"Hey Lucy, I'm Home!" I was watching I Love Lucy with the younger ones the other day--everyone was rolling on the floor, or trying to catch her or his breath. Just thought I'd share. Its going to be a very long day today, I know, but I'm hoping to make it fun for those two young ladies (pizza--delivered, oh my!), fun movies and cartoons. It snowed here a little last night, and SiSi's winter clothes are already packed (they're moving across town in a couple weeks), so we're going to have to stay in--aw, major bummer. But before things get hopping too much, I wanted to give wish you a very happy Valentine's Day, Ms D. I sincerely hope that you find it full of warmth, cheer and happiness! !!!

LOL....that's exactly how my trip was. We ended up having to stop somewhere...got disconnected from the main train for about 5 hours. It sucked.

BTW, my Amtrak excursion, from Denver to Oakland and back, wasn't without some difficulties. In Utah the engine broke down in the snow and we had to wait quite a while for a replacement to arrive. We also had the dining car break down and had to stop somewhere where the conductors could get off the train and go pick up deli sandwiches for the passengers. But for me, at 9 or 10, it was an adventure. I spent virtually the whole ride in the dome car watching the trees go by as we traveled north through Wyoming, through the Rockies, then through the Great Basin desert and past Donner Lake into California. God, this country is so beautiful--folks really miss out on a lot (i.e., elk, deer, bears, little podunk towns) when they're focused on driving themselves or flying a couple miles overhead! And of course when the dining car's working, or you have a sleeper (I didn't), so much the better!

Just swingin' by and sayin' "hi"--Hi! Hope ya have a great day. BTW, trivia--you know that "Ye" you see way too often on old signs (i.e., "Ye Olde Shoppe"). It isn't actually "Ye" but "The" That "Y" isn't actually a "Y" but the old English letter for "th"--its actually written like a lower case "y" but the size of an upper case "Y". So it isn't "ye old shop" but "the old shop". I hadn't done the trivia thing for a while now and thought I'd toss that titbit out there (and technically, it was titbit, but some folks changed it to a century or so ago ). Same reason chicken breasts and thighs started to be referred to as "white meat" and "dark meat"--too salacious, I guess, for those folks.

I've done an Amtrak train ride once...going from Texas to Phoenix. Boy was that a disaster. But I would definitely do it again.

"Home, home on the range ...ow! Oops, out of the frying pan, onto the burner ..." Wasn't that what the song was about? Cooking? No? Oh well ...must be time to eat. Glad to hear you made it home safe & sound. I can't imagine flying for that long, to be honest. Personally I think I'd rather take Amtrak and ride in the dome car (again), but trains don;t go to Hawaii, do they? Not without water wings at least. Yeah, I'm tired so my sense of humour is a bit strained, but I can only work with what I've got (hmmm, flour plus water equals ...glue). Have a good evening, Ms D, and great tomorrow. I hope you get yourself caught up with classes and get settled back in easily. Cheerio

And yep I am home...been home since Saturday night.

Well I hope you feel better soon.

Hola! I'm assuming you're either on your way home, or you're unpacking now (well, maybe not right this second ...). Anyway, I got your message this AM. Sounds good, and I will answer. The past couple days have been a headache here. My PC died on my, so I had to convert back to an older, slower one, take parts (ethernet card, USB 2.0, &c.) and re-install utilities/anti-spyware/anti-virus programs, and once I got that more or less settled, I was obsessed with going back through FTV to make sure I hadn't missed anything--I think my membership there has roughly a week left to run. Thankfully I keep all those sorts of things on external hard drives, so nothing I'd downloaded was lost, including your update and those updates you assisted on (whew!). But now I'm waiting for my sis-in-law to call so I can go get the kids--she's running late--everyone, including me, has been fighting one of those pain in the buttocks viruses here (bleck!). I'm hoping tonight, or maybe at naptime to be able to come back and answer the rest, but I am happy to hear from you, and am very (very) happy with what you said. Until later (aka hasta luego)--big cheers!

Yep...I did get to shoot in the rain. And it turned out beautifully. But it's also raining today, which sucks because we were supposed to do the "volcano" shoot which we can't do in the rain. So hopefully it stops tomorrow because otherwise we won't get as many shoots as we wanted to. But other than that it's been great.