My fun trip home.

I woke up at 5 Pacific to take Kate to the airport for her flight home. I got back to the hotel at 6 and watched crappy TV until 7:30, at which point I got up and returned the rental car, planning it so I would get to the airport in plenty of time for my 11 o'clock flight. I did. I got there at 8:15 (still pacific) and waited for 3 hours.

First they delayed boarding until noon. I got a snack, but figured I'd eat on the plane. As soon as we were all seated on the plane we were informed of bad weather in Philadelphia, and that we had to push take-off back to 2:30 Pacific. We sat on the tarmac until our 2:30 takeoff.

At 10 PM, EST now, we tried to land in Philly but it was covered in thunderstorms (VERY cool to watch from the plane, BTW). Running out of gas, the pilot announced we'd land in Baltimore to wait out the storm and refuel. We landed in Baltimore at 11:00. A gate was ready for us at midnight, but an unidentified plane sat in the way and didn't respond to radio requests to move. At nearly 1 we docked, refueled, and had the toilets pumped out so we could use them again. Filing a new flight plan took nearly an hour because of some computer problems, and we took off for Philly at 3 AM.
At this point I hadn't showered in 40 hours, or eaten in 10. I slept for 1/2 an hour on the tarmac in Seattle.

We landed in Philly at 3:30, and I waited nearly half an hour for my baggage to come off the carousel. Kate, who had sat in the Detroit airport while her connecting flight was delayed for 10.5 hours but still beat me home, picked me up at 4. I got home 18 hours after I'd left my hotel, 12 of which were spent on the plane.

The Philly airport looked like a refugee camp. People sleeping EVERYWHERE, as I assume all flights out that night had been canceled. It was a mess.

But hey, the trip itself was great! Lots of pictures to come...

Did you ever wonder how your mouse works?

All is revealed here. Let it load. Then run your cursor over the gray circle.

Julian Beever again.

Here is that artist Jason told us about, at work in Charleston, West Virginia. Lots of pictures showing him at work, his tools,various shots of one of his artworks. Quite amazing. How does he do that, anyway??!?

Fun weekend continued.

I tried to post these the other night, but blogger was making me mad, as usual.



Our first real dinner at the house! Yummm spaghetti.
We found a cool kaleidescope at the museum of play.
Luke is charming.
Zebra muscles at Lake Ontario turn Luke into a mutant superhero.

No I will not give you a ticket!

Rochester House/Fun Weekend

The dining room

My monster room with nothing to put in it Anna's room
We went to the strong museum of play. This is the dizzy room.
Luke is fixing a taxi for an irate driver!

Michael's in Waterville . . .

. . . turns out to be every bit as good as the Clippingers have been telling us. They proved it to us last night. Below, Scott and Tom help Lucy with her editorial duties, until Judi distracts them. We also saw the Drosins and Tomasellis, but I failed to photograph them.



Now, at the restaurant, we were approached by a Blog Reader who said she would post comments if only she knew how, but she doesn't. I promised an explanation. It's very easy -- here's what you do.

1. Look at the bottom of the post you want to comment on. You will see an underlined link that says "O comments" or "3 comments" or whatever. Click it.

3. Now you see the post you were reading with any comments that have already been posted below it. Near the bottom of that page there's another underlined link that says "Post a comment." Click that.

3. Now you see a box into which you can type your comment, plus three choices as to what identity you are going to use. If you have a Google account, you can use the first one. (Instructions on how to get a Google account are below.) If you don't have a Google account, you can post anonymously by clicking "Anonymous" (Amazing!) or you can choose "other" and then put in whatever identification you want to use. Once all that is done, you can choose "Publish" if you are sure your comment is ready, or "Preview" if you want to look at it once more first with another chance to edit it before clicking publish. That's all!

16. How to set up a Google account: go here and follow the instructions. Remember the e-mail address and password you use for this, because you will need it when you post comments under this identity.

All done. Now, post comments!

In Japan, they understand OM.

Hat tip, Scott.

And while we're at it, this is fun. Dad saw it on TV years ago and tried to explain it, but nobody got it. Now, we do.

April-Rod's ruse

At first, I thought it was Little Leagueish. But the CHB has as an interesting column about it in the globe. How is it different from the Hidden Ball Trick, which I love?