twincityhacker

Writer Catherynne M. Valente ( yuki_onna ) is currently stranded in a tight spot. More specifically, she's strandaded in Frankfort, Germany after receving some very, very bad advice from Expedia. When she booked her flight online, she was told she didn't need a visa to fly into Russia. She even called the agency, and was told that they did not need visas to fly into Russia.

You need a visa to fly into Russia.

So, she and her brand new husband ( did I mention that they are on their honeymoon? ) have managed to secure visas, and can pick them up tomorrow. Only they still won't get to St. Petersburg until Thursday night, which leaves them only three days to enjoy the city.

Expedia has been extremely unhelpful in this matter. They wouldn't send a note to the Russian consulate to get Valente an exception to the visa rules, forcing her to spend more time trying to find a company that would. Expedia also booked them into a wildly overpriced hotel, and then only paid a third of the price. Nor did Expedia cough up the cash for the re-scheduling penalty.

Currently, Valente is writing an online novel called The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making. The table of contents is here. It's a book with-in a book from her novel Palimpsest ( which has a rec from Warren Ellis btw ). She posts a chapter every Monday, even doing so while in Airport Hell. It's price structure is that you donate what you think the novel is worth. The author has also been posting audiobook versions of each chapter.

She also a has another project called The Omikuji Project. This is a short story subscription service. You can sign up for each month's story individually, or a year's membership. But the interesting part is that you can either receive that month's story as an emailed .pdf, or as a small book printed on archival-quality paper, autographed, and stamped with a wax seal.

First, the srs biz:

Real person. Real situation that came to a very ugly head tonight. Summary from her and how to help below:

I am a disabled military wife and mother of two elementary-aged kids. Due to a delay in processing transfer orders, my husband's move to his next base isn't lining up with the end of our lease. This means we are having to pay for our move out-of-pocket, with the military reimbursing it later. My husband is currently with his ship in another state, so all details of handling the move fall to me.

We had planned to borrow the money for this from my mother. She has always been slightly mentally disturbed; tonight, this hit new levels. In the past two days, she's attempted to kidnap my kids and threatened to kill my mobility dog. She deliberately chose the time when I would be sickest from my low-dose chemo treatments to do this. I severely doubt she plans to honor her promise to pay for the movers tomorrow.

The movers are going to cost roughly $1300. If you can help, please send money to my paypal account, marna.m(a)gmail.com. Please indicate if this is a gift or a loan; we will begin paying back loan amounts as soon as we can. Thank you.

More: http://deza.livejournal.com/1331013.html

Speaking of money woes, I've been having some of my own, recently. Luckily, it's the "can't get at money" kind, instead of the "no money" kind. It's been going on for about a month already, and I mentioned something about this earlier when I was locked out of my account and couldn't get into it because I needed to do it over the phone, and my phone wasn't charging.

Well, I transfered the money in, and thought that was it. Until I tried to use my debit card the other day and it was denied. What I think is happening is that the bank think my card has been stolen because I'm using it to make relativity small purchases around Bloomington. And, for some reason, even though I've been buying things in Bloomington for the last few years, it reads as stolen card activity. And my cell's borked, of course, and cooperating even less this time than last time.

So I'm heading to the bank tomorrow after class and hoping they can sort out the card stuff in person. It would be just my luck if they couldn't.

Ran the gambit on chat in KoL explaining that it's a good thing that the branches of government has gained power, as the "powers" that they have taken from individuals are one's that those individuals shouldn't have had in the first place. Like, the ability to destroy the ability of humans to own other humans, and the ability to enforce labor laws so you can't pay people pittance or working people to death that is created some kind of virtual slavery. And that unrestrained Captialsim isn't all that better than Soviet communism.

Okay, this is all IMHO, but the impressive part is arguing coherent when tipsy. Well, I had pretty much just chugged my first alcholic beverage in two months, so I was slightly more than tipsy.