I bought a five octave piano keyboard with full size keys at Radio Shack tonight for a hundred bucks. Any minute now I'll feel happy about it. Really, I will. It's going to make my life easier. It's going to make me a better musician. I didn't have any expenditures on textbooks this term so I just have to think of it as part of the cost of college. Could be worse. How many people complain about their teachers recognising their talent and demanding their very best? I am ashamed of myself. Jeez.
On a different subject, the airlines are making me crazy with their day by day changes and tightening restrictions on changing tickets. First they decide it's going to cost an extra $20 to $25 to issue paper tickets if electronic tickets could have been issued. Then they decide they aren't going to allow standbys any more for free. If you want to go earlier or later on the same day as your non-refundable highly restricted ticket you have to pay the change fee. They call this the "theater ticket" policy. But now they're really going for the jugular: if you have one of those highly restrictive tickets (you know, the ones we all travel on because they're cheap) and you can't go on your trip, guess what? You have to rebook a whole new itinerary before your original flight departs or you lose the value of the ticket. Yep! No more applying the cost towards indeterminate future travel. If you can't go to Phoenix on Thursday using that $350 ticket and you don't know exactly when you can travel again, the airline gets to keep your money and you buy a whole new ticket whenever you finally make up your mind.
It's crummy, but that's their way of trying to recoup vast losses. I think they should jettison some of their highly paid management and draw up a new business model, but no one's asking me. It's also driving me mad trying to keep up with each airline's rules because of course they're all a little different. I get faxed up to three times a day with new rules and regulations on using non-refundable tickets. US Airway's the worst. Since they're in Chapter 11 they've decreed any ticket issued before August 1st is of no value. I think it's August 1st. I have the fax around here somewhere.
I don't have any funny client stories to tell you, I'm afraid. I believe "Bunny" and his family made it to Germany without any problems. Numerous honeymooners have all come back lavishly praising their vacations in Hawaii, the Cook Islands, and Cabo. That makes me feel good because it confirms my uncanny psychic ability to create the perfect vacation for complete strangers. Admittedly a weird skill to possess, but a useful one and therefore I'm always happy to hear my travel agent hoodoo is working.
I'm anxiously awaiting word on whether I'll be taking a vacation at the end of October. I'll know in another month. I can't afford to pay the going airfare for Honolulu so I'm hoping to catch a travel agent fare but they never confirm it more than two weeks in advance. It's frustrating, but that's the risk: cheap tickets or no vacation. Just pray I don't have to change anything.
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