Well Hello Danica!

My travels as of late have been fodder for blog material. Isn’t it fun? Remember my trip to the Puerto Rico mountains where the owner of the Airbnb thought that I was “confusing the smell of ‘our’ organic cleaning materials with the smell of urine”?

And how could we forget earlier in the year the hotel room in Las Vegas that ended up being a conference room complete with a table and chairs?

A couple weeks ago when I was flying through Atlanta I even had a brush with fame. The guy in front of me in the security line had a beautiful black cat in a carrier. I struck up a conversation with him because well—it’s what I do. Plus I may be 1/8th of a crazy cat lady. I petted his kitty and talked a bit to him about how beautiful it was, etc. Short conversation because it was the TSA line but still I had a legitimate conversation with him. I helped hold the carrier so he could take it out to walk through the scanner and as he walked through I actually pushed his stuff through the scanner because he had left it and it was kind of holding the rest of us up. The TSA agent was watching and nodded to go ahead and give it a nudge.

The lady behind me commented to me “you know who that is, don’t you?” I looked at her and said “Uh no—some guy with a cat?”. She then informed me it was Norman Reedus who plays Daryl on the television show “The Walking Dead”.

“Norman Reedus by Gage Skidmore 2” by Gage Skidmore. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Norman_Reedus_by_Gage_Skidmore_2.jpg#/media/File:Norman_Reedus_by_Gage_Skidmore_2.jpg

Yep…it certainly was and I took a couple of pics after I got through before a few others came up and recognized him. Nice guy and very friendly and even if I had not clue at the moment who he was. He was my brush with fame that day.

Norman Reedus

Fast forward to Monday night this week when I was traveling with Buddy and Holly to Raleigh to relocate them there with Aaron until Chris and I make our move in August. I chose a hotel, a La Quinta, east of Indianapolis that was pet friendly for the night and we made it there in good time and trust me—all three of us were ready to get out of the car.

I went into the lobby, got the key to room 163, got the spiel about breakfast, etc. and headed to building G which was clearly marked to settle in for the night. I decided to take the cats in first and get them in the room before I unloaded all the paraphernalia that goes with cats so I grabbed them and my purse and key and went in the door to go find our room for the night.

Buddy and Holly chilling in the car. They may or may not be on drugs in this picture.

I found the room, set the cats down on the floor and proceeded to open the door with the key card.

When what to my wondering eyes did appear? But a mom, a young daughter and a dog named Danica! In my room. All settled in. Apparently quite surprised that I was opening their door. They thought it was their husband/dad who had gone out. But no—-it was me with two cats. Danica the Dog escaped down the hallway and we had to get her back in and secured as I was apologizing profusely here and there for the obvious intrusion. It was odd. It was beyond odd.

But I did find out they were moving to Las Vegas and this was the first night of the trip so we had a lot in common with the whole moving thing, right? I took the cats, stuck them back in the car and walked to the lobby again where I told the desk clerk we had a slight issue with the room being already occupied. She was…..non plussed, I think the correct word would be and did not even seem to be surprised at all. She took my key and envelope, recoded it for room 162 (across the hall from Danica) and I was on my way again. Odd? Yes. Disturbing? A bit. Did I make sure I locked and latched my door and put something in front of it that night? YES!

So Buddy and Holly and I made it to Raleigh and they are getting all settled in at Aaron’s for a short 2-3 month stay while Chris and I get moved. They did really well on the trip and were just glad to be here after almost 1200 miles in the car. Me, too.