A trip to Utah

 I finally made it out to Utah and had an adventure of a trip!

I left out on Friday a bit earlier than the last flight I took - I switched to the 6:30pm flight vs. the 7:45pm flight - lesson learned on that last one where I petered out just as I hit St. George and could NOT drive any further and got a hotel!  

Just coming into the someone area after a VERY smooth ride in!



Big storm front!!



Landing in Ontario California. Fun fact Liz was in LA at the time ;)

It would have been a great flight IF we didn't have a record breaking typhoon Hilary coming into California.  What an adventure.  We spent about an hour or more circling to the east of Las Vegas waiting to be released to land IN Las Vegas.  Las Vegas, however, was having it's own issues at the time.. they were having lightning strikes and rain.  They would open and close multiple times in that hour, however we were in a line of planes to land, so never got the chance.  We were then running low on fuel so we landed in Ontario California of all places.  Yep.  We sat in the airport for an hour or better, getting refueled and waited.  I had NO idea what we were going to face, would we get stranded in California overnight?  would we make it to Vegas?  Who knew?  The good news is our pilot was well within his hours to continue to the wee hours of the morning... so we waited.  We eventually got BACK in the air and had a bumpy ride to Las Vegas and landed about midnight.  YAWN.  This is now 3am my time AND I had cancelled my rental car not knowing when I would make it into town.... so off to rental cars I go.  I made a reservation on line while in the LONG line to the rental place - it was about 5 or 7 bus lengths long... seriously LONG line - who rents a car when coming TO Vegas, really?  I would think Uber and Lyft would be much cheaper than renting a car, but what do I know, maybe these folks were all doing what I was doing and going on from there.

Weeee hours of the morning driving north. Yawn. I think I had my coffee in hand by now!

Anyway, I made a reservation with Hertz, get to the front of the line and they tell me that they are NOT honoring last minute reservations... what the what?  Why not just NOT take reservations if you don't have cars silly people.  So to Avis I go and make a reservation while in line going there as well... THEY honor it... but they were telling everyone they only have trucks.. so I am prepared for a truck.  NOPE, I got offered a Charger or a Jeep Hybrid.  I chose the Jeep.  It got horrible gas mileage by the way!  Oh, well, I had a car... but it's NOW 1:30 am Vegas time... 4:30am my time... double yawn.  I was going to rent a hotel room but had issues getting a room for a few hours and paying over $100 - nope.  I drove over to the Orleans and slept in my car.

The GOOD news is that I had a duffle full of blankets to sleep with/on/use as pillows as I was taking 4 blankets to Linda to use as batting for quilts.  Bonus.  They were soft and I got about 4.5 hours of sort of decent sleep tucked in the back seat of the Jeep..  They are narrow so there was no stretching out, but it was good enough for what I needed.  I kept praying that rain would start and I would have had that nice sound to fall asleep to, no such luck.  Oh, well.  I got some much needed shut eye to the point I didn't hear the car pull up and park next to me.  I was under a street light, but honestly don't think anyone looked in the back of the car... either way I woke a few times, switched positions and went back out.  I got up about 5am and headed north.  Well, got a coffee then headed north :)  The coffee was from a truck stop and had a LOT of grounds in it so was apparently pretty strong - ha!  Worked for me.  I went straight to Mom's house, played some rummikub with her and waited for the rest of the crew to get ready for breakfast.

We went to breakfast Saturday and Sunday mornings and lunch or dinner as well, so that was nice for mom to get out and about.

We also picked veggies and berries out of Linda’s garden

What I picked that afternoon before the rain came in



Linda was still out there diving deep into the raspberries to get all she could!



We picked beans too but then forgot the in the garden in the rain. They got a good rinse! 

We also admired Sorensen memorabilia and tried to identify it all



I know there is a word for the style this is. They are Czech glass and enamel with beads embedded into the enamel. Very pretty and sparkly in the sunshine. 

This one is possibly Fostoria chrysanthemum pattern lemonade set. Regardless it is old and is lovely and has been in the Sorensen family for a long time. 

These were painted my my grandmother Leona Coles Sorensen  very pretty!  

Back to the travel pet of all this!

I was supposed to travel home on Monday and wouldn't you know it that was the date that the Typhoon Hilary was to hit Las Vegas.  After my last experience on the "practice storms" as they called them, I opted to change my flights (and with mom's convincing).  I rebooked first thing in the morning and about 3 hours later Delta came out with a notice that allowed me to change (yay me, ahead of the game!).  I altered my rental car with a click of a button and a bit of money as well.  Yay me, and extra day to hang out with mom.  

I had left overs from the Sunday's breakfast, so went to Mom's Monday morning and ate breakfast with her and played games most of the morning.  We went to the Nursery and got her a pot to replant her African Violet and then headed to lunch with Linda and Mike.  We also went grocery shopping and running around town all weekend so by the time Monday afternoon rolled around mom was beat.  She went to bed after a final round of rummikub and I went back to Linda's for a later dinner and visiting with them before bed.

The trip to Vegas was uneventful and the flight back was very nice with an extra seat between myself and the gentleman in the isle seat.  All in all a great weekend trip despite the snaffu on times and returns.  It all worked out like it was supposed to!

And the BEST news was when I got home I had a TON of boxes to go out in the mail!  Yay for eBay sales while I’m away!!

Ten sales while I was gone for those 5 days. Yay me!  Now to sell more!!

Presidents’ Day weekend

My trip started at work  all day  I took the 745 flight out and slept most of the trip out  it was NOT enough  by the time I got my rental and got in the road it was 10:30… I hit a nice Jeep Cherokee. I did a self evaluation at Mesquite.  I still felt good  I kept going  wow that next 1/2 hour/45 minutes did me in  I got out and walked around the car  1:30am UTAH time so 4:30am MY time  nope  not happening  I hit a hotel room.  It’s only money, right?  The bed was great I slept like a log and got up at 8am for breakfast and got back in the road  

Snow on the mountains surrounding St. George. COLD weather. I got there right between storms. Lucky me!!

AND look who came down!  Such fun!!  It was great to see Sandi and Suzie and Aunt Tuny! I expected Robert and Janet so it’s always good to see them!

Sisters!

They LOVE ice cream!  I was on a diet and didn’t get any but it was a great variety!!

I have NO idea what she is smelling  but it was probably yummy!

I took very few photos we had such fun playing games late into the night, running around shopping and visiting and just enjoying the time!

Sunset on the way home!

Visit with Mommie Dearest

And captured from a video I had. 


‘’Twas a cloud filled trip for sure. It was either FULL clouds and bland or beautiful storms!  I was even rained on in Vegas!  Not typical!

Mom said folks were going to think I never have flow before ;) I’m ok with that - ha!

It was a good visit and as always I didn’t take many pictures. 

This is mom reading a card from a friend who sent money to me at dads passing. I used the money to take mom out to eat while I was there. We went to Applebees once, the McDonalds (her choice) and to Linda’s one night :) oh and IHOP for breakfast one day. I joined her af her place for dinner or lunch one day and sat with her while she had her breakfast one day as well. We laid around talking and visiting and took drives up the mountains and even went to the nursery to get her a new plant. 

She and Robert we rubbing on each other one afternoon :)

Robert, Linda, Mike and I played games at night and had a very good visit!

In the evening it’s so nice to sit out in their back porch!

Then all too soon it was time to head home again. I came in Thursday night super later - or super early Friday morning.  Spend Friday - Sunday with mom for as long as she would have me each day!  She only tapped out once and said “nope, I need to go take a nap” and we let her be, but that wasn’t until Sunday!  Worked on her stamina and strength while I was there with lots of walking and more calories than she’s used to. We will get her up to fighting weight yet!!

The flights home had lots of pretty clouds coming into Atlanta

No video to catch the lightning under this storm. 

Not the same cell but a good one from the ground!

A good trip. Now I need a few days to recuperate!!

I've been a blogging Slug (AKA month of February - maybe that should be groundhog?)

To be honest, there isn't much going on this month of February. 

let's start from the beginning.  After the snow and ice that really did hit us, we had another "warning in early February about freezing rain.  They were less knee jerk on shutting down the base this time as we spent a day at home in January and there was NO snow in sight.  This time, we workers didn't get the official "go home" until the temperatures were on the decline and there was ice on the airframes on base.  Enough of a sign of things to come that night.  Well, not REALLY.  North of us by a few short miles Forcythe got hit pretty hard with lots of freezing rain and downed power lines.  We got this;

 yes, that really is a layer of ice on the leaves, not just water... but it's so thin and there is nothing stuck to the ground.  I'm sure there were chances of it freezing on overpasses, but the few I have between me and work were sanded and good to go.

 I want you to note that Butch's windshield is completely CLEAR and mine is frosted over big time.  Apparently I need to stop pointing my butt out on the car as it's the one way that I get a LOT of ice on the windshield.  Bummer.

And with that tiny bit of ice we got off early that evening and a late arrival time the day following.  The BAD thing about that was I was in a three day training course and due to our missing more than 1 hour of the course they had to reschedule it.  Yep, it complete it I will have to go back for TWO more days... even though we made it to over 1.75 days in the original course.  I'm not sure I'll make it to the "retake" of that course...  Sigh.  Oh, well - that's life with my work.

I also went TDY (work trip) for the first time in a year and a half.  We typically go once a year somewhere fun for a week to recap where we are with the program and where we're headed, but no such luck last fall as there was NO money and furloughs shut everyone down.  So... another half year later and I got to go to the big bustling city of Montgomery Alabama.  I didn't take a picture ONE.  Nope, not one.

I had a nice room with two queen beds - again something stupid with government rates...they would give me that, but not one King.  Silly.  I so missed the option to have Mom on the trip with me - not that there was anything to DO in Montgomery after hours, but still, she enjoyed going on these trips with me in the past.  To her benefit, she did plan a trip to LA to see her sisters and spend the week with them, so I had swapped my training week with Derek to allow me to be closer to home "just in case" dad needs me this week.  AND to give me a chance to go say "hey" and take him to dinner on Wednesday night.  We're going to El Tapatio in Fort Valley.  Yum!

Anyway back to Montgomery, it was a nice trip.  Julie B, Karen J, and Bob L. were also on this trip to train for the new BIRT reporting tool that we'll be using for the new version of FEM.  We'll need to have 300 reports re-written to this new tool by July if all goes as planned for the deployment of the new version.  Fun, fun, fun.

The first night Karen and I went to an early dinner and met up with Julie and Bob at happy hour at the hotel.  The ONE good thing about the hotel we went to is that they have food at their happy hour.  The first and third night was the same food (chicken fingers, baked potatoes, hot dogs, nachos, salad/veggies/dip and a soup), and the middle night they didn't have the chicken fingers and had baked ziti and meatballs instead.  The chicken fingers were the best of all of it... the rest just filled a spot.  They also give you a voucher for three free drinks as well and if you schmooze the bartender, you could get some doubles tossed in there and really have a nice nightcap before bed :)  We spent our nights visiting, drinking and munching.  Julie wanted to do something more active, so we attempted to bowl one night and found out that bowling is apparently the ONLY thing to do in Montgomery as the filled and entire 30 lane bowling alley to the brim on league night.  Oh, well, we tried.... maybe next time.

I came home to a beautiful weekend of mild weather and sunshine!!

Work on projects continued on projects during the month, but the desk has yet to be published as a finished product due to missing hardware - it's somewhere in Liz's room... however no-one is sure exactly where.. and the search hasn't really gone into full swing.  I have yet to chuck everything out of the closet and really go through the nitty gritty of what is in that room... so it's another "in progress" mode for that one.

I did buy a new paint sprayer to use to paint it and BOY was it sure FAST to do the painting that way!!   I managed to fit that in during the warmer weekends when they happened.  Next up will be the dresser I have to paint.  Right now it's also a work in progress and demands some glue in joints.  I'm a procrastinator on this due to weather.   Then when the weather is good, I prefer to be in the yard doing other things.

After coming back from Montgomery this last weekend, I finished the north west drain area of the pool.  I had put in a small retaining wall and pea gravel in the whole area with exception of right around the drain due to some very nice verbena in there... well, that has died back, so now is the time to really get in there and dig and make changes.  So that is what I did this last weekend.  That project is complete, however I didn't feel it was photo worthy apparently as there are no pictures to date.  It really was a small area - only about a 3' swath.  I did clean the deck as well, then Butch followed behind me with a nice power wash of the whole deck.  The other thing that I accomplished with Butch's help (he had to dig the hole for me!).  i got the wisteria in the ground for this spring.  It was necessary as everything is starting to bud a bit.

Doesn't look impressive, however the grapes are gone and the wisteria is started and will match the other side by next year.  I'm excited as it will be SO pretty when it's full grown!

We surprised Butch while he was in the backyard with a visit from the neighbors dog who had gotten out.  Rather than let him run the neighborhood, I had Angela put him in the backyard so he would be safe.  Apparently putting a dog in with someone when they aren't aware will really freak them out - ha!  Poor Butch and poor dog as he got a bit power washed himself.  We finally had to break into the neighbors yard due to the dog barking at the washer and attempting to bite at the water stream (he's not the brightest dog).  Anyway, his hips have issues, so in the process of being chased away from the power washer, he also took a nice swim... yeah, it was time for him to go home.  and time to convince Angela NO dogs!!  yeah, that didn't really occur, but it was worth the thought.

We also planted the wisteria that I started last year.  It was time as everything here is starting to bud.  Then I see we're going to have lows in the 20's next week.  UGH. I'm so over winter!

And that wraps up the month for the most part... hanging with Dad from time to time this week - dinner with him tomorrow night and then he'll drive with me to ATL to pick mom up on Friday night.  I plan on a break at the outlet mall area as there is a nice Mexican restaurant in the area and that distance will be a good time to get out and stretch our legs...