August 30, 2003
Computer Gremlins
SIGHHH, I had a whole, and rather witty, entry all typed and ready to submit, but I've recently downloaded the new Google toolbar which has a built in pop-up blocker. I chanced to look up and see that 2 pop-ups have been blocked, and so, curious as to which pop-ups might occur on my site, I went to look. Doing so had the rather unexpected effect of erasing everything I had just written. I was sad.
So here it is in a nutshell. Home with the parents and family. Having a great weekend. Drove bees out of my niece's hair this morning at 6:30 am. My Dad and I set up a wireless network in their house with my computer and theirs. Can't get the computers to play nice together (I suspect because we're overly firewalled), but they both go out to the internet and that's what matters. It was much more entertaining in the previous (now lost forever) version, but there you are.
August 28, 2003
Tahiti Bound!
I just now got the official word, and I leave for Tahiti on or around September 19th. I'll be on board the Tahitian Princess at least until November 19th, and possibly until December. So make you plans, book your tickets, and come visit me! In the meantime, watch me roar around with my hair on fire while I try to get everything packed and moved into its appropriate storage bin, in the 5 days I have remaining that I'm not in Iowa. Bora Bora here I come!
August 24, 2003
Interstate vs Backroads
Usually I'm an interstate girl. I just want to get to where I'm going as fast as I can, and I like having a known quantity of restaurants conveniently scattered along the way. No surprises, no combines putting down the middle of the road at 5 miles an hour, and all the exit signs tell me precisely what I can expect to find if I follow them.
Friday, however, found me in the middle of Iowa, with the nearest interstate about 50 miles away. My plan was to make a beeline for the I-80 then tackle the last 90 miles on 4 wide lanes of freeway. But somewhere along the way, the back roads charmed me. Everything was such a remarkable shade of green I felt like I was driving towards the Emerald City; the roads twisted here, rose there, and around every corner, something charming lurked to delight my eye. When the time came to head for the interstate, I found I couldn't bring myself to do it. I got out my trusty map, and plotted a backroads route that would allow me to bail to I-80 as soon as the little roads became too much for me. Oddly enough, that never happened. I drove through the sunset, utterly entranced by the soy and the corn, and twice I had a crop duster fly 25 feet over my head. I mourned the moment that I had to return to the freeway. I realized that, for all I see of the passing countryside on the interstate, it might as well be lined with concrete walls. Who knew that just 10 miles off the road lurk tiny little towns, unlikely stands of pine trees, and fields full of Oreo cows?
August 21, 2003
Photos!
My two favorite pictures so far this week. I think they're pretty self explanatory. It's hard to see in the thumbnail, but that picturesque building on the lake is the Pizza Hut where I had lunch today.
August 20, 2003
Sioux City
I'm beginning to think I must be allergic to something in Iowa. I've had a cold every single trip here, which miraculously disappears as soon as I get to Seattle. Sigh. So today Ross and I got a fabulous tour of Gateway, where we got to see the process from beginning to end. I was so inspired I ran out and bought a laptop immediately.... well, actually, I have had a laptop in the works for a couple of weeks now (ever since I realized that I couldn't take my desktop computer with me on a cruise ship), and the opportune laptop and moment presented themselves (it has integrated wireless, and only weighs 3 pounds!) today, and so now I just have to figure out how I'm going to get 2 laptops home with me on the plane. Suggestions are welcome. I'm going to take a nap now, though the siren call of my new toy is keeping me awake.
August 19, 2003
Banner Day
After months of waiting, now my website shows up first when I type my name into Google! I have found myself.
August 18, 2003
Iowa is Pretty
I'm pretty sure I should be blogging in the morning. On the hour and a half drive to my library today, I was full of things to write. The cornfields were beautiful (in the rising sun), the coffee at my hotel came out of an urn marked "double strength" (does life get any better?). And when I got to the library, the director was just laying out fresh baked sweet rolls. But, 11 hours later, I'm comatose tired, and all I want to do is lie in a stupor on my bed and watch "Monster House" while drinking beer out of a bendy straw so I don't have to lift my head. But here I have this fantastic high speed connection, just begging me to take advantage of it, and not one word wants to come out of my fingers.
August 17, 2003
Corn Looks Better Than Dirt
Life finds me back in Sioux City - a place I was hopeful I would never come back to, but it has to be said, it was the dead of winter the last time I was here, and I find it is vastly improved in the summer time. I almost felt a giddy sense of homecoming, returning, as I am, to the exact same hotel where I spent 2 weeks this winter. I must say, they've improved their internet access, and now I get FREE DSL in my room. That alone will make the extra miles I have to drive tomorrow worth it.
On another note, apparently all I have to do in Iowa is wish for a store, and it will appear. I went out for dinner tonight, looking for something besides the apparent McDonald's and Taco Bell. I was just thinking "I wish there was a Subway in this strip mall" and LO! one appeared.
August 13, 2003
The Shopping Gods Love Me!
Had a pretty uneventful flight today, which was a great relief after last week. I arrived in Des Moines, not very hungry, but I'd forgotten to pack my Iroc (which allows me to play my MP3 player over the car radio) and I had no other music to see me through my upcoming 2 and 3 hour drives. I was keeping a weather eye out for a Target so I could at least buy some cds, when I saw a sign for McDonalds, and decided maybe I was a little hungry. Then, when I made the turn, lo and behold, there was not just a Target, but a SUPER Target, accompanied by a Walmart. And, miracle of miracles, there was a Radio Shack just beyond the Target, where I could replace my Iroc, and once again have access to my plethora of cds. Once again the shopping gods have taken me by the hand, and led me to shopping paradise.
August 12, 2003
Princess Life
My life has just become very interesting, or rather, very hectic. I'm going to join Stephanie and Kendra (and Jeff and Michael) in the cruising life. We're still negotiating when and where, but I could potentially leave as early as late September (in which case you can all come visit me in Tahiti). This weekend, in addition to sightseeing with my cousin, I hired a mover, found a storage locker, arranged to leave my car at my parents' house, booked a flight home from my parents' house, and began packing up my things. The depressing part of this packing is that I've already filled 5 boxes with books, brought a huge bag of them to the Capitol Hill library, and I still don't seem to have made the slightest dent in my book collection. Now I just finally have space for all my loose books.
Anyway, the upshot of all this is that, if I do leave at the end of September, I have approximately 10 remaining days off the road in which to pack up and store my entire life. Yikes! Does anyone want to adopt some plants?
August 10, 2003
Playing Tourist
MY cousin from New York has arrived for the weekend, and yesterday my sister, my cousin and I spent the day prowling all over downtown Seattle playing tourist. There was some big thing going on down there, with all the local merchants offering pony rides and sand castle building in the hopes of attracting shoppers downtown. As near as I could tell, it was effective, as it was nearly impossible to move anywhere we went. We also managed a trip to REI, coffee at (of course) Starbucks, Pike Place Market (where we waited long enough to see a fish thrown and went on our way) a matinee showing of "Pirates of the Carribean" - which I loved - but then, I had low expectations going in, and it was easy to surpass them, and dinner at the Icon grill, which, I"m pretty sure, makes the best Mac and Cheese in the entire world. I'd post pictures, but I haven't gotten my camera plugged in since I got back from Iowa, and besides, it's raining.
August 07, 2003
xtraordinary locquacity
Please forgive the preceeding (following?) very very long post. If you want the edited version, here it is: 3 broken planes = 8 hours in O'hare. But O'hare is not a bad place to spend 8 hours. That's pretty much it in a nutshell, but read on for the extended re-mix version. I was so happy to get home last night I hugged my bed. Now that I've done my work I think I'm going to go home and curl up with my CSS book, and follow with some improvements to the site.
Xtreme Ohare
Forgive the slight misspelling of "Extreme", I wanted to be in keeping with my current "X" theme. Yesterday I made up in one fell swoop for all the good luck I've had with my travel days so far. It's a long story, so feel free to skip ahead.
I was up at 5:30 to catch a 7:30 flight out of Cedar Rapids. That part went swimmingly. Made it to Chicago at 8:00 and saw there was an 8:45 to Seattle that I could catch. (My scheduled flight left at 11:00) I hoofed it all the way from the end of the G gates to the very tippy end of the H gates to see if they'd let me on the earlier flight, but no dice, the flight was full. I was, however, fully prepared to spend 3 hours in O'hare. I meandered back to the Starbuck's (the one in the sunny corner between G and H), got a New York Times, an iced latte, and a nice corner table where I could watch the planes, and spent a happy two hours of leisure, drinking coffee and spreading out the paper to read it without having to worry about bumping into the passenger next to me. I then noticed that the people at the massage bar weren't very busy, and, having a further 30 minutes to kill, availed myself of the "20 minute refresher" - it was a rather brusque massage, but effective, and so I went relaxed to the next part of my day.
This requires a new paragraph, because this is the moment at which it all went downhill. I arrived at the gate just about as they were boarding, so I hopped in line, but when I got to the front she told me they'd changed planes because of (this is important) technical difficulties, and they had a new boarding pass for me at the desk. I acquired that and was delighted to discover I'd been assigned the exit row. Boarded the plane, got settled in, and waited. There was some delay, the pilot said, because the crew didn't have everything they needed from catering, but eventually we took off, and not terribly late. All proceeded as normal, and I was just getting antsy for drink service (about 45 minutes in) when the pilot came on and said "well, there's an instrument not quite working right up here, and we have to turn around - nothing to worry about, we just can't go on to Seattle like this". Now, I have a vivid imagination, and it occurred to me that if we were in danger of going down in flames, the pilot was hardly likely to say so. As a result, by the time we had landed safely (and credit to the captain, even severely overweight as we were with extra fuel, it was a very smooth landing) every hair on my arms was standing straight up on end. I was not much reassured to look out my window and see we had an escort consisting of no fewer than 10 assorted emergency vehicles.
Anyway, this story is getting long winded, so I'll try to be short for the remainder. They herded us all off the plane with assurances that we had our original plane waiting for us. The gate agents believed differently, however, and after some discussion with the powers that be, decided we would probably have a plane by 3:00 (at this point, it was 1:00). I amused myself tolerably for those two hours, and returned in time to hear the announcement that the plane was on its way, and the following announcement that, while it was underway to us, the mechanics had discovered technical difficulties with that plane, and had grounded it. The next plane they could get for us was at 5:00, and though it's departure time fluctuated somewhat, we did actually manage to get off the ground more or less in that vicinity. At any rate, I landed in Seattle around 8:00 to discover that my luggage had been luckier than I, and had actually arrived on the morning flight , so it was all ready and waiting for me when I got to baggage claim.
All in all, it was a fairly entertaining day. There comes a point when the delay becomes so absurd you just have to enjoy it. I talked to lots of interesting people, practiced my awful spanish with the bartender at Chili's , made silly faces at children, and regretted that I had packed so much in my carry on.
August 05, 2003
Xenodocheionology
Gretchen pointed out, and I see she is correct, that my titles seem to group in an alphabetical pattern. I'm sure that bears examining, but I determined it was time to leave the W's behind and move on to the Xes. Yikes, I found this fantastic site: Forthright's Phrontistery which has lists and lists of unusual words. Today's title means "love of hotels" and seemed appropriate for my current lifestyle, though I have to say, I don't love the hotel I'm in tonight. The word is not in Webster's online, but it is in the Dictionary of Difficult Words, at any rate, a Google search renders all sorts of interesting results. I recommend it.
So, it's my last night in Iowa until next week- I've really had a very pleasant time . It's so green and hazy here. The drive back to Cedar Rapids tonight was almost idyllic. As the librarian described the road "Once you get on it you can see all the way from the top of the county to the bottom" and she was absolutely right. It was the most amazing road. So my apologies Kim and Jenna - it turns out that Iowa is not half bad. :)
August 03, 2003
Weekend Photos
I think these two say it all. The first one is our driveway at the house, the second is a group picture from the first night.
Weekend Fun
It's indicative of a great (or at least a busy) weekend when I have no time to blog. First let me say to any of you trainers who may be staying in the Dubuque area, I have to recommend the Grand Harbor Resort and Indoor Water Park. So far I have the fastest internet, the nicest room, and the best amenities (Bath and Body Works everything) that I've had on this trip. It does require a high tolerance for children however, because they are absolutely everywhere here.
So anyway, another nice weekend house with a fantastic group of trainers, and I was able to indulge in my lust for cooking (but Stephanie, I missed you sadly while I was making (or rather, burning) the bacon, and cutting up apples for the little fried apples we made in Mass). We checked out at noon, and I thus arrived at the new resort far too early to check in. They took note of my cell phone number and sent me off into the wilds of Dubuqe, with a promise to call me when my room was ready. (Another note in their favor, they called within the hour), so I went off in search of some entertainment, which, largely thanks to Leah's influence, I found in Jo-Ann fabrics. I spent a happy hour perusing pattern books (a pleasure I rarely allow myself, as it usually ends in the purchase of $80 worth of gorgeous material which then languishes in my closet), and while I was raising my eyebrows at the new high cost of patterns ($14.95!!!) the lady across from me commented on the same. We fell into conversation, and before I knew it we're sharing details of our lives that I don't share with people I've known for years. It's interesting how it's easier to confide in a stranger than one's own friends. As a side benefit to our conversation, she pointed out that a lot of the patterns were on sale for $2, so I broke one of my rules and bought a couple patterns.
Then Ross and Wendy and Helena arrived after their long hot day of golf, and we went for pizza at my hotel - again - great pizza overlooking the indoor waterpark, where every 15 minutes the crowd below us would amass to stand under a giant bucket as it sluiced water down upon them, it was the most surreal thing. Alas, I have no pictures yet of the giant bucket in the sky, but I do have some from this weekend, and they shall be posted after some judicious editing.