While carrying my mattress over the top of our heads down on of the busiest streets in the Montreal village, my roommate who was carrying the front part tripped and as he tripped the mattress spun in the air and flew over his head. Somehow and I’m still not sure exactly how this happened, but my roommate feel unto the mattress. Funniest thing I had ever seen, although at the time it was more of a I’m going to laugh until my laugh turns into crying out of desperation.

When I got married I lived in South Carolina and my husband lived in San Diego, but was due to report to Virginia Beach on new orders a week later. So after returning from our honeymoon cruise we were at the Tampa airport trying to catch our flights back to SC so we could turn around and get on ANOTHER flight to CA to meet the movers coming to pack his apartment and then we would drive cross-country to VA (where, I might add, we had no place to live – we figured we’d just “figure it out when we got there”).

Due to some complete fucking fuckery on the part of Delta airlines, our return flights from Florida had been canceled (they accused us of not checking into our original flight as I screamed at them THEN HOW DID I GET HERE???) and we had to wait 18 hours for available seats to the tiny Charleston airport.

It then occurred to me that if a return ticket gets canceled for not checking into the first leg of a flight, I was NOT going to be getting on our flight the next day to CA, as my husband had purchased two round trip tickets instead of one round trip and one one-way (we honestly thought that was a good idea at the time).

So hubby takes off to CA figuring I’ll just catch the next flight we can afford. Luckily my landlord let me stay in my already packed and vacant apartment overnight while I tracked down four different flights that would eventually get me to CA, where my husband was supposed to pick me up at the San Diego airport.

Unluckily, the baggage handlers had stolen half his stuff out of his checked bag including the keys to his apartment and car. So I sat at the airport for four hours waiting for him to get a locksmith to make new keys so he could get into his house and get his spare car key…which turned out to be just a valet key for the trunk…so I waited some more until another locksmith could make him a car key.

I sort of figure if we could survive all that in our first two weeks of marriage, we’re gonna make it.

Sorry that was so long but I swear it felt like the most endless horrible nightmare ever at the time – and now it’s just funny.

Thanks for the stories and good wishes. We can certainly use them. We’re able to access the kitties for food and medicine(hyperthyroid tonkinese means meds morning and night), and I managed to catch a little nap in my own bed this afternoon. Bliss.

We understand there are a flurry of meetings with the super, the owner, some architechts, the Dept of Buildings people, and probably your mama going on this weekend, and maybe we’ll know our fate Monday. We’ve had our September rent refunded, and we’re looking at apartments, but being sorely disappointed, because our current (?) place is seriously huge and well-located and we were paying below-market. …and I guess that ultimately you get what you pay for.

We’ve had lots of offers of places to crash, and we’re looking for a hotel that accepts cats (and isn’t a quazillion dollars). Not sure what’s going to happen–if we can get back in a month, we might ride it out. If we find an awesome new place, maybe we’ll be moving next week. If, maybe, might. If, maybe, might.
*applies cold cloth to forehead, breathes into paper bag*

I’ve had a bunch of crazy experiences that are funny in retrospect (heck, most were even humorous at the time), but here’s my best:

Last year, I spent 3 months at a remote site in Nicaragua doing my dissertation field research. Think no electricity (except a couple hours a day by generator), 4 hours from the nearest town by boat, no regular transportation, poor phone reception (and no internet), etc. The work I did at this site is absolutely critical and central to my dissertation research, and couldn’t be done anywhere else.

A month into my stint, we’re running low on food, drinking water, and gas for the generator, so the owner of the place takes off for the weekend to stock up. Because my bank transfer to cover the fees for my 3-month stay there (of >$5000, as I had a crew of up to 4 assistants with me at any given time) wasn’t going to go through until later in the week, she borrows a couple hundred bucks from me to “buy groceries”.

Needless to say, she takes off and promptly disappears from the face of the earth – doesn’t come back when she said she would, doesn’t call, doesn’t answer her cell, her son doesn’t answer his cell, doesn’t send food or water… So, here I am, in the middle-of-nowhere-Nicaragua, speaking really crappy Spanish, waiting for the arrival of 2 new assistants, with no food, water, or electricity, and with staff who haven’t been paid in >1 month and are ready to bail. I also had been alone (previous assistants had to leave early), but thank Maude I had met a cute local guy in the nearest town who dropped everything to come out and work as my assistant. He ended up saving the day, keeping me up-to-date on what was going on and what the staff were saying, and convincing them to stay on until we could figure something out.

We ended up abandoning my research (which, btw, required that someone be onsite every single day) to go to the nearest town and get money, groceries, water, and gas – and being the remote site it is, these errands took 3 days! Meanwhile, CuteGuy and I played private eye, running around town quizzing all his friends and acquaintances about what had happened to the AWOL hotel owner. We come to find out she was, as I’d figured, off partying it up in Managua with my money. Thanks to a mutual friend of CuteGuy and AWOLWoman, we ended up sending a Colonel in the Nicaraguan army (yes, really!) to her house in Managua to order her back to the hotel to fulfill her obligations! She stalled, of course, but sent food and finally came back a couple weeks later…along with this very same Colonel – which really made for some crunchy socializing, as you might imagine.

A few days later, she screamed at CuteGuy and I for hours then proceeded to kick CuteGuy off-site for “ruining her reputation” – this from a woman known as “La Bruja” for her temper and mistreatment of employees, and our “crime” was telling people in town the simple truth: we had been left at this remote site without food, water, or gasoline, after I’d paid for accommodations. But I ended up finishing all my research, and got back all the money she owed me. She thought she was pulling one over on the dumb gringa, but she ended up getting quite a surprise!

It was crazy stressful at the time – if it hadn’t been for CuteGuy, I certainly would have had to leave, and I don’t know what would have come of my PhD work – but now it makes for one heck of a story!

PhDork – if you ever decide to venture south I can offer up an air mattress, too.

A few years ago I attended my cousin’s wedding in a small town in SC. I had just started a new job and did not want to do a whole lotta driving in one weekend. So I opted for the flying into a small town airport route.

It’s time for me to leave to go home on Sunday and misc. family members drop me off at said small town airport where I promptly discover that they’ve canceled my first of two flights to Atlanta and there won’t be another one until the next day. They give all of us the option of either waiting until the next day or them paying for us to take a taxi two hours to Atlanta. About six of us opt for the taxi. The taxi van shows up, we pile in, and get on the road. But this taxi van is making HORRIBLE noises. Like I’m really frightened to be on the highway in something that sounds so bad kind of noises. And finally it breaks down on the side of the highway in the middle of nowhere Georgia with smoke coming out of it.

So we’re stranded and it’s nearing the time of all of our connecting flights and we’re panicking. The four dudes in the group decide to hop in the car with a random guy who offers them a ride to the Atlanta airport at the rest stop we all walk to. I don’t think this is such a good idea. I call my bro, who happens to also live in the middle of nowhere Georgia, who drives 45 min to pick me and the other woman from the taxi up and drive us to the airport in Atlanta. We arrive just as my flight home (the last one of the evening) departs.

Well, now I have to fly standby. The people at Delta book me for an 11AM flight and inform me that I should come back to the counter at 5AM to see if I can get on the 7AM flight. Bro has gone home and now the only prospect is spending the night on the floor of the airport. At about 3AM I decide to call my boss and email the people I work with most directly to tell them that because I am stuck in Atlanta I will not be in on Monday. I am back at the Delta counter at 5AM when they open up and in fact they do get me on the first morning flight. In first class. Which I didn’t really get to fully appreciate as I was passed out cold for the duration of the flight home.

I’d just finished three weeks exchange program in Japan, and me and the Japanese girl were checking in for our three weeks in Holland. Everything’s fine, we have plenty of time, it all goes smoothly, until we get to customs. Suddenly, she realises she doesn’t have her passport.

She panics and I try to get some help but I don’t speak much Japanese. We manage to get everything explained and people start searching, with no luck. By this time the plane leaves in half an hour so they tell me to just go on ahead and they’ll keep looking. If they don’t find the passport, well… She’d have to come on a later flight.

So I sit in the plane, nervous, because she was so upset and she’s a year younger than me and all this is just stressful. Just before the thing takes off, literally, everyone’s in there with their seatbelts on and they’re starting get ready to go to the runway, in comes my Japanese friend! They’d managed to find her passport just in time. Everyone is happy.

Then we get to the airport in Germany where my mother would pick us up and we wait an hour or so until I call her. She though we’d arrive the day after and she’s at some party. It’s getting a little late and we’re a little jetlagged so I try to get a hotel room. I’m not 18 yet so I can’t.

Eventually my dad raced over (miraculously without speeding tickets) and brings us home. Not as disastrous as some upthread, but it was still a long day. There are a lot of passport troubles in here, huh?

Also, unrelated, I think I commented here before, and then forgot about it. My memory’s rotten but I’ll try to keep an eye on it this time.

So he cuts that all to marinate overnight washes his hands. Bed time rolls around and we wander off to bed, and things get amorous.

He slid his “clean” hands between my legs and at first I think, “ooh that’s warm” and then a few seconds later “Oh my god I’m burning”. I jump out of bed and run to the shower to put cold cold water on my now burning girl bits.

My husband is traumatised and crying because he’s hurt me and is terrified that he may have done some damage. I’m laughing because I know how funny this is going to be later.

While crying my husband runs his chilli soaked “clean” hands over his nose and his eyes and now they’re burning too. Eventually with application of bi-carb and much cold water, the burning eases.

He never believed he’d find it funny ever. Now we laugh about it every time we cook with chilli.

@ Cait Japanese immigration are dreadful aren’t they?

There are huge numbers of people working illegally mostly in the nightclub/adult entertainment industries but try and get on with some legitimate studying and you’re gonna have to jump through more hoops than a showdog.

My own experience is not awful but quite funny. I went to Japan a few years ago to spend three months living in a 9msq concrete cell, working in a bar and writing.

On the way into Japan with my request for a tourist visa (no application necessary just turn up) I was stopped. I was taken to one side and asked lots of questions by a little uniformed man with a moustache and a slightly careworn look. I blatantly was about to break visa regs and work but I calmly lied that I had enough money saved in the bank to support myself and that I was here to research my book. No no, I wouldn’t be working, not I.

The fella scratched his head and thought about it then he asked me to wait while he went and got a woman. That’s right. Because I was young and female he didn’t think he could make the judgement call. He didn’t trust his male weakness for young women not to cut me too much slack. So he went and got a woman to interview me on the grounds that she wouldn’t be fooled. This was apparently acceptable procedure.

The woman gave me a scary look then asked me the same questions as the man and swallowed the same pile of horse shit. I got my visa.

I’m having a bit of a block on the look-back-on-this-and-laugh thing, most of the things I can think about are not long stories, but relatively short experiences (like a 30 hour train ride to Kiev on a Ukrainian train, complete with oriental carpets in the bathrooms that were soaking.wet. by the end–great to tell about afterwards but not so fun when you are trying not to drink to space out your bathroom trips…).