Tennessee Trip

Kala is down in Tennessee for a few days.  There's a recreation of the Parthenon down there, and she wanted to see it--as well as go someplace warmer for a little bit.  She was planning to drive, then discovered that a flight was only $150.  Well geez!  These days, driving to Tennessee would cost at least $80.  For another $80, she can regain eight hours of driving.

 

I had to get up EARLY on a VACATION DAY to take her to the airport.  Not thrilled.  On the other hand, I'm going to Ireland later for longer than she'll be gone.

 

Kala was a little worried that traffic would be bad on I-94 heading toward Detroit because we'd be driving on it at 7:30 in the morning.  I reminded her that a lot of people have Good Friday off, and at 7:30, traffic would be light.  Turned out I was right--the highway was practically empty.  We wondered aloud what dreadfulness Northwest Air, the world's worst commercial airline, would put her through, but Northwest had the only viable flights to where she wanted to go and she was stuck with it.

 

Dropped her off without trouble, then drove equally easily back home.  A bit later, Kala phoned to say her flight was delayed by over half an hour.  Some time later, she phoned again and told me she had arrived but her luggage had not.  V. nice.  It showed up on another flight and was delivered to her hotel later that evening.

 

Loathe Northwest Air.

 

But now she's down there, with no snow and warmer weather.

Can We Haz Spring Pleez?

Yesterday afternoon the boys were feeling restless.  Sasha begged to go to an arcade or something.  There was a winter storm warning up, though, and I didn't like the idea.  I finally checked the web site of a local news station, and their forecast said the bad stuff wasn't supposed to start until much later in the evening, and it was only 3:00.  Okay, then--we could go.

 

The boys were very excited.  We drove down the highway to a pizza-and-arcade place and I bought tokens for distribution.  Several of the games distribute tickets to cash in for prizes, and Aran played one game where you hit a button to make a light stop at a random number.  That was the number of tickets you got.  If you hit one of two numbers with BONUS next to them, you got to go again.  Aran kept hitting the BONUS numbers over and over.  He got almost 100 tickets from that one.  But then at the end when it came time to cash in for prizes, Aran said, "I don't want a prize."  Neither did Sasha or Maksim.  I didn't mind--the boys have more than enough little toys at home.  So we left the tickets for someone else.

 

Meanwhile, outside, it started to snow fast and furious and way earlier than the stupid weather people on the web site said it would.  At 4:30, I told the boys we had to leave NOW.  They were slow.  Sasha wandered away.  Aran got something on his hands and needed to wash it off.  Mackie begged for ice cream.  I got snappish and ordered them out.  I was mad at myself for doing this.  I should have stayed home and told Sasha he'd just have to deal.

 

The car was already getting buried and I had to remove a lot of snow.  The roads were already slippery and traffic was slow.  Got on the highway and we crawled toward home.  It was difficult driving.  Lots of traffic and lots of snow.  We passed four accidents--one on our side and three on the other side.  One of them was a rollover.

 

"Do you see why I didn't want to do this?" I told Sasha, who looked abashed.

 

We got home safely, with no close calls, thank heavens.  I made pizza for supper.

 

It continued to snow all evening.  You could hear it whispering down through the bare branches outside.

 

Can we haz spring now?

A Night's Computer Time

I spent most of yesterday evening tweaking the laptop with limited success.  I was hoping to find a way to transfer some larger files directly from my main computer to the laptop instead of via a flash drive, but the two computers won't talk to each other, so that was a bust.  I spent a fair amount of time surfing web sites about Ireland and leafing through some travel guides I bought and trying to decide exactly how best to spend my time there.

In Dublin, I "need" to visit:

--the Book of Kells at Trinity College
--a pub or three that plays music
--some music shops
--the National Museum
--the Dublin Writers Museum
--Dublin Castle
--Christ Church Cathedral
--O'Connell Street (site of the Easter Uprising)
--Temple Bar (which isn't actually a bar, but a district)

We'll see if I can squeeze all that in over two weekends, though I can drive back from the cottage to explore some more if I want.

Since I'm currently writing a book about Morrigan and want to write a book set in Ireland at the time of the Easter Uprising, this'll all be good stuff.  :)

Morning's Exercise

I only went to karate once last week.  Too busy after Monday, and on Friday I wasn't going to drive again even at gunpoint.  This morning, I gritted my teeth and got on the treadmill.  Like many people, I always gain some weight in the winter.  Karate had helped me keep it under control, but lately life has interfered too much.  I was hoping the weather would stay clear enough that I could continue riding my bike.  I'd rather bike for two hours than run for twenty minutes, frankly.  But no dice with the current weather.  So it was back to the torture device.

I jogged for forty minutes while watching a TORCHWOOD episode, then showered and announced to the boys that it was time to shovel snow.  More excercise!  Even the little electric snow broom takes energy to use, and in any case, the electric cord isn't long enough to let it clear the entire driveway, so the half close to the street needs to be done by hand.

So I'm exercised out for the day.