My embedded picture seems to have broken, so I decided to edit this post rather than post a new blog. Sorry, unsophisticated RSS readers.
So yeah, Christmas #3 went pretty darn good. Meghan & I went down to Georgia to celebrate the “official” Christmas. We flew down on the 21st and stayed until today (the 26th). Can I just say that I now officially hate airlines? Not airplanes, mind you, nor flying… I’m talking about airlines. The companies that “run” (Hah!) the service of flying people about the country. Something about the whole system just seems messed up to me. Considering how many people depend on this service for really important things, you’d think we wouldn’t let corporations dictate when we can and cannot fly. The Democrat in me thinks we should reform air travel into a public service. I know it would still suck, and we’d have to pay more taxes and whatnot, but I’d feel better knowing that some corporation can’t just decide to cancel a flight and tell me that I can’t go to Bosnia until a week from now, just because they feel like it.
Not that I’ll be flying to Bosnia anytime soon.
Yeah, so anyway, our first travel day was pretty crappy. And as much as I dislike airlines, I can’t really blame them for our issues on the 21st. Basically, what happened is that some fog rolled into Chicago and made it difficult for airplanes to land. So this caused what airlines like to call “delays”. Personally I think “massive uncertainty” would be more accurate. Our plane was scheduled to leave at 4:25pm. We got to the airport around 1:30 just to make sure we’d have plenty of time in case we ran into… *ahem*… delays. Turns out our plane didn’t end up leaving until after 6pm. So yeah, four and half hours of hanging out in a crowded and noisy airport. FUN STUFF. Meghan spent the time productively and figured out a Plan B in case we didn’t make our connection in Chicago. I basically just ended up listening to music on the iPod.
If you’re doing the math, I’m sure you can tell, leaving Minneapolis at 6pm, with a connection in Chicago at 7:40, it was a little bit tight. So, when we touched down in Chicago at 7:04pm, we were feeling pretty good. Although Meghan still insisted on booking it to the next gate, which we did. And we got there in plenty of time. About two and half hours before our plane ended up taking off, in fact. Yeah, more delays. This time, it was because the airline apparently misplaced our airplane.
So, we ended up not getting to Savannah until Dec 22nd, by about 34 minutes. And then it took about an hour for the airline to managed to get our bags off the plane and to the baggage claim area. And then it was a 40 minute drive to the Bonekat house. We finally go to bed around 3:30am. Oy. And a half. Hooray for the wonders of air travel!
So anyway, the next morning, Meghan had a 10am appointment at David’s Bridal to try on wedding dresses with her mom and sister. Her dad had a morning appointment to go golfing with her Aunt Joan’s friend Bob. So I got up about 20 after 10am, and had breakfast with Aunt Joan. Then I hooked up the Wii. hehe.
Most of the rest of the weekend was spent riding around in golf carts, playing tennis on the Wii, playing cards, and eating. Saturday night, we went to the Driftaway Cafe, which is a little bar/restaurant on Skidaway Island. They didn’t take reservations, and, since we were seven people, we ended up sitting at the bar for an hour or so. waitstaff were friendly, though, and we ended up talking about dog bites and scars*. Dinner was nice. I had fish & chips.
Sunday night, we had dinner at home, and then went on a pub crawl as part of a haunted tour of Savannah. Savannah is apparently known for it’s ghost population, so they have all sorts of activities related to galavanting about town and hearing ghost stories. This particular one was a two-hour tour, guided by a guy in a civil war uniform who drank and smoked a lot. Savannah has a law (or lack of law?) that makes it a-okay to walk around in the streets carrying alcoholic beverages, so it’s a popular sport to have a few at the bar, and then take one to go. So we started out at the Moon River Brewery, got a beer, which we drank half of while listening to guide tell us all about the haunted upper levels, and the other half while we walked to the next bar. We ended up visiting 4 bars (that were open), I believe, and by the end of the two hours, I have to admit, I was a bit drunk (which might have had something to do with the jack & cokes consumed prior to embarking on the tour). It was superfun and the tour guide looked like a younger version of Reuben. He made a lot of pop culture references that I seemed to be the only one to catch.
Since Monday was Christmas Eve, we of course went out to dinner again (this is the Bonekat tradition–dinner out on Christmas Eve, an early bedtime, and then presents in the morning). Meghan’s mom had made reservations but didn’t want to tell anyone where we were going. Meghan kept trying to get her to tell her (even bring out the sad eyes, only to be told that they only work on Ryan now), but she managed to keep the secret until about 3:30 that afternoon. Turns out, her choice was a Japanese steakhouse. This is a bit different than previous years, but she had a hard time finding somewhere in Savannah that was open on Christmas Even. Apparently Georgians like to stay in. I thought the Japanese steakhouse to be a bold choice, and enjoyed the meal quite a bit. It was only my second time to such a place, and I really enjoy watching people cook, so it was fun. I used to not like any Asian food whatsoever, but since we moved right down the road from Thanh Do, I’ve found that I really do enjoy it from time to time. Not that a Japanese steakhouse is in anyway similar to Thanh Do. We weren’t eating wontons, after all.
Anyway, this particular steakhouse seemed to have a couple issues. The food was good, but the service sucked. The waitress we had seemed to get flustered really easily, and she had the patience of a one-celled organism that only lives for 3 seconds (I forget the name). The other issue was that our chef was exceptionally bad at speaking English. He was trying to joke around, and he tried to ask us where we were from, but I don’t think he even really understood that. Not surprisingly, he screwed up the steak order a bit as a result (rare? medium rare? medium? Whatever, it’s all cooked!). Still, it was fun.
Okay, so now I’m finally to Christmas Day. You still with me? On to the loot!
So, Meghan & I had had our little Christmas the day before we went to Georgia. Meghan got me a beer-brewing equipment kit. It’s one of the few occasions I can remember that I actually got what I asked for from anybody. I haven’t opened all of my presents for the year yet, but I can already say with confidence that nothing will top it. I can not express how excited I am to brew beer!!!
So anyway, sorry to just toss that into the Georgia story, but what can you do…
Anyway, I think I came out pretty good. I got Mario Party 8, some gift certificates (including some Target ones that were specifically earmarked for purchase of a Wii game of my choice), some lounging pants, and cologne. Meghan & I gave out various gifts, all of which I’m pretty proud of. Melissa wanted the Nike+iPod kit thingy (look it up if you don’t know what it is), and I always love giving Apple-related products to people. We got Meghan’s mom a shirt and sweatshirt from the Life Is Good collection. I’m proud of that because I totally went all What Not To Wear when we were at the store picking it out. And we got her dad an outdoor radio for his golf cart that turned out to be comically huge. He wanted a Wii, and I’m sad we couldn’t accommodate him, but dammit, Nintendo just can’t produce the things fast enough.
We also gave Aunt Joan and Meghan’s parents a nice framed engagement photo, and Meghan got other stuff for everybody, but I can tell you’re already tired of hearing about this shit and are frantically wondering what that star (*) up by the Driftaway Cafe story was all about.
Well, I’ll get to that in a second, okay? First I want to issue a public thank you to the Bonekat family for including me in their Christmas. I’m not yet technically part of the family, but they really made me feel welcome and at home.
Okay, here we go:
* – yeah, so dog bites. I warn you, this is a sad story, and I’m not going to go into a whole of detail. Basically, Meghan’s parents were dogsitting a cute little dog named Kelly for the first few days we were there. They had a friend who had a stroke the week before Christmas and went into a coma. Her husband needed to be at the hospital, so Kit & Judi volunteered to take care of the dog. (The friend ended up dying two days before we went home (yeah, Christmas Eve *sigh*)).
Anyway, Kit & Judi already have a dog of their own, Mika. Mika & Kelly got along for the most part, except when it came to the dog toys. On Saturday, I was playing with the dogs and I made the mistake of holding onto the toy too long and tossing it in an area where both dogs got to it at the same time. As a result, they started fighting over the toy. Kelly latched onto Mika’s neck and tore out some fur. I tried to separate them as best I could, but Kelly managed to slip my grip and tried to get back at Mika. At this point, Meghan stepped in. Unfortunately she somehow got positioned so she was literally standing in between the dogs. As a result, when Kelly went to try a bite Mika again, she missed, and dug right into Meghan’s knee instead. So Meghan will have a pretty impressive-looking scar after that heals up. D’oh!
By the by, our flight back to Minneapolis was smooth as silk. We were at the Savannah airport way too early, and our layover in Chicago was way too long, but that was all planning on our part. The airlines managed to get our bags to the baggage claim the instant we got there and we were out of the airport within about 20 minutes of landing, so all-in-all, that’s pretty awesome.)