BigPinkCookie

At my Uncle Terry’s house again – we came into Winona for lunch. I made sure I brought my stuff and took a nice hot shower here instead of taking one at the campgrounds this morning. Ahhhhhh… it felt so nice. Never appreciate those things as much as you do when you have had to shower at a bath house with cold water for a few days!

Here is a recap of what we have done so far:

Friday, June 29, 2001 – The trip to Bismarck, North Dakota: Left the house on Friday at 2pm to head to Houston Intercontinental airport. We had a 5pm flight out of Houston to Minneapolis, and then left Minneapolis at 10:15pm to fly into Bismarck, North Dakota. I forgot how big that airport is in Minneapolis – really nice. I went to the TGIFriday’s right by our gate and picked up some French Onion soup which I had been craving all week. It was yummy! Figured there wouldn’t be too many chances for that in ND! Arrived there around midnight, then we rented a car for the rest of our trip at the airport. Got the luggage and headed to the Bismarck Holiday Inn. After we checked in we went up to our suite to go to bed – pretty tired after such a long day. Unfolded the hide-a-bed couch that I was sleeping on with Jason, and when he climbed in he discovered that there were “crumbs” in it – ewww! So we had to call down to the front desk to get clean sheets brought up. Finally got to bed after 1:30am. I was beat!
Written on the plane on the Handspring: The pilot just announced that it is 92 degrees in Minnesota. I thought I was going North to enjoy cool weather! It took us awhile to leave the ground in Houston since the weather was bad. At least we were not delayed too long. It is real comforting when they tell you that we are waiting for a few “more” minutes due to the windshear. Oh yeah!

Saturday, June 30, 2001 – Visiting Bismarck and heading over to Sykeston: Got up and went down to the indoor pool at the hotel. Ordered breakfast from the restaurant to have room service deliver poolside. It took them 45 minutes to get it to us and then they still only brought half of it. My Aunt Rita and her twins, my cousins James & Jewel came over to the hotel to see us and the kids all went swimming. Left the pool around noon and checked out of the hotel. Afterwards we went to Rita’s apartment to visit with them awhile longer; my Dad & I went to K-Mart to pick up a cheap tent so that he could take Jason camping in Sykeston, North Dakota when we got there. At about 5pm we left Bismarck and got on the road for Sykeston – where my maternal Grandfather lives.

That’s all I have time for now. Everyone is waiting for me to hit the road and head back out to the campground. I’ll be back soon!

Dad, Jason & I drove over to Winona, Minnesota yesterday to visit my Uncle Terry (Dad’s brother) and his family. We camped last night out by the Mississippi river. What a switch from the Houston heat! Just have a secont to post – will add more later (I have been writing offline on the laptop & on my Handspring). Lots of pictures to come too – I am *so* glad Naomi let me borrow her digital camera. Give you something to look forward to! I’ll be back! Having a great time up north!

Off to the airport soon for the flight to Bismarck, North Dakota. I’ll be in and out – the laptop is going with me, along with Naomi’s camera – so maybe you will even get pictures! Off to finish the last minute packing!

First of all, many public thanks to Naomi, who has soooo generously offered to let me borrow her digital camera to take with me up to North Dakota & Minnesota when I leave tomorrow. I don’t know what I would do without her. I was going to buy one myself, but it turns out our checks don’t get deposited until Friday night (not tonight like I thought) so I won’t have the money before I leave. Public thanks too to Kymberlie, who is feeding the cats, fish and watering the few remaining plants. (my patio is cursed and only the begonias live out there! All my other flowers have died. Green plants do fine, just not flowers.) She is also loaning me the latest Jeffrey Deaver book, “The Empty Chair”, so I don’t have to go and buy a copy tonight. Yippeeeee!

Then I just called the Houston Camera Exchange because I want to take my “good” 35mm SLR camera to North Dakota too – but it needs batteries and somehow I tossed the last set without buying new ones. Oops! So I needed to know what kind of batteries to get for it. They were very helpful and answered that question for me, so I went ahead and asked about my flooded camera too. When the Honda flooded I had my camera in the car, so it got water in it. Of course it had a full roll of film in it too. I should have rewound it & taken it out, but nope. I left it in there. So he told me not to rewind the film, gave me the names of 3 custom labs with “rack” film processors, and told me to take the whole camera in so that they could use a changing box to get the film out for me. Fortunately, I took photography in high school, so I knew about some of these things and left the film all alone inside the camera. Thank goodness! Off to look for a lab so I can drop the camera off. It was a low, low end camera, auto nothing, point and shoot but it took good pictures – so hopefully the camera can be saved also.

The Honda isn’t ready yet to be picked up, and since we are leaving tomorrow I am going to have to turn in the rental before I go. My 30 days expire on July 8th and I won’t be back until the 10th. I hope it’s ready by the time I get home! They are also waiting on the check to come in for the payment, so I have to call in to Farmer’s now and hunt that down. Off to make more calls!

Yep… 3 months. Just 3 months. Better start shopping now, my birthday is coming up in 3 months. September 27, that’s the date. *grin* Sorry, one of the guys here at work gave me a drawing mannikan (sp?) today – one of those wooden figures that you can pose to learn how to draw. It is soooo cool. Someone had sent it in with their portfolio, which had an entire theme to it around this figure. Anyways, Seth told me “Now I don’t want you coming around here whining for a gift on your birthday” and I said “No way! I love it! Three months early too, to the day! Perfect!” So, I already have my first gift. Just thought it was amusing that it is 3 months away. I always seem to notice that on June 27th, I wonder why? Ironically, while I like a gift as much as the next person, I don’t get focused like that on my birthday. Not like *some* people I know (Chelsey…) who think their birthday should be celebrated at least the whole week, if not the whole month of October!

I need to update my Amazon.com wish list and link to it here. Then I need to go to Noah’s list and make a donation for using Greymatter. I could hand code all of this, but I like the archives, the comments, and other features – so Greymatter rocks!