"I do not want horses or diamonds - I am happy possessing you." - Clara Schumann

I don't know what they had in mind but it doesn't look like a good idea to me.

OK, that sappy quote up there is the kind of thing that usually makes me gag. But the marriage between Clara and Robert Schumann is a great story of love between two extremely creative and talented people who are now considered musical geniuses. He eventually went insane and she died in poverty. I really like their music (both of them performed and wrote) and I think their story would make a great movie, along the lines of Amadeus.

Pam has had the travel experience from hell. She was supposed to leave Grand Rapids yesterday evening about 6 p.m. local time, fly into Houston, and then to Phx, arriving here about 11:15 p.m. She had to be to work this morning at 7 a.m., so that made for a tough turn-around, but it was all we could get.
Before she left G.R. I got an email from United saying that the flight out of Houston was delayed 30 minutes "due to a late arriving flight." OK, that makes for an even shorter night, but it gives her some breathing room for an otherwise tight connection.
Minutes later comes an email from United that the G.R. flight is delayed by 90 minutes..."due to a late arriving flight."
Not surprisingly, she missed her Houston connection. But when she arrived United told her they'd taken care of everything and booked her on another Houston/Phx flight, at 6:30 p.m. the next day. Yes, p.m.!
"Unacceptable"
They then miraculously found her a 9:30 a.m. flight out, the next available, and gave her a voucher for a night at a nearby Comfort Inn and $9 worth of food vouchers. She and a handful of other similarly stranded passengers waited at the curb for the hotel shuttle. And waited. And waited.
Eventually one of them called the Comfort Inn; "Oh yeah, our shuttle has been broken down and isn't running." Some of her fellow travelers took a cab but she was afraid of missing her morning flight so she spent the night in the airport.
She called this morning to give me the story, at that point unfinished because she hadn't yet had her "come to Jesus" talk with United.
Oh, and then I got an email from United that this flight was delayed 30 minutes due to "operations."
She told me last night to bring her work clothes to the airport and take her directly to the hospital. When she called this morning she said she'd talked to her boss to say she wasn't coming in. She'd already been up over 24 hours and wasn't yet on a flight home. So I picked her up, brought her home (with a brief stop for some lunch) and she went to BED.
I think we'll be avoiding United Airlines in the future!

I was thinking that with Pam's new work schedule we should make some adjustments. We've already talked about me doing some of the grocery shopping, and I'll do laundry early Friday morning instead of Saturdays, which will now be our only joint day off. I thought this morning that it might be nice if we went out to b'fast Saturday mornings as a more relaxed and intentional way to start the day. But where? There's the rub.
If we still lived in Michigan we'd have all kinds of options - one-off joints with the menu printed on the placemat, or maybe on a single page laminated in plastic because the placemat was printed with business-card sized ads for local retailers and insurance agents. Heavy pottery coffee cups that never empty, and those little clear plastic water glasses with the vertical ridges. Old guys sitting together wearing Carhartt jackets and John Deere hats. Waitresses that are hustling to get everything out while it's still hot but never seem in a hurry when they come to take your order. And a cash register, not a computer, up by the front door, sitting on top of a display case with candy, and a little bowl of toothpicks.

Here? nothing. Chain restaurants with corporate headquarters somewhere back east and a glossy 8-page menu with pictures taken by food photographers.
I know of a couple of places 10-15 miles from here, but driving that far somehow changes it.
No sense of community.

That Chromecast that was supposed to show up today? The one I've been tracking online? It went from Reno, to Sacramento, and this morning went through L.A.
Do they know Phoenix is east?
The good news: Amazon still predicts it will show up today. I'm thinking not.

Why do they have handicap parking in the cell phone lot, in front of a sign that says, "Don't leave your car."

Time.com says this blizzard will affect 100 million. Given that their figure represents just under 1/3 of the entire population of the country that seems like a bit of an exaggeration to me.

Why do old people have a box of Kleenex on the rear deck of their Buick?