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November 23, 1998
Into the Wind
I woke up sometime when it was light. I had no idea what time it actually
was until I got to the kitchen and the clock said 7:20 a.m.. I started
mixing up the pancake batter, and Mom got into the kitchen right when I was
starting to look for the powdered milk. She pulled it out of the fridge,
and so I was set. Mom scolded me for being up, but was okay with the fact
that I'd go back to bed after I mixed stuff up. So, I hugged her again
before going back to bed and wished her a good day.
Sleep was pretty easy to get again, and I woke up again when John came into
the room all clean and showered and damp and aware of the time. If we were
going to get to our 12 o'clock flight, we had to leave home before 11, and
it was nearly 10 with pancakes yet to go. The batter wasn't as foamy as I
wanted it to be, so I added a bit of baking powder and soda and it foamed
up instantly. Aiee... but they baked up okay. Halfway through, I realized
that Mom and Dad might not have any maple syrup, and Dad volunteered a
quick trip to go get some. He went and got some and got back just a few
minutes after the last pancake was done. So that was good timing.
We saved on pancake for Mom as she said that she really wanted to taste
one. They were just white flour and the more commercial prep of sourdough,
so less sour. They had the texture I've come to expect from the pancakes.
Yum.
By the time we were done, packed and ready it was just a little past 11, so
we zoomed to the airport, and Dad dropped us off with a hug and a smile.
It was a pretty good visit, all together, though my lungs and eyes were
still burning from the smog.
We managed to get bulkhead seats, so were seated first with the first class
passangers. Turns out we got first dibs because we had to put all our
stuff in the overhead bins, so they made it a bit easier for us by letting
us get on first. That was nice.
During the ride I read a book that Genevieve had given me,
Managra, which is a Dr. Who adventure written up into a book.
It was lovely, creepy, and sufficiently pedantic about why things worked
for the Doctor to come off really, really well. I loved the plot twists
and turns and the whole oddball psionics and technobabble involved in
multiple replications of historic and even fictionally historic entities
and personalities in a historic recreation of Europe gone mad. And the
Doctor has always intrigued me as being powerful, alien, yet vulnerable
both physically and through the people he loved. So it's a cool balance
that the book managed to capture as well. I loved a line where a woman
says that she thinks he has bad dreams.
It was an intriguing read, with more horrific elements, and casual mentions
of sexual oddities than I've seen in most American fiction, treated with
the British style of humor that is so hard to really quantify. Nice
alterations of drama and humor as well, and I enjoyed some of the
characterizations of the really evil critters.
The flight itself was smooth sailing until we got into the northwest, as
the winds were starting to pick up with the windstorm that was coming in
that evening. Turned out the day had been clear until just an hour before
our plane was supposed to come in, and then the skies opened up and it was
pouring when we came out of the airport. Picking up Fezzik was simple, and
he was very glad to see us, in fact, so glad that he decided he was going
to sit right in the middle of all the people in the van and so lay down in
between the two front seats rather than going to the area in the back of
the van. We couldn't move him, so there he stayed. He got lots of pets
from all four of us, so was pretty content.
The house was nearly colder than outside, when we got in. Turned out that
the batteries to the heater controls had died while we were gone, so there
was no heat in the house while we were away. Very fuel efficient. But the
house was a cold as a crypt. We turned on the power, turned on the TV, and
found out that a big windstorm was headed our way and that we needed new
batteries for the flashlight we took with us on our walks with Fezzik every
night. So we started the heater and went off to the grocery store.
It was mobbed.
All the news channels had been warning everyone about the big winter storm
coming, so everyone was out stocking up on things. I was paranoid enough
to buy two gallons of drinking water in a container, just in case. It'd
be enough for a while, and we had the wood stove for heat and for cooking,
in the worst case, and the outdoor gas grill for windstorms would be just
fine as all the gas lines were underground. No use, whatsoever, if it were
an earthquake, but good for storms. Candles everywhere to hand, and
matches and lighters scattered about the house.
We got some canned things, and stuff for burritos as we still had some
flour tortillas we wanted to eat, and the fresh veggies looked good, if
expensive compared to California prices. Nothing frozen, though we did get
milk as there wasn't much in the fridge and John would use it for
breakfast.
Dinner went without a hitch. Monday night football went all the way to the
last five minutes before the brownouts started happening. Small outages
here and there. The wind was hitting the windows with a boom and rattling
them in their frames, and frozen rain was pelting all the windows, with
occassional gusts that sounded like someone was throwing a bucket of water
at the glass. Fezzik would sometimes bark at booming wind, and he curled
up close to the couch, where we could pet him where he lay.
The weather slowly got worse and worse, and as we went to bed, it was
howling around the house, the trees sounding like the ocean in a winter
storm. It was amazing to listen to the hiss and roar of the wind through
the trees. Nearly impossible to get to sleep, though, and Fezzik came
upstairs, where it was warmer. Later, in the middle of the night, he
started shaking his head a lot, the jingle of his collar kept waking me up,
so I went down, took his collar off and put ear cleaner in his ear, which
got him to whine a little, so something was up in there. After washing his
ear out, he shook his head again, but without the collar, no jingling.
Finally, around 4, things quieted down again, and I finally was able to
really sleep.
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