When it rains, it pours

One thing I will not miss about the East Coast is getting caught outside in a downpour - which happened eariler today. Yes, yes, my fault, should've paid more attention to those weather forecasts that said it would rain later in the day. But the rain is different here - Boston gets more inches of rain per year than Seattle (I know, I wouldn't have guessed it either). But the rain is compressed into fewer days, so when it rains....it pours. (We have a blog-entry-title!)

Still, isn't running-in-the-rain one of those things you see on those "things-I-want-to-do-before-I-die" kind of things....yes?

Maybe not. I'm soaked.

Had my end the term meeting with Dr. T. this morning to discuss my students grades and participation in ED 500. Dr. T. is a true southerner (he's from North Carolina) and likes to tell stories more than discuss if Emily W. deserves an A for participation in the course. He's a geniunely nice person and all, but there were times this morning I honestly thought, as Dr. T. continued on about another story, "wait a minute, how'd we get on this?" Still, most TA's put up with his stories because he's very good at what he does (teaches undergraduates and grad students how to be teachers). I wish I had taken his class back in my teacher-training days at Western.

Our meeting wrapped up and he asked for my key to the TA office - hard to believe I was just starting this Teaching Fellowship and now it's over.

So our biggest dilemma at the moment is - how do we transport the cats? And in the Grand Scheme of Things, "transporting the cats" is fairly small. I drove out the airport to try and buy a cat carrier from JetBlue. This airline had some pretty specific criteria for its cat carriers, their website said you can buy them at a Jetblue ticket counter, so off I went to Logan. I got to the counter and asked "Dave" if he had cat carriers. I think he misunderstood me because he gave me a look like I had asked, "do you have a banana sandwich?" He said he'd go check in the back and disappeared in the back (where does that go to by the way?) He came back - nothing. I asked if there was someone he could call, I mean, I mentioned politely, are there no cat carriers in the entire airport? Dave mentioned he'd go check by the gates and off he went. I waited. Of course, ten minutes later, he reappeared - still nothing.

"Sorry. We don't have any." said Dave, in a matter-of-fact, that-was-it-sort-of-a-way.

"Ok." I said. "You're website said I could purchase these carriers....here. Today. My wife and 3-year old are flying out Tuesday....with the cat. Any chance we can get a carrier here?"

Dave said he could talk to a manager and order a carrier - hopefully to arrive sometime later in the week. Now we're brainstorming! - I thought.

So I'll be driving back to Logan later in the week. Hopefully Dave will have ordered a carrier.

Alaska Airlines has an "Animal Express" that I just looked up and found. I'll call on that tomorrow. If both cats could fly on that - well, that would be just too perfect, now, wouldn't it?