I get to the airport at midnight for my 4:00 am Emirates flight, and when the guard at the entrance checks my ticket he reveals to me that my flight took off the night before. I said, "Are you saying I missed my flight?" "Yes." I stared at him open-mouthed and he asked me generally where I was from. "Bombay" I said. "You're all educated and from Bombay and you can't understand your flight date?" he smirked. But I guess he felt sympathetic a second after and told me to go talk to the Emirates guys. He said there was a good chance that I might get another flight. And I did. Which was good. Disaster 1 faced and dealt with. Had to shell out 6,000 bucks and got on the flight that I expected to be on. (After a few panicking calls to friends and the excellent Emirates customer service guys.) (Not kidding, they were totally superawesome all through.)
Well, so I made it to lovely San Francisco and was greeted by my beloved and we drove happily home, attended a nice punk concert, and watched a movie (the book of Eli -- was decent) that weekend. Unaware of what madness was soon to ensue.
Wednesday we met with a car accident while driving to work. Boom, in a second the airbags were on our faces, slight smoke in the car and an horrible crunching sound before everything was still. The doors were slightly stuck but we pushed out of the car and got out in a daze. The car we had crashed into was unharmed (a big land rover), our engine was crumpled. I called 911. Waited for the cops, shivering and feeling pathetic. But grateful that no one was hurt.
Tone says he saw everything in slow motion, (like in the movies), I had no such experience. I almost don't remember how it happened, except for the shock of it. Well, anyway, we were interviewed by cops and they made little notes in their note pads and then called us a towing truck that towed us away to a car repair shop who called a rental service and we ended up with a big dodge ram truck.
Feeling shaken but with a strong urge to do something we planned on anyway, we went on with our appointments to see apartments to rent. Checked out three that day and also later when to an animal shelter to look for a puppy to adopt. And there we met pretty little December who totally won our hearts with her absolutely mad energy and enthusiasm and her tiny gracefulness. And other things. But the shelter said that we couldn't have her until we showed proof that our landlord didn't mind us having pets, and for that, we needed to find an apartment. And they wouldn't hold the puppy for us for more than 24 hours. So, a bit sad, we went home with determination to find an apartment and finish that matter off asap.
Some more house hunting later, we were down to 3 options (out of 5, ha) but still all were really good, within our budgets, close to office and we didn't know which to pick. Two were two-bedrooms and one was a single bedroom. After much discussions and nail-biting we settled on one of the two bedrooms and left to go pay the deposit amount. And then changed our mind last minute (because the broker was a bit of a jackass on the phone) and went to the 1-bedroom. And instantly knew that it was the right thing... cheaper, smaller but still enough room for all our things and a very large patio from which sunlight flows in in the mornings and a view of three very pretty redwood trees across the street. And a bedroom with a full mirror closet wall! (Which is so awesome after ages without a decent mirror, am thrilled. Anyway.)
We went to the animal shelter and found that December was still available for adoption and we 'booked' her and got an appointment to come the next day with some money and a letter from the landlord (who's an awesome dude with two dogs himself) and get our little bundle of puppylove.
So we rented a U-haul truck to move our stuff the next day and begun packing. The next morning, we found that the car we'd borrowed from Tone's mom was broken into and Tone's backpack stolen. With many precious and important possessions. Including our new Nikon d90, laptop, his passport. Unbelievable.
Another session with a cop later, we moved our stuff. It wasn't pleasant feelings in my stomach those few days, but we just had to accept and deal with what was happening. I felt superstitious.
We went back to the animal shelter for our appointment to get little December. They gave us a bunch of papers and her history and we bought her some stuff and I cuddled her tiny shivering-with-excitement body all the way back home. She's the most inquisitive thing in the world and wants to look at everything she can.
We got home and stared at her and played and tickled and got to know her. (Of course, we couldn't take our eyes off her a second that night to make sure she wasn't going to pee on our brand new home's carpets.) But she is a good little puppy and we started thinking of names to give her (even the people in the shelter said they had no idea who or why someone had called her December.) So we toyed with Betty, Betsy and random other names. Ok this post is long. But am sorry, I need to write down my version of "A Series of Unfortunate Events" (the phrase that kept repeating in my head all week).
Well, in hindsight the worst of it was over, and the minor-ish incidents that followed, as annoying as they were, don't seem so bad.
Oh wait, by the way, the thieves who broke into the car, also STOLE the keys of the rented truck. And the rental company didn't have extra keys -- so we were basically stuck with that stupid big truck for a few more days until we managed to get that sorted out.
We cooked. Ate nice Indian food. Enjoyed our new home. I was on vacation, so I was at home with the puppy while Tone went to work on the weekdays (he was just 5 mins away so would drop in for an hour midday), played with the brand new Nexus phone Tone bought (I know, I want one too). Which met with its death one morning. From overheating. While being charged. Because it got pushed under a pillow. Seriously, at that point I felt that things were getting ridiculously absurd.
Oh, we'd named her Jolie. Coz she's so pretty. And I had two dogs before called Julie. I didn't want to duplicate, but I basically did.
So that was that week. What an eventful, crazy trip.
Oh, and if you're into awesome, fun games, play Plants Vs Zombies. You've to download it, its superbrilliant. I guess it took our worries away for the few hours we'd spend playing it -- level after level of destroying zombies.
The week could have been worse, so no regrets. Well ok, just a few, but whatever. We survived.
