The light of the silvery moon

[muckefuck]

Last night I was in a fabulous mood; today I'm emotionally hungover. I've entred the final fugue of anxiety before my trip abroad. My latest dark fantasy is that we'll get to the airport next weekend and find that, somehow, they have no record of our ticket purchase. I've been meaning to call the airline just to confirm our reservation, but I keep putting it off because I don't know what I'd do if they didn't.

But that was the furthest thing from my mind as I rode on the train yesterday evening, giddy with relief after a day of concentrated exertion, to meet my beloved. I was disappointed that I hadn't left work early enough to see the bright beautiful moon rise over the lake, but then it occurred to me that if I had, it would've been hidden behind brownstones and treetops for my trip home. Instead, it was in full view almost the entire way, and I could hardly concentrate on my reading because of it.

That more than made up for the disappointment of getting to the deck on Tuesday night and finding a thick veil of clouds hanging over the horizon. The moon still made a brief, gauzy appearance through a gap in the thickest cloud cover about an hour after its rise, long enough for us to toast it with méiguìlù, in any case. Plus the showers had frightened everyone else off and we had the deck entirely to ourselves all through dinner and dessert.

I only realised afterwards that we'd forgotten to photograph the moon. However, if you want to see pictures of us toasting (not to mention engaging in a little-known tradition involving pomelo skins), you can find them by following the link to monshu's page that I gave earlier.

Comments

[cpratt.livejournal.com]

Why call the airline when you can just check their Web site (and try to score good seats as long as you're at it)? Or is this a lesser-known airline?

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Hadn't occurred to me. It's not a budget airline, so as far as I know our seats are already assigned.

[areia.livejournal.com]

Most airlines these days will have a little seating plan in their online reservation system, so you know where you'll be sitting. If there are still empty seats, they'll usually let you move to one of those if you prefer.

[lhn.livejournal.com]

And if you can't change seats now, you probably can when you do online check-in 24 hours or less before the flight.

[areia.livejournal.com]

I think they don't let you do that any more for international flights. I've done it for domestic ones, but when I flew to Canada a few weeks ago the airline site said you could only do the online check-in for domestic ones.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

According to my invoice, we're allowed to do online check-in for our flight to Seoul. The operator at Asiana didn't seem to think our lack of paper tickets would be a problem. (I ended up talking to her because the online seat selection is broke. Of course, nothing on the website tells you that. Wankers!)

[areia.livejournal.com]

I think we may be talking about two different things. On a domestic flight, it's possible to use your reservation code to check in from home in advance, print a boarding pass, go through security and board without ever talking to an agent (and without a paper ticket). On international flights, although you no longer need a paper ticket, you usually have to go and see an actual person who checks you have a valid passport and prints your boarding pass.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Gotcha. Either way, you've got an e-ticket, but only domestically are you allowed to print a boarding pass in advance. That would make total sense given that I highly doubt the Passport Office is sophisticated enough to allow speedy verification of passports online.

[areia.livejournal.com]

Passport Office. Sophisticated. Speedy. Yeah... Given that some people are still waiting for those passports they ordered this summer: I think not.

I remember a trip from the UK to Estonia where I accidentally grabbed an expired passport for my (American) husband. Amazingly, we got let on the flight, and got through Estonian passport control without a problem. However, when we got to the hotel we found the current passport had been packed in one of his jackets, so he tried to use that on our flight back. Cue a very suspicious Estonian official wanting to know exactly how he was managing to *leave* the country, without ever having entered it. Whoops. He fessed up, and she let us out, but those were a few scary minutes there.

On international flights...

[ursine1.livejournal.com]

On international flights, although you no longer need a paper ticket, you usually have to go and see an actual person who checks you have a valid passport and prints your boarding pass.

One of my state-side guests was able to print out the boarding passes for both the flight to London and to Phoenix, so this depends on the airline. In this case it was BA.

You still have to see a real person to show your passport when checking in, entering the secure zone, passing through passport control, and at the gate.

Chuck

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

After I wrote that, I realised what Chris was getting at. (Can you tell it's been a while since I've had to fly anything but Southwest?) Unfortunately, I'm having trouble with the Asiana website, so I may need to call them anyway.