A second picture from my trip. This of my mother in front of the church in Covington, Ohio that my grandfather Ralph Aaron Brandon was the pastor of when he died in 1941 a few months before my mother was born.
|
The first of a series of pictures from my trip to see my mom. Right after I arrived early in the morning after taking the redeye, we went straight to Versailles, OH where several of my ancestors were buried. There may be more than these three, there were certainly many other Brandons, many of which I could identify from documents I have as various sorts of distant cousins. But on this trip anyway we only found these three who were direct ancestors. The stones above are for:
I actually haven’t gotten too much farther on the Brandon line of my research, but what I have done so far indicates that David Clement’s father Robert G Brandon should also be in that same cemetery, but we did not find him. I suspect there are more as well though, as the Brandon’s lived in that area for a couple more generations back. Well, I’m sure I’ll go back again someday to find more of them. We did though find many many other Brandon cousins, especially in the older portion of the cemetery. As I said, that part of the family was based there for many generations. Anyway, that was the first thing I did once I got to Ohio. Tramp around a small town grave yard for an hour or so with my mother looking for ancestors and cousins.
I am in Denver now, waiting for my flight to Seattle. It has been delayed an hour so far. But the story of the trip home so far is the flight from Dayton to Denver. A little ways through the seat belt lights came on. The Captain came on the intercom and said that we were going to hit about 10 minutes of turbulence and to make sure we were belted and secure. The flight attendant repeated this about two minutes later. I could see the flight attendant, but not who she was looking at when she said, over the loudspeaker: “I don’t care if you need to use the bathroom ma’am, you need to sit down and get belted in RIGHT NOW. You can hold it for ten minutes. Trust me, you do NOT want to be in the bathroom unsecured and be thrown around. Sit down NOW.” I guess she did. I am guessing she was glad she did. A few minutes later the turbulence started. It did not last 10 minutes. It lasted more like 3 minutes. But it was the worst turbulence I have ever felt on by far. The airplane lurched violently side to side and up and down. It pitched and yawed suddenly and violently every few seconds. There were a handful of negative G moments. I don’t think I heard any actual screams, but each time it lurched there was a massive collective gasp coming from all over the plane.The whole airframe shook and rattled and felt like it was going to fall apart at any moment. Of course it didn’t. Three minutes later we were out of it and everything was smooth again. The pilot came on and explained that we had just passed through the front that has been causing all the tornados and bad weather on the ground. They had spent extra time trying to figure out if they could go under it or over it or around it, but they couldn’t. They did take us about 15 minutes out of our way to find the shortest possible corridor through the turbulent area. Thus getting us 3 minutes of the violent tossing and turning rather than 10 to 15. I thank our pilot very much for that. 3 minutes was quite enough. The picture is the view out the window (with my cellphone, I didn’t remember until later that I had my real camera with me too) right after we passed out of the turbulent area. You can clearly see the weather front. Soon after it was over, the people beside me and behind me, who turned out to be Air Force pilots, started talking about the turbulence. “Is that the worst turbulence you have ever felt?” “I think there might have been one time in a transport that might have been, but this was close.” “Well, this was the worst I’ve felt.” “One time I was in something that FELT worse, but I was in a little trainer plane… ” “You would not want to be in anything CLOSE to this in a small plane.” “Yeah, this was very bad.” “Definately the worst I have ever felt on a commercial flight.” Etc. Anyway, that validated at least a little bit that it really was pretty bad, and not just the uninitiated amoungst us being overly sensitive. The pilot apologized for the rough ride another couple of times before we landed. :-) Anyway, I’ve certainly read about much worse. Nobody was thrown from their seats, nobody hit the ceiling, there were no injuries. So all is good. (Although if they hadn’t followed the pilot’s instructions to buckle up there probably would have been at least some minor injuries.) But it was definately an adventure… for 3 minutes. Now all I have to deal with is the fact that in the time I have been writing this post my flight home has changed gates and been delayed another 20 minutes or so. So I need to finish up and move to the new gate… even though I’ve still got over two hours until the flight is now scheduled to leave. Bleh! Just arrived at my mom’s house in Ohio an hour or so ago. I arrived in Ohio several hours earlier, but we spent the morning visiting places various ancestors lived or were buried and such as part of my Genealogy Research. There are a whole raft of ancestors from the Brandon side that lived in Darke County, Ohio for a bunch of generations. But now I am at my mom’s house. I helped my mom walk Sara briefly today. She is six now. I hadn’t seen her since she was 2 or some such. Wow. I think she remembered me though. She made SURE that I was going to walk with her and not go right back into the house. But I took the red eye from Seattle, so I got almost no sleep. So I am going to sleep now. I’ll be here for the next few days. I’ll be seeing Chad while I’m here too since he and my mom live like 5 miles apart or some such now. I brought a camera, but not a cord or memory card reader, so I may or may not be able to post any pics before I go home. Or maybe I’ll get a cheap memory card reader. They are very cheap these days. Anyway, we shall see. For now though… nap time.
Yesterday I noticed that the Sitemeter counter on this site went over 100,000. Woo! Of course, I never did finish adding the counter to all the old pages on the site, and of course this site existed for many years before I added the counter… I added the counter about the same time I converted the front page into a blog. But hey, it is a number. I shall take this opportunity to list what right now Sitemeter thinks are the top 10 search queries people find my site with: #1) Nice Cleavage Well, OK, a couple are amusing, but most are just normal. Other interesting ones from further down the list: * Chocula OK, that’s enough for today.
I had been thinking of catching up on some blog posts today for a variety of things I’ve been meaning to post about. A ferry trip we did a few weeks ago. A post about how I reckon time. A post about a movie we saw. And maybe posting a few pictures that I liked. And maybe a graph of a certain something that went up almost 30% yesterday, which was pretty cool. But I am tired and not in the right mindset to spit out several posts in succession. So just one for tonight since at least one person asked… About 6 hours ago Amy did indeed return from her field trip. She seems to have had a great time on her trip and she did all kinds of fun things. I won’t try to recount all of them. Apparently several of the children married otters, and one married a sea sponge. I am glad to say Amy was not one of those children. :-) In any case though, it seems to have been a great time. They did a lot. From sailing to hiking to cooking to camping to investigating the wildlife. It was a very full trip. Amy came home and almost immediately fell asleep on the couch. Meanwhile, Brandy is practically jumping for joy to have Amy back in the house. She was climbing the walls and in a funk the whole time Amy was gone. So it is good to have Amy back and Brandy back to normal. Or as normal as she gets anyway. :-)
A little over 9 hours ago, we dropped Amy off at the parking lot of her school to begin a just under four and a half day field trip for the 6th grade. They will be on a 35 foot sailboat wandering around the Northern Puget Sound in the area of the San Juan Islands. Here is the Google Map. During the day they will be learning how to operate the rigging on the sailboat and other boating skills and they will be doing various scientific activities related to things they can learn on the Sound. At night they will split into groups and half will sleep on the boat and the other half will put ashore to camp on the various islands. They will alternate nights so each group gets to do both. They will do all their own cooking in the ships galley and at the camp sites. Their exact route and which islands they will be visiting was determined by the kids in class over the last couple of weeks as they planned out the whole thing. It will be a very good trip. The kids were all very excited as they gathered and headed off this morning. Brandy though has been VERY nervous about this trip for months ever since she had a nightmare about Amy on a boat right BEFORE we found out that’s what the field trip was. Plus this will be the first time Amy has been away from Brandy for more than 24 hours except when she was left in the care of either Brandy’s mom or myself. So it is a little traumatic. (For Brandy, not for Amy.) But we’ll all do fine. Amy is going to have a great time and be back late Wednesday. Also, you may notice Amy has a thing on her hand. Wednesday evening she was on the couch with Brandy, got up to get a drink, but forgot to bring her legs with her and instead just toppled forward onto the floor. All three of us laughed quite a bit. It was funny the way she fell. But she braced herself with her hand when she fell I guess and shortly thereafter it was swelling and hurting. A trip to the Doctor Thursday resulted in the little brace thing as a precaution. (X-Rays didn’t show anything broken, but in the particular area in question sometimes minor things are hard to see apparently.) So she has to wear the brace thing for two weeks, including the field trip. Woo! What fun!
Monday I went into work because there was one thing I wanted to get done, but as soon as I’d done that I headed back home and then basically did nothing of any usefulness for the rest of the day. Tuesday I worked from home in the morning, although my speed and productivity was not up to healthy par. I went in for a couple hours in the afternoon because there was an all-hands meeting, but I probably would have been better off skipping it. I did however try not to cough on too many people. Looking at today I will probably once again do a partial work from home day, working from home in the morning and going in in the afternoon. Depends how I feel when I wake up I guess. I’m certainly not 100%, but I’m on the upside of this sick and am better than I was yesterday or the day before. It is very annoying however. Also, as can be seen in the picture, I have been being a lazy slob. I’m desperately overdue for both a haircut and a shave. On the shave at some point I decided I would wait and do it at the same time I got my haircut. On the haircut, I keep remembering and deciding I want to go get it done at times where the barber near me is insensitively closed, like the middle of the night, or a Sunday evening. What is wrong with them? Both are getting to the point where they are really bothering me though. I like myself best with short hair and clean shaven. Back when I lived in New Jersey (years ago now) I was on a strict hair cut every 5 weeks schedule, and I would always make the appointment for the next one when I left the one before. Then when I was in Florida, I would get a haircut before each visit to a client, which was never more than 6 or 7 weeks apart. Since I have been in Washington, I just haven’t been on a pattern… and I need to be. As for the shaving, I have just been lazy. An extra couple minutes in bed in the morning, or shaving? The time in bed wins every time. And on weekends I try to remember, but often don’t. And unlike the last couple places I have worked, there are often other scruffy people, so I don’t feel quite as out of place. Never-the-less, I don’t really like it. So I’ll need to do something about it. Maybe today I will take care of both after I’m done my morning work from home session and before I come into the office. I could do that instead of lunch. That might be a plan. Of course I thought of that both Monday and yesterday, and then I thought that going to the barber and coughing up chunks of grey goo all over the barber chair might not be appreciated all that much by the barber. So maybe I’ll wait on the haircut if tomorrow I am still a big ball of germs. I just finished doing and filing my taxes and Brandy’s taxes. It is much better than the last few years, but being taxes, it still blows. Each of us will be getting a small refund this year. Although Brandy will get actual money, while mine will be applied toward what the IRS thinks I still owe them for the 2004 tax year. An amount that if my proof wasn’t in some box in storage somewhere, I would have already proved I really didn’t owe because it is all due to my employer from that year reporting certain amounts on the wrong forms and then refusing to correct it once the error was pointed out to them. Oh well. At least it didn’t come out that I owed a five figure amount like happened originally with the 2004 taxes. That really sucked. This time it is just the usual suckage of realizing that even after all deductions and such, the Federal government stole 18.59% of the money I made in 2006. Bastards. I *know* I could make better use of the cash than Congress and W could. Harumpf.
A few minutes ago Brandy’s plane took off from Philadelphia. It went North over the city and then turned west and is now at cruising altitude and on its way. If she makes her connection in Minnesota, then she should be back on the ground here at 23:03. (Although they were a bit late leaving Philly, so there is a chance she won’t make that connection.) In any case… Whew!!! It will be good to have her home. I’m exausted after doing the single dad thing for 8 days. I want a nap. :-) |
||
So Saturday morning I woke up with an ear ache and a lump in my throat. Over the course of the day the ear ache slowly diminished, but a full blown annoying head and chest cold developed. Lots of coughing and hacking. Lots of nose blowing. It is not the kind of sick that has one completely curled up in a ball unable to do anything, but just the kind that is JUST bad enough to keep you unhappy and make it hard to concentrate and make you prefer not to be doing anything all that intense. 