WI, Day of Posting Lameness (Actually the End of Day 8)

No post tonight, but soon, to wrap up the trip. Tomorrow, with lots of pics. But it's now 23:52 here, and I require sleepage before the major goings-on of tomorrow. Sufficed to say that much fun has been had the past few days, and it will be recounted. Here is a sneak preview:

Exciting, no?

WI Days Five (I promise this time) and Six

It should preliminarily be noted that I'm running on three hours of sleep- mosquito bites made me too crazy to fall asleep last night until about 3 this morning, and then I got up again at six. Don't ask why, I've no idea. At any rate, I'm starting to get a bit sleepy now, so I thought I'd blog before I tottered off to bed.

A bed all to myself, since I'm at Oma's tonight and most of tomorrow, spending time with her and working on her computer. Norton is installed and is now running a nice full system scan, then there are major Windows service pack downloads to do tomorrow. Still haven't figured out why her hard drive thinks it's full, though...

Yesterday was fun and exciting in a shopping kinda way- we were originally going to go to the mall, but time got away from us a bit and we ended up going to Plato's Closet and Savers instead. I'd never heard of either of them, but J knew of Savers, and was blown away by Plato's. I admit, it was pretty fun. Jay got a long sweater top thing ($10), and a pink homecoming/prom dress
($8) that she bought herself, and I snagged two pretty new t-shirts ($3 & $6). So that was fun. I didn't find anything that particularly stuck my fancy at Savers, but J got another couple of tops there, I think. Bad memory is what I get for blogging late :)

Also, I keep reading "savers" as "slayers". Too much Buffy.


Girls before leaving for the shopping expedition.


J in her $8 dress. It's even nicer in person.

Then we had barbecued burgers and chicken for dinner; Oma and AK come out, and it was a very pleasant evening. Cooking for big groups is fun, especially when lots of people are working together.

Sadly, it was our last time with UD- he left this morning to go back to out of town work. I missed him by just a couple of hours, since I was up so late futzing with Norton. Oh yeah, that was the other thing I did yesterday, was fought with Norton and Windows Updates to get the second vista service pack so that stuff would run right. Anyway. That finally sorted itself out around nine last night, and I was up many hours later to watch it complete its first full system scan :)

So it was just me and AJ for quite a few hours this morning after I got up around 6. I showed her around norton and some of her new stuff I'd downloaded last night, and then we went to work ripping her music and syncing her iPod. So much tech, so little time!

While the girls were still abed, we went out to Walmart to pick up some meat for our grand afternoon meal with cousin Mike and his girlfriend. It was the girlfriend's birthday, so J and Sylvie decorated the living room and we got a very attractive meal together:


Isn't it pretty! So summery, which is what I loved. Corn, little bowls of fruit, shredded meat, buns, and coleslaw (not pictured). And nametags on the place settings!


The nice meat mix: boneless pork, zucchini, bouillon, wine, and some other stuff I'm forgetting. It was absolutely delicious.


The Decorator and The Chef! (Timelord Names?)

The visit was a lot of fun; after lunch and birthday cake we sat outside on the back porch for hours, just enjoying the day and learning about the restaurant industry. Fun stuff.

But now AK is at AJ's, since there's airport travelling to be done by AK in the morning before AJ goes to work. Aaaaaand, we're back at the beginning of the post! Still waiting for the scan to finish; contemplating just slapping on some hydrocortisone, leaving the scan to finish itself up on its own, and heading to bed.

Mmmph, right, I think that's a plan. G'night!

WI Days Four (continued) and Five (not really)

It's Four and Five! (Sorry. Had to be done.)

Aaaanyway. Yesterday (day four) was just so marvelous that it required more blogging than yesterday's entry gave it. So, Oma and AK showed up and stayed the afternoon. I had spent the morning fighting with the printer:



It's an extremely attractive printer, except when it's refusing to print anything black, or giving me messages like this:



UD was finally the one who figured out how to lift up the right bits of plastic to yank out the wedged piece of mangled test paper. It should be noted that this miraculous (embarrassing) discovery came after AJ and I had poked and prodded and tweezered at the thing for literally hours. Ahem. But never mind! So now there is a functioning printer.

The girls went out after lunch, where they went kayaking:



After that, it was water-skiing and tubing off the back of the boat, which UD drove. (Do you drive a boat? Steer it? Helm it? Also, the conjugations of "to ski" are weird.) Here they are getting the boat down into the water:



The fun activities didn't start until after the boat stopped looking like this, though:



Meanwhile, the sensible people were up on the back porch, watching from comfy deck chairs:



And Oma graciously posed for a pic for her entry in my phonebook:



After dinner (meatloaf with rice and salsa!) everyone either went home (Oma and AK) or out to see Angels and Demons (everyone else but me). I antisocially elected to remain at la casa and fiddle with the printer some more. I didn't get the wireless printing working (it required a disc I did not possess) but I did get to curl up with a couple eps of NCIS, and scurry around with the dog in tow closing the windows when another storm rolled in.

The storm receded mostly by the time we went to bed, but cackled wildly back to life around 1:00 this morning; I was just going to sleep, and there were pretty awesome, sky-brightening flashes of lightening out my window. Not, you know, directly out it or anything. Certainly farther away than the cracks of thunder and lightening that woke up (except UD) everyone in the house around 2:00 or so. Tremendously, unbelievably loud. Very awesome.

And now, I would tell you all about the fun we had today (shopping and burgers and Norton, oh my!) but it's 23:10 here and I'm pretty much toast. Sleep now. More blogging and pics tomorrow.

WI Days Three and Four

Sylvie, practicing before the concert.


Fluting!


Los padres VDH's, in Oma's sunroom thing.


AK, sewing up the wrists of one of J's new (goodwill!) hoodies.

So! Day three come and gone. We went to Sylvie's concerts in the morning and early afternoon- there were individual instrument ensembles first, most of which were really neat to watch, and then the full orchestra concert after lunch at Subway. It was really imprerssive and fun to listen to.

Came back to the house after the concerts, and hung out with Thor for a while (funfunfun!) until we both had to leave for evening activities.

Then off to the VFW for a fish fry dinner. First haddock in 4 years! It was very exciting. And delicious! With hot chocolate once we got home, it was quite a splendid day.

Which leads us into today. Got up at 8:30 CT, ate some cereal, then set to work on setting up the printer/scanner/copier/fax machine/teleportation device. UD finally managed to get off the right panel to remove the crumpled piece of paper stuck inside, and we've been in business since then. Now Oma and AK are over here and we're having meatloaf for lunch; it's all very nice. J and Sylvie are ou for a movie tonight, I think, and I may fiddle with the printer some more.

Ooh, and there was a big thunderstorm last night. Very exciting, except for the bit where we kinda dozed through it. Never mind, it'll be better next time.

Oh, and it's 13:41 CT.

WI Day Two

Jay hanging out with Lulu our first morning.


Goodwill clothes (shorts and shirt), part 1


Goodwill clothes part 2 (homecoming dress!)

Above are jut a few of the results of yesterday's great shopping expedition. We tried Kohl's first, but Jay didn't see anything that called to her, so we hit up the large Goodwill next door. Together, we got a coat, a jersey (Packers, of course), a skirt, a homecoming dress, a top, a pair of shorts, and three hoodies. Lots of win.

Then Applebees for lunch, where is took us all a really exceptional amount of time to figure out what to order. Not that we're indecisive! There was just... a lot of stuff on the menu.

I spent a good bit of the afternoon hanging out with Oma; we took a walk through Riverside Cemetery, and I fought with her computer for a while. I think I'm going to install norton on it this afternoon, see if I can't get that to sort it out.

Had nice chilli for dinner, watched the Daily Show, chatted with Gina. Suffered through J's late-night "relationship discussions" with her (ex?)boyfriend.

Dunno quite what the plan is for today. AJ and Sylvie are off doing work/school things right now, but likely we'll see Oma and AK this afternoon. Weather here is lovely. Lake flies, not so much.

Also, time here is now 11:40. Blogger seems quite determined to keep me on Pacific Time.

WI Day One

Airport pic 1

Morning all! Jay and I are safely stowed away in the Grand Old Cheese State (GOCS?). We got up around 6:00 CT (4:00 PT), stumbled downstairs, had breakfast with AJ (and Lulu, peripherally) and are now showered and ready to head out and start the day. Have to drop Sylvie off at her camp, and then We're seeing Oma at some point. There are plans!


Airport pic 2

Flight yesterday went well- it was only 3.5 hours, nicely on time, and with no luggage (of ours) lost. They even gave us pretzels and soda! Not, you know, a can of soda or anything, but cherry coke is cherry coke. Jay dozed a lot of the flight, at least after we'd done some calculus together. Differential-equations fun for the whole family! I got a lot of sudoku puzzles done, and tested my phone's music-playing ability out to the utmost. Fun, quick, direct little flight. With pretzels!

Right, off to do...things. Bed is comfy. Dog is kept shut out of our room. Pretty red barns are rustic and kinda red. Lake is nice.

Oh! And speaking of the lake. Jay and Sylvie took a late night (22:00?) dip out in it last night. Jay: "Warm, but the air was cold. [Bugs] weren't actually on the lake, they were just everywhere on the dock."

So there's that.

edit- It is actually 7:44 here. The computer/internet is confused. Poor thing.

When in the Course of human events...

...it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.