Christian M.

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Shortly after my last post, I got on to standby flight. It was a rough ride up and back down, but I made it in one piece. With my luck, I was half expecting the house to be broken into or something, but everything was safe and sound. However, but cars now have "check engine" lights coming on. Boo.

Current Mood: relieved

Sitting here waiting for a flight I only have stand-by on. The departure time has just slipped for the third time, to an hour delay. Apparently they're having trouble finding half the crew.

I'm starting to get a headache...

Current Mood: pessimistic

62 weeks since my last post? Woah.

Well, after having my flight canceled last night, I stayed overnight in a hotel and came in to the airport early to catch the next flight. When I got there, it was half an hour delayed. Then an hour. Then two hours. Then three and a half hours. (All that within about a half an hour!) Then it was canceled. I went to the self-service customer service, thinking I was being smarter than the people waiting in line forever (It worked yesterday!). The computer told me it was stumped and I had to pick up the phone receiver. I then spent a LONG time on hold while the person on the other end tried to rebook me. She then said that I needed to speak with a customer service agent at the airport. SO, I dutifully got into the very back of the line I had scoffed at. Once I got through, they said that they could put me on a flight at 9:30 tonight (I'm lucky, because the girl across from me got rebooked for tomorrow morning!). I asked if there was anything to Syracuse, Ithaca, Elmira or Scranton. I got rebooked for Syracuse at 4:30 tonight, and I'm on standby for 12:30 to Binghamton. It's almost 10:00 now, so I wait... Basically, if I don't get on this noon flight, I'm renting a car and driving from DC to Binghamton. What a nightmare... Oh yeah, and the first leg of my flight last night, it was hot, I was sitting next to a fat guy, and there was a baby crying constantly in the seat in front of me.

I'd have to say this is my worst flying experience ever.

Current Mood: aggravated

Wow... Haven't posted in a while. I've been pretty busy, actually. No, really! It's almost a conference a month now, and I'm trying to get all the big projects done with so that next year we can spend more time gardening and hiking and camping. Last weekend we put blown-in cellulose insulation in the attic. Isn't my life fascinating? Anyway, we got completely covered in dust. But it's done, and last night was the test... Through a night in the 40s, the house stayed warm with no heating all night. Woohoo!

This weekend the plan is to start making some real progress in getting a final solution together for the basement floor.

Hmm, maybe my next post will be more exciting.

Current Mood: accomplished

Want to move to beautiful Binghamton, NY?  Why not join my company as a software engineer?

My company just instated a referal policy where I get money if a person I refer gets hired...  All aboard!!!

Current Mood: working

Well... I'm sitting in a Days Inn in Rapid City, SD. We were supposed to be in Rapid City yesterday, and we were supposed to have slept in Wyoming (see the Google Earth file in the last entry). However, the huge FLOOD sort of changed our plans. As soon as I get onto a computer with a SD card reader, I'll post pictures. But suffice it to say for now that about a mile from our house, neighborhoods were underwater.

We were unlucky enough to have two inches of water in our basement, and lucky enough to only have two inches of water in our basement. We were also lucky enough to have caught it JUST as it started flooding. We had a few friends over to celebrate Mary's birthday, and we we had gone downstairs to watch a movie. Stephanie commented on the floor being wet, at which point we noticed a number of spots of water scattered all over the floor. While we watched in puzzlement, the spots grew into puddles, which grew into pools. We started elevating some things and hauling other things upstairs.

The rest of the night our friends and I sucked water up with Wet-Vacs and hauled it outside into the pouring rain. Not how we expected to end the party, but boy were we glad to have the help! Things could have gone much differently. The next day, instead of leaving on our vacation, we hauled the remaining water out of the basement and proceeded to rip the carpet up. We spent the latter part of that day and beginning of the next day scraping up the soggy foam glued to the floor and spending a LOT of money at Lowes and Home Depot trying to dry out the basement and prevent a mold situation. With the help of Andrew, Stephanie, Peter and Leslie, we did all of this in an amazingly short time.

After a 24-hour delay, we drove off in our attempt to catch up to our schedule! After all, we are picking up Andrew's parents at Billings Airport in Montana... and they arrive in less than 3 hours! So two days ago, after scraping up the last of the foam, mopping the floor with a bleach solution, and leaving several fans and dehumidifiers running, we left the house in Peter's hands and began our drive to Chicago... at 1:00 pm. We arrived at about 3:00 am, slept for a bit, then took off again, this time to here... Rapid City, SD. We got here about 2:00 am, delayed by major traffic coming out of Chicago. Today we drive to the airport in Billings, and on to Bozeman, finally catching up to our schedule.

So... it's been an adventure. I will get pictures up as soon as I can (darn me for forgetting the card reader!)... We had a rough week, but we are grateful for our friends and for God's mercy in holding his wrath back just enough for us to be able to mitigate the situation and not have to abandon our vacation.

There is a huge project awaiting us when we return... The upstairs is packed with piles of furniture and random stuff, and my aunt comes to visit a week after our return. Wish us luck!

Current Mood: exhausted

Three things:

1) Added some new pictures to my Web Album.

2) Found a cool site for sketching up your own Google Maps maps.

3) Made a Google Earth file of the trip to Glacier National Park that I'll be leaving for on Wednesday.  Includes:

• Daily routes for the drive there and back.
• All our hotels and night stops
• Map overlays of Glacier & Roosewelt National Parks
• Rather uninteresting placemarks
  

Current Mood: hopeful

I have a new photo gallery.  I went Google.

You can also see my latest pictures on your news reader with this RSS link.

Current Mood: sleepy

Ok, this site has a bunch of funny malapropisms, but a great deal  of them are not technically malapropisms.

Many of these nonmalapropisms are absolute genius, much like short phrases you would find on a site dedicated to short phrases of absolute genius that are not malapropisms.

One of them is genius only because it was blatantly ripped off from Douglas Adams, who was a genius.

Some of the nonmalapropisms that impressed me most:

Current Mood: amused