Saturday, December 30, 2006
Posted at 1:06:00 AM by Laura W. Petix.
That was cool. (Dean and I still can't believe they let you do this.)
It was really hard to get good photos because the winds through the streets of New York made it extremely bumpy, especially since we were so low. (It was a good thing none of us are prone to getting airsick.) But I took a million; most were nothing but streaks of blurred light, but a few came out pretty good. It looked even cooler (lots cooler!) in person.
1) First we flew right down the Hudson River corridor and over the George Washington Bridge. We were super-close to the bridge (at about 1,000 ft), and it looked huge.
2) Next we flew past Manhattan. We could see the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, and some other skyscraper (I don't know what it is) [edit: we looked on a map, and it's the Met Life Building] that, like the Empire State, was lit up red and green. The city looked really 3D from the side, with the huge buildings close to the water's edge like big black boxes, their windows all alight. It was impossible to photograph these.
3) We went past Times Square and could see down the streets of Manhattan. That building with the green slanty roof on the left is the Westin Times Square, where we stay when we go to New York.
4) We could see the big ships in the water, and even read the New Yorker sign on the the top of the New Yorker Hotel building. (It's blurry, but you can make it out--that yellow sign between the Empire State Building and the other red-and-green topped skyscraper [Met Life Building].)
5) And then we flew around the Statue of Liberty (aka "The Lady," as all the pilots say when they're announcing their position over the radio), at 500 ft. She was so close. Unbelievable.
Friday, December 29, 2006
Wow. Dean wants us to fly the New York City Hudson River VFR corridor tonight, together with the Pilot Guy and his girl. We're going to stop at Rick's (in Orange County, NY) first for dinner. I'm recharging the camera battery!
Posted at 12:29:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Thursday, December 28, 2006
Dean edged ahead by one card yesterday, but now we're tied again (AGD!). This is the closest C.C.C. ever.
Posted at 5:02:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
At Trader Joe's, they had this reference book called Visual Food: the Definitive Practical Guide to Food and Cooking. It looked interesting, so picked it up to look at it, opening to a random page. The page I opened to was about mangosteen. Do I have (bizarre and useless) superpowers, or what?
Why is it that I always seem to get the most Hair Compliments™ when my hair's extra-messy and I haven't washed it in an untold number of days? Very strange (but I like it, of course).
I'm actually working on proofreading my Hawaii blogs today. (!!) But I still have a bunch that I haven't even typed in, because Dean was helping me back in Hawaii but I lost my voice and couldn't dictate anymore. And I want to add photos. So it will be a while.
Posted at 1:27:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
My neck's all murdered again. It hurts if I turn my head to the left.
I have some very interesting things saved in the "drafts" section of Blogger. There's an entry from 12/10/2004 that says:"Kaikea" is a great word. It means, "white sea foam, especially as washed up on a beach." I also like "kuakea": "white and encrusted, as salt deposits left by evaporated sea water; to bleach white; foam." Like what I licked at Ke-awi-iki, and also like what I did to the urchin shells. (The bleach foamed like mad when I dropped them in it.) Hawaiian has words for things there should be words for.
Why didn't I ever post that? I think a lot of them I didn't post because I felt they were too revealing in some way, but I think maybe this one was just because it seemed out of context in the flow of the rest of my blog at the time.
Wednesday, December 27, 2006
Fake Christmas morning with my parents was Christmas Eve night (I put on my pajama bottoms to pretend better) and fake Christmas Eve with Dean's parents is tomorrow. I'm baking the French bread right now. I was sad yesterday on Christmas, but I liked watching Olive, the Other Reindeer. Today I bought my very own copy on DVD. And I got a Christmas card in the mail from Robert, so now Dean and I are tied again. My fam is going to come through at the last minute, I just know it!
Posted at 1:11:00 AM by Laura W. Petix.
Can't smell the bread yet, but I should be able to soon.
Christmas Eve and the whole Gingers visit was wonderful. Very smooth, relaxing, and enjoyable. It was great spending Quality Sister Time with Diane (we went to Target and Starbucks together, and I got to see her house and her business for the first time ever); playing Pictionary (Diane made us do it) with the M (overcast stitch??!!), Diane, Tim (Tim is nice), and June (even though Dean and I lost); having meals with everyone; and spending Christmas Eve with everyone, including dear old long-lost Jan, and Joe. That was fantastic. (I really enjoyed talking to Joe, and his presence during our gift exchange with the Diane family!) I hugged Jan when she left to drive back to Diane's, and she said something about it being much harder than my old hugs. Ha! :-) It was all nice. Really really really nice. I liked the quiet mornings best of all. Making breakfast (Dean and I had Belgian waffles with raspberries one day!), drinking the Gs leftover coffee, hanging around with the M while she sewed or things like that. She called me her little elf. :-)
The bread is done! It turned out good. Long and skinny, and bulgy on the end of one of the loaves.
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
LOL!!! I just got an e-mail from Dean: "I did a Google search for your silly 'Leopold Strasse'. It's a street or something in Munich! You and Susie are BIG CHEATERS! I'm officially winning by 1 card!"
Posted at 12:27:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
Well. Heh. Okay. It's sure nice to know I have such good (underhanded!) friends, though, isn't it? And I almost had Dean convinced Leopold could be a long-long Mueller relative, for a while there.
Monday, December 25, 2006
Posted at 7:27:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
We didn't have time to go to a Christmas Eve service last night (that was okay, because being with my family was more important, and I knew what the holiday was about even if I didn't go) so I listened to Christmas hymns flying away, including "Silent Night" in German. Then I was too sleepy so I played Talking Heads and The Band to stay alert (played The Band's unreleased cover of "Atlantic City" as we flew over it).
Oh, and the first thing I played was Bob reading "A Visit from St. Nicholas" (with very bizarro background music!) from this week's Themetime episode. I wasn't able to get the whole show before leaving for N.C., but I did have that one part, and saved it to play on Christmas Eve. He did a great job. It was weird taking off just after midnight Christmas morning, flying in the dark over the silent lights of the towns down below, listening to Dylan's voice describe Santa's flight. It sure was a quiet night to fly. Pretty much just us and Santa Claus, I guess. And one Continental airliner with radio problems (they said they could receive but not transmit--just like the 57th in "River of Stars"), broadcasting on the emergency channel and asking for their messages to be relayed.
Here's a large version of the Atlantic City photo. It's slightly blurred, but pretty clear considering. It was blazing. I could almost, but not quite, make out the huge red neon names on the tops of the hotels. And here are two more of New York City: one, and two. We think the gridular-looking island in the second photo is Long Beach. I used a different camera mode for these, so they weren't blurry but didn't show how bright it was, until I tweaked them on my computer. They're pretty accurate now, I think.
Christmas Card Competition Update!! There were a million cards in the mailbox when we got back from N.C. late last night, and we saved them until today so we'd have something to open on Christmas. We had a big showdown at the kitchen table. Current standing: 12 cards from Dean's people and 12 cards from my people (13 really, but Hunter sent me two, and I'm only allowed to count one). So we are still tied. That's the full and honest report.
Posted at 5:57:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.
[Edit: Fine. Fine. Dean says, "It's a total scam!! It's pending validation of one suspect sender!" One of my new cards was from a mysterious German named Leopold Strauße, and Dean doesn't believe it's a real guy. What the heck! He even accused my Mom of being behind it when we called the Gingers this afternoon. (He finally believed her when she said she was capable of such a thing but was not responsible.) What a sore loser! Or, tie-er. Of course it's perfectly legit!]
Posted at 5:04:00 AM by Laura W. Petix.
We're home! (A day early, because bad weather is coming.) Very clear night flight, with a nice tailwind. Only 3 hours and 40 minutes. Saw the Chesapeake Bay bridge, all lit up stretching across the black water. It's so long! Atlantic City was *glowing*. So bright. Christmas tree triangles big enough to see from 9,500 feet up. New York City (we went over the top!), so BIG and gridular. All the lights. Green lights on the bridges. More in the morning--I'm very tired.
Christmas was wonderful, even though we had to pretend Christmas Eve was Christmas day. It's weird that it's not really even Christmas yet. Very weird. I was really sad flying away, but sad from love.
This morning (Christmas Eve morning) I dreamed that David came for Christmas unexpectedly, and I hugged him really tight with tears in my eyes, overcome with emotion.
