My academically- (and otherwise, but let’s stay on topic) talented sister is in the throes of comps right now for her masters in speech pathology, and all day today she’s been getting results from the written portion. So far, she’s passed 9 out of 12 subjects, with no rewrites necessary, and her three best subjects are the three she hasn’t heard about yet. Are we worried? Not in the least. She’s kicking some comps ass.
Happy Melday!
Along with many strangers who happened to be passing by. I left work early to get home before the weather got really bad, but my normal 20-minute commute took me almost an hour and a half. What started out as sleet turned into heavy wet snow. I finally got home and started shoveling the driveway so John (in his Mustang – terrible in this weather) would be able to pull in. Twenty minutes later, I got a call. John was stuck. He was in the right turn lane about a mile and a half away, and he needed rescuing. I threw the snow shovels in the my car (4-wheel drive – thanks, Dad!) and went to meet him. We shoveled down to pavement so his tires could get a grip, and he was able to get in the left turn lane. (A guy in a pickup truck stopped and offered to pull him out, but John had it under control by then.) He needed to do a u-turn to get home (we were trying to avoid hills – his car wouldn’t make it up a slippery incline), but he got stuck in the left lane at the light. I got back out of my car and tried to push him forward (the traffic was pretty light – we weren’t worried about pushing him into the middle of a busy intersection), his tires were spinning, and then I heard someone behind me yell, “No no no! Slow down! Stop!” Some other guy had stopped in the turn lane behind me (we all had our flashers on) and was running up to help. He said he was from Minnesota (there aren’t many credentials better than that in this kind of weather), and he coached John (with totally contradictory suggestions (“Easy now, easy, go go go, no, take it easy!”) through the u-turn while helping me push from behind. We got John around the median and facing the other way (the right way to go home), and then I followed John up the road. He made it about a mile and then got stuck (in the middle of the intersection) making a left turn. This time a guy who was out walking his dogs (and his family) ran over to help me push. We helped John rock the car out of the center and get across the road. Our plan at this point was to get to the parking lot of the shopping center where the Bloom used to be and just leave the car there. We live uphill from everywhere, and there was no way his car was going to make it. He didn’t even make it all the way to the parking lot. He got stuck on the road right next to it, but there are parking spaces along that road, so we shoveled one clear and kinda pushed and shoved his car into it. We’ll retrieve it tomorrow. That whole time (somewhere between an hour and an hour and a half) the snow was coming down like crazy. My jeans were soaked through and I had snow falling down the back of my neck. A warm dinner was called for (and wine for me and rum and coke for John). Luckily, while the band was rehearsing last night, I made a pot of Dad’s beefy rice (dirty rice, kidney beans, onion, hamburger), and all we had to do was heat it up. Turned out great. (Thanks, Dad!)
After hearing their version of “Let It Snow” on Pandora the other day (last weekend, maybe?), I bought The Four Freshmen album, “Snowfall”. It’s my new favorite Christmas album. I’m listening to it now, relaxing a little before bed. We had a very busy, productive day, starting with a long-overdue visit with Erik and Margaret. We met for lunch and moved on to Barnes and Noble, chatting about their wedding plans, puppies, travel, wedding music, wedding dresses, and Calvin and Hobbes, among other things. John and I bought road maps and travel guides for our trip, and then we went shopping for new weather-proof winter coats. We both ended up with coats with zip-out fleece liners (’cause it just makes more sense), but I fell in love with the new Columbia Kaleidaslope jacket.
Trust me, it’s way more flattering on than in the picture. I tried on the large, and it was perfect. And SO warm. I’m very happy with the coat I got, but can’t I have both? I need this one, too, right? Or, you know, not. I’ll live. The point of today’s shopping, though, was to get us that much closer to ready for our trip. Which we’re very very very excited about.
We got home much later than originally planned and settled in for dinner and our annual viewing of Love Actually. Which got interrupted (but in a good way) when Corey called. We’d been trying to connect all day, so I put the movie on hold (to be continued tomorrow) to talk to Brother of Mine. Also long overdue.
Speaking of Christmas, and thanks to nn.c, here’s a link to a bunch of Christmas-themed photos from around the world. My favorites are the skiing Santas and both of the ones of Santa runners.
Tonight was the first time I’d ever heard of The Sing-Off. I still don’t know much about it, but it seems to be a talent show for a capella groups. Good ones. Little Sister Melvin (henceforth to be known as LSM (or Sparky) (I googled LSM to find out what it could stand for, and by far, my favorite is Lesbian Sex Mafia) has been watching it, so here, for your viewing pleasure (after you finish reading one of the most convoluted sentences in this entire blog), are my favorites of the videos she had me look up.
The lead singer in this first video is the guy from The Persuasions. I really like his voice.
This one will not be John’s favorite video, but Mom will like it.
He might like this one, though. It’s one of his favorite songs, but doing his favorite songs a capella has always been hit or miss.
This is the first one I’ve seen where they look like they’re having a good time.
Okay, I promise to stop now. There’s a lot of good stuff out there, and it all makes me want to sing again. It also reminds me that I should be reading Adam’s blog (among many many others). So off I go.
I’m a bad sister who didn’t call. I’ll call you tomorrow.
The forecast for tonight and most of tomorrow is torrential rain. I’m lying in bed, hoping to hear it. I really want to be asleep right now (today was a good day, but long. I’m worn out.). I want to wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of rain beating down (I love that), and then go back to sleep knowing I have a few more hours before I have to go out into the rain to get to work. I need a covered walkway to the car. Parking in the garage is not an option. I don’t trust people who actually park their cars in the garage. What are they trying to hide? Besides their cars? Maybe belonging to the Secret Society of Those Who Park Their Cars in the Garage gives you access to secret underground hideouts, hidden from view in those very garages, only accessible by weight sensor. There has to be a car parked in there to get in. What do they keep in there? I may never know. Wait! I do have a car parked in my garage! I don’t have a secret entrance to an underground lair. Maybe the cars have to be operational. The secret entrance trigger is related to actually driving the car into the garage, not using it for long-term storage. Someday John will get the Camaro back into shape so we can join the Secret Society of Those Who Park Their Cars in the Garage and find out what all the fuss is about.
Mom has laptop troubles. Mom eventually has troubles with each laptop she gets, but this one is weird. She was connected to the internet this morning, and when she came back, she wasn’t. John and I spent a couple of hours over the course of the evening on the phone with Dad, trying everything we could think of. We don’t have Vista running on any of the 5 dozen computers here (I may be exaggerating), so that made it a little harder, and we eventually (it didn’t take that long) resorted to Google. And that reminded me of this www.xkcd.com comic:
This isn’t exactly how it goes when our parents call us for technical help, but it’s close, and it makes me laugh every time. Anyway, we weren’t able to get her connected again, but we’re pretty certain we could have if we were local. I say we, but at this point in the process, it would really be John. Funny flowcharts aside, we like being the go-to tech experts in the family.
I do want to tell some stories about this vacation, but that would involve adding pictures, and have I mentioned how draining it is to upload pictures to this site? I don’t have that kind of energy. Some people at work were giving me a hard time for coming back from vacation on a Thursday (why not take the rest of the week off and come back on Monday?), and while I see their point, it’s totally awesome to go back to work on a Thursday. Two-day work week! The weekend is right around the corner. And as fun as that vacation was (it was totally fun), I’m very glad to be home. I love my bed. And my dogs. And my kitchen. Well, I don’t love my kitchen, but it’s bigger than what we were working with in Georgia. Not that I spent much time in it.
Okay, maybe this is going to be a little bit of a vacation post. I was reading The Bloggess just now, and of course I’m laughing hysterically at today’s post (that should totally go without saying), and I had a similar experience over the weekend, and then I started writing the story in my head, so here it is.
Background: My family (Mom, Dad, brother, sister, me, assorted spouses, and one almost 5-year-old) decided to stay in a cabin in the mountains in northwest Georgia for a few days. In the mountains. In the woods. Not in a clearing in the woods. In the woods. With me? Okay. ‘Cause this will become important. John and I were supposed to arrive just before midnight Friday night (fly into Atlanta, rent a car, drive an hour and a half), but our flight was delayed (a lot) and then, only about 7 miles from the place, the road was blocked by a police cruiser because the power company was removing a tree from the power lines. After about 20 minutes of sitting there (no map, no Internet connection to find a map), I finally asked the cop if there was another way to get where we were going. There was, of course, and we finally got to the house. In the woods. At about 2:30 in the morning. Oh, after we pulled into the wrong driveway. ‘Cause it was a gravel road that was more of a track up the mountain. In the very deepest dark. Because it was in the woods! And the power was out. Dad met us at the right driveway with a flashlight and helped us get inside (where there were no lights, because the power was out) and find our bedroom. With a flashlight. Because there was no power. Being up the mountain meant we were using well water, which gets into the house via pump. Which totally doesn’t work when there’s no power. So, you know, no flushing. And bottled water for brushing teeth and washing faces and hands. NO POWER! But we were ready to collapse into bed (a bed we never collapsed into again after that night – I promise I’m getting to the point) when the power came back on, and so did every light in the house. Anyway, most of that background was not really necessary, but let’s just say it illustrates how tired and ready for bed we were the next night, having only gotten about 5 hours of sleep the night before.
I was washing my face in the bathroom when I heard a very loud, somewhat shocked “JESUS CHRIST!” from the bedroom. I came running and found John standing about three feet away from the foot of the bed, kinda pointing towards the pillow. “There’s a scorpion. IN the bed.” “Can’t be. Scorpions don’t live in Georgia, they live in Texas and New Mexico and deserts and stuff.” “Zannah, it was a scorpion. Go look.” “Um, no.” He twitched the covers a little and I saw something scurry under his pillow. I got a little closer and saw it come out from under the pillow and go upside down under the mattress. Kinda looked like a scorpion to me, but I wasn’t about to get close enough to really look. Besides, it couldn’t be. Either way, though, I didn’t want it in the bed. John was pretty freaked out, and I wasn’t brave enough to get it, so I ran upstairs and grabbed Corey before he disappeared into his room. Normally, I’m the one who finds the big ugly bug, and I’m the one who completely freaks out. John walks into the situation knowing what to expect (I’ve already shrieked about the bug), so he’s usually able to handle it fairly calmly. This time, he was the one who found it after nearly LAYING DOWN ON TOP OF IT, so I think he was well within his rights to be a little less than rational. Anyway, big brother came down, we both grabbed shoes, and I helped him lift up the mattress so he could WHACK the damn thing dead. And then he put it in a plastic bag to show every person who came to the house over the next few days. ‘Cause he’s a boy. Thanks, Cor, for killing the scorpion! After Corey left (with the scorpion, which he left on the table for everyone to find at breakfast), John and I discussed whether or not we’d be able to sleep in that bed. I was actually fairly okay with it, I think because I’m not the one who found it, whereas all those other times I have been the one surprised by the spider or the centipede, I can’t sleep because of all the creepy-crawly nightmares. According to John, that kind of inconsistency is one of my most endearing (or is that infuriating?) qualities. Anyway, we did a thorough search of the room and the bed, checked all of the blankets, all of the sheets, took the pillows out of the pillowcases so we could shake them out, lifted up the mattress again, looked under the bed with the flashlight, then checked the drooping fabric underneath the box spring just in case they were nesting (isn’t that something you’ve heard of? A nest of scorpions? Maybe that’s vipers…), and when we didn’t find anything, we decided it was time to go to bed. Gingerly. And without much sleep. Every night after that, we did the same bed check.
After the scorpion IN THE BED, the spiderwebs that apparently only took 10 minutes to string up across every doorway and sidewalk, and the millipede on the wall over our bed the last night (I called Dad to rescue us from that one), John and I have decided that although we like the idea of having a house in the woods, the woods will totally have to keep their distance. Nature (the buggy part, at least) is not for me.
(I counted six, which I totally (seven) put in on purpose. For reals. Think I can go higher next time?)
I thought something I had planned for July was actually happening in June, and I was getting John all annoyed about it because it would have happened tomorrow (Saturday), and I’d be gone for the whole day right after coming home for the first time in two weeks. And while we were talking about it (two days ago), I realized it might actually be scheduled for a Saturday in July, but I couldn’t be sure…. I checked, and yes, it’s not until July, and yes, I can’t tell one month from the next. But that means we can both sleep away the whole weekend, and that kind of rest is something we could both really use. John got in last Sunday night from Rhode Island and has worked almost nonstop since then. His mother and youngest sister stayed a couple of nights earlier in the week (college visits), so when he got home from the airport, he spent a few hours furiously cleaning the house from top to bottom. Several days later (now that I’m home to see it), it still looks good. Having your mother come to stay is a powerful motivator. I have the same reaction to visits from both sets of parents.
Anyway, we have deliberate plans to do nothing this weekend. I could see myself going for an early morning run, but only if I happen to wake up early enough (’cause it’s HOT here). We might try to get rid of some of the crap in the basement, but that might take too much effort. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.
At least we were wearing good walking shoes.
John and I were out the door at 6:30 Saturday morning ’cause the night before (after we got mildly sunburned from walking around all day), I had a brilliant idea. I wanted to do the whole cliff walk and then walk back along Bellevue (about 3.5 miles each way), but neither of us wanted to do it in the sun or the heat, so why not get up before the sunshine gets so intense? Smart, right? Sure. It was early, but we managed. The first part was great: gentle sunlight, not many people out, temperature in the 60s, paved path.
The start of the Cliff Walk
There was a bird doing a Batman impression right at the beginning. Looked kind of freaky. Was he warning us of something? Maybe the trail was out. Or a storm was coming! Or maybe we should have been on the lookout for an angry mob of birds who think they’re Batman. Hard to say. Maybe he was just drying his wings after his dawn swim.
Maybe we stumbled on the super secret "Welcoming the Day" ritual of this particular type of bird.
We continued on to the Forty Steps and took a few pictures of the rocky coastline…
Forty Steps from a distance. Makes you wonder why they were put there. It's cool and everything, but did they ever serve a purpose? They used to be a gathering place for the servants and workers from the mansions, but that doesn't explain why there are steps there in the first place.
Close-up. Duh.
Shortly after that, the freaky bird came back with more warnings.
If the bird really wanted to warn us, it should have learned English. Would that have been so hard? We certainly didn't get the message.
Then the paved path went away. Still not bad, packed dirt and the occasional line of large flat rocks. Then there were the parts where there was no path. Just rocks. And not flat ones, either.
Inside the fence was private property. We had to become part mountain goat to finish the cliff walk, and I don't even think we were halfway at this point.
I didn’t take any more pictures after that; I needed both hands. John took a whole series of the place we think is Hammersmith Farm (where Jackie O grew up), but we don’t have any more of the walk itself.
Probably (possibly, anyway) Hammersmith Farm
Not too long after that (and after a scramble across more rocks that turned out not be necessary – we missed the path), we found ourselves back on level ground, where Ocean Drive starts and Bellevue ends. We were 3.5 miles from where we started with no alternative but to walk back. At least it was shady. And we could see the front side of some of the mansions. I didn’t take any mansion pictures, but I can’t resist topiary.
Camels on a desert safari across a perfectly maintained, beautifully green lawn.
Our early morning adventure ended after more than three hours and over seven miles with quick showers and then breakfast at The Franklin Spa on Spring Street. (By the time we cleaned up, we had missed breakfast at the inn.) The Franklin Spa does breakfast really well. I recommend it if you’re ever in Newport. In fact, I recommend every restaurant we went to and every park, walk, or other activity we did.
On Friday, when we were in between appointments to see retail space, we joined the crowd on Ocean Drive to see the start of the Newport Bermuda Race. John took some great pictures and I took some so-so ones.
Looking all professional. (Don't burst my bubble if that's not what professional photographers look like.)
One of mine. Hazy, not that interesting. But still - sailboats! Racing! And a helicopter!
I really like the color in this one of John's. And the dog is cute.
John plays with depth of field and proves that I was actually there (blurry, but there).
Don't know who these people are, but I love this picture. How does he do it?
More sailboats, courtesy of John.
And that’s enough.
I’m in the cafe (I’ve typed “face” instead of “cafe” three times now) of a Borders at Providence Place Mall. (Really nice mall, by the wall.) John’s flight left almost an hour ago, and mine (for Duluth) doesn’t leave for another three hours, so rather than return the rental car and sit around in the airport, I figured I’d find a place with free wi-fi (not free at the airport) and hang out for a while. Doing this.
Now I’m hungry and I need to call Dad (Happy Father’s Day, Dad!), so I’m gonna pack up my laptop. It’ll be midnight or later before I make it to my hotel in Duluth, so this’ll be it for today. Actually, I’ll be in Chicago for a couple or three hours, so if they have free wi-fi, I may be online again. I’m sure you’ll manage either way. 🙂
I’m not going to pretend I’m happy to be away from home, but last night and today so far are making it a little easier to bear. I guess I can’t be unbearably depressed and crying all the time. John, can you forgive me? 🙂 If I had my way, this plane would be heading towards home, not Boston. Since it’s not – damn. Ignore the no-crying statement. I’m not crying, exactly, but the song that just started (“(You Don’t Know) How Glad I Am”) brought tears to my eyes. Because I’m a sap and I’m away from home. Today’s post is brought to you by The Living Sisters. If I could find that song on YouTube, I’d post it. Here’s the one that was playing right before it, when I was feeling a little happier:
Back to what’s made the last day and a half bearable (and, you know, good). Mom, Dad, and Gaby drove up from Corey and Candy’s place yesterday to spend the afternoon and evening with me on their way north. Mom and Dad have been all over the south over the last two weeks, and I’m ridiculously happy they realized that coming through Atlanta wouldn’t put them too far out of their way. I was done with work yesterday right about 1pm, and I wasn’t expecting Mom and Dad to arrive until about 4:30, so I went to the aquarium. It was cool and everything, but I think Baltimore and Boston have better ones. Not at all the peaceful afternoon I’d imagined when I thought about going to the aquarium. Yesterday was the last day of school for many of the districts in Atlanta, and it looked like most of them let out early and shipped the students to the aquarium. NOT quiet, pretty crowded, but while I didn’t get to experience the whole meditation-while-looking-at-fishies thing, I did have perfect timing to see all the animals get fed. I was checking out the otter exhibit (they were all napping in a big pile) when an aquarium employee appeared and tossed some food at them. They bolted out of that pile like they’d been faking the nap and scurried all over the habitat scooping up the food, doingcutelittlehumanthingswiththeirhands. Where was my camera? That’s right. Hotel room. But it was fun to watch. Oh, one thing that is totally cool about the Georgia Aquarium is how they’ve put half of the tanks and exhibits over the heads of the people walking around. So in the Georgia swamp area, you’re wandering around looking at frogs and snakes and things (this one little boy had camped out in front of the tree frog tank and made it his business to show me every single slimy, slithery thing in there), and then something catches your eye and you look UP. And above me, right there over my head, was a huge tank of water with a glass bottom, and a two-foot long catfish looking down at me. There were all kinds of fish swimming over my head. And that’s just the river exhibit. When we got to the ocean part (Ocean Voyager, maybe?), the track leads you into this tunnel that goes under and through what they say is the largest aquatic exhibit in the world. Lots of sharks, giant grouper, a manta ray, and four half-grown whale sharks. And lots of other fish. LOTS of other fish. After you get through the tunnel (which is just SO cool – seriously the fish and the sharks are swimming next to you and over you and it’s SO COOL – they had hammerhead sharks and the kind with noses that look like chainsaws. I can never remember what those are called.), you end up in a room with a window onto the exhibit that’s the size of a movie screen. I got there just in time to watch them feed these fish, which they do by pumping food in through a pipe. Everything in the tank zeroes in on this one pipe, right in front of the glass, I got to watch the feeding frenzy. Then, while I was in the tropical reef exhibit, they fed those fish, too. It was neat to watch, but I think I’ve had my fill of watching fish eat. After a couple of hours, I’d seen everything (minus the exhibits with an extra charge), so I went back to the hotel. About an hour later, I got a phone call from Gaby telling me they were checking in, so I met them in front. Where Gaby got shy for about five seconds. Then she got over it. I can’t blame her. I think it’s been a year since I saw her last. And at four and a half, I think she can be forgiven for not immediately recognizing an aunt she’s seen all of five times (now six) in her life. She’s the funniest little kid. We went to dinner at PF Chang’s (they have a reliably gluten-free menu for Dad, and besides, they’re good), and she started to fade a little. At first, she wanted to sit with the girls, so they three of us crowded into one side of the booth with Dad all by himself on the other side. After a while, she disappeared under the table after a crayon she’d dropped, and when she came back up, she’d moved to Dad’s side. Mom bagged up the leftovers and left them in the middle of the table. I started making faces at Gaby, who gave me a blank (tired) look and then slowly slid the bag over until it blocked her view of me. Cracked me up. And she insisted on sleeping with me instead of Grammy and Poppy last night. I guess Mom and Dad had suggested it to her earlier in the day, but we all expected her to back out once it came down to it. Not Gaby. I was about to drop and she was on her second wind (and an hour behind me, since she was coming from Central time), but even knowing that if she stayed with me we were going to bed right now didn’t deter her. So we headed across the hall to my room after Mom made her brush her teeth and she settled onto the right side (if you’re on it) of the giant bed. I got ready for bed and climbed in, and she scooted over to the middle so I could read her the two stories she’d been promised. After two stories, I was putting myself to sleep, so we turned off the light (leaving the bathroom light on and the light over by the door so it wouldn’t get too dark). She tossed and turned a bit (and was still in the middle of the bed, leaving me less than a third on the left), and then decided she didn’t want sleep at the head of the bed. She wanted to sleep at the foot of the bed, under the comforter that was folded up there. I didn’t care, so she moved and tossed and turned down there. And then demanded another story. And another. And another. So I made one up, which apparently didn’t go over well, because she asked for princess stories after that, particularly Ariel and Belle. So with my eyes closed and my words slurring (I think), I managed slightly butchered and completely condensed renditions of “The Little Mermaid” and “Beauty and the Beast” (the Disney versions, naturally). At some point, she moved back up to the head of the bed, in the middle, sprawled out at an angle, and fell asleep.
I didn’t sleep well.
But she’s so cute! I can forgive a lot for a cute face and a little girl who tells me she loves me without any prompting. So yesterday was fun, and this morning, too, and I’m always happy to hang out with Mom and Dad.
On top of THAT, when I checked in online for my flight to Boston today, Air Tran offered me an upgrade to business class for a very reasonable price, and I took it. So here I am, sitting in the very front row of the business class section, next to the window, with free wi-fi. I’ve just finished one of those cute little airline bottles of chardonnay and two milano cookies, I’m listening to The Living Sisters (although I’m on the second round of the album and I’m thinking about switching to something else), and I’ll have all day tomorrow in Boston to do whatever I want before I have to work on Monday. I think the aquarium is calling my name. 🙂 The one in Boston has penguins!
So, even though I’d rather be home (or be going to Boston on vacation with John), I can make the best of it. It helps that I ran this morning. Makes me feel like I’m holding my own in my battle against getting fat.
Enough of this. I’m going back to my book. I just started a mystery by Tana French called In The Woods.
I feel so much better today. For now. I went to bed early and set my alarm for 4:50. I slept mostly okay (weird dream that turned into a horrible nightmare (with people chasing me and trying to kill me) around 4am) and wasn’t too shocked when the alarm went off that early. I took my time getting up, reading a little to wake my eyes up, and then I got dressed to go for a run. I already knew I was heading to the fitness center (it was still dark out, and I’m not running in a strange place in the dark), but when I opened the door, I found out it was raining. Pretty steadily. I dashed across the courtyard area to get to the little fitness room. I don’t really like treadmills, but that’s what I had to work with, so I set it up to go for 30 minutes and I turned on the little TV that was attached to it. I had headphones, but I couldn’t find a jack on the stupid thing, so I watched TV (an episode of Married With Children) and tried to read lips for half an hour.
About halfway through my workout, the thunder and lightning started, and the rain switched from steady to POURING. Like the clouds were hurling all that rain down as hard as they could. I was soaked after my dash back to the room. Rain like that doesn’t usually stick around for long, but it was still raining as hard or harder when I splashed through the parking lot to my car to get to work. I have to park about a block away from the building (at work, not at the hotel), so I stopped at my friendly neighborhood Kroger and bought a tiny little red umbrella. You know what that means. By the time I parked in the lot downtown, the rain had slowed to a sprinkle and I hardly needed the umbrella. If I hadn’t bought it, though, it would have been pouring still.
My point, if I had one, is that despite the soaking wet hem of my pants, and despite knowing that I don’t get to go home until NEXT Friday, I feel a little better because I RAN this morning. (“SO much better” from the first paragraph has already been downgraded.) Also, I get to see Mom, Dad, and Gaby tonight. They’re stopping here to see me on their way back to KY. AND (see? lots of good things today) my first couple of hours at work this morning have already been a vast improvement over the rest of this week ’cause I’m sitting down and I’ve only had to talk to two people. Sitting down is crucial.
Make that five people. Still better than the rest of the week, and I have a built-in, supervisor-approved excuse so I don’t have to stay here all day. Yay!
It’s ten to three. We pulled away from the gate on time, did some taxi-ing (how do you spell that? Taxying? Taxing? Taxiing?), and then came to a standstill on the tarmac with a message from the pilot. “Something something something from Atlanta, 30 minutes before we can take off, approximate time of take-off 16 after the hour, blah blah ten-minute warning to turn electronics back off.” So…why did we pull away from the gate? Why board at all? Maybe so those of us who are sleepy can nap uninterrupted, as both of my seatmates are doing right now. (One is snoring. Lightly, but still.) I’m on the window this time, exit row again, next to two seemingly ordinary people. We’ll see how it goes. And Mom, I don’t ALWAYS have stories to tell about my flight. On my way home from Atlanta two days ago, my seatmate was a woman visting her daughter in Leesburg. She was a bit of a talker, but perfectly nice. It wasn’t her fault that I wasn’t in the mood to chat. (Maybe if she’d been a hot ex-Marine I’d have changed my mind about that. 🙂 )
I finished my Dresden Files book while waiting to board. I have another one with me, but I’m going to try a new mystery writer first. New to me. Has anyone heard of Lawrence Block? I read about his books somewhere (almost everything I buy comes from a recommendation now), but I can’t remember where. So far so good. The book is called “The Burglar in the Library”, the main character owns a used bookstore, and he’s heading to an English-style bed and breakfast to look for a possibly non-existent rare book. Just my cup of tea.
Yesterday, John and I went to Erik’s place to help him celebrate getting his Masters degree in International Commerce and Policy. (Erik, did I get it right?)
Hey, ten-minute warning. I’ll finish that later.
Much later:
I’m in my hotel room after a trip to a nail salon (yay for pretty toes) and a trip to Kroger for breakfast and lunch supplies for the week. Food and relaxing are at the top of my list for right now, so, um, bye.
We turned the A/C off while we were away ’cause it was making some not-good rattling noises Friday afternoon. And then we had 80-degree weather all weekend, so we came home to a stuffy house. Turned the A/C back on, and voila! (or “wa-la!”, as Mindy used to say), cold air! We’ve been home for almost two hours, and so far, no rattling. Maybe it fixed itself while we were gone.
I’ve got a couple of random pictures of the UPitt campus from Saturday’s graduation ceremony. Saturday was a beautiful day, all warm and sunny. We woke up to pouring rain this morning, and after dropping Emily, Tom, and Molly at the building for the big university commencement, John and I hit the road for home. It’s an easy four-hour drive (easier on a Sunday afternoon, in daylight, when we’ve only been up for four hours, not fourteen), and we stopped at Wegman’s on the way home so I wouldn’t have to go back out for groceries. We ate lunch around 2:30, so we’re having tomatoes, basil, and mozzarella for dinner. Light, fresh, easy.
Emily in her cute wrap dress and new pearls. Oh yeah, there's a sign behind her. We'd hate to forget where we were...
Emily in her gown and hood, while we tried to figure out how she was supposed to wear the damn thing.
The diplodocus (Elmer) outside the Carnegie Music Hall, our meetup spot after graduation.
The Cathedral of Learning (real name of the building)
Some church through the trees. Pretty.
I liked Pittsburgh. We saw some really nice neighborhoods, some cute shopping districts, and I’m sure there are other places around the city we would enjoy hanging out in. I’m not sure when the next opportunity will arise, though, since Emily will be moving away this summer to start her new job in New Hampshire? Philadelphia? Probably not North Carolina, but she’s got interested parties in all three places. Good for her.
I wasn’t able to hold my almost-annual Derby party today, but I did get to watch the race. (I did not choose the winning horse, but then, I never do.) We just got back from an evening at the Hofbrauhaus, where John and Tom each drank about two liters of beer, and I now consider myself an expert user of the Pittsburgh city bus system. Close to expert. Close enough. It helps to make friends with the bus driver. Tomorrow doesn’t have to start as early as today did (Today we had Emily’s school graduation to go to, so we were up at 7. Tomorrow is the university commencement, but it doesn’t start until 2pm.), thank goodness, so I’m hoping to get a good night’s sleep for the first time in….many, many weeks.
I wasn’t sure if I’d make it, but look! It’s not midnight yet. So here’s today’s post. We’re in Pittsburgh for the weekend to see Emily get her Masters in Speech Pathology. The drive was okay, but mostly in the dark, which is not my favorite way to do it. I’m completely worn out and sleeping in (past seven, anyway) is not an option. So I’m off.
But wait! I almost forgot. As I drove out of DC this afternoon, I watched Marine One land on the south lawn of the White House. SO cool. Maybe it wasn’t Marine One at the time, but it was probably about to be. Everyone on Constitution just then, in cars and on the sidewalks, was staring in the same direction. 🙂 You don’t get to watch a helicopter land at the White House every day.
Okay, okay. I accept that what happened to me yesterday morning was a panic attack, and I’ll call the doctor in the morning.
TV, anyone?
I love the theme song for Treme (on HBO). John and I haven’t decided if we want to keep watching it, but we had to watch the first two episodes. Required viewing in this family. Why? Check out the concierge in the second episode. She’s related to ME! How cool is that? The concierge in question (who Steve Zahn waved at!) is my soon-to-be-famous sister-in-law. So, you know, kind of related to me. Close enough.
Candy, I thought you were great. Even though we were watching for you, we were caught by surprise when you did appear, and then there was much squealing and pausing and rewinding and rewatching. (I’ll take credit for most, if not all, of the squealing.) We couldn’t possibly delete the episode from our DVR, of course. We’ll have to show it to everyone who comes over. And we started with Jess on Saturday night. So for the next…I don’t know how long, everyone who enters the house will have to watch Candy’s scene in Treme. 🙂 You think I’m kidding? Just wait.
Go visit Curiosity. She’s listing her priorities for life (and making fun of Victoria’s Secret models). Who can resist?
You know what bugs me? (In a little way, not a big way.) Finding a blog I like, and then realizing they don’t update every day. And it’s not just that they don’t update every day (’cause that’s okay. People are allowed to lead busy lives and do other things and NOT update the blog every single day. Yes, you have my permission.), but then they don’t update every few days, and then it’s been a week, and then two months. It’s so disappointing! I bookmarked you because I liked you! I liked to read you! And then you abandoned me. How could you? *sob* (Mom, I’m not talking about you, since I talk to you every day, and you tell me the things you would blog about. I feel up to date on you. But if I didn’t actually know you, and I found your blog some other way, then yes, I’d be talking about you. (Was that too harsh? I didn’t mean to be harsh.)) I have five or six blogs bookmarked that fall in this category, and since I already don’t have the time read all the blogs I bookmark (but I really want to), I may have to clear those few out.
It’s Oscar Night, so I might as well talk about it, right? But first, I have to see who’s nominated and find out if I even saw any of these movies. Last year, I hadn’t seen a single Oscar-nominated movie by the time the awards rolled around.
Okay, I’ve checked. Of movies that were either nominated for themselves or had an actor nominated, I’ve seen Avatar (liked it, but for a technical category, not Best Picture. I mean, come on, it was a 3D remake of Ferngully: The Last Rainforest!), Julie & Julia, and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Soooo, none of the really good ones.
We’ll watch the beginning for Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin, but that’s about it. I’ll check out the highlights online tomorrow. We’re going to spend our evening finishing Batman Begins (we got too sleepy to finish it last night) with pizza (and maybe wine – classy, I know).
Oh, we caught up on Lost this morning over breakfast, so Mom, Dad, Mindy, call me tomorrow and we’ll chat.
Complete and utter failure. Worst ponytail EVER. I took the dogs for a short jog this afternoon, and for the first time in months, I put my hair into a normal ponytail instead of the double-decker thing I’ve been doing (which has been working just fine). Because the ponytail wasn’t tight enough, it slid down the back of my head, freeing all the shorter hair in front to flop around in my face. I couldn’t just tuck it behind my ears (over and over and over) like I usually would because I was wearing my ear grips to keep my wittle ears warm, so I didn’t have ears behind which to tuck the hair. Behind which.
John has been in the driveway all morning replacing the rear brakes on the mustang. It’s not supposed to be this hard. That’s true of EVerything he does to this car. Except when he replaced the drive belt a couple of weeks ago. That one went pretty well. He got the driver’s side done, but he’s having trouble compressing the piston back into the caliper on the passenger side. I’ve been googling the problem, but he’s got the right tool and he seems to be doing all the right things. He’s not ready to assume the caliper has seized yet, but if he can’t fit the new brake pad in, he may have to replace the caliper. And that will mean he won’t be going to his cousin’s new baby’s christening. Because it will take the rest of the weekend (bleeding brake lines, replacing parts, adding fluid, etc) and he won’t have a car to drive until it’s done. So we’ll see. But if he does go, he’ll leave for PA tonight to spend the evening with his family and then drive to Long Island with them Sunday morning for the christening. He’ll stay with his parents in PA Sunday night and go to work from their house Monday morning. So I won’t see him again until after work on Monday. On the plus side, I’ll have Indian for dinner and watch movies he’s not interested in. But that’s only fun for one night, not two. Oh! Speaking of movies, we watched 500 Days of Summer last night. We both really liked it. Joseph Gordan-Levitt was fantastic, and while we didn’t like Zooey Deschanel’s character as much, she was really good. John couldn’t decide if he thought she was really attractive or not. He said he wasn’t sure if he’d call her beautiful, or even pretty, but he wants to keep looking at her. So at least he thinks she’s interesting. I think she’s very pretty. She’s got that blue eyes with dark hair thing I’ve always liked. Like Liesl in The Sound of Music. 🙂 And I will watch the musical number (from 500 Days) at least three more times before I put the movie back in the mail.
Things I Like (in no particular order):
Speaking of that last one, it’s getting close to my bedtime. More accurately, it’s getting close to that time when I should be in bed reading.
The snow just stopped. Maybe 15 minutes ago. And the sun is out. Our total is somewhere around 30 inches, maybe a little more in places. Definitely more in the corners of our yard. When we were shoveling this morning, the sidewalks (which were a little lower than the yard) had 24″ of snow. We spent a couple of hours shoveling the driveway and part of the sidewalk, mostly to make sure we could get the car out if we really had to. Tomorrow we’ll tackle what fell after we quit, the rest of the sidewalk, and we’ll try to dig John’s car out. If he can swing it, I really think he should work from home on Monday. The roads will be terrible. We had a plow come through sometime last night, maybe early this morning, but none since then. Our street has at least a foot of snow. Snow snow-snow, snow-snow-snow. I’m tired of it. And it’s way too deep for the dogs. The first thing we did today was clear a path on the deck, clear the deck stairs, and shovel out an area in the yard so they could get around. They can blaze their own paths from there, although they really haven’t this time. They’ve stayed under the deck overhang, where the snow isn’t as deep. Mark asked for pictures (apparently, he needs proof – Hi, Mark!), so here they are. Maybe it’ll all disappear overnight. I’m ready for spring!
Snow depth on the bench around 9:30 last night:
Snow depth on the bench as of about 9:30 this morning (through the sliding glass door with snow on it):
Snow depth on the bench around 4:45 this afternoon:
The back corner of the yard yesterday afternoon (3-ish, I think):
The back corner of the yard around 4:45 today:
My flower bed, buried:
An evergreen in the neighbor’s yard, yesterday:
Same evergreen, after the snow stopped today:
Out the front door this morning:
The driveway, before shoveling:
John shoveling the driveway:
The house, after shoveling (and the buried mailbox):
The neighbors, also shoveling:
And Roxy, peeing in the clearing we shoveled for her:
You’re welcome. 🙂
So yeah, we have lots of snow. We came in from shoveling around 11:30 or so, showered, and then had breakfast even though it was after noon. Hot chocolate (of course), cereal (Wegman’s version of Lucky Charms), and muffins. And we watched a little TV. Since then, I’ve been messing around on the internet, and John has been stealing cars and beating people up. Seriously. Oh, yeah, and we’re drinking champagne that’s been in the fridge since New Year’s. It’s better aged. 🙂