since we had Phantom tickets for yesterday, and my coworker could only make a trip out the last week of February, I reversed the usual schedule and went to Phoenix to visit my parents for a week before heading out to SF.

I left on Valentine’s day. It had been snowing a bit all morning, but as soon as the 28X bus hit the freeway, it really started to come down. Visibility was terrible, and the bus was crawling along the freeway at around 10 MPH.

But I get to the airport with plenty of time anyway, and we board the plane on time. Visibility still isn’t great.

Most of the way through boarding, the captain comes on the speaker and says they’re temporarily stopping boarding because the flight is going to be delayed. A bit after that he tells us all to deplane because air traffic control had shut down the runways (due to wind, snow, and lack of no-wind/snow so they can plow the runways) and they didn’t know if they would open again before Monday.
So I sit on hold with Southwest’s customer service number for about 90 minutes, when they announce that the wind has stopped long enough that the airport can plow. So we quickly re-board, get de-iced, and take off only about 2.5 hours late. Not too bad, all things considered.

But anyway, because I was flying Pittsburgh to Phoenix, I went from snowy 0Fs to sunny high-70Fs. So that was interesting.

My parents and I made a trip out to the Amazing Arizona Comic Con (interesting, I suppose, but not really worth admission if you’re not particularly into modern superheroes) and Cirque du Soleil Varekai (amazing). We also ate at 4 all-you-can-eat buffets over the week. So hooray for food.

The following week of work was fairly uneventful. Didn’t get to see as many people as I was hoping, since everyone seems to be super busy with work and life now. But it was good seeing my coworkers face-to-face again, and it reminded me how much I miss it.

More photos from the trip can be found at my photos site.

Christmas

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I had a Christmas. It was awesome. It was filled with lots of board game playing, as I’d ordered Zooloretto, Love Letter, and Viticulture: Tuscany and they arrived over the break. There was also plenty of Bohnanza, Bananagrams, Carcassonne, 6 Nimmt, Uno, and Ingenious. For Christmas we got 7 Wonders (to replace our old water-damaged set), the 7 Wonders Babel expansion, and Splendor, which was added to the mix of games.






There was, of course, the usual cookie decorating. Channing and I made poop cookies. Here’s my two:

I also did some rather untraditional present wrapping:

So it was a nice, relaxing week. More photos are at photos.

We also made some progress on wedding things. We went with the awesome Chris and found our bridesmaids’ dresses.

We’ll be spending the next week working on our invitations and doing more wedding things. So whee.

Chicago, wedding #4

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Ben and Simiao got married this past weekend at the Morton Arboretum in Lisle, IL, so we took the opportunity to go on a much-needed vacation and headed over the Sunday before via the Amtrak.

Or, at least, we tried to go via the Amtrak. Turns out they were having line trouble between Toledo and Chicago which meant both that we were two hours late leaving Pittsburgh despite the train being there on time (because the crew had exceeded their working hours or something), and we were woken up in Toledo and transferred to a cramped charter bus for the rest of the trip. So much for taking the more-comfortable Amtrak over the Greyhound. :(

Chicago turns out to be a wonderous land where the Walgreens sell frozen yogurt (with fresh fruit toppings), the Starbucks have a beer and wine selection, the people don’t seem very friendly, and the drivers honk all the time at nothing in particular. Interesting to visit, certainly, but not somewhere I’d really want to live.

We made quite a few trips out to the Bean.

The Chicago marathon was also that weekend, so we encountered a lot of marathon-related things, including rows upon rows of port-o-potties and chain-link fences that seemed quite out of place in the parks.

Ben had a bachelor’s party on Thursday evening. We tried to make it out, but it turns out the Blue line was having serious issues, with trains arriving overpacked and only one or two people able to squeeze into each car at the station.

After being unable to board 4 trains in a row, we gave up and met up with them for dinner instead, which ended up being amazingly tasty.

But mostly we spent the week wandering the city before transferring out to a hotel in Lisle on Friday before the wedding. We took the Metra train, which seems pretty much exactly like the Caltrain. The seats had a neat property though where the backs swiveled over the seat itself so you could face either direction or create little seating areas that faced each other. Kind of an awesome feature.

Saturday was the wedding, and we took advantage of the free admission to the Arboretum to wander it for a bit in the morning. We had no car and walk everywhere anyway, so we walked the 2.5 miles in, but it turns out the Arboretum doesn’t really expect people to wander in by foot. As a result, we ended up standing in a line of cars going to the entry booth while a bunch of confused volunteers kept asking if we were okay. So that was fun.

The wedding itself was beautiful. It was the quickest ceremony I’ve ever seen (less than 7 minutes from the time the officiant walked out the door to when he walked back in again after having married them), but it was still awesome. And you couldn’t beat the view.

The food, booze, and company were all awesome, and it was rather a shame to head home Sunday evening via the Metra to an L train to a plane to a Port Authority bus. Our great luck at Chicago public transit never failed us, with trains usually arriving shortly after we got to the platform, but gave out in Pittsburgh when we missed the 28X by a matter of seconds.

More photos can be found at photos.

That’s it for weddings this year (thank god). Next wedding is in March, followed by ours in April. Yay for more weddings?