The joys of vacationing

In our realm, January means auction time in Arizona. Barrett-Jackson, Russo and Steele, RM, Gooding all in the same place during the same week. Colin can reflect on the market and what that means for his business and maybe add some things to his inventory. Which in turn means leaving the winter wonderland of Wisconsin for a warmer climate. And not just for January. We stay all the way through mid-April. What more could a girl ask for? A nice place to stay while we're there, if I may be so bold. That doesn't seem like too much, does it? 

Naturally we plan in advance. Colin likes things to be "turn-key." Just show up and go. We have the advantage of Colin's mom living in Arizona. Couple that with the fact that she's a real estate agent you would think finding a house to rent for the winter would be a breeze. That being said...

Call it karma. Though I don't know that Colin and I could both have been so awful in former lives to deserve the road blocks we seem to encounter so frequently. I prefer to think we simply just both have bad luck. Everything seems to be a challenge. Even finding a place to stay on vacation.

And we did find a house. Colin paid the security deposit, cleaning deposit and first months rent before we even arrived. Our decision to rent this particular house was based on the pictures and listing description provided on the real estate website. The house was listed as "show model quality."  Amazing, fully furnished. Luxury rental. All sounded good. And the pictures seemed to support the description. However upon arrival, the house was not as it was purported to be in the listing.  I felt like a balloon being deflated, and not just for the fun of sucking out the helium so you can talk like a chipmunk! Walking in and looking around it was such a disappointment. This often happens with high expectations. But when you're paying more than the per capita income of an entire third world country for three months rent, the house damn well better exceed expectations. 

Remember Pig Pen from Charlie Brown? Well if he was a grown bachelor, this could be his house. There was dust and dirt and dinge everywhere. Upon opening a closet I was caught off guard by a dust bunny the size of a mouse, which is what I mistook it for at first. All the walls and floor boards were banged, scuffed and gouged as if someone had let a hockey team practice in the house, which we later learned wasn't too far from the truth. The family that had previously rented the house had four rambunctious young boys who did in fact play hockey in the house.  

And as far as being fully furnished and completely stocked, I guess it's all relative. But I don't consider four severely chipped plates, a  box of plastic forks and a couple of threadbare towels fully furnished.  

But really, all this is manageable, with perhaps a reduction in the rent and the help of a cleaning service. However, dirt and less than ample supplies is not where the sham of this "luxury rental" ended. Sadly, the crème de la crème was a curious spot on the living room couch. As Colin so eloquently put it, "If our living room were a crime scene, there'd be plenty of DNA evidence." And he wasn't referring to blood, if you follow. Due to some tightly budgeted family road trips, I've built up a tolerance for staying in some pretty, um, interesting places, but even I draw the line at couch stains of the male reproductive variety. 

So I refused to stay there. Who knows what else was a recipient of such deposits? We didn't unpack and were forced to find some place else to stay. Which we did. Though Colin is still trying to resolve the lease/misrepresented property issue. 

That all said, if needed I'd go through it all again because as far as I'm concerned the headaches, and possibly the extra three and a half months of rent (plus security deposit plus cleaning deposit) for a house we're not occupying, are certainly all worth my being able to sit on my back patio in Arizona and bask in the sunshine in a near 70 degrees on January 9th typing this blog post. 

Come visit. 

Brush with fame - literally

Do you remember the TV show Happy Days? It's okay if you don't, I'm a little young to remember myself. Happy Days was on the air from 1974-1984 and featured Henry Winkler as Fonzie or "The Fonz." The show revolved around a family in the '50's with The Fonz as the epitome of cool. Considering it was on for 10 years, I guess you could say it was a big hit.

So what's the point? Well Happy Days was supposed to be set in Milwaukee, the town I currently call home. Well on Monday I was boarding a plane in LAX heading back to Milwaukee. And who's taking up the first three rows? Most of the major players of Happy Days, including The Fonz. My fiance, Colin, at nine years my senior, found this to be a much more significant encounter than I. He grew up with Happy Days. I was faced with a celebrity. Should I exclaim loudly, OMG, you're Fonzie!? No, that didn't seem right. Should I nonchalantly say hello, like he's not some celebrity? No, that somehow seemed disrespectful, because he is a celebrity. So I just walked by and took my seat. No reaction, no acknowledgement that I'd just walked past Henry Winkler.

Here I was at a moment I'd always dreamed about. Not walking past Henry Winkler per se, because, well Henry Winkler doesn't really register on my radar, (No offense, Fonz, but you're just a little too soon before my time to get my motor running) but what I'm talking about is meeting a celebrity.

I've always hoped that when I actually met a celebrity I'd say the perfect thing. Something clever and witty to make me standout. Something that would make the celebrity want to discover me, or befriend me, or write a song about me. I know, this is not reality, but you never know. Why couldn't I make such an impact on someone? Well for starters, I'd actually have to say something, but I always clam up and discover myself at a loss for words. As a writer, I should never be at a loss for words. The same thing happened when I met Chip Foose. I thought, here's my chance, I'm meeting one of the great masterminds of automotive design, say something memorable. So what did I go with..."Hi, it's so nice to meet you Mr. Foose." That's all, well that witty repartee paired with the deer in the headlights gaze.

So as I sat in my seat, I kicked myself for missing a second opportunity to at least make a celebrity laugh, if not make a lasting impression. And I vowed next time I would do better. And next time came much sooner than anticipated. When we landed in Milwaukee, there was one of two baggage carousels our luggage was going to come up on, but we didn't know which carousel it would be. So we took our place in line by carousel and waited. When the luggage didn't come within a few minutes Colin said he'd wait by this one and I could go check the other. Good plan. So as I'm navigating through the sea of other passengers awaiting their luggage, BAM, someone runs into my left side. I turn to say "Excuse me," and no shit if it isn't Henry Winkler. This is the opportunity I was waiting for. Here was my chance. Not only did he run into me, but I had him as my captive audience. I would not mess this up. So he says, "Oh, it's nice to run into you." And I, say, "I'm sorry, excuse me."

That's it. Dang it, Cana, you can do better. In fact, I have done better. Remind me to tell the story about Mario Andretti and his bottle of wine sometime.