The Average Blogger

Blizzard, Birthday, Bailout

You can be a child of God, or a child of rage, but this child of mine is apparently a child of snow.
I've mentioned before the snowstorm the night he was born -- and the worse snowstorm the day he was going to be inducted if he didn't make deadline. 

There was snow for his first birthday, but not a big deal.

There was no snow for his second birthday, but there was also no plumbing. And we had 20 people at our house.

There was heavy snow when he was 3, and we watched as the entire town descended on Chuck E Cheese when we did.

There was some snow and bowling when he was 4, a little snow and a party when he was 5, and no snow, but lots of ice at a hockey game when he was 6.

And then there was 7.  Great goshamighty.

All week the forecasters were sounding klaxons and flashing red lights.  Lock down! Get food! DO NOT LEAVE YOUR HOMES AFTER FRIDAY MORNING!

Friday morning, I went to work.  It started snowing juuust as I got on the interstate.  I kept an eye out the window all day. 

Eventually I had to go out.  The Young Prince had requested "White frosting! From a can! Not that stuff you make, the whippy kind!" and I had neglected to get any.  There was also a mixup with some birthday gifts, so I had to do some last-minute shopping on that front too.

It was still really warm -- I left my jacket undone. Snow wasn't sticking yet, and it was early afternoon.  I found the gifts, bought some lunch and headed back to the office.

Without the frosting, of course.

So I went back out at 3, and although the ground was still clear, it was getting colder. Plus, the wind was pretty crazy. You could turn any direction and it was still blowing snow smack into your face. I was unhappy to find that the first drug store only had chocolate frosting. I went to the one across a diagonal block, and bought the Last. Can.  -- blinded the whole way by big fat flakes bashing me in the eyeballs. 

I left work at 4:30 or so.  I got home with McDonald's for the family around 5:40.  This is because the interstate was deserted and the road was quite clear -- but once I got off the interstate the roads were terrible and visibility was quickly decreasing.

Error Number One: I call home and tell Not Your Average Blogger that I'm going to park at the top of the driveway. "Oh, don't do that. The plows will just come by and bury you."  So I park at the bottom, in the usual spot.

Error Number Two: Power outages were predicted.  In a display of hubris, I was sure if I baked the cake Friday night for Sunday consumption, we'd have power galore.

Still Friday night was nice. We watched a movie, I frosted the cake, we all went to bed.

8:30 next morning, we heard "Hum, click-click-click" as our cable and Sleep-Number bed informed us the power had gone out. This was quickly followed up by the YP barging into our room and announcing the lights were out.  Error Two deployed. 

The power magically returned at 11:30.  We scrambled to wash dishes, crank up the heat to 75 so the house will be warmer when the power goes out again, and throw some snow-soggy clothes in the dryer.

Error Number Three: NYAB decides to put pork chops in the crockpot instead of flash-frying them. 

Annnd, the power goes out again at 1:30.  

For whatever reason, NYAB decided to pass the time by reading aloud from the book he's currently working on. About the Donner party.  This was not helpful.  All that cold imagery and descriptions of 30-foot snowdrifts did nothing to warm my soul.

We moved up the kid's birthday celebration to alleviate powerless boredom. Fortunately, none of his gifts required electricity.

After another couple hours, we concluded that huge amounts of food would be ruined if we didn't do something, so we dumped the contents of our fridge on the deck and the contents of the crockpot into a cast-iron pot and threw that in the fireplace. 

Dinner was fantastic, though we took no photos. Error Three corrected.

The cake was a success.

Once it started to get dark, we dragged all our bedding down in front of the fire, lit some candles, told stories, and entertaine ourselves til it was the kid's bedtime. 

We brought in buckets of snow to melt for non-drinking water use, watched as the first snowplow of the night took a first pass at our street, and went to bed. 

Next morning we woke up early and started digging our way out. We only have one snow shovel, so we took turns -- not a huge rush, just to get started on the job.  I went to see if the neighbors had a spare, and was told it might be Tuesday before we had power. 

Well.  I had to be online for work at 4:30 Monday morning. That wasn't going to do.

So after that, we shoveled a bit faster.

At about 1 p.m., we were halfway up our driveway.  The kid came out and rolled some snowballs, but he wasn't a lot of help and we sent him back inside to watch the fire and make sure the house didn't burn down.

At 1:30, some guy with a snowblower showed up and did our neighbor's driveway.  As he was trundling it back down our street, I stopped him.

"How much??"
"To go all the way down?!?"
"Nah, just to where the car is. Halfway down."
"Oh. Twenty bucks?"
"SOLD!"

I gave the guy $30.  And he did in 15 minutes what would have taken us another 3 hours.  Talk about having the right tool for the job -- and he cut a path to our mailbox.  Best $30 I ever spent.

After that, we packed up, buried the food in a bit more snow, inhale a bit more smoke from the fireplace -- the whole house reeks -- and decamped for a hotel. With power. And wifi. And a pool.

And a jacuzzi.  My shoulders were shot last night but they feel muuuuch better today. 

The YP has dubbed this, "the birthday of Lights Out."   I call it, "the Donner Birthday Party." 

Of course, upon arriving here, I heard from a neighbor that our power had come back on a couple hours after we left.  We'll go back today to see if we have cable/internet/etc., or if I will be putting in another early morning shift at the hotel.

Regardless, nobody will be picking up our trash for a while.

Let's Wrap This Up

So, that was our week on the Big Island.  On Saturday morning, we flew back to Oahu, checked into our silly little hotel near the airport, failed to get breakfast by noon, and hit the road.  We drove all the way around Oahu, missing turns left and right for places where they shoot Lost. But we did see a lot of gorgeous scenery and a lot of gorgeous waves.  Big waves.

Bigger than that one. Still, probably not scary for people who actually spend a lot of time at the beach, but intimidating for a fat old woman whose 6-year-old was all, "Let's go! Yeah! I want to get in there!"

So after driving 3/4 of the way around, we found a beach that -- shocker -- had parking, and was in a fairly calm inlet.  And there the kid got his first real taste of actually swimming in the ocean, as opposed to wading out for miles and still only being up to his knees, or trembling with terror at the prospect of being in past his waist.

He did great.

And he got slammed.

After a couple hours we drove the rest of the way around the island, had dinner and crashed. Our last night in Hawaii was spent watching Grease and Grease 2 in the hotel.  Yeah, I know. But it kept the kid still and quiet til he fell asleep, so that's a win.

Next morning we got up and headed off to the Pearl Harbor memorial.  We  toured the museum and then took the boat out to the memorial.

It's an interesting place, and it has an interesting feel of history to it. I might have been projecting, but it did seem like the emotion still runs fairly close to the surface there, unlike that you get at Civil War battlefields and places where the history is a bit dimmer and more distant. There were also a LOT of Japanese tourists there. I can't help but wonder what kind of perspective a Japanese heritage would bring to that tour, as compared with an American Whitey one. 

The memorial is built over the USS Arizona, and you can see much of the boat just below the surface.

And it still leaks oil.

At the same location, there's a retired submarine, the USS Bowfin.  This was our one Lost success; submarine shots on the show are filmed here.

I think this was the kid's favorite part of our trip, actually.  He got to push buttons and spin dials and pretend to his heart's content.

After that, we went on a shave ice expedition.  I don't know why they call it "shave ice" and not "shaved ice," but it seems to be the standard usage. It is also kind of meh.  It's like eating mildly flavored snow not as robustly flavored as a Slurpee, not as crunchy as a Sno-Cone.  But since we failed to ever find poi, this was our nod to local cuisine. I daresay the Young Prince ate a lot more of that than he would of the poi anyway.

After that, it was back to the beach.  The waves were a little bigger here, and we had to watch out for lots of boogie boards, but it was still a lot of fun.  And then the YP demanded he be buried. I was assigned to the task. NYAB recorded the event for posterity.

We wound up getting sand in places we hadn't known we had places.

In a not-entirely-unrelated segue, we also found the spot where they filmed the torrid love scene in From Here to Eternity.

After that, we headed back to the hotel, took long de-sanding baths, and packed. Returned the car, headed to the airport.  We were delighted with the Honolulu airport.  Polite people, who knew how to check you in, who took your suitcase instead of taggging it and handing it back to you to dump with TSA, did it themselves. People who smiled and Got Things Done.  Sooooo much nicer than Dulles.

And then we got on the plane, and after waiting 15 minutes for Big Shot Barack's plane to take off and get out of the way with its Oh-look-at-me-I-need-the-sky-all-to-myself-ness, we were airborne and heading home.

Layover in Salt Lake City. Where there was snow. And then we got home, where it was 32 degrees and dark and so sad. I am ready to move, people. I haven't been on many vacations where I've thought, "you know, I could have stayed there."  And I'm not actually sure I could have stayed in Hawaii without a serious consideration of career change -- which would mean a serious diminishment of income, and thus not living in the style to which I'm accustomed.  I guess we'll just have to go back for another vacation at some point.

But that will be after Davenport, Iowa, in July, and after Alaska, in August.  :)

How do you say Part Three in Hawaiian?

I don't know, but I bet it sounds like coughing up a hairball. I think there will be one more vacation post after this and that'll run the well dry.  I'm sure you're all Over It anyway, but it'll be good archive material for the YP when he goes into therapy.

Thursday we got up early and drove around the southern chunk of the island, stopping at South Point -- the creatively named southernmost point of the United States.

The YP never did quite figure out the difference between "hang loose" and rooting for Texas.

Probably the only time NYAB can honestly say he's got the whole country behind him.

South Point was also interesting because it was so windy. Trees grow sideways. There are wild horses who have taken up residence in abandoned buildings. There's a dead wind farm, replaced by a live one farther down the same hill. It's worth the drive for what you might see. We continued around the island and back on to Hilo, where we had a reservation for ... a doors-off helicopter tour.

This was booked at the last minute. I was very upset that I hadn't gotten any better shots of flowing lava than I did from 5 miles away around a corner, and I wanted a closer look.

Well, I got my closer look, but the lava had all gone underground.

What do you see when you look into a volcano? Not much besides steam.

The dead lava was pretty cool to see, though. When you are that far above the ground, you get a much better picture of what's happening with lava flow and how the island is growing as the lava runs down into the sea and cools and turns into more land mass. The fun part is watching it get to the water, though.

Apparently someone still lives in this house, above, though his driveway, below, is blocked by lava, his back yard is all black rock -- and apparently his house is only still standing because one lava flow piled up high enough to block all subsequent ones so they flowed around his house instead of over it. I mean, really. How do you insure for that? The guy can't even drive anywhere. He has to hike in and out to get groceries and all his water comes from a rain barrel.Maaaan.

YP absolutely loved this escapade. He sat up next to the pilot and used the walkie talkie like a pro and just sailed right through it like he'd spent his whole life previous in a helicopter.

(Stupid zoom lens. Next time I will take two cameras with two neckstraps. One with a zoom and one with a regular lens for stuff Right In Your Face.)

What I forgot is that NYAB has a little thing about heights. (Bad wife, no jewelry!) A little thing so huge that he refuses to get on Ferris Wheels.  So the idea of puttering around in the airborne equivalent of a Jeep was ... well, he faced a fear.  I, of course, completely forgot about it and couldn't figure out why, when we were about 10 feet off the ground, he was hanging for dear life to the strap you use to pull yourself into your seat with one hand and holding my hand in a death grip with the other. I tried to pull away so I could use my camera, and he gives me this look and tells me, microphone off, teeth clenched, "I. Can't. Let. Go. Of. This. Strap."  Ohhh, damn.

He must have lightened up though, because he managed to ask some questions of the pilot that weren't related to falling out of the machine or whether the diminished atmosphere messes with one's head. Maybe it was the view of the waterfalls that did it.

After the tour, we drove back to the hotel and stopped at several pretty spots to look at the water and take pictures and let NYAB exhale again that THERE WERE NO DOORS.

Home, bed, etc. It was New Year's Eve, and we were all sound asleep by 10 p.m.  We celebrated on East Coast time.

Next morning we got up early, even for our maladjusted selves, and trotted on down to the beach, where I belatedly learned that whale watches in Hawaii are not at all like whale watches in California. For one thing, you are on a catamaran and there's not a whiff of diesel fuel, nor seasickness.  For another, it isn't windy and so cold you need a parka, it's balmy and hot and you need sunscreen.

And, the boat drivers are unlicensed.

AND, you actually get to see more than one fin of one whale.  

Please imagine here that there is another photo, a really great photo of a humpback whale actually breaching. There was a showoff young whale following our boat -- he somehow wound up named Henry and the YP instantly claimed him as a member of our family with our surname -- and he was really putting on a show for us. So I am 96 percent sure I got a shot of at least half of him out of the water, but when we got the waterproof camera offerings back from CVS, there were several shots missing and in their place were several other shots of some old man I'd never seen before in my life. He didn't look too healthy, either, so I hope those weren't some poor soul's last pix of Granddad before he shuffled off the mortal coil.  Yet another reason to go all-digital, all the time, and spring for the gizmos to waterproof your equipment. Sigh.

(Of course, it has occurred to me that my "missing" shots might be included in the negatives, but I never remember that when the negatives are within a 30-mile radius.  Maybe someday.)

After the whale watch, we saw some sea turtles back on the beach.

Then we drove a little more around the island and had a pretty relaxed day.  We thought about attempting snorkeling since the kid seemed to be over his beach woes and at ease in the water, but the lady at the sports stand told us it was too cloudy and windy and "Oh, the visibility is just zero, I'd feel like I was robbing you if I rented you equipment."  So .... yeah. Maybe next time.

Next entry will focus on our last two days, which were spent back in Oahu. Pearl Harbor and body surfing!

Of Shoes and Ships

Well, no. No ships. No sealing wax, either. 

Before I get started -- the skin care thing seems to be going fine. I'm at least being dutiful in my ministrations. I can't really see much difference, but it has only been a week.

In other girly news, this weekend I went shopping for shoes.  While on vacation I noticed that the kid and I were both running around in shoes that had holes in the bottoms, so it was time for new ones. I went in on the recommendation of a friend and got some Asics, but then I sauntered around while NYAB took the kid to find something in his size and I found these bizarre looking things.

Well, you know me. A shoe that will help you lose weight? Really? Even if I just put them on and sit on the couch eating chips all day? Sure, why not? Dude. These shoes come with a booklet AND a DVD.  I'm not even kidding. Not only do they look hilarious and feel like I'm walking in a bounce house, I need audiovisual instruction on them.  (Except I've been so busy laughing that they came with a video that I have yet to watch it. I assume it's the same video they have on the site linked above.) I like the shoes, though. I wore them all day Sunday and did feel a little more pull in my legs than usual, so they must do something.

So that was this weekend's bit of fun, along with a trip to the Kennedy Center to see Young Frankenstein, which was wonderful. And the YP was beautifully well-behaved for once, and we all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

OK, back to where it was warm.

So Monday was Volcano Day. Tuesday was Golf Day for NYAB, and because I was too lazy to drive him, that meant he took the car so it was Pool Day for the kid and me.

This is actually a measure of some accomplishment, because the pool was ... well, it was gorgeous by any normal person's standards. But it was also expansive, and fancy, and didn't look like your standard industrial pool. The kid section had a sandy bottom. It was all enclosed in black rock (except the Infinity Pool, and can someone please tell me the appeal of these things? I guess they fit in nicely with the decor, but if your backdrop is a beach with an ocean, do you really want the pool dribbling off into it? Why not a definite end?) and had lots of plants. In short, it looked very "natural."  The YP is anything but. We started this trip with some reservations about him, because pretty much every time we've ever taken him to an ocean he's insisted there were sharks and refused to go anywhere near the water. 

We seem to have gotten over all that.

After the pool, we met NYAB for lunch and then headed to Kona, where we did the obligatory Buy Stuff For Folks trip, at the end of which we found ourselves at Wawaloli Beach, a nice unsandy, mostly smooth rock beach with tidepools behind the Energy Lab (which we did not tour.) 

That was pretty much it for Tuesday. Though Tuesday was also the day I figured out that jet lag really can surprise you in some ways. Like, we were all up and ready to go by 6 a.m. every day, and ready to drop by 8 p.m. If you know us at all, you know this is almost exactly backward from our preferred hours at home. And we were all STARVING at 2 p.m.  "But ... we had a huge brunch just a few hours ago?" my brain said. "Yeah, moron," my internal clock replied. "But you weren't really hungry then, and now it is DINNERTIME at home!" Ohhhh. Riiight.

Wednesday we got up and ran around on Hapuna Beach.

(Note, these were taken on disposable cameras that were developed at a CVS in Virginia.  I do not recommend this. Not only do they look like scratched up and grainy slides from the 50s, the colors are TOTALLY off. )

We then bopped on over to the Hilton, which is wow-boy-fancy. The beach fronting it is absolutely gorgeous, but very rocky and rather dangerous looking, so they've created a whole manmade extravaganza for guests. It is very Disney-esque. There is a train-tram thing to get guests from the lobby to their rooms, and there's also a boat that traverses the manmade lagoon, which feeds into the manmade beach/pool thing they've got with a waterfall.

I was sort of wishing we'd stayed there instead, until I looked at the amenities and realized that what we saw was pretty much it. The rooms weren't any nicer, and there weren't any ocean-related activities you could get to from there to speak of, whereas the Marriott had a stand on the beach where you could rent snorkeling equipment or sign up for boat tours or whale watches. The Hilton had a few more kid-related activities, but since we had our days lined up and were all falling asleep by 7 p.m., it wouldn't really have been worth it.

But. The other thing the Hilton had, aside from all the window dressing, was Dolphin Quest.  This is where you pay scads and scads of money to wade into one end of a rather nippy pool of salt water  with a group of other folks and listen to a (very young! Very enthusiastic! Very perky!) trainer (all of whom are girls, as near as I could see,) who works with 3-4 dolphins who shuttle between your group and another group at the other end of the pool. It's pretty cool, actually. You get to pet them and learn some signs to make them do tricks and so on. You also can't take any of your own photos or video. But you can pay extra to get their stuff, which is probably better than what you'd get with a waterproof camera anyway, so it all balances out, I guess? I think if we had it to do over again, the kid and one parent would probably suffice.

After the dolphins we had a disappointing lunch at the Hilton -- for starters, the guy never placed our order, then when we got it, the food was meh. But it was also comped for us waiting so long, so that's not all bad, I guess. I was feeling kind of cruddy, so after that we went back to our hotel and the boys romped in the pool while I lounged around and napped. Room service dinner, annnnd ... scene.

We are up to Thursday. I think Thursday was the YP's favorite day, even better than the dolphins. Why? Tune in next time!

Hawaii, For Realz

OK, so after our aborted efforts of Saturday, on Sunday we took off, flew allllllll day and got to Honolulu in time to watch the YP fall asleep while we were waiting for a table for dinner. Since the good folks at Cheeseburger in Paradise didn't see fit to put us in any of the 3 empty tables we saw, we bailed on them and had our first vacation dinner at .... McDonalds.  Yup.  And it was pretty good, too.  The YP revived and we chased him up and down Waikiki Beach for a little while, then wandered up the main strip. It is kind of like Times Square, only with better weather and a Cheesecake Factory.  So maybe that makes it more like Rodeo Drive, but closer to the beach. I don't know. It wasn't really what I wanted to see or spend time on, so a half-hour the first night was just about perfect.

Next morning we got up early and went back to the airport for a quick bouncy flight to the Big Island.  The YP was a total embarrassment at this juncture in the narrative.  He was tired, out of sorts, completely thrown off any sort of possible routine, and just a cranky bratty howling mess.  He also didn't believe me when I told him that this flight was not like the other flights and kicked up a tremendous fuss that I wouldn't let him get all his electronic games out because by the time we were in the air and it was allowed, we'd be landing before he could get situated enough to start playing one.  I suppose I should have just let him, because instead we fought and he cried for the entire 40 minutes we were in the air, and then he went into further meltdown mode when he dropped a bottle of water "An Important Figure" gave him (that is, the bottle of water the flight attendant gave him to try and shut him up,) and it rolled under a fence, into a street, and out of reach as we were getting on the car-rental shuttle. Good times, I tell ya.

Once we got the car, though, things improved a bit.  We drove from the airport north to our hotel, through lots and lots of lavabeds.  The "graffiti" over here cracked me up. Basically people take a bunch of bleached lava and coral and spell out messages. Nothing hostile, either, at least that we saw. 

We checked into our hotel but our room wasn't ready, so we had breakfast by the pool (with minimal hassling from the kid,) and then we headed back out to the car and drove around the northern part of the island and down the east side.  

Here is a plug for something we found invaluable.  You Need These Books. They are amazing and do not steer you wrong in any instance at all.  Every single thing they suggest is spot-on, and every place they say is a deserted beach really is deserted. I can't attest to Kauai or Maui because we weren't on those islands, but I'd vouch for those too.

It was gorgeous, and warm, and the ocean really is that clear and blue and amazing. It is also interesting to note the radical changes in geography in just a few hours driving in a circle.  The west side is all lava, black rocks, only a few scrubby trees.

The north is a big ol' rainforest and lush.

The east side is wet, but looks fairly tropical and Florida-esque

The south, we found out later, looks a bit like Tuscany or Ireland in spots. Lots of green, but lots of rocky cliffs.

So we drove counterclockwise about 3/4 of the way around the island and spent most of the afternoon at Volcanoes National Park.  We saw the crater. 

And we saw a really cool field of petroglyphs.

Then we took the book's advice and drove south to the "volcano viewing area." This was pretty cool. First, you and 600 million other people who know about this thing park your cars. It's a good idea to wear good shoes and bring a flashlight, but don't worry, a hardy band of entrepreneurs have tents set up selling flashlights for $5 to $10 a pop if you don't have one. They also sell food, water, photos of the lava better than any you'll get from the observation area, and assorted other street fair type stuff.

You really do need the flashlight, though. There is no light out there and you're hiking about a mile on a very bumpy uneven lava trail along with a LOT of other people. So if you trip, you're bound to fall on some other frail person and hurt them.

The hike is worth it, because the view is amazing, even if the photos suck. If you are serious about taking photos, bring a big-ass tripod and a good lens, and be expert at taking photos in the dark.  And around a scarp.

After that, well, we had dinner at Jack in the Box -- a rare treat for me -- and drove back to the hotel.  Ahhh, bed.

Up next, there are pools, and then there are pools...

WTF, Alfred?

Who am I, Tippi Hedren? This is the second day in a row I've been besieged by birds, and all that hyperactive flapping and all those sharp and shiny beaks combine to make me nervous. They are loud suckers, too. Pictures don't begin to do justice to the real thing.

Indeed, Indeed.

There's a Picasa auto-correct function labeled "I'm Feeling Lucky." Certain photos, like this one, remind me that even if I'm not, I certainly should be.

A Friend Writes...

"When did you get new cats? Who named them Gilda (Radner?) & Jane (Curtin?)"

Really? I never posted about that? It appears not. Well, then, allow me to rectify.*

So, yeah, a couple months ago, Shays died.  And then we looked at adoption agencies to get new kitties, and I wound up pissed off.  Then I looked on craigslist and found Free to a Good Home kitties, e-mailed the guy, and off we went for a visit.

The guy was giving his cats away because he was allergic to them.  Apparently he had tried to stick it out for a year for the rest of his Cat People family, but it wasn't working and they were going to get a dog instead. I found this amusing, because we are very much Dog People and the only reason we go for cats is because the Young Prince is allergic to dogs.  I think this is not as bad as it used to be, but it is still pretty hard to watch him itch and snort while he adjusts. 

The funny thing is, I completely forgot that cats have been known to do the same thing to me.  We've had our cat for so long and I'd completely adjusted to her and it didn't even occur to me UNTIL WE WERE DRIVING HOME WITH THE BEASTS that, huh, I might start sneezing and having to take Claritin forever. 

That hasn't turned out to be the case, so yay for growing out of allergies.

So, we go to visit the cats. One is a lovely grayish-brownish lonnnng hair furry calico -- named Clarissa -- and one is a gray striped shorthair tabby named Missy.  Yeah, I dunno. Maybe they are big fans of Melissa Joan Hart? I have no idea.

Not Your Average Blogger and I had been thinking about what we'd name cats if we got new ones.  I was really pushing to get a boy and a girl, a brother and sister. I like pairs. It's been my experience that same-gender pairs don't work as well as mixed.  And there we were, all set with paired names.  George and Gracie.  Jimi and Janis.  I think we had pretty much settled on Satchel and Nancy -- and here we are with two girls.

Um. Patsy and Edina? Liz and Jenna? NYAB and I hit generation gaps on girl duos. Either I thought they were lame or he'd never heard of them.  I said, "OK, Jane and Gilda."  He laughed. We kept going. Finally he landed on Roxie and Velma, which we thought the kid would like because he's constantly singing numbers from Chicago.  Not so much. The YP apparently felt we should keep calling them Missy and Clara. (Hey, he was close.)

Of course, the minute we got the cats to our house, they went into hiding behind the living room couches, so we didn't get much glimpse of their personalities at all.*  So we called them Roxie and Velma for about three days, but when they finally came out of hiding, NYAB decided that Jane just looked more like a Jane than a Roxie or a Velma, and back we went.

Funnily enough, when I finally looked at their vet records, Jane used to be Prudence before she was Missy. So maybe we should have given Gilda the name Mia instead? Eh. I like where we landed.  If we ever get a third cat we can name her Lorraine.  

Now that they're assimilated, they are pretty entertaining.  Gilda is a total diva and fluffs her fur and prisses around like the beauty queen she is. She demands pats of anyone who looks at her. Janey is very much a Janey.  She is the first cat I ever saw that will play fetch -- as in, you throw something, and she brings it back repeatedly. Not just once and "oh, I'm bored," but good volleys of 9 or 10 times. She is active and alert and has a very strong hunting instinct, as every single night when I am trying to go to sleep she attacks my toes under the blanket until I punt her off the bed.  Then she hops back up, lies down and the two of them conk out purring at the foot of the bed.

And the best thing is, where Shays would usually try to kill the kid if he came within 12 feet of her, these guys will put up with ANYTHING.  To wit:

Poor cat.  I wonder how long it'll take her to wise up and slice him.

*Now I remember why I never posted.  Because I was waiting for them to come out of hiding and let me take photos.  Then I posted photos on FaceBook, but not here.  Brilliant!

It's All Relative....

Well, I'm supposed to be on mini-vacation, and had this grand intention of posting something exciting and colorful every day. 

Except yesterday, I did nothing. (And it was everything that I thought it could be!) Well, not quite nothing.  We played some baseball. We had Richmond Friend visit, which is always a pleasure. But nothing really lending itself to colorful anecdotery, ergo, no exciting or colorful post.

So instead, I will tell you about the side project I've been dawdling along on, and an unexpected surprise. 

The side project is a genealogy of sorts -- found here, if you care in the slightest. (Though why you would if you aren't related, I don't know. There are probably some amusing anecdotes in there, but it's a godawful lot of sifting for not much return.) It's been a back-burner thing. Posts are written in e-mail English, with bad syntax, no attribution as to whether the stories are written by me or someone else, a lot of missing capital letters.

So .... why would I bring this up before it was ready to launch?

Because Google already launched me.  Heh.  Last week I got an email out of the blue from a lovely woman in Stamford, Conn., who said we share a grandfather a few generations back. I immediately called my father, who responded, "Ohhhh, yeah, I remember someone with that last name..."  And so the email began. It turns out we are ... some breed of cousin.  My great-grandmother and her grandfather were siblings. What's that make us? Yeah, me either. Like I said, some breed of cousin.

Here is something she sent me yesterday, that I have yet to put up in its proper place on the other page, but am so excited to have I can't tell you ....

CORRECTION: Clearly, I need an editor. And a better flow chart. My great-great-grandfather is the old guy in the middle row, and great-great grandmother is in the middle next to him. My great-grandmother is the kid on the end next to her.

So how cool is that!?! I sure do heart me the Internet when stuff like this happens.  And like I told Newfound Cousin -- my dad's immediate family was notorious for playing sort of fast and loose with the truth, so the idea that any of the tales handed down to me were at all  grounded in reality pleases me no end.

And, it gets me motivated to get back on this project and do some file cleaning! Ahh, spring.

Weekend Trip

Every time we go to New York these days, I feel like we are missing so much. We are usually there for long enough to do stuff but not long enough to get organized and motivated, plus we are usually tethered to the kid, and I'm such a lightweight anymore that if I'm not asleep by 11 it's a farking miracle. 

And NYAB doesn't drink, so there's that, too. Even if we didn't have the kid, bars and clubs are not his default setting.

So this was a pretty good trip, actually.  We weren't there long enough for me to feel we had time to waste, and we stayed out of the hotel room more or less the entire time until we were ready to go to bed.

We got to Union Station around 11, and Thomas had his first experience with Godiva chocolate. You can't see them here, but he got a chocolate duck. He was quite excited.

Then we got on the train and headed north.  I alternated looking out the window and looking at my BlackBerry, NYAB read Ivanhoe, and the YP played his DS.  An uneventful trip.  Best kind, with that kid in tow.

We got a cab and got to the hotel around 3.  I love love love the Doubletree now.  They give you free cookies at check-in, and they have Neutrogena stuff in the bathrooms, and we got this room where the bedroom is set off from a little office -- with a door. And a lock.  Yeah.   And it's got this crazy lobby that looks like it was designed by Yul Ulu.  (And I can't find any links for that, either, so if you don't know, email and I'll explain.) Unfortunately, I didn't take photos, and can't find any to link to, but imagine lots of skylights, chairs with no arms, and suspended sculptures of glass globs strung on wires. 

So after we got cleaned up a bit, we headed out.  Since I knew Delmonico's was out, and adventures in strange food was out, and I couldn't stand the idea of eating at an effing Fridays or Ruby Tuesday's in Manhattan, I rifled through the hotel tour book for "American fare" and stumbled over the "best burger in New York" entry -- apparently served eight blocks away in the lobby of the Le Parker Meridien Hotel. Finding the hotel was easy.  Finding the joint ... well, see for yourself. This is the only indicator where the place is:

I think the book may have been right. The burgers were excellent. The fries were great. The milkshake was well received by all. We should have bought at least one more.

After dinner, we wandered around a bit, and took the YP to his happiest place on Earth, the M&M store.

And on the way out of there, we bumped into Spiderman.  The YP was delighted to get his autograph.

Then we went to the show, and were surprised to learn we were in the first row.  The YP was alternately very excited at being so close, disturbed by not being able to see, and put out at the amount of dry ice smoke blowing on him.

He was also rather vocal.  He howled out when Oliver Platt came onstage. "That is NOT Frank Sinatra!"  Oy.  Then he turned to us. "WHERE is Frank Sinatra?"  I'd been bashing him to shut up for at least 3 minutes already, so he turns to NYAB, who says, bluntly, "HE IS DEAD."   The YP looks a bit stricken and settles down. 

Same thing when Lauren Graham came on.  "But where is Faith Prince?"  "YP, we told you that the woman from Gilmore Girls was doing this." "Huh." 

Finally, some theater staffer came down and hissed at NYAB that people backstage could hear the kid.   At intermission, NYAB explained we were in danger of being kicked out, and I told the kid that I was going to cry if he embarrassed me again.  Not sure which piece worked, but he was virtually silent the entire second act. No more front row for us for a while, I think.

After the show, some cast members were shilling for AIDS funding, and the YP was astounded when he gave money to the woman holding the bucket.  "She was on stage!! I saw her on stage!"
Yah, and she doubtless heard him, apparently.  But she was very nice to him and seemed enthusiastic back at him.  So that was nice.

Headed back to the hotel and crashed around midnight. 

Got up in the morning and headed down to the restaurant for breakfast.  I'm not sure if I was tired and cranky or the waitstaff was, but that was a little rocky.  We looked at the menu waiting to be seated and settled on our orders -- pancakes for me, waffles for the kid, and French toast for NYAB. We sat at the table.  The waiter came, and said, "Are you having the buffet?"  "No, but ..." by which time he had huffed off to get us menus.  He returns with them and I say, "Thanks, but we already know ...." and he'd already huffed off again.  Then he came back and said, "So, no buffet?" I said, "No. I will have pancakes, and the kid will have waffles, and ... " and he interrupts me and says, "Why don't you just get the buffet? The boy eats free."  Jeezopete. 

Well, after being urged three times, I huffed up and said, "Fine! Buffet it clearly is, since that is the only way we will ever get any food here."  Grrr.  Stomped into the buffet.  Saw no pancakes, or french toast, or waffles.  NYAB took a half-pound of bacon and a banana.  The YP ate Frosted Flakes.  I found some meh scrambled eggs and bacon and had that.  I wish I had thought sooner to  just take the waiter's head off while we were trying to order and just said, "No. We do not want the buffet. But we would like a waiter who will do what we ask. Can you arrange that???"  Bleah.

The waiter wandered by to see if we wanted drinks. "No, thank you," I gritted. "Really? No coffee?"  I look him in the eye, apparently with an OMGWTF look, and said, "No! Thank! You!" 

I finished eating before the YP and couldn't stand being there waiting for the check, so I went back upstairs to finish packing.  NYAB came up later and said they only charged us for one breakfast, so apparently my displeasure was registered and responded to.  Which made me feel better. 

After breakfast, cab back to train station.  Train back to DC, sitting next to Gwen Ifill.  Cab back to office. Car back home -- with a stop off for Little League practice.  So far, the YP appears as engaged with baseball as last time, which means either he will die when he gets hit in the head with a ball or I will die of an aneurysm wishing he'd stop playing in the dirt.

But hey, we've got the Whole Week Off. (Sort of. Except for me working half-shifts at 5 a.m. and a full day in the office Tuesday.) We can work on skills and focus.  Right? Right.