The first leg is finished. We’re in New York City’s John F. Kennedy Airport waiting for the next flight to Milan. We’re in the Business Class Lounge which has comfortable seating, electrical power, and free soft drinks and snacks. Flying international Business Class enables us to be in the lounge. We’ve got about two hours before the Milan flight boards. From there the calculation says it’s a eight hour flight. That’s plenty long enough!

The Salt Lake Airport was very busy this morning. I’m always surprised at how many people are at that airport every time we go through there. It took about 45 minutes to get through checkin and security after we got to the terminal. That left enough time to get a quick breakfast. The flight left a few minutes late leaving due to waiting for some connecting passengers. We arrived in JFK ontime — scheduled for 4:21 p.m. and we arrived at the gate at 4:23 p.m. Service was good and the flight was full — except for two seats. I wasn’t able to get an upgrade on this flight to New York (Nina did and was in First Class). but I scored a front-row seat in economy with an empty seat between me and the guy sitting by the window. That meant plenty of legroom for the flight. I was happy. So here we are — on our way and life is definitely good.

The trusty machine is back home, plugged in, and chugging away. The local computer store did a repair, then a windows repair restore, and then fixed some things in the registry. That was enough to get things fixed!! We’re back in business with the Windows XP machine. However, I’ve found the iMac Mini to be a very capable machine. My next buy will be a Mac laptop when they’ve got one out on the Intel chipset. Meanwhile, it’s good to have all the files back.

My “trusty” Windows machine got sick yesterday morning. I had downloaded and installed the latest version if iTunes which may have had something to do with the problem. However, when I plugged my iPod in to synchronize, the system rebooted and networking stopped working. There was also a strange smell of bad electricity! So, today I bought a new motherboard and installed it in the machine. Now the machine starts to load the Windows OS and then reboots. I can’t get it to boot into safe mode or any other configuration. So, it’ll go into the shop Monday and hopefully they can resurrect the system. Dang!

So, last evening and today I’ve been using the iMac Mini as my main machine. I really like it, however there are a couple of fairly quirky things. For instance, the Safari web browser works pretty well but there are some interesting problems. The URL history, for instance, can only be accessed by going to the menu bar and clicking on the “history” item, unlike Firefox where a right click shows the last URL’s accessed. Control left arrow doesn’t move back one word, it moves to the beginning of the line — alt left arrow is the key combo on the iMac. Getting used to these strange things will take some time. I’ve just found that when I’m writing a blog entry, all of my “quicktags” don’t display. I’ve no idea why — perhaps the HTML or the javascript is wrong or something. I miss having the tags directly available. I think I’ll check to see if a version of Firefox is available for the Macintosh and load that so that I can have a more similar interface.

Today has been fairly busy with little things. There isn’t much time left before we go cruising! This morning about 9:30 a.m. I was deciding how many changes of underwear I should take with me. That lead to the question of what laundry facilities were available on the cruise ship. I went online and found that a self-service laundromat is located on the same deck as our cabin and not far away. That was good information. At the same time I noticed that there are a couple of webcams available from the Grand Princess. I checked the bridge cam and got a great picture of the dock area where the ship was docked. That would have been about 5:30 p.m. — and it was DARK! Way too early to be dark!! We’ll just be getting warmed up at 5:30 p.m.!! Anyhow, the ship is on it’s way back to Barcelona to get ready for us to board a week from Monday.

Today was wet and chilly. The forecast calls for snow in the mountains overnight tonight and Sunday night. Maybe we’re in for an early winter?? A good winter with lots of snow would be very welcome here after several years of below-average snowfall. Meanwhile, I’m just glad I’ve got a backup computer! This iMac is a nice machine whenever I get the quirks figured out….

I wasn’t able to take very many pictures during the trip to Seattle. Most of the time I just didn’t feel good! Nina, however, took a lot of pictures and hopefully she’ll be able to post a few of them. This picture was taken on Saturday afternoon. Kendra was also recovering from a bad cold, but had taken quite some time to clean up her bedroom so we could see it. She also had quite a few pictures she wanted to show Nina. Kendra’s room is lovely — vibrant, brilliant colors and a fairy princess kind of a bed. The canopy is visible in the background. She has really grown up and we really enjoyed visiting with her.

Wendy and Aaron are just such wonderful people. Aaron is a deputy sheriff in Kitsap County and is on K9 patrol. His dog is always by his side. Aaron works the night shift getting home around 4 a.m. or so in the morning. He sleeps until about one in the afternoon and then another day starts. Wendy is working at a local market (local is relative — it takes about 40 minutes to drive there and another 40 minutes back) and is a substitute teacher. They were wonderful hosts for our visit and made us feel very welcome. I’m looking forward to another visit!

Despite feeling lousy, the trip was pretty good. We toured Jared’s apartment and stopped by his work. He took us around a few places in Seattle, including by the Troll Under the Bridge. Stay tuned for some pictures. All in all the Seattle side of the trip was just OK. The Bremerton side, however, was very nice. We stayed in the Eagle Tree RV Park on the Suquamish Indian Reservation. The park was nice, well maintained, very quiet, and quite full! It rained the entire time we were there so we didn’t do very much outside. The RV however stayed dry and warm. The warm part was very important since the temperatures got very cold at night. Fall has definitely arrived. We took the ferry to Seattle and back from Bainbridge Island which was also a comfortable ride. The Bremerton side of the sound has a lot of things to do and see, has water everywhere, and just beautiful scenery. We definitely made the right decision to stay on that side of Puget Sound.

The sore throat is pretty much gone (I can still feel it, but it isn’t painful any more). I’m pretty much back to normal. It seemed to take a very long time, but I definitely should be good to go for our next adventure! A week from Saturday we’re off to Barcelona and a two-week cruise. I’m right ready to go. I’ve had enough of being sick and am looking forward to having some great fun.

Monday morning I woke up with a sore throat. Nothing else seemed to be the matter and it wasn’t really all that sore anyway. Tuesday morning I got up with a really sore throat. On a scale of 1-10, Monday was a 2 and Tuesday was a 9. I went into the office because I was expecting a contractor to arrive and begin working. He didn’t get there until the next day as it was. By mid morning, I headed out to see my doctor. Of course, he doesn’t work on Tuesdays. My option was to go through urgent care. They swabbed the throat and a physicians assistant told me I had strep. She prescribed a five-day course of medication and sent me home.

We have had a trip to Seattle planned for some time. We were going to leave on Thursday morning and then start the return trip on Sunday afternoon. We would have time to visit a little bit with Jared as well as seeing Kendra. I can be sick in Seattle just as easily as being sick in Pocatello. So, we loaded up the motor home and headed to the great northwest.

The problem with really sore throats is swallowing. That has become impossible. I’ve managed to choke down the daily pill, but that’s about it. Thursday morning I was feeling so crappy that we stopped in Baker City, Oregon at their emergency room to see if there was something they could do relieve the pain enough so I could drink some fluids. Their solution was a fairly strong narcotic in the butt. The headache subsided, but no hope for the sore throat. They prescribed some vicodin and dripped a liter of a saline solution into my body (two sticks to get the IV started. I almost didn’t care). The vicodin managed to make my mouth so dry that it puckered automatically (and that was the end of that medication. It’s a horse-sized pill, anyhow). There seems to be no change in the pain levels. On the same scale, I would say today on this quiet Saturday morning that my throat is an 8. Some improvement — but it almost put me on the floor trying to get the last of the Zithromax (azithromycin) tablets down. Thank heavens this was a once-a-day tablet. Now I don’t have to try and get anything else down until the throat eases up.

There is always an upside, I guess. I haven’t had anything to eat since Tuesday morning, either. Every once in a while my stomach cuts through the pain noise from my throat to remind me that I haven’t eaten in some time. It’s easy to ignore because the thought of trying to get something down is quite nauseating. But, I keep telling myself, it has to get better. I’m sure I still believe that….

Eventful weekends are always a lot of fun. This was one of the nice weekends! It had been quite some time since we’d visited Heather and her family in Orem. I wanted to go to Salt Lake City for the Church’s Sunday School Open House. Stephanie, our oldest granddaughter, had a date to Homecoming at Orem High School. Danielle had a soccer game. All of that meant it was time to go south! We left Pocatello about 3 p.m. on Friday afternoon in the motor home and headed for Salt Lake City. I’ve received a new Church Calling as the Stake Sunday School President. Since I’ve not much of an idea of what all that job entails, I decided to go to the Church’s Sunday School Open House being held on Friday evening from 6-8 p.m. in hopes of learning a bit more about the job. We took Bradica (the dog) with us since we would be in the motor home.

The Open House was interesting. While there wasn’t much information about the specific job of Stake Sunday School President, the material on teaching and gospel scholarship was very interesting. After the meeting was over, we continued on down to Orem. We parked the motor home in Heather’s driveway for the night. That meant we would have our own beds without causing Stephanie to sleep elsewhere. Both Stephanie (who had a date the the Big Dance on Saturday night) and Danielle (who had a big soccer game on Saturday morning) needed to get a good night’s sleep.

Danielle’s soccer game was a lot of fun. She barely missed scoring on this attempt with the ball hitting the post and going right instead of left. But that was OK — a few minutes later she made a great pass from which another teammate scored. Danielle’s Purple Cyclone team went on to win the game 3-1. It was a nice morning — not very hot and quite pleasant — and the girls had a great time playing.

Later that afternoon, Stephanie got ready for her first Big Dance. She looked radiant in her gown. Her date was a delightful young man and I’m sure they had a very good time at dinner and then at the dance. We really enjoyed being there for the day and seeing Stephanie looking so happy and beautiful. After Stephanie left, we had dinner and then we drove back to Pocatello. A very nice day and trip.

Today was as busy as every Sunday seems to be. I played the organ for Priesthood Meeting as well as Sacrament Meeting and taught the lesson in High Priest Group as my normal assignment. Nina was up at the prison for her standard quota of meetings. The weekend is now coming to a close. I did get some pictures which are accessible through the link or by visiting the “pictures!” link on the right side of the screen. I’ve been busy putting up some other pictures from my last Belgium trip, so there should be plenty of pictures to look at.

Speaking of pictures, I’ve decided to build a new picture capability somewhat similar to USA Today’s The Day in Pictures feature. While they use flash technology, the idea is still quite appealing. I take a lot of pictures that don’t get loaded to the “pictures!” pages because they don’t come together in a specific theme. This would allow me to take unrelated pictures and post them as a group. Besides, it’s a great way to learn more about this technology I’m using. In the process of doing this, I’ll upgrade my server to from PHP 4 to PHP 5, implement some Object Oriented capability, and for the first time, try to make use of some clever HTML 4 and Cascading Style Sheet capability. All that means is that it might be some time before I get this capability implemented. But, right now it sounds like fun. It’s been a nice weekend.