Day 6 (or is it Day 5?)

6Jul13

Connor made it to Australia Thursday. (I hope that in five months I will be able to spell/type 'Australia' right on the first try.) He flew out of San Francisco Tuesday night on July 2 and landed in New Zealand for a layover on July 4. I guess he had a few hours of July 3 in the air before crossing the International Date Line but for the most part, he lost that day. Tomorrow he'll head to Adelaide to meet his host family.


Went to watch fireworks in Fort Payne on Tuesday night. Mom and Pops and Garrett and lots of other folks...

Alex was playing his annual version of 'Red Light/Green Light' where the launch of a firework is the Green Light and the explosion of the firework is the Red Light. He'll work his way down to the bottom of the hill and back while stopping and diving for the ground at every big detonation and then leaping up and dashing onward when he hears the launch of the next one.

 

The FP show is usually on Fourth Eve. For some reason, it was two days before this year. I've heard in years past that it's not done on Fourth of July so the city doesn't have to pay all the extra Police and Fire Fighters working that night the extra holiday pay. I've always liked the early show and if the explanation I've heard is true, happy to know the city is being frugal with budget.

 

Saw the smallest doe I've ever seen on the back road. I think Dexter was bigger than this guy...



And there's been quite a bit of other wild life spotted recently with both turkey and turtle sightings within the past couple of days.

 

 

Also had a gathering when Logan came from his first summer semester at school..

 

Jambalaya and corn-on-the-cob which led to the informal survey of how people ate their corn: round-and-round style or old-school-typewriter style. Best correlation is that people born west of the Mississippi are 'rounders' and the those born east are 'typewriters.' There were the outliers of what could be considered total-randomness/cave-man style.

 

 

Lots of rainy days this week including Fourth of July when Cara and I were home with just Chico and Ellie and watched a lot of movies. Best quotes of the day from Cara:

  

"At least they don't turn into zombies when they die."

-during Hunger Games

 

"Why are we watching this movie after we just sent our son off to a foreign country?"

-during The Way

 

Day 1

2013July1

On the road a little after 5AM from Fort Payne (or Valley Head, technically) to get Connor to his 10:50 flight out of Atlanta - a nonstop to San Francisco. The night before, I downloaded the Vine app to get ready to get some action shots but had a few false starts as I figured out the setup. Thought the final product was respectable...

https://vine.co/v/haTWYAtAHJL

I told the TSA agent that I only had Connor in the shot since it sounded like she was ready to delete any photos with her in it. (Are those Vine clips all or nothing during filming? Because I think I would have lost everything if I had to try and erase that portion. And is that link the best way to share those in blogs? Both vining and blogging are unchartered waters for me.)


Connor made his flight and the rest of us headed out. We stopped at IKEA to start looking around for stuff for Garrett's apartment in Austin.




I forgot how huge IKEAs are and only remembered a small snack counter at the Houston location rather than the extensive cafeteria that was at the Atlanta one. Good cinnamon roll and was surprised that I couldn't share even a bite with Cara or Garrett - all right by me since that left all of it for me. Came out with a few furniture ideas but not anything definite.


And on to my next food agenda item, a stop at Pizza Antico. But Cara was at her limit on pizza after Connor requested it three times in a row during the week leading up to his departure and Garrett had fallen back asleep after getting too little sleep last night. I decided to go ahead and at least get one to go even if I was the only one that wanted it. In the end, Cara did share it with me in the car and Garrett finished off the last slice when we made it back home.

Also got to stop by and see Lane at Sam Jones Memorial UMC in Cartersville. A couple of his students were there and can anyone guess what they were doing? Redecorating/Rearranging! It's always fun to visit him and hear new stories from his group and reminisce about old stories from our group. We came to the realization that students formerly know as 'the worst kid in the group' can turn into 'a really amazing youth leader.' Also speculated that some former students stopped coming to youth group after particularly tragic outcomes from rec events gone awry.


Now it's back to studying cellular/wi-fi configurations and finalizing Connor's cell phone arrangement. We've heard some scary stories of international roaming fees and the crazy fees.

 

So far I've learn that removing the SIM card doesn't necessarily disable the cellular network. For now, we have a Google Voice number for receiving forwarded calls. And we have at least a few last tweaks to get everything lined out.

 

 

Tomorrow night, Connor will take the 3rd and 4th legs of his trip. Leg One was 2-1/2 hours and 150 miles to the airport and Leg Two was 5+ hours and 2400+ miles to San Francisco. Here's hoping he has a friendly, but not too friendly, person to sit next to for the long-haul.