zdashamber | Oh thank god.

Ok, so let me tell you how big of a moron I've been, now that it's over.

I noticed the Wednesday before Ambercon that I couldn't find my little wad of credit cards and ID, the one that lives in my rear pocket. Thursday, I searched in a flurry for them as the time-to-leave-to-catch-plane approached. Oh well, I thought, I have my passport to get on the plane, and by luck I happened to have picked up a big chunk of cash at the bank last Saturday to cover food in excess of the food coupons and drinks and gifts and shit... The cards'll turn up, stuff always does eventually.

What I hadn't remembered was paying for the hotel room.

Talk about your Oh Shit moments, standing in front of the hotel desk in Troutdale Oregon with the realization that you don't have enough money to cover the weekend's worth of lodging. "...Can I just give you the credit card number...?" I paid for a few nights and planned to come around Friday when the manager would be there, the guy who could authorize such things.

About this time I remembered, "Oh! 'Checks' are pieces of paper that are commonly believed to be money equivalents! And I know precisely where on my desk in California these 'checks' are!" Kicking. Self.

Long story short, the manager let my check my account from his computer (to see that yes, the credit cards were not stolen, just lost) and pay with the number and expiration date alone (god, the Edgefield is a stupendous place!)... And here's what really saved my ass, let me have a "charge to room" card so I could eat and stuff once my food coupon ran out. So after losing nearly all the remaining money to a dinner Saturday night at the Black Rabbit (the fancy eatery at the Edgefield) (if only I'd made the waiter who turned up his snoot at my request for coffee with whipped cream in it [honestly, some people just don't know how to live large] put the quarter of the bill that wasn't covered by the remainder of my food coupon on my charge-to-room card... That'd've learned him. Didn't have time, alas, though, running to the next game.) I ended up the last Monday in Oregon subsisting on the charged-to-room brunch at the Edgefield, and then nothing until midnight when I got home save beef jerky I'd brought along and an apple I bought at Whole Foods in Portland for my last buck. Dear, dear dear dear dear.

But! No one but Simone learned of my condition. :)

But the time from then to now...

To get cash, I had to go to the bank. I mean, that's just weird. That's something my mom would do in the 80s, the bank near my house had pneumatic tubes at a drive-in where she'd put her check in a colorful capsule, and if I'd sit up all perky-like in the passenger seat they'd often send back a dum-dum sucker with Mom's money... Anyway, so I'd go to the bank this past month and take out a big wad of cash as if I was being blackmailed or something... And it would run out and I'd borrow money from people at work for lunch until I got off early enough to hit the bank again before it closed...

Just weird.

And the whole "checks are bits of paper that can be exchanged for goods and services?" Lots of businesses were like, "...A passport for ID? Um, manager?" "We don't ususally allow that..." Dangit! And this was fun on the trip back to Colorado for Thanksgiving: "Sure! We take in-state checks with a drivers license." Um, sister whose credit cards are accounted for? You'll take my check without ID, right?

The driving-without-a-license thing was, relative to the rest of my life, barely stressful at all. O, glorious hybrid that encourages me to drive in the right lane below the speed limit!

But the hybrid... That's the thing. Nearly time for an oil change, eh? I haven't had time to take her in, and the little "maintain me!" light has been getting more and more insistent. So yesterday I went to the bank to get the latest infusion of "help I'm being blackmailed" cash. Filled out the form, got up to the teller, went through all my pockets...

No passport.

Yep, just about reached the "toss it in" point. So today I decided I would not stop cleaning my room until I located my credit wad.

And I did.

If you wait by the river long enough, sooner or later the body of your enemy will float by.

And if the passport doesn't turn up, well, that's almost a good thing. Next fall, the government's going to start putting chips in all new passports so that as you walk by they'll know who you are. It would be nice to have an excuse to renew my passport now so that I'll have 10 years of being off the grid instead of 7 or 6 or whatever I have now. If you don't have a passport, for god's sakes get one soon, now!

So. Now I can go buy the one gift thing that's sold only at one site on the internet that wants my damn "verification number" in addition to credit card # and expiration date, damn their eyes. And I'll be able to get on the plane to go back to Colorado for Christmas. And I'll be able to pay back my coworker and buy lunch tomorrow, and chip in for groceries again...

Let it never be said that I ain't stubbornly optimistic. :)

Oh, and speaking of Ambercons, I'm seriously considering going to the coming ACUS. If anyone has something to say in regards to these two joining in unholy union, speak now, eh?