On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: Not giving up my window seat to a lady with a baby. There was like 5oo kids (ok, more like 30, but that is still a large number of children on a small airplane) on my flight from Copenhagen to Chicago. One of them (of course) was sitting next to me, and 3 hours in the flight attendants finally realized that there was an open seat a few rows back in the middle aisle and asked me to switch with someone. I thought about it and finally decided on no. I have given up my seat now several times to people with children, and I always suffer for it. Where's my karma?!! Seriously. I am not getting up, moving all my stuff, just to get a middle seat.. forget it. Don’t look at me like that! I requested the window seat on purpose.. months ago! I wasn’t a complete jerk about it though and asked if the lady who had the aisle seat next to that empty middle seat would switch an aisle seat for an aisle seat, which makes more sense anyways. So don’t worry, the lady with the baby got her 2 seats and I didn’t have to move, so everyone was happy (ish).
On the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: Props to my mom for waiting for me at the Detroit Airport. I was supposed to get in at midnight, but there was a snowstorm in Chicago, and so I was delayed for about 3 hours. It sucked and they made us change the gate about 4 times, but considering all but 4 flights out of Chicago where cancelled at the time, and there was a 1/2 mile long line for the United counter, I was happy just to be getting the heck out of there. So my mom came in and waited since I didn’t have a cell phone for the U.S. Also, my mom somehow managed to get out of the parking garage without paying, which was pretty awesome.
On the third day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: More snow. Lots of it. Over a foot, easily. It wouldn’t have been so bad except that Detroit's economy is so bad that they have completely cut the snow removal budget. No salt trucks, no plow trucks, nothing. My family and I were supposed to go the Pistons game on Friday night (where they went into double overtime!) but the roads were too bad to drive, so we watched it from home.
On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: Puppies. I met Jacob at Bdubs (aka- Buffalo Wild Wings... yumm!!) for dinner on Saturday night. We were approached by a girl who wanted to take a picture for social life in the metro Detroit area and this is how the conversation went according to Jacob:
Lady: Can I take your picture for the uhaps website to promote social life in Detroit?
Me: Sure, but neither of us live in Michigan.
Lady: Silence
Me: (to Jacob) Oh well, "Do I have anything in my teeth?"
Jacob: No, but you have an onion ring in your hand! (Note- he didn’t say this, otherwise I am pretty sure I would have put the onion ring down. Maybe.)
After dinner we walked over to a pet store and played with puppies that we would never adopt because they come from puppy mills (But they are still cute and fun to play with!). Then we went to the mall and looked at more puppies and made fun of the people adopting for not knowing enough to not adopt from puppy mills. (Not too much unlike our new vice president elect who made the mistake.) Oh, and we got ice cream. Best faux high school date ever.
On the fifth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: Even more snow. On Tuesday when the Pistons where playing at home again. This time I begged my parents and they decided to risk the bad weather and go anyways. So my dad tried to get tickets on Stubhub at work but the website kept saying to try again. Well after 2 hours of this, he decided to drive from work to the stubhub office which is near the Palace (where the Pistons play) and we would meet him there. He got there around 7:30 but they couldnt sell him tickets, and told him he had to purchase them online, but luckily there was a computer there. So he keeps on trying and again, the stubhub sight is down. My mom, brother and I get there at 7:45 and finally call the number and get through. The lady gets all of my dads credit card information, goes to make the purchase right as the clock hits 8:00. Game time. No tickets can be sold after game time. So we have just driven 2 cars in the terrible weather for over an hour and nothing. My dad went to thank the people at the stubhub office for their help and said, hey- here are 4 free tickets! They were crappy seats, but we didnt care, we just wanted to go at this point.
So we drive to the Palace and my dad drops us off while he goes to park the car. My mom, Matt and I try to get in and our tickets are rejected. We went over to customer service and apparently these tickets have already been used 10 minutes ago. Great. We wait for my dad who manages to somehow get past the ticket check with a bad ticket, and then started looking into buying tickets. They claim that the whole upper deck (cheap seats) are sold out, and that there are not 4 tickets together for sale. He gave us his employee discount, but the tickets were still going to be expensive for a game that is no almost halfway over. So my parents are trying to decide what to do when a random dude walks up to Matt and I and says, need tickets? Shocked, we mutter that we need 4 and he goes, here you go- 4 lower bowl seats. Merry Christmas! And takes off. Sweet! So somehow we managed to get 2 sets of free tickets in 1 night. And the 2nd set actually worked. :)
And they beat the Bulls! Huzzah!
On the sixth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: Christmas! Grandma and Grandpa came over for our traditional Christmas dinner which is a usually a smorgasbord of randomness. This year we had steak, shrimp, scallops, lamb, salads, potato latkes, and some moose that I smuggled into the country from Sweden. Soo good!
On the seventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: After Christmas shopping with my mom. I wanted to buy everything because it was sooo soo cheap, especially compared to prices in Sweden. Got a sweet new leather jacket though as a late Christmas present... I cant complain.
On the eighth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: MSU Reunion at the Post! It was great to see a few friends from college on Friday if only for a little bit. Although out of a group of 12 or so, only 1 person was still living in Michigan. Which means we complained a lot about still being able to smoke in bars which is just plain awful.
Liz, Me, Andrew, Laura, and Michelle:
On the eleventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: Too much stuff to pack! Not that I am complaining, but I was overweight by 13 pounds and they wanted to charge my $125! So I repacked everything at the ticket counter and carried quite a bit with me through security just so that I didnt have to pay that crazy charge. I looked ridiculous, but $125?! Seriously?!
On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: Jetlag. It is so great to be back with Blake in Stockholm, but we really cant sleep on normal Stockholm time. The earliest we have woken up all week has been 1 pm. This is getting out of control!!! And we are sooo tired!
2 comments:
I sat through 12 things your supposed "true love gave to you" and not one included the used Ninja Turtles deck of cards (where the missing ace of ninja stars and the 7 of nunchucks were replaced with the two jokers) or the 2006 calendar of "Puppies with Hats".
I don't even know why I try.
Funny how Karma has a way of working things out...Piston tickets, holiday with family and friends, and dodging a $125 charge. Not bad at all. Welcome back to Sweden. Gott nytt år!!
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