The Everywhereist

Why am I so obsessed with cake? BECAUSE CAKE.

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FAQ pages have always bothered me. They seem kind of lazy. Like, if someone goes through the trouble of sending you an email and asking you a question, the least you could do would be to answer them in kind, right?

That was before I started getting emails.

Holy cats. I can’t actually believe it, but after reading the unhinged and potentially litigious drivel on this site, people want to know more. They ask questions. Some of those questions are asked frequently.

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For once, they don’t charge you for the view.

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I’m a bargain-hunter. I’d like to think of this as one of my better qualities, instead of, as my husband puts it, “an acute kind of madness.” And granted, sometimes I do strange things to avoid spending money. Not unethical things, mind you. I’ve never shoplifted or stolen anything (okay, FINE, there was that one time), but I will go to ridiculous lengths to save a buck.

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Some of the replies to last Thursday’s post (via the comments, Twitter, and Facebook) hit me pretty hard. I have figured that several years of blogging would have thickened my skin, so my reaction surprised me (also surprising: when I got teary over an Olympics-themed Visa commercial. These damn steroids have turned me into a moody softy). I curled up into a ball and when Rand asked me what was wrong, all I could mutter was, “People on the internet are upset with me.”

And he had a good laugh, because when the sum total of your problems can be expressed thusly, THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH YOUR LIFE.

But in the midst of the occasionally-heated discussion, an important point came up: this sort of reservation-mishap happens a lot (a big thanks to reader kokopuff for making me aware of this). Sometimes it’s an intentional scam. Sometimes it’s just an honest clerical mistake (I want to give our hotel the benefit of the doubt). Either way, you need to protect yourself.

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Words are funny little things.

I know, because I spend most of my days wrestling with them, trying to manipulate them into what I want them to be, often to no avail. Have you ever tried chiseling someone’s likeness in a a hunk of jell-o? It’s something like that.

But I love them, and I can’t rightly abandon them, because my blog would be oh-so-boring without words. It would be nothing more than photos of cupcakes and me making out with my husband. (I realize it’s not much more than that now, but it has the potential to be more, thanks to words. Or so I tell myself.)

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Mmm ... "mit hackfleisch!"

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I’m not a big shopper.

Hold on just a sec, will you? My husband is reading over my shoulder, and has started laughing so hysterically at my opening sentence that I need to make sure he’s not gonna hyperventilate.

Yeah, apparently, he’s fine. The jerk.

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Who knew keeping your shoes on would be such a luxury?

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I am not a gambler. Should there be any doubts of this, note that I was in Vegas for two whole days and the greatest risk I took in a casino was ordering a savory crepe (don’t do it. Cheese is no substitute for Nutella, and anyone who says otherwise is likely trying to sell you something. Probably cheese).

But the TSA has turned me into someone who takes chances, who rolls the dice again and again, because if I win, I get a bit of humanity back. How? Via the TSA’s new PreCheck program.

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When I am hungry while traveling, things go downhill very quickly.

I become snappy and irritable and overly-sensitive. In a town like Munich, this can be problematic, because German isn’t exactly a delicate sounding language to begin with. Even when folks are being courteous (which they often are in Bavaria), I want to respond to them in one of two ways, depending on my level of hunger:

1.) Weep.

2.) Scream, “OH, YEAH? Well ‘ENTSCHULDIGUNG’ TO YOU, TOO, ASSHOLE.”

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This is how it begins.

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I have a bladder the size of a chipmunk’s.

No, no – stop praising me on how amazing this is. How it’s so ladylike and really quite Hollywood to have a bladder so svelte and small. That Angelina’s or Gwyneth’s is probably barely bigger than my own.

Because despite how glamorous it sounds, let me tell you: having an itsy-bitsy bladder is NOT as amazing as movies and TV would have you believe. It means that much of my and Rand’s travels are interrupted with side-quests to find toilets. That before we go anywhere – a flight, a drive, a short walk, or even if we are simply moving from the dining room to the living room – I need to run to the bathroom.

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