Apparently Mother Nature isn't so keen on Thanksgiving this year; we're in the midst of a pretty big nor'easter off the coast. It has been raining since yesterday morning and winds gusting to 40mph. We're expecting up to 5 inches of rain before it is over (we're already over 2inches at 8am this morning) and continued high winds. My poor potted trees were both overturned in the wind and one lost a fair amount of soil which promptly was blown onto my, once clean and clear, glass storm door. It is so terribly yucky outside and I've got to go out in it to finish collecting a few items for dinner tonight and tomorrow, yay! My poor parents are supposed to be on the road heading up from Atlanta today (I haven't heard from them, so I'm not sure that they'll be here before late tonight at this point).
Wishing you, and yours, a very Happy Thanksgiving!
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
***It's snowing!***
.... at 1,300 feet (or so I heard). I think I may have seen/heard some sort of frozen precipitation falling on the car as I drove to work this morning. It's blustery and cold! And the commute took almost an hour (took 22 minutes to go 6 miles, usually I can make that section in 10-11 minutes, tops!). Thankfully, it's almost Thanksgiving and that means a break from work and some time to spend with the 'rents.
Grandfather Mountain this morning (with fresh snow, elevation 5,964 ft.)
We are cooking Thanksgiving dinner at our house this year (we did in 2004 just after we moved in, I thought I had a post about it, but can't seem to find it). I'm in charge of the turkey (check), green bean casserole (check), stuffing (check), cranberry sauce (check), pumpkin pie (check), rolls (check), and something else... (not check). Mom is making her FAMOUS sweet potato soufflé, pecan pie, ambrosia salad and fresh collard greens (thanks to dad and his mad gardening skillz). I think we'll have plenty of food for the 4 of us.
Grandfather Mountain this morning (with fresh snow, elevation 5,964 ft.)
We are cooking Thanksgiving dinner at our house this year (we did in 2004 just after we moved in, I thought I had a post about it, but can't seem to find it). I'm in charge of the turkey (check), green bean casserole (check), stuffing (check), cranberry sauce (check), pumpkin pie (check), rolls (check), and something else... (not check). Mom is making her FAMOUS sweet potato soufflé, pecan pie, ambrosia salad and fresh collard greens (thanks to dad and his mad gardening skillz). I think we'll have plenty of food for the 4 of us.
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Beautiful sunrise
My drive to work has been blessed with mostly sunshine since the time change. Although the days are growing shorter and the minutes of sunlight are fading, I still love to see the sunrise (despite being in traffic at 6:30am) on my way to work.
I wish I had a camera with me this morning; the clouds and sunbeams were amazing. The WRAL skycam had a decent shot of the sky -
Just over a week away from Thanksgiving... still planning the menu, ack!
I wish I had a camera with me this morning; the clouds and sunbeams were amazing. The WRAL skycam had a decent shot of the sky -
Just over a week away from Thanksgiving... still planning the menu, ack!
Friday, November 10, 2006
Friday Funny Time
So I’m trying out the ‘daily blog theme’ thing again. Friday should be funny, well, it needs some funny to help the day go by faster. It’s near 80 degrees here today (yes, 80 in November, gotta love North Carolina) getting close to breaking a record high. The weekend looks to be beautiful, but I’m not sure that we’re going to do much. Paul and I are fighting our first bout of the ‘crud’ – it’s not exactly a cold, flu or virus, but it ain’t making either of us feel too good.
A-n-y-w-a-y, the Friday Funny is about travel, air travel and its woes to be exact. The following to a letter from a disgruntled passenger on a flight in December of 2001 (the spelling and punctuation errors intact). I checked it out on Snopes and found the following to be TRUE!
Here is the text, but for the FULL effect WITH PICTURES, you must go here
"Dear Continental Airlines,
I am disgusted as I write this note to you about the miserable experience I am having sitting in seat 29E on one of your aircrafts. As you may know, this seat is situated directly across from the lavatory, so close that I can reach out my left am and touch the door.
All my senses are being tortured simultaneously. It's difficult to say what the worst part about sitting in 29E really is? Is it the stench of the sanitation fluid that's blown all over my body every 60 seconds when the door opens? Is it the wooosh of the constant flushing? Or is it the passengers asses that seem to fit into my personal space like a pornographic jig-saw puzzel?
I constructed a stink-shield by shoving one end of a blanket into the overhead compartment — while effective in blocking at least some of the smell, and offering a small bit of privacy, the ass-on-my-body factor has increased, as without my evil glare, passengers feel free to lean up against what they think is some kind of blanketed wall. The next ass that touches my shoulder will be the last!
I am picturing a board room full of executives giving props to the young promising engineer that figured out how to squeeze an additional row of seats onto this plane by putting them next to the LAV. I would like to flush his head in the toilet that I am close enough to touch, and taste, from my seat.
Putting a seat here was a very bad idea. I just heard a man groan in there! This sucks!
Worse yet, is I've paid over $400.00 for the honor of sitting in this seat!
Does your company give refunds? I'd like to go back where I came from and start over. Seat 29E could only be worse if it was located inside the bathroom.
I wonder if my clothing will retain the sanitizing odor . . . what about my hair! I feel like I'm bathing in a toilet bowl of blue liquid, and there is no man in a little boat to save me.
I am filled with a deep hatred for your plane designer and a general dis-ease that may last for hours.
We are finally decending, and soon I will be able to tear down the stink-shield, but the scars will remain.
I suggest that you initiate immediate removal of this seat from all of your crafts. Just remove it, and leave the smouldering brown hole empty, a good place for sturdy/non-absorbing luggage maybe, but not human cargo."
[end letter]
From Snopes: When we posed a query to Continental about whether this letter was an actual customer complaint received by them, they tersely told us that the information we were requesting was "proprietary" (which we took to mean that yes, they had received such a letter, but they weren't about to discuss or answer any questions about it with us). However, Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn noted in a 22 July 2005 piece that a Continental spokeswoman confirmed to him that the letter was genuine:
“. . . it's genuine, according to Continental spokeswoman Courtney Wilcox. She sent me the airline’s official, potty joke-intensive response:
The letter is not totally accurate and uses sarcastic humor to make the seat sound a lot worse than it is. But we don't want to pooh-pooh this customer's concerns — seat 29D is less than ideal. Most flights are not sold out and normally we can easily re-seat a customer who prefers not to sit in this location. However, the Dec. 21 flight was completely full, and we have apologized to the customer who wrote to us about the concerns. If there was a quick and easy solution to this problem we would do it in a whiz. However, the aircraft configuration is fixed and there is little we can do at this point to just flush away the issue.”
A-n-y-w-a-y, the Friday Funny is about travel, air travel and its woes to be exact. The following to a letter from a disgruntled passenger on a flight in December of 2001 (the spelling and punctuation errors intact). I checked it out on Snopes and found the following to be TRUE!
Here is the text, but for the FULL effect WITH PICTURES, you must go here
"Dear Continental Airlines,
I am disgusted as I write this note to you about the miserable experience I am having sitting in seat 29E on one of your aircrafts. As you may know, this seat is situated directly across from the lavatory, so close that I can reach out my left am and touch the door.
All my senses are being tortured simultaneously. It's difficult to say what the worst part about sitting in 29E really is? Is it the stench of the sanitation fluid that's blown all over my body every 60 seconds when the door opens? Is it the wooosh of the constant flushing? Or is it the passengers asses that seem to fit into my personal space like a pornographic jig-saw puzzel?
I constructed a stink-shield by shoving one end of a blanket into the overhead compartment — while effective in blocking at least some of the smell, and offering a small bit of privacy, the ass-on-my-body factor has increased, as without my evil glare, passengers feel free to lean up against what they think is some kind of blanketed wall. The next ass that touches my shoulder will be the last!
I am picturing a board room full of executives giving props to the young promising engineer that figured out how to squeeze an additional row of seats onto this plane by putting them next to the LAV. I would like to flush his head in the toilet that I am close enough to touch, and taste, from my seat.
Putting a seat here was a very bad idea. I just heard a man groan in there! This sucks!
Worse yet, is I've paid over $400.00 for the honor of sitting in this seat!
Does your company give refunds? I'd like to go back where I came from and start over. Seat 29E could only be worse if it was located inside the bathroom.
I wonder if my clothing will retain the sanitizing odor . . . what about my hair! I feel like I'm bathing in a toilet bowl of blue liquid, and there is no man in a little boat to save me.
I am filled with a deep hatred for your plane designer and a general dis-ease that may last for hours.
We are finally decending, and soon I will be able to tear down the stink-shield, but the scars will remain.
I suggest that you initiate immediate removal of this seat from all of your crafts. Just remove it, and leave the smouldering brown hole empty, a good place for sturdy/non-absorbing luggage maybe, but not human cargo."
[end letter]
From Snopes: When we posed a query to Continental about whether this letter was an actual customer complaint received by them, they tersely told us that the information we were requesting was "proprietary" (which we took to mean that yes, they had received such a letter, but they weren't about to discuss or answer any questions about it with us). However, Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn noted in a 22 July 2005 piece that a Continental spokeswoman confirmed to him that the letter was genuine:
“. . . it's genuine, according to Continental spokeswoman Courtney Wilcox. She sent me the airline’s official, potty joke-intensive response:
The letter is not totally accurate and uses sarcastic humor to make the seat sound a lot worse than it is. But we don't want to pooh-pooh this customer's concerns — seat 29D is less than ideal. Most flights are not sold out and normally we can easily re-seat a customer who prefers not to sit in this location. However, the Dec. 21 flight was completely full, and we have apologized to the customer who wrote to us about the concerns. If there was a quick and easy solution to this problem we would do it in a whiz. However, the aircraft configuration is fixed and there is little we can do at this point to just flush away the issue.”
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