Travel News From My Parents

My Dad Lloyd writes:

Hi all, Here we are in Alaska after getting up at 3:00 a.m. to catch a 7:10 flight to PHX, we are traveling with some friends who retired from AA, We made it through to Anchorage unscathed. They didn’t know about the hoops you have to jump through to get stand-by passes on another airline (Alaska Air) so they left DFW without the proper tickets to get through to Anchorage. They had to back track in Phoenix and get the right paperwork, which caused them to not make the flight on which we were all listed. Once they got to Seattle, they had to wait for two flights before they got on a plane. We waited in the Anchorage airport until 2:00 am Texas time for them to arrive. The rental car that was reserved by our friends went bye-bye because of a no-show, and they didn’t think to call or go to the rental counter in Seattle and let them know we would be late.

We ended up staying a very short night in the land of no darkness at a motel. We were lucky to find a rental car the next morning. The silver Taurus with 194,000 miles on it is still running. I can’t believe we are paying $100.00 a day for this fine ride!

We got to Seward in high spirits, but very tired from our endless night the day before. We went straight to Miller’s Landing over worst the gravel pot holed road we’ve ever been on to check into our deluxe accommodations. Our friends got settled in their small cabin that had indoor plumbing. We then went down the road to our “cabin”. We began to wonder when the agent asked us if we brought sleeping bags! It didn’t look too bad at first, until she pointed to a small tool shed in the back. It was about 12 feet wide and 15 feet long. There was a kitchen sink and table on the bottom floor. The stairway to the “sleeping loft” took up the rest of the room on the ground floor. It was a wooden ladder nailed to the wall. But wait there’s more! The shower was on the outside wall by the only door, a classy blue shower curtain and two boards that formed the walls. The path to the out-house had been newly mowed. We could see it in the distance. Imagine the surprise if one of those friendly black or brown grizzly bears decided to go pooh at the same time you did. WE aren’t stupid yet! We high-tailed it back to Seward at the blazing speed of 10 mph to find a room. The Breeze Inn is fantastic! The room doesn’t have air conditioning, but you don’t need it here. It is cold and rainy, but still ALASKA. We’re hungry and we need to go find a $20.00 hamburger somewhere!

We were surprised to find that hamburgers were only $8.00, and that was at a restaurant. The only fast food place in Seward is Subway. The local eateries are good, however.

On Thursday, we hopped, skipped, and jumped over the worst road on Earth to go fishing. The weather had not improved, but nothing ever cancels a fishing trip, right? The fishing party and the guides all met at the Miller’s Landing establisment to board the boat. Much to our surprise, there was a two step process to board the boat. A van took the party about one mile south and got on a water taxi(john boat). The taxi took the group out to the 33 foot flat bottomed boat which has two 250 horse powered outboard motors. There was space for four in the wheelhouse–remember there were 5 people fishing and the captain. To say the least, it was cozy, but the place cleared when the little boy got really sea sick and barfed all over. The waves in Resurrection Bay weren’t too bad, but as soon as we broke out of the bay the waves went to 11 feet and our luxury liner rocked and rolled. The air temperature was about 60 degrees, rain was coming from all directions which made it impossible to see or maintain balance (have you seen Deadliest Catch? It was somewhat like that!). The captain headed for the leeward side of an island and we dropped our hooks into the 175 foot deep water. The prospect of catching the BIG one was still a possibility; so we fished on!

Two hours, two fish (not keepers!), and $220.00 later we gave up and went inside the cozy wheelhouse. Oh, by the way, the boat was equipped with first rate bathroom facilities. A white toilet was attached to the boat near the wheelhouse. It has a blue shower curtain supported by a round rod above the potty for privacy, except it wouldn’t completely go around because of the wheelhouse. It was a real show for those seated in the wheelhouse. They didn’t advertise entertainment. I guess that was an added bonus. Our fishing trip ended about 2:00 in the afternoon. We were wet, tired and fishless.

The ladies enjoyed a trip to Exit Glacier and shopping. Did you know that most of the Seward shops are souvenir stores? They all have identical things to sell. It was a challenge to see who had the best prices on plastic moose statues, ball caps, and t-shirts. You probably would have guessed that without going there. It is rather sad that one of our country’s most picturesque places has become commercialized like many of the others.
Friday morning we loaded up the Taurus and headed out on the bumpiest road ever one last time to pick up our friends at Miller’s Landing. Their luggage was sitting on the cabin’s porch and they were there eagerly waiting for us. Our friends had some breakfast while we hit the shops for the last time. After taking some harbor photos, we kissed Seward goodbye and set off for Anchorage. Interestingly, we didn’t realize that there were TWO big cruise ships docked there. We all were going on about how big that boat was and that we’d never seen one that big! Now we know why! I guess a trip to Seward, Alaska, can effect you in ways you would never imagine. It made us irrational!

We finally found the car rental salvage yard in Anchorage and were taken back to the airport. It was about 3:00 pm on Friday and we were not supposed to leave until 1:30 AM on Saturday. We once again began the discussion about ticketing and where our friends had their tickets stored only to find that they didn’t have any tickets yet. He guessed that he would get them before we leave Anchorage. So we restart the ticketing process all over. This time they are neither one coherent enough to make the reservations, but we didn’t figure this out until we got to Seattle. We lucked out and found a much earlier flight that we could take so we listed them and us for it.

We arrived at 1:00am in Seattle and tried to settle in for a short nap. The ticket counters didn’t open until 4:00 am so we were just stuck. Oh, what a night. The public address system came on every 15 minutes to tell us that we were there and there was nothing we could do about it! Our friend’s wife packed and unpacked her carry on bag about 100 times. If I ever need a jacket folded, I’m going to get her to help. She would ask all of us every time she folded her jacket where this one came from and would we like a jacket because this one wasn’t hers. There was one of the cleaning crew that got on Air France’s ticket counter phone and must have been calling family in Africa. They could have heard her without the phone.

At about 4:00 we tried to get their tickets. It was a long drawn out deal again. He couldn’t hear (hearing aid in both ears) and would get mad and hang up. When we went to check in, the agent asked how many were in the party that had the same last name as theirs. We said two, and she said that there were 8 listings for the same name! His only comment was that he guessed Lloyd’s computer must have fast keys because he just didn’t know how he could have made a mistake like that! Shame on Lloyd’s computer!

One last flight to Phoenix and then on to DFW. We thought we were home free when we landed at DFW. Oh no, we were not so lucky. Our friends got split up on the flight home. He told her to stay in her seat until he came to get her. That was when they got on the plane. Big mistake. She just follows the other passengers off the plane. When we got off we saw him walking down the corridor and asked him where his wife was. He looked around and said that he told her to stay put! We both panicked and hurried on very tired legs in different directions looking for her. He found her and called us to let us know. That was a relief.

We made it back, but never again! We know that we could never be tour guides for groups of senior citizens. Those people have got to be nuts to usher old folks all over the world.

In Dorothy’s famous words,  “There’s no place like home”.

Scenes from the Day

My children are chicken-fried nuts. Jacob is chaotic at times, but underneath that boy who’s running around screaming and pretending to be a robot is a very keen mind. Exemplar gratis: we used to own a hammock. It’s strings have long since rotted away, but we did keep the hammock stand, a set of tubes of metal that looks like a minimalist canoe. Jacob took the chains that the hammock would hang from, looped them together, and wrapped them around the handle of a little tykes see-saw. He then walked over to the other end of the canoe and applied force, lifting the see-saw into the air. Essentially, it was a lever. 5 years old and the kid’s got more mechanical engineering in his blood than I ever did.

Jessie also belongs in the devilishly sweet category. She managed to pull out the stepladder, climb up to the kitchen countertop, climb on the countertop, open the cabinet, get out the green treat bucket, set it on the counter, then climb down after helping herself to a treat or two. When we confronted her about it, the following conversation took place:

“Is Jessie allowed to walk on the countertop?”

“Nooooo.”

“Is she going to do it again?”

“Yeeeesssss.”

Sigh.

Salsa De Cojones

SALSA DE COJONES

7 or 8 roma tomatoes
2 jalapeno peppers
1 small yellow onion
1 head cilantro
¼ cup apple cider vinegar (approximate)
salt and pepper
½ t. chili powder
oil for tossing vegetables

blender
half-sheet pan
parchment paper
a large bowl

line the half-sheet pan with parchment paper. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. grab the big bowl and cut the tomatoes in half. Put the tomatoes in the bowl, drizzle with a bit of the oil, sprinkle liberally with salt and pepper, and toss the tomatoes to coat with oil, salt, and oxford-comma’d pepper.  Place the halves on the paper-lined sheet pan.

Halve the jalapenos lengthwise and scrape out the seeds and as much white connective tissue as you can. Repeat the oiling process on the jalapeno halves and put them down on the parchment paper.

Slice the onion into not-thick, not-thin half-moons. Oil them as you did the tomatoes and jalapenos. Place them in an even layer on paper on the sheet pan.

Place the pan in the oven, center rack, for 45 minutes. They can go longer, but you want the vegetables to roast, not burn to cinders. After 45 minutes, take the pan out of the oven. Scoop all of the vegetables off of the parchment and into the blender. Fold up the parchment paper and discard for brilliant, easy cleanup.

Guillotine the top of the cilantro, getting most of the leaves. Put the leafy part in the blender. Add the vinegar and chili powder. Blend on a low speed, shaking the infernal contraption to push the cilantro down into the blend. Or use a better blender than ours. Your choice. Pour the salsa into a storage vessel or serving vessel and enjoy, preferably with a bit of milk to take care of the hotspots or some fresh tortillas right off the comal.

Cocooning.

Jacob’s been a little bit odd lately. I’m not sure what it is, but he’s had a moment of either sheer brilliance or lunacy. Laureen found a dress at the thrift store which essentially looks like a shift. It’s copper colored, sleveless, etc. Jacob likes to get in through the neck hole and work his way into the dress, shouting “cocoonie! cocoonie!” He keeps saying that and wriggling into the dress until he’s completely encased by it. Then, he stays quiet for a minute.

Of course, he emerges pretending to be a butterfly after that.

I don’t know why it helps him to go to sleep, but the act of doing that actually helps him calm down from an over-cortisoled day.

Little Things

Many of you know that we’ve been trying to streamline/straighten/work out our finances and other money situations for a while now. Today was a watershed day, but only in the sense that water on the roof of a shed might cave it in.

We’ve been working getting insurance for a while, and for some reason, we wound up with a product that we weren’t entirely sure we’d signed up for. This meant liquidating an existing cash value policy and turning it into a universal life one. While I understand the purpose of it, it ultimately wasn’t what we wanted, and to suddenly have it along with a roughly 38% surrender fee was a rude surprise. It’s our own fault for not paying attention.

The other surprise was a red-light violation in the van, caught for posterity on digital media. Yay for a $75 show of support for our lovely city!

We’ll be okay. These are just minor bumps in the road.

In other news, Jacob has been accepted for the gifted program for Garland, which means he’ll attend an academy if there’s space. It’s either that or homeschooling. His numerical abilities are pretty scary smart.

Jessie has learned the art of being a drama queen, especially when she gets told “no” to something. She’ll act shocked, pout, stick out her lower lip, then put her hands on the table and bury her head in them, sniffling twice. All that she needs is the Shakespearean speech to go with it.

Exponential Laundry

I understand that clean clothes are necessary in today’s civilized world, but it’s strange how much laundry has evolved. When you’re a kid, the clothes appear magically in your dresser. Sometimes you get dirt on your favorite shirt, and you cry, so your mom takes the shirt and magically replaces it with a clean one! Neat!

Then you learn about THE MACHINES.

We’re fortunate to have the machines; there are still people and places that don’t. But once you learn about the machines, you slowly begin to understand that they’re beasts that must be continuously fed. I learned about laundry during high school. Everything was pretty easy to handle, because for guys, laundry is relatively simple: white underwear and socks in one pile, light t-shirts in a second, dark t-shirts and jeans in a third. Simple: three loads, no problems.

Then you get married or live with someone, and then things get a bit nuts. You start separating out delicates into light and dark. You learn about water temperature and the power of red to dye everything else. Maybe you do a tie-dye and use the washing machine for entertainment purposes. You learn about lingerie bags and the fine art of washing pantyhose. Things get more confusing.

Then you have kids. Your laundry demands increase to the point where you’re doing loads daily just to keep up. Not only are you separating your clothes into whites, regular darks, regular lights, delicate darks, delicate lights, dry-clean only, sweaters, and oversize blankets, there’s now baby laundry to be Drefted, spit up stains to pre-treat, and the sizes. Oh, the sizes.

When the laundry comes out of the dryer, you have your underwear, your wife’s underwear, your son’s underwear, your daughter’s underwear, usually decorated with a Hispanic girl or a unicorn emblem. Then you have the “fits him”, “used to fit him”, “too big but we were out of clothes that day”, “fits her”, “neighbor kid”, “too small for her”, “hand me down from him to her”, your regular clothes, your wife’s regular clothes, the sweaters (which hopefully you remembered to place on the drying rack instead of in the dry…aw dang), the jeans, the pants, the T-shirts which are all turned inside out to protect the emblem, the dress slacks, the shorts, the capri pants, the bras (which again should be air dried), the clothes that shouldn’t be dried before your other checks them to see if the stain got out, and so on and so forth.

Finally, you’re done, so it’s time to take off your clothes and put on pajamas because it’s past your bedtime. So you toss the clothes into the hamper, realizing that the beasts need feeding again.

20 years, 20 thoughts

In honor of attending my 20th high school reunion, here’s 20 thoughts on high school.

20. Yes, I put the APATHY acrostic in the yearbook on purpose.

19. Yes, I was ready to be slapped by the former yearbook editor.

18. Yes, it would have been worth it.

17. There is a large part of me that hated high school. It started with moving from Oklahoma on my birthday before the 9th grade year, so there was a HUGE amount of transition that the natives didn’t have to deal with. I already felt weird about myself, since I was the stereotypical nerd, and being overweight and out of place didn’t help matters.

16. The fact that I went to college and got Ds in classes made me feel that I never really learned how to study. Was it that high school was easy, or that I never chose to challenge myself?

15. I didn’t challenge myself. Science fair projects seemed like such a complete waste of time.

14. At the reunion, everyone looked pretty good. It takes a certain amount of guts to even attend a reunion, especially if you never felt like you were part of a group in school.

13. I was an oddball in high school. There’s an issue with being smart and wearing glasses right around the time of Van Halen’s “Hot for Teacher”. No matter how much you try and not feel like a nerd or a geek, it’s painfully obvious that you are one. As such, you start feeling that “no one to sit with at lunch” phenomenon.

12. It’s amazing how much change has happened in some people. Some of my friends have made HUGE changes in their lives. Some others…not so much.

11. I wonder beneath the surface how many people are happy with their lives as they stand now. Are they doing what they wanted to do? Has their lives changed?

10. I’m pretty sure I’m doing what I wanted. I’m also sure that I chose what I wanted to do for the wrong reasons, and as a result, I’m in a bind.

9. High school was such a different animal 20 years ago. There wasn’t as much emphasis on passing tests; the TAKS came online during our time, and now that’s become almost the entire focus of teaching.

8. There apparently are plans to get rid of most of the old high school and completely change it from a set of buildings with walkways inbetween to a monolithic building. One of the little bits of charm of Boswell was the outdoor lockers, and that will be gone.

7. I didn’t get a chance to talk to some people at the reunion. I wish I had in some cases. In at least one case, I made a choice not to talk to someone. There wasn’t any reason other than having dealt with the type of person before and not wanting to (a) get tied down and (b) not engage in pointless small talk. I don’t want to be a jerk, but I also don’t want to open any old, firmly closed doors.

6. Romy and Michelle was a pretty good, extremely unrealistic movie.

5. Why would we have a reunion where people would want to talk in a confined, cramped place with a DJ blaring the best of the late 80s?

4. Was there any good music from the late 80s? In retrospect, not really. I think I’ve lost more brain cells in remembering lyrics to “Come On Eileen”.

3. I don’t look back on high school with much fondness. However, I think it’s just the system that grinds everyone down and puts them into defined boxes more than people.

2. As far as the people go, I have nothing but respect for them.

1. I’ll be ready for the next one. 🙂

Is it okay if I don’t care about Michael Jackson’s death?

One of the problems in today’s society is that with twitter, facebook, and everything else, news events get sent through the echo chamber many more times than before. It used to be that you’d see something on TV, or you’d read about it in the paper, but today, arguably 90% of the facebook updates that I’ve seen have had something to do with Michael Jackson.

There’s no doubt the man was a cultural touchstone. His music was popular around the world, and his lifestyle was tabloid fodder for many, many years. But to idolize him the way so many people have been gives me the willies. This was a man who paid several families settlement money for his behavior. Sleeping in the same bed with kids is not something a healthy-minded 50 year old man should be doing unless he has to. The fact that it was always boys is a bit bothersome as well; can you imagine the hue and cry and immediate action from the police if it were a young girl in a similar situation?

While I’m sorry that he’s gone, the question of what musically had he done recently comes to mind. His most recent albums were compilations, and everything seemed to point to a magical time for him with Thriller and Bad with not much in the tank after that. His lifestyle overshadowed his music at that point and continued to do so until yesterday.

The most I can say about him was a line heard on a local radio station, “it’s amazing that he was a child prodigy that never wanted to be anything but a child.”

Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Serbia, the Congo, North Korea, and other places are spots where the only music is shrapnel flying through the air and the only lyrics are the cries of the innocent. Those songs should matter more to us than “Beat It”, but I fear they never will.

Under Where?

I’m starting to think the time you feel most out of sorts is when you’re wearing underwear that doesn’t work for you. It’s either that it’s too small, or too big, or it bunches up, or… This is coming from a guy. I only have one undergarment. I have a hard time imagining the struggles women go through to get out the door.

Jacob still has the occasional accident where he doesn’t make it to the toilet. These are usually small dribble type accidents, so it’s not a big mess. He had one of these earlier this week before my folks came to visit. Laureen got him out of his underwear and just pulled up his shorts. He clambers down the stairs, goes up to my mom and whispers with a mischievous gleam in his eye, “Granny! I’m going commando!”
Just FYI, if you visit the blog regularly, there’s more protected pages on the right hand top side. These are basically writing projects–some things I’m trying to work on in order to get them out of my head. If you want to read them, you can ask, but they aren’t necessarily finished, done, or even good.

I’m trying to make writing more of a habit.  120 characters really doesn’t go terribly far these days, and if I’m going to finally give meaning to my life, I need to start exploring those parts of my brain that are quiet.