I write this, apparently, from the past sitting in my rather pleasant hotel room in Tucson, Arizona. That's "Toooooo....saaaaaooohhnnnn" for all you phonetic plebs out there.
The blog title kindly comes from my darling husband who pointed out that, as it is 20 hours later in NZ, I am living his sloppy seconds. He has yet to tell me how the day pans out.
Blog-wise, as I am paying for 24 hours of in-room internet, I might as well use it!!
Some water under the bridge since the last blog. Hundreds of aftershocks. Just checked the count, 1911 as of now. Sold the house. Now married to an unemployed bum, although to his credit, the bum helped the house sale go smoothly and is looking for a job. Moved to a serviced apartment after all our stuff was stolen by two chaps who tidily wrapped it all beforehand and billed us for storage. Placed my baby girl in kitty storage, although she has been busted out twice and smuggled into the apartment :) We try to arrange all of life's major stressors to occur at once.
So, America. Yep, first time here. Gee, it's pretty big huh? Flights were tolerable, although I think I clocked up 23 hours of travel and time in airports and 34 hours without sleep. Apparently this is how you conquer jetlag - don't sleep and crash for 10 hours at local time! What a melee at LA domestic though. Took over an hour to get through LOCAL customs. Sheesh, apparently you can offend less people coming into the bloody country. And "flowing clothing", read, "not US-style clings to every angle to get a better hourly rate", leads to a patdown. Clearly I'm a terrorist. I was however impressed to find myself and baggage in Tucson as predicted. Was expecting some luggage drama as United Express falls into the "cheap" airline bracket. Maybe that will be saved for the return leg?
I'm here for a course and conference which starts tomorrow and work have checked me in to a nice hotel which is grand - including an extra day so they're not wasting their money for a jetlagged staff member to sleep during a training course!!
It's been the odd things so far - light switches go on the wrong way (maybe hotel specific!!). Stressing about the tip thing (too much? too little? this person? that person?). Seeing endless land during the across country flight from LA to Tucson all the way to the horizon. Road lanes that are wider than NZ's - now I get why US vehicles look so ridiculously big in NZ, they look fine here! Coke/Pepsi bottles that look small as they're missing a few mL.
Walked in to town from the hotel this morning. Beautiful weather (27ish). Took nearly 2 hours to walk into town and there were no cafes/businesses open and buggerall to look at! Not to mention running out of pavements. Clearly this is why shopping happens in the malls here as the bloody city centre shuts down.
Still, the people have been friendly which is nice. Taxi driver has pointed me in the direction of some malls (cheers) that I feel I should visit so I can say I have done America with cheese (had one in a breakfast panini at the airport, yeerch) and mall shopping. Not to mention a free bottle of wine and some fruit courtesy of the concierge after we had some accent issues and a chuckle. Very nice :)
Course starts tomorrow, damn, have to earn my place here!
The Rose
