December 24, 2023

🎅🏻A Most Unreliable Narrator Issue #166: Viva Las Vegas🎄

So much alcohol; so little time

Welcome to A Most Unreliable Narrator, the slice-of-life newsletter of GenXer around town, Lisa Rabey. I talk about anything and everything with a bit of swears. I’m glad you’re here.

Dear Internet,

I’ve been working on this week’s newsletter for the last few days when it became clear that the topic was better suited to send on New Year’s Eve. Re: Intentions over resolutions and why I’m choosing former rather than latter. (Great Kate, is it supposed to be “latter” or “later?” “Latter” sounds right but grammar check keeps telling me “later.”)

Moving right along.

Last weekend, Mr Lisa and I headed to Vegas to hang out with The Canadians, Whisky Karen and her husband, and I roped Brendan in as well. Later, we meet up with Lee and his wife on Saturday for breakfast.

(I met Mr Lisa, Brendan, and Lee around the same time online in the late ‘90s. I haven’t seen Brendan in 10 years, and I’ve never met Lee in person.)

It was crazy to see everyone in one location. Lee gives good hugs, btw.

We didn’t hang out much with Lee and his wife other than a breakfast date, which was sad, but we filled our free time drinking and carousing Vegas. We did not, shockingly, gamble. I drank too much and did not tag team with water so my insides shriveled up and dried out. This week, nothing but coffee, tea, and water by the gallons. No pop including sugar free versions. It’s Thursday and I’m starting to feel hydrated again. (Drinking water is one of the top priorities after fat girl surgery but even if you have not had more than ½ your stomach removed, you should still be drinking water!)

(And I know someone is going to come at me with the “coffee dehydrates you” comment and I’ll beat you to it: you do not want to meet me without caffeine.)

The Canadians have direct flight to Vegas from Calgary and they assumed the rest of us also had direct flights. Only Brendan was a direct flight since he was coming from the Bay Area. The rest of us had connections coming so our travel time took forever. Whisky Karen and her husband and The Canadians got into Vegas on Thursday while Mr Lisa, myself, and Brendan got into Vegas Friday morning. Mr Lisa and I have sworn when we do a couple’s trip again (and six of us have already started planning for 2024), it will be places with direct flights only. We were up at 3:20 a.m. EST to catch a flight at 5:37 a.m. EST to arrive in Vegas at 10 a.m. PST. NEVER AGAIN!

So yes, we had a good time even though Mr Lisa and I are not fans of Vegas. We said goodbye Sunday morning after breakfast with Whisky Karen and her husband with The Canadians coming down to say their goodbyes before Mr Lisa and I grabbed an Uber to the airport to head home.

And this is where shit got fucked up.

Our flight was scheduled to leave Sunday 11:54 a.m. PST and we’d arrive in Kentucky at 10 p.m. EST with a three-hour layover in Denver.

Around 10:30 – 11 a.m., gate crew announced flight was going to be delayed due to a mechanical failure, but the part was at the airport so at best, it would be ½ hour delay. Then we were delayed again and again. Finally, around 1 p.m. PST, gate crew announced the flight was now reschedule to 7 p.m. PST and over 30 connections were going to be missed.

As you would expect, no one was fucking happy.

Mr Lisa pulled a Chad and was directed to United’s app to reschedule the flight. The app gave you the option to do text or voice and he picked voice. The customer service agent was rude and kept insisting we give her all the information via text. What is the fucking point of having a voice support option if you’re sending everyone to text?

We finally got rebooked for a flight to leave Denver on Monday 10 a.m. MST and we’d arrive in Kentucky at 2 p.m. EST. I called Thursday’s boarding to let them know we’d be a few hours late. No problem says they.

We board the Denver flight at 7 p.m. and flight attendant tells us that we should have received texts notifying us of hotel accommodations. We did not receive such text. We were then told to go to a page on United’s website for compensation which turned out to be a $50 credit towards the next united flight and you cannot join the coupons together.

No one apologized by this point for United’s fuck up.

We get to Denver, and for those of us who did not receive this magical text, we were directed to United’s customer service kiosk to schedule a hotel paid for by United. We were also given four $15 meal vouchers (two for each of us) which were set up as credit cards. The credit card number was printed on the voucher along with CVV, expiration date, and billing zip.

We grab the shuttle to our hotel, check-in, arrange our shuttle back the following morning. We have not eaten all day other than a few snacks at the airport lounge we had access to and the only thing open for delivery was Papa John’s pizza which is gross but hey, beggars cannot be choosers. Grub Hub does not allow you to stack payments so we ended up paying for the pizza out of pocket.

Mr Lisa goes down to the desk and picks up a few bottles of Gatorade and pays for it with a voucher. At least that was accepted.

Another thing is that if you do not spend the entirety of the voucher, you lose the balance. So, yep. Fuck that.

We’re up and ready to go for our 7:30 a.m. pick up and head to the airport. Mr Lisa wants a Jamba Juice. Yes, Jamba Juice accepts meal vouchers, so we order our drinks and I input the first voucher and it’s accepted. I type in the second voucher to cover the difference and it won’t take after a few tries so I have the Jamba Juice employee tap it in and that takes. He then asks for the remainder of the payment which should have been covered already so in short, we paid for the difference and one of the vouchers was empty.

(I had a Chad behind me and I apologized and told him what was going on. He did not seem pleased. Like look m-fers, it’s 8 a.m. and I’m grumpy after a few hours of sleep. Fuck off.)

We sat at the gate and left on time. We get back to Kentucky, pick up Thursday, get home, and go out for dinner. Our adventures are over.

We took Monday and Tuesday off so recovery wasn’t rushed but still, no one from United apologized and that set Mr Lisa off. He’s going to do a Karen (worse than a Chad) this week and get better compensation from United.

Hopefully. He has the voice of God on the phone so this should prove interesting.

Not surprisingly, we refuse to use United in the future, however, when looking for flights to Ottawa, Ontario (Mr Lisa wants to museum hop), the only American airline coming up in Google Flights is United. I refuse to believe this so when I have energy again, I’ll find a fucking airline that won’t bend us over without lube.

That’s my tale of woe for the week.

Tl;dr: visiting with friends and family in Vegas was nice but arrival and departure was not.

The Canadians and us swapped goodies. Tracie really likes Trader Joe’s beauty products and I adore President’s Choice chocolate chip cookies so a swap was made. We bequeathed everyone a bag of modjeskas since it’s a Louisville confection and you can’t get it elsewhere. It was happily accepted.

(The Canadians also made gift bags of recovery items like eye masks, Pepto Bismol, and the like. We are eternally grateful for their generosity.)

#

I hope you have a merry holiday season. We’re heading to Mr Lisa’s aunt’s house for gift swapping and tamales. Should be a good time. /s

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Wonderful Thing

Gravol

For quite some time now, I have problems sleeping through the night. It’s not just getting up to use the restroom, because that does happen, but it’s getting up and staying awake for hours. The other day, I woke up at 4 a.m., read for four hours and fell back asleep at 8 a.m. I eventually woke up at 12:30 p.m. I was so pissed. Thank fuck it was on the weekend and did not jack up my work day.

I was relating this to Tracie and she asked me if I have used Gravol. Nay, says I. Never heard of it.

She gives me one pill on Friday night and lo! I slept through the entire night. I have had zero success with melatonin and the prescribed drugs I’ve been given. Nothing seems to work. She gave me the rest of the bottle which I have been doling out every night. (It looks like it’s a Canadian company but I can get it via Amazon; yay for me.)

I don’t know what the ingredients mixed together do since it does contain melatonin, but I do not care. It’s now part of my nighttime drug regime and it’s just a blessing I can sleep through the night and not wake up ornery and tired.

lisa x

(Fuck fascists and Nazis!)

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