Converted

Since I wrote about our honeymoon travel plan falling through, people have been sending me concerned emails, asking if we were OK. Yes, we are, thank you for asking.

And here's what happened:

Like I already mentioned, we had planned to spend a couple of days in Philadelphia, then rent a car and drive through Indiana and see Brooke in Bloomington, then stop over at St. Louis to hang out with Kyle's mom and her husband Tom, and then we were going to drive South to Memphis to see Dr. J and Sewanee. We were going to end up in New Orleans.

We reserved a car with Budget online and headed over to their office bright and early on Saturday morning. The guy behind the desk was friendly enough and rather than chatting us up went straight to business and proceeded to enter our personal information into their data system. Company policy. Everything was going just fine until he asked for our credit card. Kyle handed him a debit card, when the guy said (not-so-nicely, may I add) that he needed a CREDIT card, not a debit card. Had something to do with the company's trying to cover their ass in case of car-theft something or other. OK, credit card, we said. And handed him our credit card. He refused to accept it.

See...HE needed a driver's license AND a credit (not debit) card that were both in the same name. What WE had was a driver's license and a debit card in Kyle's name and TWO credit cards in my name. The fact that we had more money in our debit card then in our two credit cards combined did not matter. The fact that we were fuckin' married did not matter. The fact that we offered to leave a cash security deposit did not matter. The fact that we had rented a car from Budget using Kyle's driver's license and a debit card just last summer when we were in Califordnia did not seem to matter AT ALL. There were company policies to be followed and data fields to be entered into "The Computer System" and thus no car to be rented to the Kirilova-Grady crew. Bummer.

So things fell through and we were so shocked by what happened that, honestly, could not even get mad about it. What we did was storm into a Starbucks and get ourselves a room in a hotel that served our breakfast in bed each morning (bagels and coffee and fresh fruit and all). What was one to do, you know...We had to make the most of it.

As we were leaving the Budget office that morning, though:

Prof. Grady: You know...THAT could never happen in Bulgaria!!!
Me: Why, what do you mean?
Prof. Grady: In Bulgaria there's ALWAYS another way around.

My husband...I think he's been converted.