Monday, December 28, 2009

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggety Jig

I'm home.  I took the redeye flight back last night (overnight, leaving at 10 pm, arriving in Newark at 6 am).  Normally this is a flight that I dread, but several things happened to make this flight pleasant.  First, when I checked in, they were able to put me on an earlier flight from Newark to Albany, getting me home about 4 hours earlier than I expected.  Then, security was empty.  Empty.  I walked right up to the metal detector and, yes, I had to do everything but undress for the metal detector.  But it's so much worse when you have to do the same thing after waiting in line for 10 minutes.

Then, my first flight left early.  You read that right.  Early.  And the second flight left a bit late, but arrived on time.  So here I am at home, working on getting the woodstove warm enough to warm up the house.  I'm still getting text messages from Orbitz on the status of my original flight from Newark, and it's currently delayed 2 hours (hasn't left yet).

I expected security to be insane because of the recent attempted bombing on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, but it was normal.  On the eastern end, they're doing random searches of cars entering the airport and they may be doing other "extra" things inside the airport that I'm, thankfully, unaware of.

The road was dry down in Albany, but when I hit about 1000 feet altitude, I got to this.  Unplowed roads with about 4 inches of new snow, falling fast.  Good thing I have a big, heavy truck and the big, heavy truck has 4-wheel drive!



If I have to be driving on snowy roads, the part I enjoy is when I am the first one to disturb the snow.  Here I am, in front of my house, looking back at the only track in the road.  Mine.  Right after I took this picture I discovered something else.  Under all this pretty snow is a thick layer of ice.



What I don't like about taking the redeye flight is that I'm never able to sleep on the plane and last night was no exception.  I feel like I've pulled an all-nighter.  I used to hate doing that in college.  Sleep is just about my favorite thing to do.  So, as soon as I can get the woodstove stable and running on it's own, I'm going to do exactly that.

It was the perfect vacation.  I was happy to arrive and happy to leave.  There was plenty of time with family and not much rushing around.  I had enough time out of my normal life to be able to see it with some perspective.  And, it's not bad.  I'm relatively happy with the way things are, but can see a few changes I want to make with the new year.  (Shh - they're NOT resolutions! They're NOT!!)  Mostly around eating better, more local food, some of it extemely local (as in, from the 'stead).  I'm going to write a post later this week about this past year and the next year, where I'll talk about that stuff some more.

Right now, I've got some sleeping to do!

Oh, and no, nobody came over and did my dishes or took anything.  Do you think maybe I should post a sign on the house, "I'm not home - can you please come in and do the dishes?"  No?

3 comments:

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  2. sorry about the dishes. I had good intentions, but life got in the way... but with no dogs to snuggle up with there, I figured I'd stay here and keep warm as best I could.

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