TS1 and I flew out for a long weekend to visit my parents, and my sister and brother-in-law brought my now two year old nephew Jake from their Long Island manse. Very enjoyable time, not long enough of course, and the boy is something else. So blond, friendly and nearly unlimited energy; fortunately, unlike last year’s visit neither he nor my mom were sick. I should have a photo or two soon, once my sister sends them along.
Jake is old enough now to have a small, barely understandable vocabulary but he quickly picked up on calling us Uncle Bill and Aunt Viv. Hearing that was a real rush! Trying to keep up with him as he ran around the house backyard, ha!, that was another story. You’d think going to the gym and such would have made it less taxing; big props to my sister and Larry for doing it every day.
While there I expanded my use of MooTools by updating my gallery page class (click any on the list page to see) to use Sam Birch’s Lightbox for managing the image display and some code from MooTools Gallery to generate thumbnails as needed. Because of my less than stellar graphics skills, the gallery thumbnails may look squished but I’m working on it.
The trip home was not one of the best, though. When we got through security and checked the departures board, though, our flight had been delayed an hour; let’s just say Newark/Liberty International Airport is not my idea of a place to sit and wait, especially since they don’t provide free WiFi. We got jammed in the takeoff queue thanks to the change and lost another half hour waiting for our turn at the runway. The flight itself was a bit on the rough side but something I ate earlier in the day must have really disagreed with me as my stomach felt like an angry goblin was inside, poking me with its claws; I am not good with pain.
We walked halfway around SFO after claiming our bag looking for the SuperShuttle pickup point courtesy of crap signage, only to find that the company decided to jam eight people into one van. Not super-thin people either, and when I complained to the driver he laughed–not mailiciously, I’m sure, more from a combination of nerves and inability to do anything about it. Of course the driver is a (recent?) immigrant from eastern Asia with poor English speaking and comprehension skills and driving ability to match. TS1 and I agreed that on future trips of five days or less we are driving ourselves and using the longterm parking.
Midnight California time we finally got in the door here and got a brief second wind to handle a bit of necessary immediate unpacking before extremely welcome collapse in our own bed. I love seeing my family, not being able to do so more often is the one bad thing about living on the other side of the country from them, but sleeping in your own bed is, as the commercials say, priceless.
BillSaysThis 