Wow, it’s been five months since I last posted. Grandpa, I’m so sorry! (My Grandpa regularly comments on how much he likes hearing all the family news since they live in AZ). So, here’s the quick update for the three of you who don’t know:
Thanks to el crappo economo, my website business started tanking in August 2008. By January I was in full web redesign mode to try to breathe new life into a dying entity. By April, we were offloading expenditures, such as the kids’ school (I started homeschooling). By June the hit was hard enough that we moved in with my parents who graciously decided that they would rather we lived with them than in our van. By July, the website was costing more in payroll than it was bringing in, so I shut it down. It was weird for about a week and then I recovered. I don’t miss it at all. Kinda miss the money though… 
Most of my summer was spent trying to figure out school for this year, which now seems to be humming along rather nicely. We’re on Christmas break at the moment, but the kids generally are enjoying their studies and I like teaching. We’re doing ancient history this year and I’m thoroughly enjoying learning all of that since somehow that part sort of got skipped in both high school and college (and I took a whole year of Western Civ at Portland State! So depressing.).
Our Egypt studies were a huge hit, and Georgie has begun to develop an appreciation for ancient literature. He thought the Epic of Gilgamesh was great (it was a young person’s version that sort of glosses over that whole part with Shamhat taming Enkidu). I read the full version myself for the first time and loved it! Now we’re going through stories of Greek heroes in prep for next term’s ancient Greece studies. They keep pointing out that they’ve heard half the names and other references from Harry Potter. Brilliant!
Georgie and I have had several conversations about worldviews and how the cultures we’re learning about differ from what we believe and why we believe what we do. He’s starting to recognize this stuff in reconstituted form when he watches television now, which has prompted some interesting discussions. Bwahahaha! My evil plan to make him aware is beginning to work even at eleven years old. Awesome!
George has been working himself to oblivion trying to make up for my lack of income generating-ness. He’s doing quite a good job, too. A couple weeks ago he was off on a shoot from Tuesday until Friday in Buffalo, NY and Cleveland, OH. That was the week there was a horrible storm in that part of the county. I worried about him the whole time he was gone, and after the story I heard when he returned I felt totally justified!!!!
His outgoing flight was from here to Newark and then they took a prop plane from Newark to Buffalo. George and his business partner guy Tim sat in the front of the plane right next to the flight attendant and Tim’s a pretty chatty guy so they spent the whole flight talking to her.
About fifteen minutes before landing they hit some pretty choppy turbulence due to high wind followed by a loud BANG at which point the flight got much worse. George spent the rest of the flight trying not to have to use the barf bag but Tim noticed that all the color drained right out of the flight attendant’s face and she suddenly got very quiet. The plane felt like it was listing with the pilot fighting to correct for it.
After they disembarked, Tim had to return to the plane to retrieve a forgotten item. The flight attendant was there and furtively confided that the plane had lost an engine. As in losing one of the two engines on the plane. In a windstorm. The flight got in around 8 or 9 am. By then end of that day both the Buffalo and Chicago airports were closed due to snow and wind respectively.
But by 3pm George and Tim had finished their work in Chicago and were headed down the interstate to Cleveland. After checking into the hotel and having what George described as a “terrible dinner,” they hit the proverbial sack (or hay depending on which part of the country you are from). By this time the interstate they had driven on to get from Chicago to Cleveland was also closed due to foul weather. But wait! The fun just never stops!
Around 11pm my time I received the following phone call:
George: Hi.
Me: Hi. Isn’t it one in the morning there? And what’s that weird noise in the background?
George: We’re at the hotel. That’s the fire alarm. Everyone’s out in the hall in their pajamas.
Me: Umm, sweetie, if the fire alarm is going off in the middle of the night, don’t you think it might be a good idea to get out of the hotel?
George: No, it’s minus ten degrees and blizzard conditions out there. Besides, I think it’s a sewage leak. There’s a bunch of water down the hall. The fire department is coming. We’re on the second floor. It’s fine. Oh hey, I think the alarm finally shut off. Oh, nope it’s back.
Me: George, sewer leaks can have fumes and weird things that are flammable. I think you should go out of there. Like now!
George: I gotta go. They’re sending us all to the lobby. Bye.
Charming! So after two hours of standing in the lobby, it turned out to be someone’s fire sprinkler went off and sent water gushing down the second floor. George and Tim got moved to the third floor where they got a couple more hours of sleep before heading back to work.
The rest of their trip was uneventful although even more sleep deprived since they went to a late movie, didn’t go to bed until midnight, and then had to get up at 3:30 to catch the red eye back home. I didn’t find out about the whole airplane engine debacle until I picked George up and Tim spilled the beans. I don’t think he was planning to tell me that part at all.
Considering the fact that I was worried already and the weather got so bad while they were there that every airport and road they used got shut down within hours of them being there, it was probably good that he didn’t tell me about the airplane when it happened. Then neither of us would have gotten any sleep. And now my January plans involve reinstating our life insurance and getting on LegalZoom to set up a will.
I think that’s all for today. There is one more story from this summer that I want to write down before I forget it entirely and then I’m hoping to post with a little more regularity, so I hope you four readers feel extra special now! Stay tuned tomorrow for Georgie and the Amazing Escaping Snakes!
Rachel
Fiendish friend for effusive fun!
