Friday Funny Time

So I’m trying out the ‘daily blog theme’ thing again. Friday should be funny, well, it needs some funny to help the day go by faster. It’s near 80 degrees here today (yes, 80 in November, gotta love North Carolina) getting close to breaking a record high. The weekend looks to be beautiful, but I’m not sure that we’re going to do much. Paul and I are fighting our first bout of the ‘crud’ – it’s not exactly a cold, flu or virus, but it ain’t making either of us feel too good.

A-n-y-w-a-y, the Friday Funny is about travel, air travel and its woes to be exact. The following to a letter from a disgruntled passenger on a flight in December of 2001 (the spelling and punctuation errors intact). I checked it out on Snopes and found the following to be TRUE!

Here is the text, but for the FULL effect WITH PICTURES, you must go here

"Dear Continental Airlines,

I am disgusted as I write this note to you about the miserable experience I am having sitting in seat 29E on one of your aircrafts. As you may know, this seat is situated directly across from the lavatory, so close that I can reach out my left am and touch the door.

All my senses are being tortured simultaneously. It's difficult to say what the worst part about sitting in 29E really is? Is it the stench of the sanitation fluid that's blown all over my body every 60 seconds when the door opens? Is it the wooosh of the constant flushing? Or is it the passengers asses that seem to fit into my personal space like a pornographic jig-saw puzzel?

I constructed a stink-shield by shoving one end of a blanket into the overhead compartment — while effective in blocking at least some of the smell, and offering a small bit of privacy, the ass-on-my-body factor has increased, as without my evil glare, passengers feel free to lean up against what they think is some kind of blanketed wall. The next ass that touches my shoulder will be the last!

I am picturing a board room full of executives giving props to the young promising engineer that figured out how to squeeze an additional row of seats onto this plane by putting them next to the LAV. I would like to flush his head in the toilet that I am close enough to touch, and taste, from my seat.

Putting a seat here was a very bad idea. I just heard a man groan in there! This sucks!

Worse yet, is I've paid over $400.00 for the honor of sitting in this seat!

Does your company give refunds? I'd like to go back where I came from and start over. Seat 29E could only be worse if it was located inside the bathroom.

I wonder if my clothing will retain the sanitizing odor . . . what about my hair! I feel like I'm bathing in a toilet bowl of blue liquid, and there is no man in a little boat to save me.

I am filled with a deep hatred for your plane designer and a general dis-ease that may last for hours.

We are finally decending, and soon I will be able to tear down the stink-shield, but the scars will remain.

I suggest that you initiate immediate removal of this seat from all of your crafts. Just remove it, and leave the smouldering brown hole empty, a good place for sturdy/non-absorbing luggage maybe, but not human cargo."
[end letter]

From Snopes: When we posed a query to Continental about whether this letter was an actual customer complaint received by them, they tersely told us that the information we were requesting was "proprietary" (which we took to mean that yes, they had received such a letter, but they weren't about to discuss or answer any questions about it with us). However, Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn noted in a 22 July 2005 piece that a Continental spokeswoman confirmed to him that the letter was genuine:

“. . . it's genuine, according to Continental spokeswoman Courtney Wilcox. She sent me the airline’s official, potty joke-intensive response:

The letter is not totally accurate and uses sarcastic humor to make the seat sound a lot worse than it is. But we don't want to pooh-pooh this customer's concerns — seat 29D is less than ideal. Most flights are not sold out and normally we can easily re-seat a customer who prefers not to sit in this location. However, the Dec. 21 flight was completely full, and we have apologized to the customer who wrote to us about the concerns. If there was a quick and easy solution to this problem we would do it in a whiz. However, the aircraft configuration is fixed and there is little we can do at this point to just flush away the issue.”

Seen in the backyard...

Since the birdfeeder has been full and the birds are on the winter move, the backyard was quite full of action! This lovely hawk was looking for a snack in our yard. Crikey, isn't she a beauty? Glad that she didn't hunt anything down while I was watching - that would be just a little too much for me to handle - but I loved watching her move along the perimeter of the yard checking everything out.

Congratulations to Jennifer & John!

The proud parents, John & Jennfer and Kathryn (Kimberly had to spend a little more time in the nursery for swallowing a little extra fluid)


From their Carepage* Latest News:

"Kathryn Grace and Kimberly Renee were both born at 7:45 AM on
November 6th 2006. Kathryn at 5 lbs 15 oz. and Kimberly at 6 lbs 5 oz.

They both went straight to the nursery (not the NICU) and as far as we know are doing very well. Mom is in recovery right now. Everything went well with her surgery and she is doing great so far. Dad sounded like he couldnt be happier or more in love!! "

*if you're a regular reader who knows Jennifer (I know there are a few lurkers out there!) and would like to visit their Carepage, send me an email (paulandjuliewedding {at} yahoo {dot} com) and I'll send you an invite (lots of great pictures and updates there).

UNCA Women's soccer team earn bid to NCAA tourney

Women’s soccer team makes history
by Bob Berghaus (Asheville Citizen Times)

ASHEVILLE — The UNC Asheville women’s soccer team made school history Sunday by winning the Big South Conference tournament and earning a bid to the NCAA tournament.

After battling Liberty to a scoreless tie through 90 minutes of regulation and 20 minutes of overtime, the Bulldogs won on penalty kicks 4-2 in a game played on the campus of Coastal Carolina in Conway, S.C.

The NCAA berth is the first for a UNCA women’s sports team. Tournament pairings will be announced between 3 and 4 p.m. today on ESPNews. The Bulldogs will watch the telecast during a party at Wild Wing Cafe.

“It really feels amazing,” said UNCA senior midfielder Ashleigh Carter, who was named the tournament’s most valuable player. “We’ve waited so long to win this. But today’s win makes every single minute of the last four years worth it.”

This will be the third time a UNCA team will play in a NCAA tournament. The men’s basketball team participated in the 2003 national tournament.