our little adventure last night
Feb. 23rd, 2011 08:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivendellroseMet with photographer last night. Seems like great guy, really seems to know his stuff, pretty sure we're going with him. Spent entirely too much time chatting with him... long enough that Starbucks wanted to close. Well. There went our Cunning Plan of calling a cab from the Starbucks. So we walked Photographer out and said goodbye, and started off back in the direction of home(ish) for lack of a better idea, while we tried to ascertain the best next move. Theoretically, the same bus that brought us there might be running... but it was freezing (literally - it'd been snowing earlier but was now too clear for it), and I hate standing waiting for buses when I'm cold. Better, if you're not too far from known areas, to walk. So we did.
Walked for a while down empty industrial/business area until we found a familiar street that looked like nothing, but which I knew would go through because it was the street address of one of my former jobs at the Seattle Center, walked up that, and followed our noses (and the neon lights) back to a populous strip of restaurants and so on. Had dinner at 10:30 at a pub in Queen Anne, then spent twenty minutes having pub call us a cab, watching for cab, seeing no cab, having cab company call pub to say they came but couldn't find us. Eventually stood outside for ten minutes, watched cab settle in in front of another restaurant a block away. Thought "hang on, that's how they keep saying they've come without us seeing them." Attempt to get cab's attention. ...Cab picks up another fare and drives off, the bastard.
Eventually we gave up on the pub calling them (since clearly the cab company couldn't figure out that this pub with the giant sign proclaiming its name was not whatever that other unmarked restaurant was), and walked over to where bartender said there was a taxi stand. Did not find taxi stand. Did not find anything at all. Suspect bartender just wanted to get rid of us so they have the place to themselves until closing. Started walking back so that we could just catch a cab in front of the other damned restaurant, since it seemed to be such a magnet for them, but fortunately only got halfway down the street before another cab showed up and accepted our hail. Hurray!
Herein came an interesting discovery: When I first moved to the city, I was petrified of cabbies' driving. I mean, really - I thought I was going to die pretty much every time I got in one, because of their habit of speeding and zipping between obstacles and all. But... turns out now that The Boy and I have been using them often enough in the last few years that I'm pretty much over it, and now regard the whole thing with much the same attitude one takes to a roller-coaster. Yes, it seems like you're going slightly too fast and you might hit that monorail pylon, but it's just an optical illusion. Or, you know, a guy who spends his whole working life driving. Same thing, right? Sure.
This realization, I have decided, should not be questioned too much. And should not be applied to cabbies in Las Vegas, who are, in my experience, actually insane and possibly slightly homicidal.
So we got home at about 12:30 (oh god oh god oh god, weeknight), threw ourselves into bed...
And I woke up this morning with a really awful sore throat.
Argh.
But there were nifty things online this morning, at least: IKEA instructions for a Henge. Yes, like Stone Henge. It's adorable. ♥
Walked for a while down empty industrial/business area until we found a familiar street that looked like nothing, but which I knew would go through because it was the street address of one of my former jobs at the Seattle Center, walked up that, and followed our noses (and the neon lights) back to a populous strip of restaurants and so on. Had dinner at 10:30 at a pub in Queen Anne, then spent twenty minutes having pub call us a cab, watching for cab, seeing no cab, having cab company call pub to say they came but couldn't find us. Eventually stood outside for ten minutes, watched cab settle in in front of another restaurant a block away. Thought "hang on, that's how they keep saying they've come without us seeing them." Attempt to get cab's attention. ...Cab picks up another fare and drives off, the bastard.
Eventually we gave up on the pub calling them (since clearly the cab company couldn't figure out that this pub with the giant sign proclaiming its name was not whatever that other unmarked restaurant was), and walked over to where bartender said there was a taxi stand. Did not find taxi stand. Did not find anything at all. Suspect bartender just wanted to get rid of us so they have the place to themselves until closing. Started walking back so that we could just catch a cab in front of the other damned restaurant, since it seemed to be such a magnet for them, but fortunately only got halfway down the street before another cab showed up and accepted our hail. Hurray!
Herein came an interesting discovery: When I first moved to the city, I was petrified of cabbies' driving. I mean, really - I thought I was going to die pretty much every time I got in one, because of their habit of speeding and zipping between obstacles and all. But... turns out now that The Boy and I have been using them often enough in the last few years that I'm pretty much over it, and now regard the whole thing with much the same attitude one takes to a roller-coaster. Yes, it seems like you're going slightly too fast and you might hit that monorail pylon, but it's just an optical illusion. Or, you know, a guy who spends his whole working life driving. Same thing, right? Sure.
This realization, I have decided, should not be questioned too much. And should not be applied to cabbies in Las Vegas, who are, in my experience, actually insane and possibly slightly homicidal.
So we got home at about 12:30 (oh god oh god oh god, weeknight), threw ourselves into bed...
And I woke up this morning with a really awful sore throat.
Argh.
But there were nifty things online this morning, at least: IKEA instructions for a Henge. Yes, like Stone Henge. It's adorable. ♥
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no subject
Date: 2011-02-23 04:20 pm (UTC)Have some henges! ♥
no subject
Date: 2011-02-23 04:53 pm (UTC)And... yeah. I've still always refused / never had to take a cab alone, and I'm gratified by that, but I'll take them with friends or with The Boy when needed, and... for the most part it's not bad? But yeah, their driving is... special. And Las Vegas cabbies = just plain freaking terrifying. Whether you're in one or trying to cross the street at a crosswalk. :P
no subject
Date: 2011-02-23 04:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-23 05:01 pm (UTC)...I think you're probably the braver woman than me, reading that. It might just be cozy home-town prejudice, but I suspect Seattle is probably a lot less scary at 2am than Brooklyn. Or, for that matter, London or Edinburgh. ;)
no subject
Date: 2011-02-23 06:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-23 06:21 pm (UTC)We were talking to this rep for a luxury car limo service thing for weddings (no actual intention of using the service, he was just at the vendor fair, and we were interested enough to chat with him), and he's showing off all the pictures of the cars and nattering about how most girls want the white Bentley or the... I forget the name, but the car Queen Elizabeth gets driven around in, and I'm just sitting there going "VINTAGE LONDON CAB OR BLACK BENTLEY!!!" ♥
no subject
Date: 2011-02-23 06:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-23 10:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-23 04:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-23 05:03 pm (UTC)Oh god. I've heard this from others, too, yes. Never been, myself, and we stuck to mass transit in Tokyo due to it being easy and neither of us speaking the language, but... yeeeeeeeeeeah, I think genuine terror would probably be my reaction to cabs (or, in fact, streets, from what I've heard) in China.
A bit OT but...
Date: 2011-02-23 05:57 pm (UTC)Waited and waited and waited - no pizza. Called the pizza place - person taking orders said that the driver was at our place but no one answered (even though we'd all been sitting IN the living room, 5 ft from the front door) so she'd brought the pizza back and would deliver it again after she got back from delivering her next batch of pies.
I confirmed that they had the right address. "Oh yes, we've got it" (but at no point did they ask for landmarks, directions etc to clinch it)
So we opened the inside front door (so that she'd literally see that the lights were on and people were home) and waited again. Still no pizza.
When we called back again the very annoyed driver got on the phone with my mother and said that she'd been back three times already and that no one was home. When Mom said that was impossible as we'd had the front door open the whole time and had been watching etc etc the driver said:
"You have a light up Santa Claus in your front yard"
"No, we don't. I'm sorry but you must have been at the wrong house"
"YES YOU DO!"
Needless to say we didn't get our pizza and we never ordered from them again :P
I know it's unreasonable to expect everyone to be at a certain level technologically but one would think that if it was your JOB to drive to specific places, in a set time, to make deliveries you would at LEAST have a cellphone so that you could call for directions/clarification etc if something wasn't kosher. Heck you'd think a delivery person would have a cellphone AND a GPS
Re: A bit OT but...
Date: 2011-02-23 10:03 pm (UTC)"No, we don't. I'm sorry but you must have been at the wrong house"
"YES YOU DO!"
Wow. That's... that's just wow. o_O Delivery services are definitely the other side of this problem. We live in an apartment complex with two buildings, and have several times had to go through a lot of trouble (including leaving one building and going over to the other to retrieve our food) with delivery folks who call us to say they've arrived and, despite our warnings about the buildings, can't quite figure out which is the one. It's not that hard - there's a giant "TWO" written on one of them - but people just don't get it, even when you make a big deal of it on the phone.
At least most of the delivery people in our area do have cellphones and do call if they get lost or something.
Cabbies... I don't know, it's like it just doesn't occur to them.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-24 01:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-24 02:35 am (UTC)