an evening in saratoga springs

We took the train up from Penn Station yesterday afternoon ( now assures me we should’ve just gotten off the plane in Boston and stayed with them and trained or driven over from there, since it’s approximately the same distance, but here’s the thing: if you are from Alaska, you don’t know anything about East Coast geography, and if you are going to somewhere in upstate New York, the obvious thing to do is go to New York, because people from Alaska can’t really wrap their minds around the idea that everything’s spitting distance from itself on the East Coast anyway and anyway, now I’m crabby that I didn’t know that before, particularly because it would’ve been more fun to spend a couple days in Boston visiting than staggering around exhausted at JFK. :p) and it was a beautiful trip, causing me to think, hey, I could live in upstate New York. (Then we looked at house prices in Saratoga Springs and hey, a person could even afford to live there. If there were any jobs. I get the idea there might not be.)

Once we were checked into the hotel we went downtown to find some food, and while we did find food, we also found the Borders bookstore, so of course we had to go in and see if there were any books written by one C.E. Murphy. There were! I was carrying around a bag of food, so I thought I wouldn’t try to sign anything just then, but I went to ask one of the employees if there was a pay phone we could use. As it happened, I was wearing my Superman t-shirt under a mostly-buttoned-up overshirt, and the top of the “S” was visible–you know, very Clark-Kentish. The guy I asked about the phone said, “See, I’m such a nerd I can tell that’s a Superman t-shirt!” and I said, “Everybody can tell it’s a Superman t-shirt. Everybody recognizes the bit of the S. It’s very Clark-Kentish.” He said, “Aww, c’mon, don’t make me feel like I’m not a nerd!” so I told him he was in fact a very good nerd and I was very impressed, which made him happy. :)

And since we were getting along so well, I thought I might as well mention the books, and then it transpired that he was Matthew Dow Smith, who is currently the artist on SUPERNATURAL: ORIGINS, and…well, we had a good long talk, we did. We know about thirty-eleven people in common, making him say, “How is it we’ve never met?” :) So that was quite a lot of fun! And then we came back to the hotel and collapsed the collapsey sleep of collapsey things.

This morning I spent nearly an hour on the phone to eventually be told in no uncertain terms that I was not going to be able to redeem the Delta voucher because despite having been told that I could buy tickets online and bring the voucher to the airport to be redeemed on the day of the flight, in fact buying online made paper vouchers irredeemable (which I was not told, or I would obviously not have done that) and there is no way around it. And the fucking thing runs out on the 6th, so we’re screwed. They won’t extend it and it can’t be used to upgrade or anything. The poor guy I talked to at the last tried really hard to help, including thinking of every possible way the voucher might possibly be used and asking about them before I’d even asked him about them (to no avail, mind you, but he tried), and I think he was genuinely unhappy at not being able to help. So I’ll write a nasty letter to Delta and (as Mom suggested) cc it to the BBB headquarters and the BBB in Atlanta, and I will tell them they’re all bastardly sons-of-bitches except for the guy who tried very hard to help me, whom I shall commend for the effort.

I think I’ll go try to write. NNWM starts today. 1700 words (2300 would be a lot better, because I need this done before the end of the month if at all possible, but 1700 failing all else!) or bust!