ARGH! AIIE! ACK!! Oh, Hi, How Are You?

I am back in Austin after a really frustrating trip to New York for house-hunting purposes. I'll tell you all about it but first, I have to tell you about the Old Bait and Switch on my flight back.

So, my flight left at some Early Hour that required me to get up at a time that had a beginning number of FIVE (5) in it.

I hate that.

But I took the hotel shuttle and I went through security and I didn't have to be all searched or wanded or anything so things were looking up. I boarded the plane and sat down in Row 16, in seat A, and I waited to see who was going to be assigned to sit next to me.

No one came.

Dude, I was afraid to even spread out because, you know how it works, you raise the armrest between the seats and you get your pillow and you put your legs up on the seat and settle in for a long winter's nap when BAM! The fattest person you've ever seen claims the seat you've just claimed for yourself and not only that, she's afraid her carry-on luggage is a little over-sized and so, she wonders if you'd mind putting YOURS in the compartment overhead where it will have shifted during take-off or landing and then give you a head wound when you try to retrieve it. Know what I mean?

So, I hardly dared breathe, I was so hopeful that I was going to have two whole seats all to myself.

Sure enough, the doors closed, we taxied out of the gate, and still no one came.

Then we had to taxi back to the gate for something the pilot called a "customer service situation" but by then, I was SO napping, so I have no details for you.

I napped through take-off and we were airborne and the captain released us from having to wear our seat belts (I mean, just in case we wanted to feel free to move about the cabin). I sat up for a minute to adjust my pillow and wipe the drool off my face and, as fate would have it, this MAN said, "Is this seat taken?" I was so groggy that I said, "Um, wha?"

And he said, "Oh, it's taken?

And I said, "Wha? Snurf? No, it's not taken."

And he freaking sat freaking down.

"My screen is broken." he said, referring to the little television screen in the seat in front of him.

And just like that, my little pipe dream came to an end.

And I don't want to even tell you about how he had this MOLE with HAIR STICKING OUT OF IT that was exactly in my line of vision if I turned my head to glance at him in annoyance because he was --I am not making this up-- peeling his face.

Peeling. His. Face.

And then, he'd brush the flakes of dried skin off himself vigorously and I almost threw up in his lap each time. I was very relieved when he progressed to sucking his teeth. And then once, he got up and came back with, like, six bags of chips that he put in his briefcase for later, I think.

Anyway, now that we are all sufficiently traumatized (anyone else feel the need to go exfoliate RIGHT NOW?), I should tell you that we spent eight hours with the Realtor on Saturday, which was also my husband's birthday, and then on Sunday, we woke up and the world looked like this:

So, we went back to visit the house we put an offer on and I took a gazillion pictures so I could carefully plan what all we'd have to do to it and then the owners refused to budge from their exorbitant price, despite the fact that for that kind of money, one might expect that it might not need a total remodel. So, good luck to them and see ya in January when the market drops even further.

The trip wasn't an entire waste, though, because A) we saw much better houses this time around--some of which could seriously have been contenders if we hadn't gone with the one that was the funkiest and needed the most work and B) because I saw a shop called THIS:

You can't make this stuff up.