I get to fly, I get to fly, I get to fly. . . .
That's me being extremely excited and jumping up and down inside. I was talking about flying with one of the guests that just arrived and I told him I had considered getting my pilot's license in the past but wasn't able to do it. He asked if I had ever been in a small plane and when I said no he said he'd be glad to take me up! woooohoooooooOO!!! He's part of the 6 man party that flew up in two small planes from California, so he's got a little plane here at the Soldotna airport.
Oh man, you have no idea how excited I am. I actually get to fly the plane while up there, too. Now we just need a nice day within the next week and I'll be all set.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Minnesota Mantown
I finally figured out what the deal was with the Nestles booking. I was confused because it was booked for 4, but I kept seeing different people at different times. I was really wondering if I was starting to lose my mind or something. Turns out Nestles sent some guys on a fishing trip as a pat on the back and they had a big pow-wow here one night. After the pow-wow, the Nestles guys couldn't stay for the remainder of the trip because something came up. The boss, however, could stay, and he did. He also called his Father, Stepfather and Uncle and told them to come on up to do some fishing for a few days in Alaska because the cabin was paid for anyways, so why not? They were all from Oregon.
The uncle made me laugh because he was sort of incoherent. I was sitting at their table figuring out their bill and he was the only other one in there at the moment, sitting in a chair across the room. He said something I didn't hear, so I replied, "what was that?" and he looked confused that I was asking him what he said. We had one of those awkward exchanges where we What-ed eachother back and forth until I finally said, "I thought you were talking to me, but I didn't hear what you said, so I was just asking you to repeat. . ." His reply was, "I was talking just now?" He was genuinely surprised that he had just been talking. oooooookay then. He was a little odd, but all in all he meant well.
Right now the party animals from Minnesota are sitting by the fire. It's a family trip for the men of the family. The Grandfather, his three sons and two of their kids (The kids aren't little kids, though, they're probably 20 at the youngest). The Grandfather definitely has a favorite Grandkid, though! I see them rolling together often. The other day they knocked on my door just to chat, which was colorful. They're a bit crude, but I kinda like it. They actually remind me of a sector of my own family which I thoroughly enjoy. The grandfather definitely qualifies as a dirty old man, but nothing I can't handle. The other day one of his sons was over asking me about the grill and the grandfather saw from across the way that he was talking to me so he said, "hey! That's my girlfriend!" Yesterday he said, "I like the way those pants are fitting. . ." I gave him a dirty look and shot back, "You're a dirty old man." What a way to talk to a guest, right? His sons got a kick out of that one. They told me I'm absolutely correct and also gave me permission to smack him if I'm so inclined the next time he says something. He's all talk.
Don't worry, all you high anxiety parties out there that are worried about my safety - If he isn't all talk, I'll douse him with pepper spray in a heartbeat!
The uncle made me laugh because he was sort of incoherent. I was sitting at their table figuring out their bill and he was the only other one in there at the moment, sitting in a chair across the room. He said something I didn't hear, so I replied, "what was that?" and he looked confused that I was asking him what he said. We had one of those awkward exchanges where we What-ed eachother back and forth until I finally said, "I thought you were talking to me, but I didn't hear what you said, so I was just asking you to repeat. . ." His reply was, "I was talking just now?" He was genuinely surprised that he had just been talking. oooooookay then. He was a little odd, but all in all he meant well.
Right now the party animals from Minnesota are sitting by the fire. It's a family trip for the men of the family. The Grandfather, his three sons and two of their kids (The kids aren't little kids, though, they're probably 20 at the youngest). The Grandfather definitely has a favorite Grandkid, though! I see them rolling together often. The other day they knocked on my door just to chat, which was colorful. They're a bit crude, but I kinda like it. They actually remind me of a sector of my own family which I thoroughly enjoy. The grandfather definitely qualifies as a dirty old man, but nothing I can't handle. The other day one of his sons was over asking me about the grill and the grandfather saw from across the way that he was talking to me so he said, "hey! That's my girlfriend!" Yesterday he said, "I like the way those pants are fitting. . ." I gave him a dirty look and shot back, "You're a dirty old man." What a way to talk to a guest, right? His sons got a kick out of that one. They told me I'm absolutely correct and also gave me permission to smack him if I'm so inclined the next time he says something. He's all talk.
Don't worry, all you high anxiety parties out there that are worried about my safety - If he isn't all talk, I'll douse him with pepper spray in a heartbeat!
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Bubba Gump. . . Salmon?
You know that scene in Forrest Gump where Bubba is telling Forrest all the ways you can prepare shrimp? That's how I feel about Salmon here. These days I constantly feel like I'm in a movie of some sort. In the past week I've come into contact with (haven't eaten all of it, thank you very much) Salmon spread(eww), Salmon Dip(eww), Smoked salmon, salmon with butter and dill, salmon with spinach feta and sundried tomatoes, salmon with coconut batter crust, blackened salmon, salmon pasta salad (eww), and one other type I can't remember the preparation for. I mean, really, people?! I realize this is the salmon fishing capital of the world, but can we calm down a bit? With all the salmon I've seen I'm actually somewhat surprised there isn't a large group here that doesn't like salmon because they're just plain sick of it.
I do have to say, though, that the salmon with feta, sundried tomato and spinach was delicious. I was told it was blue cheese when it was given to me, but that was a lie. I was happy it was feta. Very delicious, which I was a little surprised by because I've been quite limited in my salmon experimentation in the past.
That said, I'm thinking of making some salmon using some ginger I have tonight. Deeeeeelicious. The super fresh salmon here is really just so good. Not a trace of fishy taste at all, it's more meaty. It's possible to get fresh salmon elsewhere, but it's usually frozen, etc. I think the key difference goes beyond freshness, actually. One of the fishermen here was talking about one particularly nice salmon he caught that he'll cook and then some others whose coloring wasn't as great so he would end up smoking those. The guys here catch so many fish that they just pick and choose which they want to keep based on quality, which makes for some damned good eatin'!
I do have to say, though, that the salmon with feta, sundried tomato and spinach was delicious. I was told it was blue cheese when it was given to me, but that was a lie. I was happy it was feta. Very delicious, which I was a little surprised by because I've been quite limited in my salmon experimentation in the past.
That said, I'm thinking of making some salmon using some ginger I have tonight. Deeeeeelicious. The super fresh salmon here is really just so good. Not a trace of fishy taste at all, it's more meaty. It's possible to get fresh salmon elsewhere, but it's usually frozen, etc. I think the key difference goes beyond freshness, actually. One of the fishermen here was talking about one particularly nice salmon he caught that he'll cook and then some others whose coloring wasn't as great so he would end up smoking those. The guys here catch so many fish that they just pick and choose which they want to keep based on quality, which makes for some damned good eatin'!
Kayak.com to the rescue!
This is a little update in regards to my previous post about Cheaptickets.com
The airfare I found on Cheaptickets.com that turned out to be crap, I initially found on and was referred by Kayak.com. They have a little blurb on their website that says if you find a possible bait and switch situation, they'd like you to report it to them because they're working on making their site as accurate as possible and they can only be as accurate as the other sites they search. (For the unfamiliar, Kayak.com doesn't sell airfare, they just search most of the other travel sites at once then when you click on the fare you want it'll take you to the site that's selling it. They also have better search features than other travel sites). Pretty much you tell them and they get on the jerky sites' asses!
I clicked the button to report the problem to Kayak and then afterwards proceeded to contact Cheaptickets because I thought what they were doing was scummy and they should know it. I got a reply from Kayak today and it was actually from a real person who was genuinely interested in getting to the bottom of it. Her name was Karen. She also gave me the email address and phone number for Cheaptickets customer service in case I wanted to go that route. I replied that I had actually already contacted them and even sent all of my correspondence to her. I figured it couldn't hurt because in there they tell me they're looking into the issue, so that way when Kayak contacts them they can't act like it's news to them that there's been a problem. She said in her email to me that the Kayak engineers frequently get on the phone with airlines and travel sites to get to the bottom of these issues and that she'd pass the info I gave her on to them. She actually also asked a few more questions about the issue, and I could tell she had read my entire email by the things she was asking (wasn't fully expecting her to, I've gone back and forth with Cheaptickets more than a few times, which makes for a lot of reading).
It's refreshing to have human contact when dealing with a substantial company. I mean, they actually care. I've not recieved one scripted line or brush off from them, which is something else! I was really just informing them of something they had asked to be informed of and wasn't expecting to hear much more about it. I'm getting from Kayak what I was hoping to get from Cheaptickets.
Thank you, Karen from Kayak.com
(And, hello, BillO. I'm the nerdy girl from Massachusetts)
The airfare I found on Cheaptickets.com that turned out to be crap, I initially found on and was referred by Kayak.com. They have a little blurb on their website that says if you find a possible bait and switch situation, they'd like you to report it to them because they're working on making their site as accurate as possible and they can only be as accurate as the other sites they search. (For the unfamiliar, Kayak.com doesn't sell airfare, they just search most of the other travel sites at once then when you click on the fare you want it'll take you to the site that's selling it. They also have better search features than other travel sites). Pretty much you tell them and they get on the jerky sites' asses!
I clicked the button to report the problem to Kayak and then afterwards proceeded to contact Cheaptickets because I thought what they were doing was scummy and they should know it. I got a reply from Kayak today and it was actually from a real person who was genuinely interested in getting to the bottom of it. Her name was Karen. She also gave me the email address and phone number for Cheaptickets customer service in case I wanted to go that route. I replied that I had actually already contacted them and even sent all of my correspondence to her. I figured it couldn't hurt because in there they tell me they're looking into the issue, so that way when Kayak contacts them they can't act like it's news to them that there's been a problem. She said in her email to me that the Kayak engineers frequently get on the phone with airlines and travel sites to get to the bottom of these issues and that she'd pass the info I gave her on to them. She actually also asked a few more questions about the issue, and I could tell she had read my entire email by the things she was asking (wasn't fully expecting her to, I've gone back and forth with Cheaptickets more than a few times, which makes for a lot of reading).
It's refreshing to have human contact when dealing with a substantial company. I mean, they actually care. I've not recieved one scripted line or brush off from them, which is something else! I was really just informing them of something they had asked to be informed of and wasn't expecting to hear much more about it. I'm getting from Kayak what I was hoping to get from Cheaptickets.
Thank you, Karen from Kayak.com
(And, hello, BillO. I'm the nerdy girl from Massachusetts)
Monday, July 28, 2008
avoid Cheaptickets.com
Cheaptickets.com is exceptionally stupid. I thought I finally found a reasonable flight to Austria so I clicked on it with the intention of buying. Once I clicked a screen came up telling me it was "confirming my fare and flight details." When it was done the flight had magically jumped hundreds of dollars! That's just not okay. It came along with a message telling me:
We're sorry. Due to changes in airline availability, the fare for your selected trip is no longer available. We have adjusted the fares for all affected flights. The fare for your selected trip is now $ 877 total. See below. (Message 1048)I checked in their FAQs and it says this:
During the time between your flight search and purchase, the airline may have changed the fare or the fare may have sold out. Airfares change throughout the day, based on demand for the flight and the airlines' right to modify them at any time.
CheapTickets monitors these changes closely and makes every effort to keep our fare displays as current as possible. Sometimes the fare difference is the result of a technical issue. In that case, clicking "Select" will display the most up-to-date fare.
That's nice. Just the fact that it's in the FAQs means it probably happens more than it should! I don't know, I just find this ridiculous. The first excuse is null and void because I searched for the airfare several times, so it wasn't like it sold out or changed in the time it took me to press the Buy button after searching. If it happens more than once, it's an issue. The second excuse is dumb, too, because if they were monitoring closely, their system probably should have picked up on the fact that the price for this flight had changed and it should have corrected the information. This same flight has been doing the same thing for days now! C'mon, you can't be making every effort to keep the fares as current as possible if something is happening for this long.
It seems odd to me that the only time they can show me the up-to-date fare is when I click on the button to buy the ticket. So if I want any accurate prices I'm expected to click on all the fares? What a waste of time. This just makes me think they're doing a bait and switch! Think about a person researching airfares who is checking out all the sites they can before settling on a fare. They'll undoubtedly find that Cheaptickets.com has the cheapest fare (because the fares they show don't even exist!) so they'll come back to that ticket in the end and just assume they waited too long and now the price went up, when in reality Cheaptickets never had the cheapest price! Chances are they'll buy it there anyways because it's probably the same as all the other prices and they're there and all set to buy anyways. So wrong.
I emailed them to tell them about their little problem and how I feel about it. It's actually turned out to be quite a correspondence I've got going with them. In their last reply they told me that I should call the hotline instead of emailing because of the "intricate nature" of my question. I don't know, I think it's a pretty simple question. Why aren't the prices on your site correct, and why have the same exact ones been wrong for several days now? That's fair, right? I'm assuming they want me to call the hotline so that I'm not wasting their time replying to their emails about the same topic over and over. I hate having my time wasted with the same problem over and over, too, Cheaptickets.com! If they only knew who they're dealing with. They basically just invited me to email them all day every day and waste their time in return for wasting mine. I haven't sunk that low, yet, though. It really isn't that big of a deal, but it just seems sleazy to me what they're doing and getting away with.
I'm also a bit more mad than I would have been because the very first reply to my issue gave the usual scripted apology, which I expected, but then they tried to SELL ME their services in the next breath. That's horrible customer serivce, that is. Why would I want to register for one of your crappy services if you can't get the very essence of an airline search right? The price, dumbass! The reply I got spent just as much time explaining this newfangled service as it did addressing my issue. Wow, what nerve.
I made out like a bandit
I let the Nestles guys leave their stuff here later than checkout time because they had a fly out fishing trip and there wasn't anyone checking in to that cabin yesterday or today. When they got back they were really funny. Those boys enjoy partying. It actually turns out that only one of them works for Nestles, so maybe it wasn't really a company trip. I still don't get it. It was the Nestles guy, his dad and two other older guys who I think were friends of the dad.
They left a TON of groceries and told me I could have them. It's mostly junk food, but I'm actually very excited because when I was moving their stuff I had my eye on these mini cakey donuts that had powdered sugar frosting on them. I really wanted one, but I wasn't about to eat their food. That's just wrong. Now I get my donuts!! I'm sure they may have considered bringing the food with them if they didn't have so much salmon to bring home. One of the guys actually left some of his clothes behind because salmon is apparently more important than them. haha!
Before they left I asked if he had any more coffeemate coupons because I got the shaft. He said ". . . aaaaactually. . . " and waved me over to the car where he gave me a GIANT stack of them. He's the boss so he gets all the coupons, apparently. I'm pretty much set for a few years with coffeemate. He also gave me some Nestles Quik coupons. I'm told, as well, that Jamba juice will be available in our grocery stores by next year. Alrighty then.
I'm still laughing that getting the salmon home is more important than clothes. I poked fun at him about it and he said he actually does it all the time on fishing trips. So funny. He actually left waders in there, too, which can be expensive, so that's kinda cool. Now I have my very own pair of waders down here. Frenchy isn't a fan about lending them out because if you get one hole in them they're toast, and they're also a bit expensive. Understandable.
So, I walked away with some salmon, waders, lots of coupons, delicious donuts I've had my eye on all week and some other junk food. Not bad.
They left a TON of groceries and told me I could have them. It's mostly junk food, but I'm actually very excited because when I was moving their stuff I had my eye on these mini cakey donuts that had powdered sugar frosting on them. I really wanted one, but I wasn't about to eat their food. That's just wrong. Now I get my donuts!! I'm sure they may have considered bringing the food with them if they didn't have so much salmon to bring home. One of the guys actually left some of his clothes behind because salmon is apparently more important than them. haha!
Before they left I asked if he had any more coffeemate coupons because I got the shaft. He said ". . . aaaaactually. . . " and waved me over to the car where he gave me a GIANT stack of them. He's the boss so he gets all the coupons, apparently. I'm pretty much set for a few years with coffeemate. He also gave me some Nestles Quik coupons. I'm told, as well, that Jamba juice will be available in our grocery stores by next year. Alrighty then.
I'm still laughing that getting the salmon home is more important than clothes. I poked fun at him about it and he said he actually does it all the time on fishing trips. So funny. He actually left waders in there, too, which can be expensive, so that's kinda cool. Now I have my very own pair of waders down here. Frenchy isn't a fan about lending them out because if you get one hole in them they're toast, and they're also a bit expensive. Understandable.
So, I walked away with some salmon, waders, lots of coupons, delicious donuts I've had my eye on all week and some other junk food. Not bad.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Bathroom reading material
Oh, wait, one more thing. My favorite part of moving their stuff from one cabin to the next was their bathroom reading material. Penthouse! Later on one of them apologized for the magazine and I told him not to worry about it at all, I actually read about how guys are supposed to try to meet me and pick me up. He laughed. . . then asked if the article had any good pointers. haha! I really only read the first paragraph, because I was busy, but I thought it might be a funny read. I only got through step 1, which said to go to a coffee house and immediately ask a girl if she's single. I disagree with that theory. If a guy asks me if I'm single before even saying hello, I'm immediately on my guard. That tells me he knows absolutely nothing about me except that he likes my ass (insert any body part. . . legs, chest, etc.) and would really like the chance to get to know it better. I mean, really, a few seconds of dialog could prevent the guard from going up instantly. Even just pleasant small talk reveals some personality and character almost instantly.
Bathroom reading material in general cracks me up. I don't read in the bathroom, so I don't fully get it. I mean, penthouse in the bathroom is a whole different ballgame, and we're not gonna go there. Reading in the loo while you're sitting on the commode is just funny to me. Maybe it's because I have ADD, but I can't fathom doing both at once. Eh, probably just me.
Bathroom reading material in general cracks me up. I don't read in the bathroom, so I don't fully get it. I mean, penthouse in the bathroom is a whole different ballgame, and we're not gonna go there. Reading in the loo while you're sitting on the commode is just funny to me. Maybe it's because I have ADD, but I can't fathom doing both at once. Eh, probably just me.
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