Enjoy Medway Comeback Tour - 23rd Sept, 17 October

Six weeks from now I'm headed back to the US to see my lovely darling, Jennifer. It's been well over a year since I last saw her and it's about fucking time we saw each other again. It's been a hard fucking year because I know what I'm missing out on now.

Last year I had such an amazing time. I met her family in a lunch time barbeque (intimidating meeting the better part of the family in one go); we toured around Kalamazoo having dinner at restaurants and such; we even had half a day at the beach. It was the best time of my life. Even when she was sick, and we just sat down on the couch watching movies.

This year was meant to be her turn to take the Plunge to Australia. But due to circumstances, she had to push it back. I played it cool at first because I understood, her job is tighter than a Flys arsehole and what she does save has had big chunks taken out to go towards emergencies.

But after a bad day and a weeks worth of terrible sleep patterns, my cranky pants were giving me a wedgie. It wasn't her fault, but the poor girl copped some of the flak and I expressed how I wasn't happy with her knocking back her trip to March '12.

I had been mulling over it though. Not my knotted knickers, but the pushback. She wanted to be here for her Birthday. *I* wanted her here for her Birthday. So much fun was planned to have. But now to wait another 6 months? I was starting to lose my mind. I had offered her money, but she refused to accept it. So after having my tantrum I decided I'll go visit her again.

Now I think I said somewhere that I was going to go for Xmas this year. Yeah, that wasn't going to happen. I can't afford the $3000+ for an Xmas Trip. My own finances aren't that awesome. But after getting my tax return after only 2 weeks (maybe less), money from my savings and the USD I had put into my bank account, I figured I might be pretty well set.

Well, at first I wasn't right. I gave V-Australia a call, because they're the same mob I went with last time. Last time, with a stop over at Indianapolis for GenCon, the flight cost me about $1,200-1,400 AUD. I could definitely afford that. But after being on hold to V-Australia for about 10-15 minutes, I finally got a quote at $2,400.

Okay, I'll have to borrow a little bit from Mum. That's fair enough, it's not a substantial amount, just about $400. No drams. Easy peasy, hand-on-squeegie. Surely nothing can go wrong here! Well Open Mouth, Enter Foot. All of my money is in my Savings Account, an account linked to my Primary account and, basically, makes it hard for me to take my money out.

So I requested the account to transfer it to my primary account. Did that on Thursday, when I got the quote. Money didn't come through until Sunday (A strange day for it to finalise) but I used the money to Bpay Mums Credit card.

My mistake though was calling V-Australia on Monday. I thought they didn't have trading hours over the weekend. I was wrong. So my last booking Auto-Cancelled. Not cool, but hopefully I'd make a new booking and get the same quote. It was better than expected! Instead of AU$2,395 I was offered AU$2,020! So a better quote! The change? Go through Minneapolis rather than through Detroit to get to K-zoo. So I locked it in and requested an extension to Thursday in case my finances didn't come through properly.

On the same day, I called up two other places to see if I could get a better quote. Hervey World Travel came up, at best, AU$1,855 for a one way trip just to Detroit. Right, no chance of getting something better there. So I called up Travel Centre. I gave her my details and she said she'd look up a good quote for me and would call me back

Come Wednesday, I have about 32 hours before my V-Australia Booking Automatically Cancels. I hadn't heard from Travel Centre. And the money to Mums account is still “Pending”. So I'm starting to get worried I'll miss my awesome flight deal with V-Australia. I even called up my bank to see what happened and they said "Yeah yeah, it's gone through. Give it another day, and if it hasn't give us a call back and we'll discuss a Dispute and get your money back".

That's all well and good, but what about my Fucking Ticket?! For FUCK sake, I only had so much time, I couldn't extend the booking again, and trying to get a definite answer from any form of bank? Well I may as well wish to shit gold bricks and send it to Richard Branson himself. The Virgin Blue Head Office is just a train ride away.

To get my mind off of things I focused on other things about the travel. Clothes will have to be getting to the warm side, because it's creeping through Autumn while I'm there; Camera and Charger will have to get packed; As much as I hate to use it, I'll pack my PSP for the flight over because its really fucking boring in Cattle Class being stuck between two strangers, one of whom will always want to chat about something (which I have little to no interest in doing).

The annoying thing is that the battery only lasts for a handful of hours constantly playing games. Not even a handful, it's like 4 hours tops. So I need a charger. Not just any old charger, I have one that plugs into the walls here at home, and the planes don't have one of them. I need a USB Charger. So I looked up on Ebay and got one for $2.50. Should be here soon. Then I worked out my spare dosh last week and downloaded Tactics Ogre for the PSP. It'll hopefully be a long game and I'll be able to take my time with it. Earphones on, USB Charger plugged into the armrest and I'm off to the land of whatchamacallit for some medieval fighting.

Then when I get there, I'll put away the bugger of a thing and just leave it be. I doubt I'll need it again over the next 3-4 weeks. Jenny is coming up with many plans for us to do and I'm all for them. Doing a Charity Walk for Alzheimers, going to a beachhouse with her family, her Birthday which will be awesome, dinner at Main Street Pub, celebrate our 22nd month being together, and even more on top of that. So it's going to be a very awesome 3-4 weeks.

Come Thursday, the big day. The last day I have to buy Tickets to the US of Awesome-Girlfriend-istan. (That's a weird name when you think about it) What do you think happens? That's right. Fucking nothing. Mum's account hasn't gotten the money, money that I sent as a Bpay payment on a Sunday and should've gone through Wednesday at the Latest. But No, now I've made my claim and just have to wait 10-14 working days to get my money back.

Luckily, Mum came to the rescue and did the simple thing of increasing her credit limit. I really owe Mum on this. But don't tell her that. It'll go to her head and she'll just topple over.

Now everything is slowly on the up and up. Everything is slotting into place very nicely. I can't wait to get these 6 weeks over and done with so that I can be there. Wait, no. It's 5 weeks. Because our 22nd Month is 8 weeks from the date of this posting. Happy 20th Month Jenny. I love you and I will see you very soon.