Barb's place

(caveat:  I’ve already re-written chunks of this to re-arrange various activities in accordance with the dates on the pictures.  My memory is pretty horrible.  Any remaining errors are … well, there’s probably quite a few.  Oh, well…)

I got to the Grand Rapids, Michigan airport at right about 5:30pm on Sunday, May 20.  As I said, Jourdan (Birgitte) and PD (Purple Dragon) met me at the baggage claim area, and after a little prodding PD went to get my suitcase off the carousel.

The whole drive back to Jourdan’s house, I was fascinated by some of the signs we passed.  I’m not sure why – they just caught my attention.  I’m sorry I didn’t take some of the pictures I had intended to take.  Lisa or Jourdan, I still want a pic of a sign for one of the “Third Fifth Bank” places you have – that name just boggles my mind.

I had told Lisa in advance that I sleep on a waterbed at home, and she had set me up with a double height airbed, which was WONDERFUL to sleep on.  I didn’t know HOW wonderful till I got to my next two stops, but that’ll wait.  My only difficulty was in getting OUT of the thing.  Well, not literally true – I found out the second night that an airbed is incredibly easy to ROLL out of … :P   It’s nice to wake up with a case of the giggles, though.  

It was a busy week.  My second day there, Jourdan took me and PD up to Meijer Botanical Gardens, and we spent about three hours walking all over the property.  They have some very good greenhouse areas, with a wide variety of environments, from desert to wetlands.  We amused ourselves finding various plants that represented us and people we know, like Dragon Bones, Fairy Washboard and Bishop’s Cap.  There was a wild assortment of sculptures there, as well.  Rodin’s “The Thinker” was there, and I didn’t realize until I read about it online – but it was the REAL THING – not a copy.  That blows me away.  Pisses me off, too – I would have taken more pics had I known.

Lisa took me to Costco on Tuesday, where I bought a new camera to replace the one I’d brought – which flatly REFUSED to work.  I got lucky.  They had an Olympus SP-350 8 Megapixel camera on sale for only $180 – it takes AWESOME pics.  Unfortunately, the memory card for it (an xD) was not available at Costco – Lisa found one for me at Target – 2 GB.  It takes pretty damn good movies, too – but I’m really annoyed that I didn’t figure out the sound function until AFTER Seeker had come and gone.

We spent a fair amount of time with laptops set up on the dining room table – often as many as four, with all of us doing different things.  Though SOMETIMES PD and I would be in a group chat together – but at least there were other people there – I assure you we WEREN’T just chatting with each other over the net – while sitting next to each other…

Seeker (Rich) came down from Canada on Wednesday, and left the next day.  All the movies I have of him are silent, darn it.  He does some pretty amazing impressions.  My favorite memory of his time there, though, has to be after he, Jourdan and PD went out for a walk.  When they returned, PD sat back down at the dining room table, and said in tones of deep agrievement, “OK!  He is NO LONGER allowed to call ME silly!”  It cracked me up.   I had some advance warning that the “live” Seeker is completely different from the “text” Seeker, having spoken with him in Skype several times in the preceding months – but Lisa, PD and Jourdan didn’t have that advantage.  Heh.  Trust me, the difference is profound. 

He and PD did attempt to demolish my reputation in TL chat, however.  Seeker sat down at my keyboard at first and pretended to be me.  However, when the very first thing he did was start “singing” the song “I touch myself” at least two people in the chat room twigged VERY quickly that it was MOST unlikely to be me.  However, it got worse.  A bit later, after I’d typed for a while in my own voice, Seeker took the opportunity to sit down at PD’s keyboard and pretended to be HIM.  This was a little harder to spot.  However, PD soon took MY keyboard over, and pretended to be ME.  It was really amazing how quickly they managed to make everyone leave the chat room completely.  Whenever one of them got off a particularly horrid shot, they would “high-five” each other.  Sigh…  I can only hope people don’t really think that was me.  

We forced PD to watch “Blazing Saddles,” something he had never seen.  We had the subtitles on, because otherwise it can be difficult to catch all the jokes – especially with the rest of us saying so many of the lines right along with the actors.  I was rather glad to have them on, myself.  I caught at least three jokes that were obvious in print, that I had never really noticed when they were strictly auditory.  He was satisfactorily amused.  

Thursday we attended Pirates of the Caribbean III en massé – the whole family:  Lisa, Paul, Jourdan, Alex, Miranda, plus PD and me.  I’m missing a name, dammit.  L  Anyway – we had fun.  Neither PD nor I had yet seen PC II – but it wasn’t all that hard to pick up on the story.  At least we HAD seen the first movie, so the people weren’t totally unfamiliar, except for a few that were introduced in the second movie, like Davy Jones, Tia Dalma and Captain Beckett. 

Friday was Jourdan’s graduation.  We walked over to the school – something I would have thought long and hard about had I known how far it was.  What’s just an easy stroll for the others had me huffing and puffing and trying not to think of how foolish I looked.  Or how much it was going to hurt tomorrow. Paul (Lisa’s husband) and PD were kind enough to amble slowly along with me – the rest of the small mob was a LONG way ahead by the time we crossed the highway to the school.  Then we had to climb to the top tier of the bleachers.  LOL.  I looked at those steps and just shook my head.  But I got up there. 

We had a great view, if a bit far away from the action.  Both PD and I took a number of photos – and I have a short movie of Jourdan walking the diploma line.  I decided to leave right after that, though, because I was a little worried about trying to descend those bleacher steps with a mob.  My knee was still very unreliable if I wasn’t careful.  So Lisa phoned Alex (RS) and had him come pick me up while the rest sat through and waited for the end.  Heh – I had to duck under some barricade ropes and cross an exit aisle the school had set up in order to get back to the parking lot.  Some people were unhappy with me about it – but it was at least another 5-10 minutes before anyone would be walking down that blocked off aisle – and it took me about 3-4 seconds to cross it.

When Jourdan got back to the house, there was a family party celebrating her graduation.  There were quite a number of people there, including Jourdan’s biological father and his wife and mother, as well as some of Paul’s family, including his sister Mary, among others.  It was quite a crowd.  Many photos were taken.

After about an hour, PD and I grabbed the cribbage board and a deck of cards and retreated to the basement.  Lisa and I had taught him to play over the last couple of evenings.  His first night playing I beat him three games.  His second night, he beat ME three games – including one double-skunk!  ~Grumble – beginner’s luck~  This night we quit in the middle of a game to watch a movie – Dogma, I think.  We left the board set up so we could finish the next day – but the Emperor and the Khan were up long before us, and when we got there, the card deck was short a few cards and the pegs had disappeared.  We found the cards, but not the pegs.  Happily, Lisa told me in a chat a few days ago that she discovered the manufacturer of the board was located in a town in Michigan – just a short distance from Grand Rapids.  LOL.  So she ordered pegs in eight colors.  Including postage, total cost about $8 – not bad.

On Saturday, the 26^th, Alex drove us (me, PD, Miranda and Jourdan) to see Lake Michigan.  I think PD was a little stunned.  He said he had never seen water that big that wasn’t a sea.  You truly cannot see the far shore.  In fact, my flight back to Chicago passed over Lake Michigan, and it took about 10 minutes of flying to cross wherever we were.  They’re called The Great Lakes for a reason.

Once everyone got back to the house, there was a second party for Jourdan, with lots of good food, and a marvelous cake.  Lisa had a photo of Jourdan’s very first day at school, age five, I guess.  And another of her in her graduation gown, and those were printed onto the icing.  It was a really good cake – incredibly sweet.  I’m glad I got an inner piece, and not one with edge icing.  Jourdan had to be reminded that no one could have any until she cut it – she took her sweet time.  Heh.  :P

Our last night there, we watched MacLintock – an old John Wayne movie and one of Lisa’s favorites.  I’ve always liked it, too, and PD had never seen it.  We didn’t finish Dogma – everyone fell asleep before it ended.  I promise, Lisa – I’ll finish it sometime.

Sunday arrived much too soon.  I headed east for Maryland and family, and PD and Jourdan headed for Houston, Texas – and another TL mini-meet.  The trip to Texas was PD’s idea for a graduation gift for Jourdan – several TLer’s contributed to the fare.  I understand it was an unqualified success and she had a great time.  They did fit in a one-day side trip to Austin to meet PD’s other Warder, my Warder Sister Cary.  I wish I’d been able to go – but my family would have been SERIOUSLY unhappy with me had I come to the mainland for the first time in 14 years and left them out of my plans.

The next phase of my trip to follow…

photos for this leg can be found at http://s52.photobucket.com/albums/g7/tworiverswoman/Friends/Mini%20meet%202007/

(Originally posted on MySpace on 05/28/07 -- copied here)
I've reached the second stop on my 3-legged tour of the mainland, and it's time to start putting things in writing.  Maybe.

I left Hawaii on Saturday, May 19, on the 9pm flight to Chicago.  About 2 hours into the flight, I used the lavatory (what kind of word is that, anyway?  How "unobjectionable" can you get?) and, when I returned to my seat (22G -- right aisle seat in a center section of 5 seats), the guy in front of me had his seat reclined as far as it would go.  To phrase things -- delicately -- I am not a slender woman.  There was no way, with the fix-mounted armrest on the aisle, to get into my seat in any simple way.  So I clutched the headrest of the guy's seat, and swung my torso to the left, figuring I'd just let go at the end of the arc and plop down (gracelessly) into my seat.  My left leg apparently wasn't included in the discussion about the procedure, because it remained in its complete, upright position -- which generated an unpleasant "pop" noise and a rather horrid amount of pain.

I did a little hyperventilating, rubbed the hell out of it, and did... nothing, for the rest of the flight -- which lasted another three hours and then had a one-hour stop in San Francisco.  We were required to deplane, which is when I discovered that my knee was NOT going to cooperate with this whole "walking" business.

Actually, that's not quite the truth -- my knee would support me ok, if all I wanted to do was WALK -- but when you added the 10-pound oversized purse full of this-and-that, and the 30-pound laptop case full of MORE this-and-that, and trying to crab sideways down the aisle of the plane, the knee basically threw in the towel and got all pissy at me.

So, they called in a wheelchair for me.  Not a memory I cherish.  The little porter they got to push me up the ramp... I felt so sorry for her.  She and I were cracking jokes at each other, and I was pulling on the hand-rails to help.  Heh.  She just parked me off in the waiting area and told me to "stay right there!" and she'd be back for me as soon as I could get back on board.  So, after 1st class, I was the first one on, and was able to get into my seat reasonably well.

The flight to Chicago was another four hours, with another damn wheelchair at the end.    I have to say I MUCH preferred the SF porter to the Chicago one -- this one forgot where she was taking me ... three times, and ignored (or forgot) my alternate choices (a laptop station, for example) and finally took me to the next gate -- for a four-hour layover.  She got me into a seat, plopped down next to me, and promptly took a nap.

After about 30 minutes, she got a page and took off.  So there I sat.  For four hours.  I couldn't leave my stuff, and I couldn't carry it, so I couldn't even use the bathroom, much less get a snack or a drink.  I wasn't impressed with her services, needless to say.

The flight to Grand Rapids from Chicago was only about a half-hour in length, and I was able to walk off the flight.  There WAS a wheelchair near the loading ramp, but I just plopped my two carry-ons into the seat and used it like a baggage cart.  The flight crew was very pleasant to me and worried about me trying to walk, but I'd be damned if I was going to sit in a wheelchair again.

Once I got to where I could GET a baggage cart, I felt much less conspicuous.  I hauled out my little T-Mobile cell phone and called Lisa, and she gave me Jourdan's cell phone number to call.  They must have been REALLY close by, because it was less than a minute later that PD was greeting me with a silk/paper lei and a peck on the cheek, followed by Jourdan.

We bullied PD into grabbing my suitcase off the luggage carousel (poor dragon -- it weighed 50 pounds) and then took off for Jourdan's house.  I gotta say -- I have never been in a place that made me feel so comfortable as a guest.  It was more like becoming a member of a family I'd known for years.  Lisa, I am more grateful than I can say for the time I was there, and I sincerely thank you for making me feel so at home.

I wish I was one of those people who can sleep on a plane.  No chance.  I'm pretty short, and almost all seats are just a wee bit too long for me to sit back comfortably in them.  Airplane seats are no exception.  The little pillow they give you I use in the small of my back instead of up near the head -- so now (after five flights) I've bought one of those "inflatable neck pillows" for the next leg of this trip.

I found that the only things I require for my pleasure on a flight is my MP3 player, my good noise-cancelling headphones, and a book.  So that damn over-sized purse did NOT get used when I left Michigan.  Unfortunately -- I didn't dare check the laptop bag through to Maryland when I left Michigan -- the gods only know what I would have gotten when we got to the other end.  And there's nothing I can do to reduce the weight.  It's just a damn heavy bag (Titleist -- Xmas gift from my company) and doesn't have wheels.  However, I'm inclined to think that it could take a considerable amount of abuse and the computer would probably still be working afterward -- it's well made.

This blog is already overlong, so I'll leave the description of my visit for another blog at a later date.