Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Off to the North

Before I get started with this blog, for those of you who are following Lees progress I will be updating his page today.

Last Thursday, Oct 14, I left for Massachusetts for my Grand Niece's wedding. Using my frequent flier miles I was flying first class for the first time except for the very few occasions that I was bumped up to FC due to over booking and those flights were few and far between and usually for very short jaunts. Well this was going to be all the way there and all the way back. Well the first leg of the journey was Tampa to DC. A rather small plane and FC was sort of unimpressive. I was in a bulkhead seat so not any room to store my bags except overhead. But not too bad. Was supposed to have a wheel chair in DC. It never showed up so I walked up the gangway and the lady said I had to sign in for this service at the check in counter. Well I thought I had checked in on all this when I checked in online. Guess not! Next leg was DC to Providence RI. Well it was a very small plane, had to walk out and clime up stairs to get to the plane, it was raining (from watching West Wing and JAG I have determined it constantly rains in DC) so I had to scurry along or get wet. Well I don't scurry well. And I am lugging my super heavy purse, a computer bag and a coat. Get on the plane and discover there is NO first class. All seats are the same. Arriving in Providence and again of course no wheel chair and lugging all this junk. Why I didn't bring my wheelie bag I do not know. Some where along the way I determined that when I packed this time I must have had my head up my behind. I forgot my iPod and really wanted to watch some TV shows I had downloaded on it. I forgot my charger for my kindle and forgot my charger for my phone.

So here I am in Providence and my niece Pam is here to meet me and has invited me to stay at her house. She, Bob and their daughter Julie who lives at home made me feel very welcome. And the good news is that Pam has the same phone, and Kindle as I do so I used her chargers to charge up my stuff. Way to go Pam!

The wedding was lovely and I was very happy to see all my nieces and nephews who I hadn't seen since the last time I had gone up there to see my sister Bette. It was a little sad for me though being there and no sisters. We did a lot of reminiscing and lots of funny stories about the two sisters that I had always spent time with when I went up there. My sister Doris had already died by the time I started going to Massachusetts so basically I just spent time with Claire and Bette. Lots and Lots of funny stories involving Claire and I with Bette playing the roll of the disapproving big sister to some of our hijinks's. We were constantly doing things to drive her to her limit of patience. Like the time she left us at home and emphasized NOT to put her cups with the gold rim in her microwave. Well didn't I (quite absentmindedly) put one of the damned things in the micro. Sparks are flying and I am jumping up and down shrieking: Claire, Claire what do I do? What do I do? She yells at me and after a few choice swear words at me said turn off the damned Microwave! Bette was a bit upset with us on that one. And there were many many more such stories of here two "bad little sisters"

The weather up there was cold for me coming from 80+ deg weather. But I survived it. Think I caught a cold tho cause my head is now all stuffed up and I am coughing up gunk. But again I will survive this.

So while I was staying at Pam's, she introduced me to her new coffee pot. I actually don't know how new it is but it was sure new to me. It is a Kuerig single cup brewer. It is the neatest thing. You just pop one of the little "K cups" in and bingo in a mater of seconds you have a fresh brewed cup of coffee. Now the really good thing about this is you can get many, many flavors and blends of coffee. For example Lee likes mild coffee and I like really strong coffee. My daughters all like weak coffee too so now every one can have just what they want. There are different flavors and hot chocolate and also you can make a cup of tea. Well of course don't you know I had to come right home, go on the computer to see where I could get the best deal and off we went on Monday to buy our coffee pot. At Walmart we picked up a bunch of K cups to tied us over until we can get a shipment of several varieties that I ordered online. The one thing that concerned me is Pam's coffee was very very mild and I was afraid I wouldn't get a good strong coffee but I really found lots of good strong blends and ordered several of them along with some hot chocolate and breakfast blends. So I am really enjoying the new coffee maker. With my old pot I would make a pot in the morning and have 3 cups Lee would have one and unless I decided to heat up a cup in the micro in the evening the rest would get thrown away. Lots of waste. Here there will be no waste. It averages about $0.42 per cup.