And They Are.... Update

In Chicago. After several delayed and canceled flights, along with three trips back and forth to the airport from our house (about a thirty to thirty-five minute drive to the south on a clear day), they have made it to the place they need to be to catch the plane to Shanghai in the morning. Fortunately they were able to get spots on tomorrow's plane. They had planned a day to look around there before they were going on to Beijing to meet up with our friends there. So things are looking up. That is, if you ignore the missing a day in Shanghai and the difference in seats booked far enough in advance instead of the day before. At this point, I am going with "seats are seats."
I think I will keep an eye on the weather and flights next week starting early in the day, in case we decide DTY needs to try to get on an earlier flight to make sure she gets back to school in time. Of course, I also have the option of driving her to the airport she needs for her connection. It is only an hour and a half north of us. Oh, and the drive back home. Yeah, probably about the same as we spent all told on the road to the airport today. Too bad we didn't have that option today.

AND THEY ARE....

Not off. Because of

DENSE FOG HAS SPREAD ACROSS MUCH OF THE AREA...
WIDESPREAD FOG...MUCH OF IT DENSE...WILL CONTINUE THROUGH THE
MORNING OVER MUCH OF THE AREA...

both here and Chicago, where their plane needs to come from, so it can go back. Planes delayed and/or cancelled, thus connections will be missed. We are supposed to have freezing drizzle after 3 AM tonight, so I have suggested that they should still work on getting to Chicago today.

Latest updates

The laundry has been supervised and washed, store runs are all completed, Oribel has helped with the packing, the dogs have figured out something is up, the Mp3 players are loaded to the gills, all the needed information is printed, and whatever else they needed to do except for the actual drive to the airport and plane boarding. Of course, that part doesn't happen until tomorrow morning, but other than that they are ready to go! They seem to be pretty excited and happy, to say the least!

I have been so busy helping them get ready to go that I haven't gotten the mystery solution posted for Jessi yet, but it will happen either on Sunday or Monday, I promise! I know she is dying of curiosity and has been for a couple of weeks now. This is a mystery that I don't know the answer to and she has volunteered to help me with it. She just can't help until I do my part.

The last thing for now is to mention that Anne and Holly are hosting the newest seasonal dish cloth swap. "Defeat the Winter Doldrums" registration opens January 11 and they have a pre-registration contest going on. If any of you out there have thought about joining a swap but have worried about it not going well, I promise they run an excellent swap. If you decide to join on my recommendation and it goes south for you, I will make it up for you. Kind of like those rare times when the "Wait, Wait... Don't Tell Me", Not My Job guest offers to do the answering machine message when they loose and the person they are playing for doesn't get Carl Kasell's voice on their answering machine. (The loosing part isn't rare, just the offering to do message to make up for it.) "Wait, Wait" is my standing 2 PM Sunday afternoon date. I don't take phone calls between two and three or go anywhere unless it is an absolute emergency. No cooking is involved in that hour either. Just radio, a comfy couch, and knitting. And a lot of laughing. Seriously, if you have never heard this radio show, check out a pod cast on your computer (since you have one or wouldn't be reading this, but you don't need an iPod or any poddy thing at all), or check your local NPR station and listen to the broadcast. Just please don't call me during my broadcast time to tell me how much you loved it. Call me before or after 'cause I take some of my addictions seriously. Like knitting dish cloths. So anyway, check out the dish cloth swap. Can you really go wrong if you have a promised back-up?

Playing With Fire, Part 2

These are the products of DTE's session with fire yesterday. She went out to finish up from yesterday. The beads had to anneal for a couple of hours after they were all made and then cool down. So she went out today to dremel them (cleans out the bead release and smooths any rough spots)and stuff. She had a lot of fun and really wants to do more. She would like to be able to get to the point of making other things as well, since she doesn't make stuff out of beads. Many, many thanks to Judy for opening her glass studio and home to DTE and me. (No pictures yet of what I did while there. No worries Jessi, I promise you get to see my messy work and the mystery soon.)
Hubband update: He seems to be very much on the mend, though is still a bit tired. There has been no dizziness for over twenty-four hours (for the first time in a week or more), and he is able to hear much better. We have been doing trip laundry like crazy and there is a girl's suitcase in the process of being packed. Baring something going terribly south tonight, they are planning on leaving for China Sunday morning!

The best thing to hear

"Good morning. How are you feeling?"
"Better. I am feeling lots better!"
Nothing like good old amoxicillin sometimes.

Some of us are having more fun than others

Hubband is still sickly. He is better part of the time but then gets terrible bouts of clogged up ears and room-spinning dizziness. He started a different antibiotic today in hopes of killing off some bugs that may be lingering around after the one he started on Monday. I guess the big decision on going overseas with DTE will have to be made by about 5 AM Sunday, since their plane leaves between 8 and 9 AM. Though I am guessing the decision will be made sometime by Saturday evening. I am really hoping he is better in the morning because the two of them have been looking forward to this trip and his friend is really wanting some folks to speak English with! Of course DTE is also hoping this trip will help her decide about spending five weeks studying in China come next spring.

 

Today I drove DTE out to my friend's house so she could play with fire. (Well, she could have driven herself, but I was happy to go too.)

 

She was a very happy camper for several hours.

 

Tomorrow she gets to go back out and clean up all her hard work. Never fear, you'll get to see the products of all her fun. I might even decide to show you what I did today.

Happy New Year (again)

So far our new year is not much different that the last. We did have Back-Eyed Peas for dinner, this year's variety was with caramelized onions, carrots, and sun-dried tomatoes. I don't always cook them the same each year, but we always have them with cornbread!
Hubband continues to have a bad cold/sinus thing, despite the antibiotics he got on Monday. In addition to his head being stuffed up, his ear is very clogged and it keeps making him very dizzy. They are supposed to leave on Sunday morning for China and then on to Lhasa, Tibet, via the "Sky Train". Well, he is only doing this if he gets the ear/head fixed. a fourteen hour plane trip and then a 16,700 foot elevation train doesn't seem like a good idea in his current condition. DTE is also hoping he gets better as it is his friend they were going to visit after all. We can't really transfer his visa to someone else after all!
All of this means that he hasn't participated in the "Annual Winter Camp Out" with DTY. She slept outside again last night, it was -1°F when she headed out for the night and it was -4°F when I got up at 8:30. They had been predicting it could be as low as -10°F last night. She says she stayed nice and toasty warm and I think it was up to +1°F when she came in.

 

Oribel is teething. DTY had found a tooth sometime last week and then we found another one yesterday in her fur. Plus she was able to feel a loose one in Oribel's mouth. Today she was fussing with her mouth a lot and then we saw another one on the floor. Baby cat teeth are pretty tiny (standard small paperclip for scale).

 

Not much else going on around here but I think there will be some bubble blowing a little later today. If the pictures turn out, you can be assured that they will be here!

Oh well, I'll try some more later

Well, I thought had it all figured out how to load a video and needless to say I was very excited about this. It worked in the preview window, but then nothing actually showed up after I hit publish. Le Sigh. Maybe someday. I'm sorry. Of course I am not sure who is really more disaponted, me or you (of course, I know what it was a video of....). I'll work on it some more.
So instead I am going to have to give you this link to a comic that seems to be kind of true around here since girls got home from college. Hover your mouse on the comic for additional text.

Kittens in the snow and annual winter happenings

Miss Oribel keeps telling us that she wants to go out in the snow again. So we decided to indulge her a bit yesterday . I don't think the girls or I ever expected that she would want to stay out there as long as she did. She can out last three of us on keeping track of her outside as well as fetch.


It would seem that Oribel really thought the Luminaries needed a very close personal inspection.

 

I think she might have been checking to see if anything had gone under the bench while she was up on it. She spent a fair amount of time under this bench in the corner watching the birds and hoping to catch one. She almost made it when one little bird hopped pretty close before noticing that there was a cat on the deck.
It might have looked like she had come over to come back in the house, but she hadn't. As near as I could figure she was just checking in at home-base. Whenever we thought she wanted in and would open the door, off she would go again to explore more stuff and see if there were any more birds to be had.



Apparently Oribel likes the view from the rocking chair as much as I do.

 

Still checking out everything she can. She obviously really didn't care about all the snow that kept falling and covering her all over.

 

We finally had to make her come back in because she kept shivering. I think she decided to take her frustration of being inside out on the bear that lives on the stairs.

 

This the crazy girl trying to get back out outside into the snow. She kept going nuts trying to scratch her way through the door.

 

Yesterday was determined to be the first night of the "Annual Winter Camp Out." The tent was set up and DTY slept out last night. It wasn't very cold, only around 17 above zero: some years this has been done when it is around zero or below when this happens. Normally both DTY and Hubband do the "Winter Camp Out," but Hubband seems to be coming down with a cold. Since he is headed overseas the first week of January, he decided to stay in and is hoping he will be better tonight to participate in this craziness activity.

More Ice Luminaries

Well, just 'cause I had some more in the making, I wasn't super happy with the previous pictures, and Hubband and I wanted to play with camera settings, you get a few more luminaria pictures.

Another daylight just as a start.

 

I am hoping that these look a little bit like they were taken at different shutter speeds.

 

 

I am also hoping it will show up better in "click on the picture to make it larger" mode.