Archive | October 1, 2014

Ghost berries, they look like tiny pumpkins.

Facebook Apologizes to Drag Queens Over ‘Real Name’ Rule

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2469605,00.asp

I think Ello taking off scared them

Time is too short

I got back Monday night after a way too short visit up to Portland or more specifically somewhere between Gaston and Laurelwood, Oregon. We had an easy flight up but coming home was hell and I’m afraid I got rather grouchy.

We were supposed to be on a through Southwest flight from Portland to Burbank with a stop in Oakland but no plane change. Not how it went. We got to Oakland and they cleaned the plane around the 29 of us staying and then with no warning a new pilot got on and we were ordered off the plane to another gate. We were supposed to keep the same crew but they disappeared. We were supposed to land in Burbank around 6 but they came out and told us we had priority seating on this new plane but it would be 20 minutes late and then it was another hour and then it was another hour and then they said the flight was cancelled and we had to go clear across the airport to another plane. And they started lying to us. We had watched as they boarded a plane full of people and our plane took off back to Portland, our perfectly good working plane, about 15 minutes after they shoved us off that plane that was supposed to go on to Burbank and made us wait for a plane that was having mechanical difficulties. There was a lady with a walker who couldn’t do her seatbelt, another person and myself with a cane and several people that were elderly among the 29 and Southwest offered absolutely no help on our trek across the airport, they just told us we needed to hurry and that our first plane had had mechanical difficulties, when we had seen it take off already full of passengers. And they kept that lie up. One of the women at the desk insisted she had talked to dispatch and our plane was out of commission, as well as the plane they had cancelled. Since the flights were all already full, Goddess knows who they bumped off the new plane to get us on that one. When we finally got to Burbank after 9 pm most of the 29 were in line at the Southwest counter mad. Di and I went and caught our Super Shuttle home.

I have found that when you have a problem with a national company go to their Twitter account and start raising hell, so I did and we are now receiving Flight vouchers and I got an apology and I had my suspicions confirmed, the counter people did lie. There was a plane that had conked out in Portland and they had decided that sending our plane back was a better idea and they screwed up because then they had 2 dead planes and a lot of pissed off people that didn’t need to be pissed off. And the CU person admitted it. Di wasn’t happy with how mad I was over the whole thing. She had to put up with it but she says she doesn’t mind now that we have flight vouchers.

It doesn’t help that our visit was bittersweet seeing how Mary’s ALS is progressing and that we didn’t want to leave to come home knowing that next time she may not be able to speak. It makes me feel so helpless that I can’t make it better for both Mary and Denise. She now has longer home healthcare hours and that is better and she has gained a little weight now that she is on a feeding tube and not trying to eat by mouth. We got her outside on Sunday in the sun and that had been the first time she was outside in a while. Druids need to be outside, it’s in our DNA so that was good.

I did a lot of the cooking and I’m a better cook than a baker but I didn’t manage to poison anyone. It was my magic French toast for Saturday breakfast and an early dinner of my mom’s favourite chicken recipe and oven fried potatoes. Di had made pumpkin spice muffins that night too. Then I made cinnamon bread on Sunday morning and for our marathon of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 1 & 2 grilled cheese sandwiches with some wonderful Oregon Tillamook cheddar, Yum!

The rest of the time was talking and walking the dog and enjoying nature around their property and drinking a lot of tea and coffee and oh, DI played handyperson and put together this very cool electric fireplace and heater. It looks like a real fireplace with a wood mantel and you can adjust the way the fire looks. It looked kind of like this: http://www.amazon.com/Brown-Media-Fireplace-Stand-Combo/dp/B00JRO25TO/ref=sr_1_14?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1412197500&sr=1-14&keywords=electric+fireplace.

Di and I had an emergency run to the rural post office for something for Mary since I guess they refuse to deliver packages to the house. We had a ½ hour window to do it Saturday morning so we flew down the road to the post office and since I hadn’t had breakfast yet into the small town market. I had trouble sleeping and instead of being the first one up I had slept in, bad me. My diabetic neuropathy kicked in about 1 in the morning and I went and doped myself up to sleep. We had an impromptu meet up since Mary was being helped into bed about then and Di heard the commotion and came down from her tree house bedroom.

I love old markets like that. Breakfast was a lemon pie and chocolate milk. There weren’t many options in the breakfast line that I wasn’t allergic to but I also came home with a package of maple cookies that I love and are hard to find. Di got two cds and we had a great time wandering around the market. They had cookies to learn the Presidents or Spanish or math that were of the same batter that the Barnum animal cookies were made from it looked like. Almost got a box of those just because I was amused. If it had been later I would have gotten something at the little deli in back that Denise says is wonderful and they were cooking chicken and it smelled amazing but they weren’t ready yet.

On the way back we had time to look at the scenery, one farm had loose turkeys and geese and another had alpacas and still another had buffalo. There are also a lot of small wineries around them and hazelnut aka filbert orchards all around them before you go up their mountain. It’s just starting to show colour in the leaves and their pears and apples are ripe but the deer have broken into the garden and eaten everything else. We watched the deer in the early morning and evening and it was so nice to just breathe and take care of people we love.

I just hate to leave.