[Daz Blog] Tweets for Today

- 22:25 Sitting at gate M17 Chicago O’Hare, looks like the flight is
still on time for 6:00pm departure. #Automatically shipped by
LoudTwitter

Normal Service Will Soon Be Resumed…

It’s actually cheaper to rent a car to drive out to the airport at Chicago than it is for the three of us to take the shuttle bus. Renting a car also gives us a little more freedom.

Doing the “goodbyes” today, lunch with Barbara’s mum, evening meal with Gary’s dad.

Sunday we pack and spend the last day with Barbara’s dad.

Monday we drive out to Chicago then out to the airport for the 6pm flight.

Alt Friday Five

Borrowed from …

1. Do you have any pets* right now? If so, what are they?

One dog.

2. Why do you have pets? Or why not? Or why do you have the pets you do, and not some other kind of pet?

My wife and kids wanted a dog and after many discussions as to why I didn’t think we should get one, we got one.

3. You have fallen into an alternate universe where you are required by law to get a new pet. From the animals that are commonly kept as pets (cats, dogs, gerbils, pigs, sugar gliders, etc.), what would you choose, and why?

Is it still legal to have a tortoise? My family had a tortoise when I was young and it didn’t need much attention and loved eating the weeds out of the lawn.
(Sugar gliders?)

4. You have fallen into an alternate universe where you are required by law to get a new pet. From the animals that are *not* commonly kept as pets (dolphins, elephants, unicorns, etc.), what would you choose, and why?

What’s with all the alternate universes? I’d want a mermaid with a big saltwater pool where we could both swim.

5. You’re being reincarnated as a pet, and you get to choose which kind. From the animals that are commonly kept as pets, what do you choose, and why?

As much as I personally dislike cats, this possibly stems from their complete and utter freedom. A cat gets fed at it’s families house (note I’m not calling them the cats owner) and possibly other houses, the cat has it’s own door and is free to come and go when ever they want. I think a cat’s life would be pretty cushtie!

My Manor

So, seems like da boys from my neck of da woods didn’t do so well, seems like the East Enders aint what they used to be….

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7319216.stm

Slick!

About an inch of hail fell in about 20 minutes today. The low profile tyres on the PT cruiser had next to no grip as the weather very quickly changed. The roads here don’t have tarmac over them, so even the slightest water on the road causes aquaplaning. Now the hail has stopped but there’s slush all over the road.

I’m driving very carefully and very slowly.

Oh The Weather Outside Is Frightful

Well actually it’s quite nice. The snow is coming down in big clumps but the ground is not cold enough for it to settle. Maybe it will freeze over night?

I took a few pictures as the snow started to fall around Prospect Park in Moline.

Here’s a link to where the picture was taken.

Oil Change

This morning we took the car out to get an oil change. In my experience in the UK an oil change is just that. Over here, the oil change started with the mechanic checking the lights, the coolant, the tyre pressures and the brake fluid. The car was given a clean bill of health.
We drove out to pick up Barbara’s mum and bought her back to Al’s place for the day.

Cleaning The Car

We were heading out to get some grocery shopping when Barbara’s dad called to say that his truck had been fixed. Barbara and I drove back to Al’s place, picked him up then drove out to the garage so he could pick up his truck.
Lunch was at Hungry Hobo.
After lunch we drove out to Timmy’s picked up Seth and Cara then drove out to see Gary’s father and his wife.
After visiting we dropped Seth off and drove back to Al’s.
Early this evening, before the sun set I cleaned out the PT Cruiser. Though not the work-horse that the Dodge truck is, Al’ still treats the car like a tool box. The glove box, the door pockets and under the seats were full of tools, rags and bits of tractors with the accompanying oil and dirt. After cleaning and vacuuming out the car it now looks far more like a car.
Tomorrow I want to take the spare wheel off of the car and put the alloy wheel back on now that the tyre has been fixed, then take the car to the jet wash.

[Daz Blog] Tweets for Today

- 13:33 Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy birthday dear
meee, happy birthday toooo me. #Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

Another Year

Happy birthday to me,
Happy birthday to me,
Happy birthday dear me,
Happy birthday to me.

Went out to Timmy’s (Seth and Cara’s cousin) house, picked up Seth and Timmy and we went out to breakfast.
After breakfast we went to the shopping mall. I bought a couple of books and Barbara did some clothes shopping.
Next we went to Cost-Cutters and all had hair cuts, for less than it would normally cost Barbara to have her hair cut. Barbara getting her hair cut, styled and coloured took three and a half hours!
After the hair cuts we drove up to Timmy’s again and dropped off Cara to stay the night then Barbara and I went out for our evening meal.
We went to the Texas Road House, for a birthday meal of barbequed ribs.
We had intended to go see a film after eating but there wasn’t anything playing that interested either of us.

Car Insurance?

Everyone was up at the crack of dawn. Barbara’s father wanted to get his truck down to the garage to get it repaired. Back in October he’d run the battery down flat, then tripped over the jump leads when getting it started, the leads shorted on the top of the engine block and it wouldn’t run properly since.
The truck wouldn’t start this morning so Al’ had to call in a tow company.
Next task was to go in to the insurance company to see about getting me added to the insurance for Al’s PT Cruiser. We went in to the insurance office, the woman behind the desk greeted Al’ by name. Al’ just asked if I could be added to his insurance for three weeks and she just said “sure”. No paperwork, no computer checks, she didn’t even ask to see my license! Such a tight little community the company takes the word of a long standing customer as enough. Hopefully we won’t have to test how legitimate this insurance cover is.
We drove out to a local Target store and picked up a mobile phone for $14.99. I thought that phone tariffs were complicated in the UK, that’s nothing compared to here. You can pay a $1 per day for each day that you use your phone then calls are not metered. You can pay a fixed charge of 25c per minute for both outgoing and incoming calls. You can pay less at evenings and weekends but more during the day. Free calls to phones on the same network with no mention of what you’re charged to call other networks. Text messages are an extra, Internet access is extortionate and with all of the plans, you only get a time limit to how long your credit lasts. My head is spinning!

[Daz Blog] Tweets for Today

- 10:10 5am Chicago time and I can’t stay in bed any longer. Just the
one glass of wine on the plane, mouth is as dry as the bottom of a bird
cage. #
- 10:11 Pool/Gym opened at 4am so I could go for a swim? #
- 10:29 @adamcurry Sticking to the left when going through the security
check at Heathrow to avoid the first shoe x-ray worked a treat, thank
you #
- 11:07 Just hearing the first planes taking off from O’Hare now. Not
much louder than when Concors used to fly over home, just more
regular. #
- 11:23 Updates will be mundane but will stop at checkout time, about 5
and a half hours time #
- 12:11 Oops, changing the time zone on the laptop has confused
LiveJournal. Given I probably won’t be online for a few days that
should sort it. #Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

The Not So Live Journal

Waiting for the shuttle bus at the hotel and a stretched limo pulls up. “Hall family?” asks the driver. We keep waiting. Wall and Hall get mixed up so often that I took a walk over to the driver to double check. It turned out that the driver had bought a fare over to the airport and since they had no return fair the company used the limo to get us back to the Quad Cities.
Getting in to Barbara’s dad’s place both the spare rooms needed to be cleaned out. Seth came over, him and I cleared the rooms out while Barbara, her dad and Cara went out to get shopping.
There are remains of snow around the area although the temperatures are yo-yoing up and down.
Just recently a spell of warm weather melted ice in the Rock River that then came down and re-froze. A second bout of warm weather melted the ice again but caused the river to flood.
Cooking dinner now then probably a quiet night in.
Tomorrow we’ll see about getting me insured to drive one of my father in laws cars.

Fly, Fly Away

drove us in to the airport on Monday morning. We’d already done the online check-in so that cuts down the waiting time right? Wrong. We still had to stand in the “bag drop” line and answer the same questions. As far as I can see, on-line check-in simply saves the girl at the desk typing a few things.
On the way up to the departure lounge there are plenty of shops selling food and drink but no-where to sit. Barbara bought a bottled drink.
We took our home printed boarding passes up to the departures lounge, having to walk the entire length of terminal three since they have a queue system set up that even when empty they won’t change the barriers. After being told that we’re not able to take drinks through into the departure lounge they then refused to accept our tickets.
I walked back down to the Virgin desk and was told that there was no reason for the tickets to be refused, but they re-printed the traditional card boarding passes and these worked. The security check for getting from the public side of the airport to the departure lounge makes a big point of the fact that “you no longer need to take your laptop out of the bag”, nor do we have to take off our shoes.
As we get into the departure lounge we then find that our 11am flight was delayed until 2:30pm.
At 1:30pm the gate information updates and we’re sent on the long walk out to gate 19. The majority of the moving walkways are switched off or being worked on. Further to the initial security check people are now randomly checked at the boarding gate. Barbara and I, seasoned travelers, are wearing shoes that will be comfortable on the plane and will slip off easy for security, Cara is wearing fashionable, high heeled boots with buckles and zips up to her knees, guess who got searched.
At about 2:00pm the flight was further delayed until 5:30pm due to the plane having a technical fault and we were sent back to the departure lounge to wait gate re-assignment. We had to take the same long wale back from the gate to the departure lounge and we had to go through security again. This time the laptop did have to come out and the shoes did have to come off.
While waiting in the departure lounge I fired up the laptop, stuck on my headset and used Skype to cancel the hotel room that we’d booked, to re-schedule the shuttle bus ride and booked online a room at the airport hotel in Chicago.
The re-scheduled flight showed up on the board for gate 29, yup, another long walk.
There was random security at the gate again but this time we all managed to avoid it.
Finally we got onto the plane at about 6pm. All in all a 6 and 1/2 our delay and four security checks. While personally I didn’t mind this too much it was a little testing on Barbara and Cara.

The flight itself was great. General tip, keep a bag of sweets in your hand luggage and offer them to the stewards and they’ll treat you like first class for the whole trip. We’d got seats at the very back of the plane and once we’d taken off I had a whole row of seats that I could lay across and sleep.
There was no turbulence, no noisy passengers and no screaming babies. The only film I watched was Bearwolfe and the food was great.

As Barbara and Cara both have US passports we were able to go through the US citizens security line which was much shorter than the “other” line.

Walked to the Hotel and after a quick bite to eat fell fast asleep.

Guilty Pleasure

I have to admit, my guilty pleasure is the power showers in hotels that have the “strip flesh from bone” setting. This experience is second only to standing under a waterfall.

We Are Here

I think this is where we are –>LINK

The search returns points all over the airport but none that match here which is opposite the car park that I can see out of the window and a short walk from terminal one?

The sun is finally showing up now, time for a shower. Wonder if I’ll be able to wake up Babs or Cara?

[Daz Blog] Tweets for Today

- 10:12 Flight delayed until 14:30 #
- 12:07 41 flights cancelled, that’s not many for Heathrow. Ours still
set for 14:30. #
- 14:22 Fault on the plane, now delayed to 17:30. We’ll miss the bus
and not make the hotel. #
- 14:29 @adamcurry dude are you stuck at Heathrow too? #Automatically
shipped by LoudTwitter

[Daz Blog] Tweets for Today

- 09:07 @adamcurry Sunday morning, cleaning kitchen and listening to
the DSC. #
- 11:08 DDL 12 Now ready for your pleasure…
ddl.btpodshow.com #Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

Dumbed Down Life 12

A nice happy show this week, talking about retirement, getting old and death.

Follow this link to listen to the show –>Listen to the show

Follow this link to the RSS to subscribe –>

1. Intro / Outro Music
   Snubnosed Aardvark – Derek K Miller
   http://www.penmachine.com/
   
2. Darren – Topic
   Bill Gate is no longer the richest man in the world
   
   
3. Song 1
   Blake Morgan (Featuring Lenny Kravitz – Why Don’t you see
   http://www.blakemorgan.com/blakemorgan/
4. Joke of the Week
   
5. Feedback
   One of our listeners has been inspired to start his own show. Listen to the Bugcast
   http://bugcast.thelovebug.org
6. Doug – Topic
   Getting Old at 35
   
7. Song 2
   The Morning Light – A safe bet
   http://www.myspace.com/themorninglight
   
   
8. Lance Topic
   Gary Gygax Dies
   http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/05/arts/05gygax.html?ref=arts
9. Contact
   E-mail – ddl.podshow@googlemail.com
   Website ddl.podshow.com
   Twitter Username: DumbedDownLife

[Daz Blog] Tweets for Today

- 15:47 @adamcurry No problems with Gmail in Berkshire boss! #
- 16:42 @adamcurry Again, no problem here going through VPN, an issue
at the site you’re connecting to? Firewall or caching? #Automatically
shipped by LoudTwitter