It looks like I will be in contract on my apartment soon, with an offer comfortably over the asking price. And it’s going to close in mid-to-late May.
Which got me thinking: my current assignment will probably have wrapped up, or will be wrapping up, by then. And yet I don’t have the kind of cash (or, frankly, credit rating) that will allow me to jump right into a new rental without asking my aunt for a short-term loan (or, god forbid, ask her to co-sign a lease), and I really don’t want to do that.
But I’m gonna need a place to live, which is complicated by the fact that I also need a place to park my pets.
And it hit me: why not get a summer sublet somewhere like Halifax or Montreal? Halifax is essentially a college town, which means there are plenty of sublets available, plus summer’s a great time of year to be there. And Montreal is, well, it’s Montreal. Both places have low housing costs, and Montreal has good public transit. Each is a relatively reasonable drive from New York, and I could probably Shanghai a friend into making the trip with a bribe of furniture or electronics.
I could sure use some planned time off, versus “Oh, shit, now I’m out of work; what the hell am I gonna do?” time off.
Thoughts?
Published at July 16, 2007
in Travel.
Vancouver. So pretty.
(photo: Bonny Makarewicz for The New York Times)
Carol Lloyd at Salon’s Broadsheet posted a story the other day about a woman who’s suing Continental Airlines for kicking her family off a flight after some kind of altercation with the flight attendant over the flight attendant’s alleged suggestion that the woman’s son, who was repeating, “Bye bye plane” before takeoff, needed to shut up, and, when the mother asked what she was supposed to do, that “It’s called baby Benadryl.”
Now, I don’t know what happened on the flight, because I wasn’t there. Not to mention, we’re only getting the mother’s side of the story (including her appearance on Good Morning America with her son, who was so restless and making so much noise he had to be taken away from the interview). We really can’t tell, from the mother’s account, just how she objected to the alleged suggestion of Benadryl (and from experience, I’m guessing that this is where things went all pear-shaped, since these kinds of accounts usually leave out crucial details like that. Which is why you usually hear about them when the complaint is filed and not after more details have come out during discovery and the case is settled).
What I want to talk about is Lloyd’s post at Broadsheet, because it irritates the fuck out of me. After recounting the Continental story (casting it as “mother kicked off flight for refusing to drug her child”), Lloyd continues:
Bring on the child haters, the airline critics, the lazy parenting theorists! If you think this story sounds like an urban legend designed to foment sippy-cup culture wars, I don’t blame you. I too would have found it difficult to swallow had I not experienced a similar treatment on an airline just last month. The details are tedious — they involve me tapping the flight attendant on the shoulder trying to pass along some trash, him informing me he didn’t appreciate “being touched,” and me asking why he was being so rude. He then snarled at me: “Your children are totally out of control! If you’d just discipline them, you’d be much better off.”
Right. Because anyone who gets irritated by screaming kids on airplanes must be a child-hater. It gets better, though: Continue reading ‘Unfriendly Skies?’
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