Celticangel.org

Over this past weekend, Koshvader and I went on a nice little road trip. We went as far south as SLO, stopped at and photographed two missions, visited Hearst Castle, found a squirrel tame enough to stand on my shoe, got stuck behind several very slow people on Highway 1, photographed a Surrey with the fringe on top, saw a bunch of illegal fireworks from a distance, and even went to two beaches without actually setting foot on the beach.

And what else did we do?

We invented a new game.

I’m sure that many of you are familiar with the game known as “Slug Bug,” especially since Volkswagen has started putting a modified version of it in their commercials. For those few of you who have not yet encountered it, “Slug Bug” basically involves seeing a VW Bug before the other person playing the game (most often played while in a car for the record) and then hitting the other person (who did not see it first) and saying “Slug Bug.”

Well, out this way there are far less Bugs than there used to be, both classic and modern. What are there a whole bunch of these days?

Mustangs!

And thus, my friends, the game called “‘Stang Bang” was invented. Basically, it has the same rules as “Slug Bug.” (Except for the one memorable “‘Stang Elbow” incident. If I may just say…ow!) The only thing that we have specified is that you can’t just keep hitting each other due to repeatedly passing the same darn car as you go down the road. That is just plain cheating, and therefore naughty.

So, what are you waiting for? Get out there and play! (Within reason, mind. Use your good judgment and don’t come crying to me if you get into a wreck. I have the smallest violin in the world and I’m not afraid to play it.)

Quite recently, I took a holiday. My plan was (along with my Sister) to visit my Nana for her 95th birthday in Atlanta where much of my family lives.

My plan went somewhat…awry.

The flight in was bumpy, but we managed to see a few of the family (and some of the animals) before going to bed. On Friday, we got to see even more family and had a merry old time.

By Friday Night, I was taken to the ER. My kind sister, knowing me well as she does, offered to take a picture of me for the blog. So, here we have documentary evidence that I can get really sick and still remain a bit silly.

Please note that I am apparently too metal for the Emergency Room. I was brought in carrying a pink basin like the one you can see in the image (but I think that it had been traded out by then) and yet my sister still didn’t hit me for repeatedly saying “I Has a Bucket.” (Yes. I explained the whole LOLrus thing to my cousin, but then she already knew I was weird.)

Finally, I was taken home at about dawn and I ended up sleeping the entire rest of Saturday. Like, nearly 24 hours, waking up every time someone opened the door…’cause I’m just that light a sleeper. By the time I’d left, there were seven of us that had fallen ill.

Seven. Seven women, no less. Including my poor sister and my Nana. Don’t worry. Everyone was fine in the end (or so I hear) and the last two may not have even had the same thing. Still, I felt a bit like Patient Zero, even though I didn’t get sick until after I arrived. It sort of put paid to our vacation plans, though. It’s fun and all to call it the Vacation from Hell. I mean, if I was going to be ill, I could just as easily have stayed home. Worse yet, there is precedence for this. When I was quite young I brought the measles with me to Georgia. That was, in a word, bad.

But…I’ve had some time to think about the whole thing in the last week, and some things have occurred to me:

1) If I’m going to be quite that ill, the best place to do it is somewhere with a massive support network. (I have a lot of family, bless them.)
2) I am industrial strength. More so than I thought, even. My stomach muscles are amazing. …Though, Hello! they still hurt. Ow.
3) My Aunt is even more industrial strength than I am. I now aspire to be her.
4) I got to see my family and meet many of their animals.
5) The Georgia Aquarium has many places to sit. This helps if you are going to visit it right after being ill.
6) I still love Hee Haw and so does my uncle.
7) I took a bunch of pictures!

So, while the vacation was a bit of a nightmare, and not what I was looking forward too, it was still a vacation. My parents and siblings live two hours away from me, but I got to spend several days with them. I saw most of my cousins and their kids. All in all…not terrible. I guess I’ll just have to try again soon.

(Frisbee would like to remind y’all to recycle…just not his box.)

This summer, I am going to be doing as much traveling as I possibly can. This great spate of travel begins…tomorrow. So, if you wish to follow my travels as I have them, pop by Where’s Calliope? to see what I can manage to post from my phone (I have an App!) and from my computer after a long and tiring day.

The Trips I already have planned are:

* the Kansas/Styx/Foreigner Concert (May 25)
* L.A./Disneyland/The Stinking Rose (Memorial Day Weekend…God help me)
* Atlanta (June 3-9)

Don’t worry. I’m bringing my camera, and I’ll try to get the good shots up here once I get home. In the meantime…you know where to find me.

Well, I’m doing it again. Heading to L.A. for the Doctor Who Convention known as Gallifrey One. I’m fixing to leave tomorrow after work. But fear not, you may yet live vicariously through my geeky field trip.

I have a blog set up for adventures I may have. You can find it at: http://wherescalliope.wordpress.com/

You may also follow my trip on twitter here: http://twitter.com/wherescalliope. (Or…just watch the Twitter feed in the sidebar of the blog)

Wish me luck!

Ok. From the videos above you can determine which of the following:

a) It rained a lot while we were in Kauai
b) I need a cell phone with better video capabilities
c) I have finally posted something to Youtube, and have thus caught up with my father
d) All of the above

If you answered D, you’re correct!

If you want a better idea of the weather during our trip, check out this news article and the accompanying video.

And for the record? I’ve never had thunder make me feel like I was inside of a drum before. (*boom* *house shakes*)

The Spouting Horn, Kauai

Hello again, all. Yep. I’m in Kauai with my tiny laptop in tow. You can follow me on Twitter for slightly more rapid updates while I’m here.

So, to give y’all a quick update:

Monday and Tuesday I called in sick to work. Apparently, apart from the itching and the pain, Shingles will also make you frickin tired. …Or that part might be the drugs they gave me. Not sure. (Two more pills left to take and I’m done. yay!)

Early Wednesday morning, we managed to find our flight out of SFO to Honolulu, but only had time for a quick snack rather than breakfast. I say “managed to find” because they were not listing the gate to go with our flight number on the departures display. When I asked at the gate that turned out to be the correct one, the lady there informed me that when you check in they tell you the gate…but that isn’t the case when you check in online apparently. At least, the gate wasn’t on the stuff I’d printed out. Argh.

The flight was quite turbulent and we ended up at our destination forty minutes late, and with no idea where we were supposed to go to catch the connecting puddlejumper for the flight to Kauai. Luckily, I found someone to ask and when we eventually found a departures board it actually held gate numbers! Huzzah. And very luckily for us, the flight wasn’t boarding until twently minutes later than stated on the boarding pass.

And now my impression of that flight:
Takeoff
Climbing
“Would you like some juice?”
5 minutes later
“Okay. Trash pick up.”
Descending
Excellent landing

Yep. Island hopping doesn’t take very long.

Our friends came to pick us up at the airport and took us to lunch at the Market Street Diner. Can you say nummy comfort food? It was quite the nice relaxing follow up to a stressful journey. Purr… (Did i mention that they patted me down at SFO? That hurt.)

After stopping by our friends’ place to leave our stuff (and have the grand tour…pictures to follow) we took the obligatory trip to Walmart to grab a few things that we didn’t want to lug on the plane. (Yes. I refused to check a bag.) Okay. So I did buy a couple of things that I didn’t already own…like a pretty pink “rash guard” for swimming.

Dinner was at Sushi Bushido, which meant that I had sushi for breakfast (on the plane) and dinner in one day. I’m not complaining. The place was really busy, but the food and the conversation made it all worthwhile…even if I never did get my hot tea.

And that was pretty much the sum total of Day one here on the island. I’ll tell you all more later, but it’s time to leave for the day. TTFN!

Thursday 13: #1

Okay. I’m going to start trying to do T13s again with the new version of the site, and my first topic will be places I’d like to visit. Upon reflection, I’m thinking that I’d better get to work on this list if I’m going to cover all my bases. Perhaps I can find a job as a travel writer to pay for all of this…

13 Places I’d Like to Visit:
1. Machu Picchu
2. New Zealand
3. The Shetlands
4. Glen Coe, Scotland
5. The Louvre
6. Dartmoor
7. Cornwall
8. The Isle of Man
9. All the 50 states
10. All of the Canadian provinces
11. Ireland
12. Luxembourg
13. Australia

A week ago Friday I got off of work an hour early, gassed up the car, and zoomed on home. Not long after, the car was packed and we headed out on our way to Disneyland. And we made it. Albeit at 3am or so. It was great seeing our friends (those we were staying with and those who stopped by) but it was all kinds of humid there at the Mouse House.

We nearly melted. No lie. And I’m from Sacramento, for heaven’s sake. But one thing I can’t stand is humidity. We went to DisneyLAND, not DisneyWORLD. Get it right El Niño! Sigh. At least there was my beloved Dole Whip to keep me among the living.

On Tuesday we all ventured home. After that I pretty much slept a bunch and did very little in the way of useful…which chapped my Type A hide quite a bit, really. On the bright side, I now own a new toaster oven…which is just not as cool as my old one, but then again, what is? I may now toast my crumpets once more. Also, I gave in a bought a new shredder, but I didn’t buy the ruddy maintenance plan. The shredder itself was expensive enough thankyouverymuch. It may be small, but I’ll bet it’s mighty, and it has an actual handle on the drawer. A handle! You don’t have to go removing lids that can drop on your feet, or dealing with how the heck you’re going to get the shredded bits out of it. You just pull out the drawer and dump the contents into a bag. Amazing.

I went back to work this past Saturday. Or rather, I tried to. I only managed to be there for a couple of hours before I received a rather stressful phone call that led to myself and Koshvader traveling up a mountain and returning with my Mother in Law in tow. (She hasn’t been feeling well. We’re looking into it.) My cats seem rather pleased to have her back, honestly. And so am I.

The view of the Grapvine on the way down. I imagine it’s much snowier now.

…But it tried. Yep. On Monday the 5 was closed at the Grapevine due to snow. So…I had to take the 101 home and it took a little over 9.5 hours, during which I stopped a whole two times. Once, in Santa Barbara where I ate at Subway, and once in Atascadero for In N Out and a refueling stop. Most of the time it was raining. Sometimes it was raining very hard. I had cause to be thankful for my top of the line all weather tires and brand new brakes, let me tell you. I was also thankful for the book on CD of A Little Princess. I love Frances Hodgson Burnett.

By the time I made it home, and Koshvader came to help me out of the car, my right leg refused to move. He had to help me move it out of the car so I could stretch it. Ugh. I’ll not be doing a drive of that length alone again any time soon.

Today I had to get up early for my Doctor’s appointment. I’m sure that I was quite a sight. Oh well. At least I wasn’t moaning like a zombie, even if I looked like one. Come to find out that for once, I actually ovulated before day 14. I think it was actually late yesterday during the drive, if the random uncomfortableness was anything to go by. So, no IUI this month. And what does this mean, boys and girls? That’s right! I get to sleep in tomorrow! Thank heavens. I’m still exhausted. The next vacation that I take will not be a working one.

(Photos by me)

On Saturday we went up the eerie mountain to pick up my Mother in Law and bring her back to our place for the holidays. There was much in the way of traffic, so…we went the back way, as you can see above.

Eventually (as in a couple of hours later) we reached our turn-off. Yes, you read the sign correctly. It’s [tag]Hells Hollow Road[/tag].

And here, for those of you that have asked, is the front of Koshvader’s childhood home.

Did I mention that I got up early to get brand new, extremely good tires put on my Subaru? Well, I did. See the snow in the picture above? Well, the main roads get plowed, but the road up to the house looks like this:

Have I mentioned that I love my car? She handled the entire trip like a pro (as did my hubby who was driving.) We made it home fine, if quite late. (In the interest of avoiding the rain/snow on Sunday we made the whole trip in one day. Ugh.)