hello from chez misti in austin. Yes, another trip, and while mark told me i'd regret it, i decided to go ahead and head out to the acl festival.
And he was right. Not because i'm not having a great time seeing my friends and being in austin, but because i'm not working this festival, and i'm no good at just being there and listening. I know that sounds crazy, but there are very few shows I go to just to enjoy!

that said, i am having a wonderful time here. Once I got my wallet back, that is.

yes, another travel horror story. I had a two hour layover in dallas, and i took advantage of the time to walk from terminal d to terminal a...took about 25 minutes, or so because I was just strolling. I got to the admirals club, pulled my license out of my wallet, showed it to the wonderful folks on duty, and then proceeded to a hidden quiet area. (I'd tell you where it is, but you'd just tell your friends who'd take it over with their too loud cell conversations, or whining children. )

I plopped my stuff down, and proceeded to the ladies, and, you guessed it....walked out leaving my wallet.
Of course I didn't notice it until six pm, just as we were about to leave for a party. Why did it take so long?
well, you'll notice i said I took my license out to show when i entered the club. D0 you see any indication that I returned it? No, I didn't. I stuck it in a pocket, and didn't need to dig it out of my wallet when I rented a car upon arrival. And, since I wasn't staying at a hotel, I didn't need to dig into my wallet for a credit card when I arrived in austin.

So, I spent the time from 6pm to 745 on the phone with both the admirals club and fed ex, begging everyone to just get along so that I could get my wallet on Friday. Fedex, the company i have an account with, and prefer to use for all my shipping, was the stumbling block. First they said it was too late to arrange a pickup....so i called aa, and was told they often get 9p pickups. Called fedex, they said "well, maybe. But our drivers won't go through security." called aa, and was told they do walk into the club. But that wouldn't be needed, as the manager offered to go out to meet them at the curb, if they'd call him upon arrival. So i called fedex again (getting still another cs person and having to explain the whole damn thing again as the clock is ticking away), and talked with someone who insisted they can't contact the drivers, and they don't carry cell phones, so they couldn't possibly call the club manager. he had to leave the package at the ticket counter, and that was that!
So I called AA again, and the agent said she doubted he'd do that, as the wallet would just be passed from hand to hand to hand and no one would be responsible for it. So, I called back fedex again, got a cs who could barely speak english and told me he really didn't understand my problem, got transferred to his supervisor, who took care of things and arranged for a pickup. He was 50% sure it would all come off, as they required a 90 minute window for pickups, and the club would be closing in an hour...which meant they could be shuttered before the driver arrived.

I called the club again, and as i was giving all my account info to the wonderful woman on the other end of the line, she exclaimed "oh, he's here, the fedex guy is here."

score one for the good guys.

the wallet showed up at 1030 the next morning.

On the downside, it was now 745, and the party we were invited to was from 6 to 8. Misti offered to drop me off there (i had to meet jill to pick up my passes), as she wanted to head to the festival site to pick up her own passes, and the box office closed at 8. I told her not to be silly, we'd just go to the site and drive to the party from there.

She got there in time, but had a mixup of her own --- the friend that made the purchase for her sent the wrong receipt, but that was cleaned up later that night.

we did drive downtown and spent about 20 minutes looking for a parking space. by then it was 9pm, but i was holding out hope that jill would still be at the party site, as she's a stickler for details, and was likely to be making sure that all those involved were happy with the event.
We raced up the street, and there she was, about to drive off! But she saw us! Another happy ending!

Now it was 915, and we had to move or miss the next event.The day before, I'd sent billy an email, telling him i was coming to town, and asking if was going to be around. He called me a few minutes later, and said he had a show thursday, and I said I'd shown up. but it ended at 10, and we were starved (i'd only had breakfast and was quickly reaching cranky stage)..luckily there was food at the venue, we ate, heard a few songs, and i was able to talk about the show with him when he came over afterwards.

and that's thursday in a very large nutshell. Still to come: day one of the festival. i was hot, without my earplugs (yes, again i forgot the ones I've had made by the audiologist), and tired. but still managed to have fun.