Tag travel (17)

Golden Rules of Travel
Mood: happy
Posted on 2009-10-19 10:01:00
Tags: travel
Words: 63

Grandma's Golden Rule of Travel: Always go to the bathroom whenever one is available.
Grandpa's Golden Rule of Travel: Don't back up more than you have to. (this is more of a driving rule)

I am proud to present
My Golden Rule of Travel: Always pack boxers and sleep pants, no matter what the temperature is outside.

This rule has served me well :-)

1 comment

Honeymoon quick wrapup
Mood: accomplished
Posted on 2009-08-08 18:24:00
Tags: pictures honeymoon travel
Words: 114

We had a very nice honeymoon. Hawaii is a really beautiful place. Maui is great for relaxing and sightseeing, and Oahu seems nice for shopping and whatnot.

We kept too busy on Maui. I don't regret anything in particular that we did, but we should have scheduled fewer activities and had more relaxing/recovery time. It's been a while since we had a vacation that we planned for ourselves, so hopefully we'll remember it for next time.

Amazingly, I didn't get seriously sunburned!

Stuff we didn't do this time but I'd like to do next time:
Maui: Surfing lessons, parasailing
Oahu: Polynesian Cultural Center, swimming with the dolphins at Sea Life Park

Full honeymoon pictures:

0 comments

Texas Bowl was awesome!
Mood: excited
Posted on 2008-12-31 14:13:00
Tags: pictures travel essay
Words: 477

Recap:

That was a lot of fun! We got to the game early and walked to the stadium (avoiding the $20 parking), got some food and sat in our seats. We were literally four rows away from the field, at the 35 yard line. Visibility would have been better had we been a bit higher up, but being that close to the field was pretty fun. Reliant Stadium is huge!

I haven't watched a Rice football game since I graduated, as far as I can remember, so the team was very different. When I was there it was a lot of running, and a pass play almost qualified as a trick play because they happened so rarely. Rice ended up running a decent amount, but their passing game was stellar. Chase Clement (their senior QB) is quite good - he ran for Rice's first touchdown and threw for a few as well. He was good at avoiding the pass rush too - on one particularly nice touchdown throw he did a neat little turn to throw off the rusher and had plenty of time to step and throw.

Jarrett Dillard (Rice's All-American WR) was pretty amazing too - he made some nice catches (my dad says he has a 42" vertical leap!). James Casey sometimes lined up at tight end, sometimes at fullback, and he returned punts and was the holder for the field goal kicker :-)

Rice tried a few trick plays including a flea flicker (QB hands off to the fullback who takes a few steps, tosses it back to the QB who then throws a long pass) which didn't work, and a reverse followed by an attempted pass which would have worked but it was a bad throw. One that did work was with four wide receivers lined up on the left, Clement quickly threw to Dillard and then took off to the right. Dillard took a few steps, stopped and threw it to Clement who waltzed in to the end zone. It was awesome :-)

Here's the game recap - it was never close at all (Rice won 38-14 but went up 38-0 and then started taking out first-string players). The downside was that it wasn't that exciting per se, but it was nice the coach got to take out Clement and Dillard to a standing ovation.

The stadium was reasonably full and there were unsurprisingly a lot of Rice fans, including NI's former VP of R&D who I ran into. We got some good cheers going and stuff :-) I went with my dad and sister (not wonderjess, the other one who refuses to get a LJ account...) and had a lot of fun! Got to use my new camera for the first time and it performed well - took a lot of good pictures that I'll post when I figure out how to download them...

Edit: pictures now up!

2 comments

just so I feel caught up
Mood: happy
Posted on 2008-12-29 10:52:00
Tags: travel gay politics links
Words: 326

Back from vacation! Christmas and related activities were good and fun and relaxing. Enjoyed spending time with family and got a lot of work done on whereslunch.org - only remaining things on my list of "must fix before launching" are dealing with IE and possibly adding tag editing (which will be a pain).

Driving back to Houston tomorrow to watch Rice play in the Texas Bowl, and driving back the next day - glad I have a plan for that now.

There has been some controversy about Obama inviting Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration. He's the pastor of Saddleback Community Church and while he has focused on poverty and the plight of AIDS victims, etc., he did endorse Prop 8 in California. It turns out he did so on a Friday 10 days before the election on his church's website (not anywhere more public) and neither he nor his wife donated money to the campaign. Obviously I don't agree with him, but I'm all for engaging people we disagree with, and Rick Warren is no James Dobson or Fred Phelps. Plus, it's just an inauguration - not like he'll be writing policy or anything like that!

Oh, what the heck...some more links:
- 90% of the copies of World of Goo are pirated - yeah, yeah, I know not all of those people would buy the game, but this is kinda depressing. It's cheap ($20), it's DRM-free, and it's a good game!
- The US Census Bureau just released the 2009 version of the Statistical Abstract of the United States = tasty tasty data. Maybe I will do a project in R...
- A Russian professor predicts the breakup of the US in 2010. The map at the bottom is pretty awesome. I definitely think states like Kentucky and Tennessee would be excited about joining the European Union. Sheesh!
- No big surprise: text messages costs carriers nothing - I didn't realize SMS was designed to fit inside a control message, neat!

3 comments

links links links links links links links links
Mood: cheerful
Posted on 2008-12-11 14:31:00
Tags: travel gay politics links
Words: 87

I'm trying out Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 - the new fancy Javascript engine makes things (like whereslunch.org, which I really should work on more) much faster!

- A collection of tourist scams that I found interesting.

- James Franco and Sean Penn kiss on camera in "Milk" and get lots and lots of questions about it.

- Obama is crazy popular these days, way more popular than Bush or Clinton were when they came into office. 79% say they won't miss Bush and 48% say he's been worse than most presidents.

0 comments

back from beach, more Palin
Mood: chipper
Posted on 2008-09-02 10:21:00
Tags: travel politics
Words: 176

Port Aransas was fun. I got sunburned but they're mostly gone by now. Better recap will follow at some point in time. But, for now...

I'm feeling a lot better regarding Palin than I did on Friday. Turns out she's more conservative than I thought especially on abortion and sex education - she supports abstinence-only education, which will prompt an angry rant sometime this week.

And it turns out her 17 year old daughter is 5 months pregnant and will marry the father. I don't think her daughter is fair game, but it gives a slight "hypocrisy" angle to the abstinence-only education which is enough to give the story legs. As Atrios says, "Policy matters".

And she hired an attorney today in that trooper scandalish thing. And...well, here's a list. (was a member of a fringe group wanting a vote on Alaskan secession, did actually support the "bridge to nowhere")

Anyway, announcing the pick on Friday seemed like a good idea at the time but now it seems like these stories are gonna overshadow the Republican convention.

14 comments

back from Maine
Mood: cheerful
Posted on 2008-08-17 15:20:00
Tags: pictures travel
Words: 325

Well, we're back from Maine! Here are pictures, and trip recap is behind the cut:

Left on Wednesday and, after the plane stopped in Baltimore (thought the flight was non-stop but apparently not), made it to Manchester, NH. The Southwest gate agent in Baltimore was nice enough to let us off the plane for a few minutes so we could grab some dinner. It was weird being in an airport that we were so familiar with!

My family picked us up and we drove back to Old Orchard Beach, ME. The cottage we were staying in was small (and the stairs were creaky!) but nice enough. The next day we walked down to the beach and walked along the beach for a while. We walked around town and picked up some souvenirs, including a half-pound of fudge and almost three pounds of Jelly Bellys. (this is too many Jelly Bellys, by the way)

I tried lobster for the first time - it was...OK, but nothing spectacular.

Thursday afternoon we walked around Portland and saw something about a renewable feast being put on by Cultivating Community. Of course, the whole eating local thing was offset by the fact that we flew up there, but whatever. The food was pretty good, although the meal lasted for a while and it was quite chilly by the end.

Friday we walked around the beach some more and almost played a game of mini-golf before Aunt Rebecca, Uncle Barrett and company arrived. Walked around some more with them and had a nice dinner at a local place.

Saturday morning we walked down to play some mini-golf before dropping wonderjess off at the train station and driving back to Manchester for our flights. We barely took off before a thunderstorm rolled in, and in fact we barely landed in Austin before thunderstorms came in (or at least the rest of the flights were delayed).


It was nice to have some time off!

6 comments

we are in austin
Mood: tired
Posted on 2007-09-25 00:17:00
Tags: travel
Words: 26

Made it to Austin, checked in to our apartment, stuff gets here Wednesday(!) so we have lots to do. *yawn* Will be at game night tmw!

1 comment

unstuck not in st. louis
Mood: tired
Posted on 2007-09-23 23:39:00
Tags: travel
Words: 166

After all the hullabaloo over the car, it turned out to be a big bust - we turned it on this morning and not even the check engine light was on. Took it in to the service place (who only sold tires on Sunday, no service) and the guy said if the check engine light was off, they couldn't find the code anyway and so it was probably fine if we didn't notice any handling problems, etc. We drove over 700(!) miles today, nary a warning light to be seen. Went through 280 miles of Missouri, a lot of Oklahoma and are in Hillsboro, TX right where 35E and 35W become plain ol' I-35. We were on the road for just over 12 hours so we're pretty tired but we got a room with a whirlpool and we get to sleep late so we should be fine for the less than 3 hours of driving tomorrow. (I think - it's only 3.5 hours from Dallas to Austin, right?)

3 comments

stuck in st. louis?
Mood: unsure
Music: scenes from "Dodgeball"
Posted on 2007-09-22 21:05:00
Tags: travel
Words: 467

Our journey thus far!

We got up early Friday morning, packed up the remainder of our stuff (including our computers which we had kept connected one last night), checked out of our apartment and went over to work one last time. Wandered around for a little bit, finished our last meeting and took off!

Good time was made as we passed through the long skinny part of Maryland, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, a little tiny bit of West Virginia, and a lot of Ohio before stopping in London, OH. (just west of Columbus) Lunch was at a gas station Blimpie which was decent and dinner was at a Cracker Barrel which was quite tasty. (we'd never been to one before) Stayed in a bed & breakfast which was kinda pricey. Neither of us had stayed in a B&B before so the whole thin gwas a little weird - felt like being in someone's house. Did get to use the whirlpool and read on the second-story porch swing.

This morning we had a nice breakfast and hit the road again. Got to Indiana and had lunch at a White Castle (our first time! an adventuresome trip, kinda) which was greasy but good. In planning we kinda forgot about the time change, and combined with the extra distance we had made the first day we got to St. Louis earlier than planned. Met up with Carrie and her boyfriend Chris (who I had never met) and her two roommates and walked to dinner at Fitz's. I had a root beer float which was delicious, and Carrie had a "quesadilla burger" (a burger with cheese with tortillas as buns) which is genius!

Walked back to her apartment, took lots of pictures of her apartment (which is quite roomy) and got back in the car to go another 100 miles. Except after around .2 miles the master warning light went on with the check engine light, as well as something with the hybrid system. Well, crap. Pulled off into a gas station, waited a minute, turned on the car again with the same warnings. Called a few local dealerships (thanks for the info Carrie), none were open tonight or even tomorrow (curse you weekends!), although Carrie did know a place that was open on Sunday. After that long conversation and booking a hotel room here, turned on the car...and the master warning light and the hybrid system lights were off, leaving just the check engine light. (I've had the check engine light come on before, got it checked out, nothing was wrong) Sooo the plan is to get the the places that are open early tomorrow and hope they can take a look at it. If not, well, maybe everything's OK.


So, wish us luck tomorrow! I'll try to twitter one way or another...

2 comments

two weeks to yuma...i mean austin
Mood: cheerful
Posted on 2007-09-07 09:37:00
Tags: travel cluesolver
Words: 194

We leave two weeks from today! Here's the route we're planning to take, going 6, 8, 8, 4 hours per day, stopping for the night in Ohio, Missouri, and somewhere close to the border between Oklahoma and Texas.

Things are coming together for the move. I'm going to finalize the movers today (going with Bekins), djedi's car is all set up to magically reappear down there, etc. Wish it would just hurry up and happen now. Two weeks isn't too bad though.

We raid Karazhan again tonight! I have high hopes.

The clue solver is not going well. I rewrote it using just propositional logic (no first order logic) last night, and it still gets stuck on very simple queries. I think I may have screwed up the resolution algorithm as it deduces all sorts of unhelpful things, so I guess I'll look at that next. If all else fails I could always just do the Monte Carlo-like simulation omega697 suggested, but I'm going to be disappointed if I can't actually prove things. Oh well.

For the clue GUI I'm thinking of trying out the Google Web Toolkit (GWT) to make a spiffy interface.

16 comments

in a new york minute
Mood: awake
Posted on 2007-08-27 10:28:00
Tags: travel
Words: 846

We're back from our NYC trip - I have lots of pictures that hopefully I'll get around to posting this week. I twittered some while we were there. My highlights, djedi style:

• I've been to NYC before (in high school), but I forgot how weird and neat and kinda creepy it is to be surrounded by tall buildings in all directions.


• Empire State Building: surprisingly sketchy. We wanted to go to the top, so we waited in a line that stretched outside. There were people asking everyone "Do you have your ticket yet?" (they even had shirts that said that), and it turns out they were selling some sort of virtual tour of NY that I think still included a ride to the top of the building, but was more expensive. Then they were telling people it was a two hour wait if you waited in the "real" line, which was blatantly not true (maybe 30 minutes). We were handed a couple of different flyers while waiting in line, where we discovered you could pay more and go to the observatory 20 floors above the usual place. Or you could pay more and cut to the front of the line! We chose to pay more by buying a CityPass which included tickets to museums we were planning to see. More on that later.


• The Statue of Liberty was impressive and worth the ferry trip out there, even though we didn't get to climb up it (you have to get tickets beforehand). I am definitely allergic to something in popsicles that street vendors sell, as the red bumps have appeared again. (previous incident) When we were getting off the ferry back at Battery Park it was very choppy and kept shifting and stuff, which made me think of the fall of the Eastland. Which didn't happen.


• Spamalot was a good show. We had listened to the soundtrack (of course Hank Azaria, David Hyde Pierce, Tim Curry weren't in it anymore), but there were a good number of visual gags that added to it. The audience was really in to it which (as with most comedies) made it seem funnier. And a few cast members seemed to break character a little and laugh.


• Getting a bus tour was a great move. We got two days of hop on hop off privileges which was great for seeing stuff we didn't want to spend the time to walk to, as well as seeing kinda what it's like to drive in New York (crazy crazy crazy...although not as crazy as the people who bike there. How they don't get run over every week I'll never know) I got a lot of hopefully good pictures that way, and we used it to get from place to place most of the time. Taking the downtown tour on Friday and not Saturday was a big win, as it was much less busy which meant we got to sit on top almost all the time.


• Metropolitan Museum of Art was confusing. We bought the CityPass which included admission there, but it normally costs a $20 suggested donation. Does this not seem kinda sleazy? I'm guessing that since we used our "ticket" then the museum gets some money for it, or something, but it's weird. Also, the museum is very large and lots of exhibits were closed for renovation, which sucks. We got a little lost in European Paintings. Then we were going to have afternoon tea, but not for $24/person. Yikes. This was the only other time we used the CityPass, so I wouldn't recommend it unless you know you're definitely going to enough places to save money.


• A friend of djedi's showed us around Greenwich Village, which was a lot of fun. We went to this piano bar and hung out there for a while talking and occasionally singing. I tried to request a song but the pianist didn't know it or something. ("Santa Fe" and later "I'll Cover You" from Rent...how can you not know those in a gayish piano bar in New York?) Apparently a lot of Broadway people hang out there after shows, as the people singing had generally incredible voices. And the head puppeteer from "Avenue Q" (I was told) showed up! It made me miss choir days and long to be in musical theater. (which I'm sure I wouldn't really like long term)


• We also went to a huuuuge gay club, which was dark and really loud. (my ears are still recovering) They were showing a Madonna concert video downstairs, although the sound was Madonna singing different songs. I got a little drunk (only had one drink there but the bartender put a lot of rum in my rum and coke), and the loud music and flashing lights and stuff became a bit more mesmerizing.


• The subway was fun, although dirty and loud. Pretty quick except for getting to Penn Station on the way home where we had to wait for like 15 minutes.

0 comments

Greetings from the most anti-gay state in the nation!
Mood: excited
Posted on 2006-08-26 21:13:00
Tags: moving travel
Words: 650

Ah, Roanoke, Virginia. So nice to end up in such a nice nice hotel as this. There's a nice whirpool with rotating lights (and two mirrors), big flat screen tv, and the place is huge. Will put up pictures when we get there :-)

So, the first two days: fairly successful in terms of driving. Today, not so much. Since things had gone well we decided to stick with the plan of the Blue Ridge Parkway. First problem - I-40 near the North Carolina border was down to 45 mph (fairly curvy road - it was in a national park, so makes sense). But we stuck with it and took it over to the parkway. Now, the speed limit on the parkway is 45 mph the whole way, which we hadn't realized. Also, the drive is kinda scary if you go 45 mph - there are tight turns, especially with changing altitude (think roller coaster!) Finally, for some reason they let bikers go on the road (it's one lane both directions with absolutely no shoulder, and usually the trees are very close to the road). Now I'm sure it's an awesome (but tough!) ride with the scenery, but this is seriously dangerous because you have to either slow to a low speed to stay behind them or try to pass them quickly, which is scary because the road is fairly narrow and on a lot of the turns you're lucky if you can see a second in front of you. So that was scary.

Having said that, the view was absolutely gorgeous - we switched off drivers so we could both see the scenery. There are lots of overlooks where you can stop and take pictures, which I did :-)

So originally in my mind we were going to take the Blue Ridge Parkway the whole way to Roanoke, then spend the night in Charlottesville (another 120 miles). This was right out, because the 45 mph speed limit meant we would get there at like, oh, 3 am or something. (don't forget, we changed timezones which cost an hour as well) So we took the first "exit" off of the parkway (which were few and far between - I was a bit worried about running out of gas!) and decided to take some roads to get back to I-81. Apparently "state road" in North Carolina means "nice mountainous road where speed limits are 35 mph for long stretches of time", so this took for freakin' ever. Finally we were going to stop before Roanoke in Wytheville, but the hotels I called were all full up, so we bit the bullet and drove to Roanoke, where we are now. Yesterday we averaged 58 mph for the day, including stops (500 miles in 8.5 hours) - today it was 45 mph (500 miles in 11 hours) which makes a huuuge difference.

Luckily tomorrow's drive will only be around 300 miles so we don't have to get up early or anything.

Last night we watched The Break-Up while in the whirlpool. The movie ordering system was weird - you had to tune the TV to channel 2, then pick up the phone and press the "movie" button (which was on a box also tapped in to the phone line), then use the remote to select the movie, then swipe a credit card through the box to pay for it. Seems unnecessarily complicated...

Random bits:
- This morning right before we checked out, a guy in the hall said "so, you're from Texas" (I was wearing my Texas ARML shirt). I said yeah and he asked where my Kinky for Governor bumper sticker was. I was surprised to hear this in Tennessee :-)
- At lunch today (Subway for the third lunch in a row!) the girl making my sandwich said I looked like George from Grey's Anatomy (which I haven't seen). After looking at the picture, I guess I can see a resemblance...

Columbia tomorrow!

8 comments

Tennessee, our Tennessee
Mood: sick--
Location: Cookesville, TN
Posted on 2006-08-25 19:34:00
Tags: moving travel
Words: 277

Howdy! We've stopped for the night in Cookesville, TN. Had a good trip today - went just under 500 miles, so we're doing well enough. The only traffic we hit was in Nashville which probably cost us 20 minutes or so...

In terms of sickness, I'm probably a little better than yesterday, but I feel kinda feverish right now. Hopefully a stint in the whirlpool will at least clear up my sinuses. Speaking of which, do most hotels have rooms with whirlpools/jacuzzis nowadays? Because most of the ones here do, like the ones in Hot Springs. Maybe we've just never looked for that before, but we're totally doing so in the future :-)

Cookesville is a weird place - we've only seen the part right near I-40, but there are tooooons of hotels and restaurants (Jack in the Box, Wendy's, Chili's, IHOP, Ryan's, Steak and Shake, Starbucks, Subway, Outback are all within 3 blocks...and there are more I'm forgetting) right near our hotel. It seems like there may be a college right around here, based on the age of people at Wal-Mart and the conversation I overheard at IHOP, which might explain some of this...

One of the upcoming Alamo Drafthouse events we saw at "Snakes on a Plane" was the showing Chuck Norris movies with Chuck Norris himself in person, which looks awesome. I'm really gonna miss the Drafthouse.

Tomorrow is more driving, probably around the same amount (so our Sunday drive will be easy, especially since we have to get to Columbia by 5 PM), but we're gonna take the Blue Ridge Parkway for a while tomorrow which is supposed to be very scenic. I'm excited about that :-)

4 comments

LJ - Arkansas edition!
Mood: sick
Location: near a sweeeet jacuzzi!
Posted on 2006-08-24 20:17:00
Tags: moving travel
Words: 400

Howdy sports racers! This post is brought to you by the good folks at Clarion Resort who provide tasty tasty free high speed internet in every room. Not to mention the sweeeet jacuzzi in the room - we're totally going to use it again and watch TV in it after this :-)

The drive today went relatively OK. We're in Hot Springs, AK now which is right about on schedule in terms of distance (maybe a little farther than we needed to go), and the nice part is we got here around 5:30, so we got some relaxing time (sweeeet jacuzzi!) before heading out to a nice Italian place for dinner. The bad news is that my allergies are freakin' killing me. I don't know if it's a cold or not, but I was blowing my nose all day long and it's really starting to get raw from all that. I bought some of the fancy Kleenex(TM) with lotion on them which usually helps, so we'll see how that goes. Hopefully a good night's sleep tonight will help too.

Hot Springs (population 36,000) seems like a relatively nice place, although we drove through downtown to get to dinner and it looked a bit run down. Bill Clinton grew up here, and they converted his old high school into the Cultural Center of Arkansas, which is "a large complex where artists and performers may live and work". Although now that I search on that, one of the only places this shows up is in the brochure I'm currently reading. Maybe it's not finished yet?

Here's a random question - why is it standard practice to tip waiters 15% of the cost for food and drink? I can understand based on the number of drinks and entrees ordered, but is it harder to keep track of and deliver an expensive steak than a simple angel hair pasta? Or is this just an easy approximation to the number of entrees and drinks ordered? I know hosts and busboys get part of the tips - do the chefs as well? Because that would make sense, since presumably the more expensive meal is harder to cook.

Tomorrow the plan is to stop somewhere in Tennessee (we'll be spending a ridiculous amount of time in Tennessee, going from the southwest corner to the northeast corner), so hopefully I'll be able to post again if we can find another nice hotel :-)

9 comments

back from graduation!
Mood: sick?
Posted on 2006-05-23 11:10:00
Tags: travel
Words: 814

So wonderjess graduated this weekend, so I made the trip up to the ol' ROC to be there. It was a lot of fun! I took toons of pictures that maybe I'll get around to putting up tonight.

One downside is that I think I picked up a slight cold or something from my family (three out of four of the others felt sickish yesterday)...although I feel much better today than last night! (my flight got in around midnight and I was exhausted from travelling)

The way UofR does it is there is a ceremony for everyone in the morning, but they don't call names and nobody walks. You receive your diploma in smaller ceremonies on a per-department basis. So, the four of us got up early Saturday morning to get good seats - we got there around 8:15 for a ceremony that started around 9. The trouble was that when we got there, it was cold, windy and rainy. Luckily, it stopped raining before the ceremony started and the wind died down some, but it was still darn cold. To pass the time, Carrie and I and Mom played a word game - we each picked a word before it started that we thought would be said the most, and counted how many times it was said. Carrie beat us both by a lot. For your enjoyment, take a guess which word won!

[ Fill out Poll ] [ View Poll Results ] [ Discuss Results ] [ Close Poll ]

Poll #734605 The graduation word game!
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 13

Which word was uttered the most at U of R graduation?

7 comments

back home, finally
Mood: tired
Music: some sort of tired music or something
Posted on 2005-08-17 22:26:00
Tags: travel charlottesweb
Words: 1039

I'm back in Austin!


So I left on Friday afternoon to go up north and see my family. Unfortunately my flight out of Austin (to Cincinnati) was delayed an hour or so, but since I was going to have a three hour layover in Cincinnati, no biggie. Ate dinner in what is possibly the most depressing airport concourse in America (Cincinnati terminal 3 concourse C...to be fair, it was under construction, but it was all concrete and harsh lighting. Yuk!), then went on to Burlington (after a 15-minute delay or so). Got in around midnight and made it to Plattsburgh around 1 and promptly fell asleep.

Saturday and Sunday were spent cleaning and packing stuff up. Maybe I should back up. My grandparents (on my mom's side) have lived in Plattsburgh (upstate NY) for 50 years or so, but they're going to move to live in Hanover, NH (in the summer) and Houston (in the winter). There are a number of reasons for this, the most important being that it's getting harder for my grandma to get up stairs (the bedrooms are upstairs), and this way they'll get to be closer to their kids (my Aunt Rebecca and Uncle Barrett live in Hanover). So, this was all planned and stuff - then my grandma fell and had to get pins in her hip. So now she's in a rehab center in Hanover (more on this later). So, us plus Grandpa went to clean and move stuff to Hanover, except that we didn't know what stuff to keep and what to get rid of, etc, since a lot of it is Grandma's.

Anyway, so we drove to Hanover on Sunday via Burlington (dropping my dad off at the airport so he could go home) and Waterbury (where the Ben and Jerry factory is! Mmm...). We visited Grandma before getting to the condo - she's doing quite well, her physical therapy is going well and her spirits seemed relatively high. Then we unloaded and unpacked. Monday and Tuesday we spent visiting Grandma and Aunt Rebecca and Uncle Barrett and their children (our cousins, for those of you keeping score at home) Ethan and Chloe. That was fun.

Then, Tuesday, time to leave. Everyone else's flight left at 2:15ish and mine left at 5:15ish, so I hunkered down for a long stay at the airport - finished a few books and learned some more lines. Then, the flight was delayed two hours (this means six hours at the Burlington airport, which, while not as depressing as the Cleveland concourse, is extremely boring. The only "shop" inside security was a snack cart, from which I bought trail mix and a cinnamon roll), and we finally left. I was told that my Cincinnati-Austin flight was delayed 20 minutes, so I might just make it if things went well. We were a little later getting into Cincinnati than we had predicted, things did not go well, and I spent the night in Cincinnati.

Which, I used to always sort of want to happen, being an adventure and such. But I was really tired by this point, and disoriented (Cincinnati is in the Eastern time zone, fyi), so I didn't enjoy it as much as I could have. Plus, the flight they put me on the next morning was scheduled to leave at 8:53, and they asked me when I checked in what time I wanted to take the shuttle in, and I didn't know if they had breakfast or not so I said 7:00 to be sure I had enough time. Which meant I had to get up at 6:30, and they did in fact have a nice continental breakfast there, waffles included. Oh well. The room was quite nice - it was actually a suite with refrigerator, couch, and 2 TVs (I have pictures!) but I just watched a few episodes of Law & Order, took a sorely needed shower, and went to bed.

Next day! (i.e. today, or at least today when I started this entry...) Got up, was exhausted but made the shuttle no problem. This flight was a "true" Delta flight and not a Delta Connections thing, so I got to go to terminal 3, concourse B which was a very nice concourse. So I walked around it some, then sat down and read and waited for my flight. Unfortunately, it was...wait for it...delayed due to fog. (for the record, all 4 flights I went on, plus the one I was scheduled for and didn't go on, were delayed) Anyway, it left about an hour and 15 minutes late, and destroyerj was nice enough to pick me up (and got a speeding ticket on the way back, for which I felt bad).


So I get home by way of Wendy's (mmm!), and got home. At this point I knew that I had to work the booth at NIWeek from 4-7 and that I had Charlotte's Web rehearsal from 6:30-9:30 (so I would be late to rehearsal, and probably not get dinner in there), so I hurried and tried to find an electric razor so I could shave (there's another story in there, but it's uninteresting), and failed. Then I checked my email: hallelujah, Charlotte's Web rehearsal cancelled! Woohoo!

But I showered and went down to NIWeek, worked the booth which went fine, then came back here by way of NI (drove a coworker there) and Chick-Fil-A. My main task for tonight was to try to install Win98 and WoW (and Skype) so I could be ready with that (since I'm not having much luck making WoW work under Linux). Fiddling around with the hard drives took much longer than I thought, but I eventually got things set up and Win98 partially installed, only to have it reboot when it tries to finish the install. Whee. So now I'm working on XP. This stuff is gonna work, dang it!

This entry is getting long, so I'm gonna wind it down. Which is convenient, because I'm about out of things to say. djedi gets home tmw, which'll be nice. And I'm doing pretty well learning my Charlotte's Web lines, which is good since we're supposed to be off-book by Monday, which means some work is required this weekend.

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