The voyage home
News ·Thursday January 10, 2008 @ 02:48 EST (link)
20080101: Annual Brockview football game canceled due to weather (not that I was in any state to go). Slept as long as I could with the pain; got up sometime around noon. We were invited to my Uncle Tom's place for 1600, arrived 1630; Anna and Drew and cousin David ("CD") were there too; snacked on nuts until dinner, ate, played Scrabble, went home. Watched Stargate (9.20, "Camelot", last episode in season 9) at around 2130; also watched Star Trek: Voyager (3.19, "Rise"), the first on the DVD we brought.
20080102: Dug up my old Dragonlance atlas and Forgotten Realms book from the basement, and found a few books we'd missed. Some power outages in Fonthill around 1900; fortunately we only had a flicker here, but my parents' Internet has gone out. Dave Trotter called around the same time; they just sat down to eat and he'll call again about meeting for coffee afterwards.
We went to see Dave and Nancy Trotter (parents let us have the car); left a little after 2000, got there around 2030; instead of going out for coffee they invited us in for coffee (and tea) and we sat around the kitchen table and talked until about 2230, prayed together, and left. When we got home we packed (including a stack of my old Forgotten Realms novels that we wanted to bring back, that we fit into our suitcases) watched some season 1 House episodes then went to sleep at around 0500 (0530 for me).
20080103: We got up around 1100, finished packing, ate (or not); I drove the van to the airport (with Mom to drive back) at 1430; customs was good, and security wasn't even too bad: we were sitting at gate 6 at 1620, boarding 1655. Left pretty much on time (1725). On the flight Honey had the window, and I was in the middle next to a girl who was visibly upset, so I switched seats with Honey and she talked to the girl, Rachel: she had just left her fiancé and wouldn't see him until March, and didn't like to fly very much; she's in Equestrian Studies at Rocky Mountain University in Montana but was going to see family in Portland. When we got into Philadelphia, oh joy oh delight, they had a Chick-Fil-A; Rachel ate with us, then we talked for a while and parted to our separate planes.
That's where the trouble began: the flight finished boarding around 2100 (supposed to take off 2035); they had overbooked, so they were fishing for people to leave; it took a long time to load luggage, and everything was just slow and inefficient and incompetent, the hallmark of air travel these days. We finally left at perhaps 2130 and (insert long boring flight here, relieved only by Rush Hour 3, sleep, and Quiddler) arrived at about 0030 Seattle time (i.e. 3 hours later, 0330 Eastern). Fortunately, our luggage came out fairly quickly (as it should; they had hours to load it), and Shuttle Express, which we'd booked from my parents', was up to their usual efficient, courteous standard. Just an observation: they seem to have a lot of older, frequently bearded men working for them, all very friendly and helpful and a credit to the company, however. It's about 0112 local time in Seattle: we've unloaded the car, had a Coke, unpacked most of our stuff, and are ready to sleep or relax a little.
20080104: Worked from home due to back/wrist pain from the fall: looked at a few bugs, and at EOD rebuilt the world. In the evening we watched a few recorded Jeopardys and opened Stargate SG-1 season 10.
20080108: Got an X-ray at Evergreen in the morning (car needed a jump, battery drained after vacation, Honey had already left for school; called AAA); the doctor looked at it, said he didn't think my hand was broken, but talked with a colleague who specializes in upper body extremities and recommended an MRI. "MC" (Milestone Compliance—binary documentation and OpenXML deviations) started at work (but for now I'm still on co-authoring: bug fixes, and still trying to get a working PR since build is still failing).
20080109: Honey diagnosed with allergy-related asthma, got her inhaler yesterday. Got my Zune from work (black, 8Gb), as promised in December; it's a big letdown, details to follow.
20080101: Annual Brockview football game canceled due to weather (not that I was in any state to go). Slept as long as I could with the pain; got up sometime around noon. We were invited to my Uncle Tom's place for 1600, arrived 1630; Anna and Drew and cousin David ("CD") were there too; snacked on nuts until dinner, ate, played Scrabble, went home. Watched Stargate (9.20, "Camelot", last episode in season 9) at around 2130; also watched Star Trek: Voyager (3.19, "Rise"), the first on the DVD we brought.
That's where the trouble began: the flight finished boarding around 2100 (supposed to take off 2035); they had overbooked, so they were fishing for people to leave; it took a long time to load luggage, and everything was just slow and inefficient and incompetent, the hallmark of air travel these days. We finally left at perhaps 2130 and (insert long boring flight here, relieved only by Rush Hour 3, sleep, and Quiddler) arrived at about 0030 Seattle time (i.e. 3 hours later, 0330 Eastern). Fortunately, our luggage came out fairly quickly (as it should; they had hours to load it), and Shuttle Express, which we'd booked from my parents', was up to their usual efficient, courteous standard. Just an observation: they seem to have a lot of older, frequently bearded men working for them, all very friendly and helpful and a credit to the company, however. It's about 0112 local time in Seattle: we've unloaded the car, had a Coke, unpacked most of our stuff, and are ready to sleep or relax a little.