Our new “puppy”

I think the reason Ava and I are so obsessed with these cute little animals is because we don’t have enough to do at the soul sucking day job with Bank of No Forks.  Also, what we do have to do is completely boring and 100% unsatisfying.

Today we found this picture. After an extensive discussion where I postulated a theory that there really aren’t anymore Panda bears. They just look so unbelievably perfect they can’t possibly be real. I suggested that China and Disney are in cahoots and that they’ve got a crack team of Chinese Imagineers running around the bamboo jungles of China moving around stuffed bears to fool the tourists. She said there was a video and the pandas moved. I suggested animatronics. You know how good Disney is with all that.

Ava refused to believe that they aren’t real and I’m unconvinced so we decided that we needed to investigate this more fully. I offered to look into the flight arrangements. I pulled up Expedia and typed in what I wanted: two first class tickets to China. There is no way I’m flying all the way to China in anything but first class. It’s nonnegotiable. Expedia wanted to know where in China. I didn’t know. The jungle-y part. The panda bear part. NOT the part where the outdoor markets try to sell you giant cockroaches on skewers to eat. I will NEVER be that hungry, I assure you. I stared at the list of Chinese airports.

Fortunately, right then the building maintenance man wandered into my office to spackle my wall where I tried to tunnel out using a wooden coffee stirrer and the butt end of my stapler. He amuses me because he’s about four feet tall and Irish. (It occurs to me that this post is quite multi-national. Good for me.)

I asked him, “If you were flying to China to kidnap a panda bear, would you fly

our new "puppy"

into Shanghai or Beijing?”

He didn’t answer. I hope he’s not a company spy here to see if I’m misappropriating Bank of No Forks resources.

I found a near perfect flight from here to Phoenix then London and off to Beijing. It will cost a paltry 21,990.00 before tax. Each. And, the way back we need another seat for our new “puppy.”

I wonder if the flight is cheaper from Rome to Beijing? We could work in Operation Panda Liberation right after we withdraw all the funds in that Latin ATM. In fact, depending on how smoothly this whole thing goes, we may also stop off in South America for that prehensile porcupine and a llama.