Ice Ice Baby

I was in Las Vegas Friday morning to give a presentation to our operations group when there was a stir because flights were being cancelled to Atlanta. The word was any flight arriving after 8 pm was cancelled. I was scheduled to land at 10:55 pm connecting through Dallas. I pictured myself sleeping in the Dallas airport over the weekend.

I went ahead and gave the presentation then headed for the airport. While many flights were cancelled, Delta and our travel department told me that it did not appear my flight was cancelled. Sure enough, I landed in Atlanta about 11 pm.

My car was covered with a sheet of ice. I had to warm it up for 15 minutes before I could scrape it off. The radio said several sections of 285, 75, and 20 were already closed. I drove slowly on 285, I-20 east, and then north on Scenic Highway to Snellville. The farther east I got, the less icy the roads were. It took me an hour and half to get home.

On Saturday the girls had a great time throwing snowballs, eating icicles, and sledding. Photos: Claire, Kelly, and Clyde with the Icy Jeep. Kelly, Claire, and some neighbor friends sliding down the BIG HILL. They went so fast, they shot all the way across the cul-de-sac to the Pink’s driveway.

Icy Jeep Sledding The BIG HILL

Now playing: Across The Lines by Tracy Chapman

Modernize Me

modernizeme.pngDanny started playing with GarageBand which is music mixing software that came with our iMac a year ago. We had looked at it a year ago, but we did not understand what to do with it. Over the holidays, Danny made some amazing discoveries, and suddenly he was combining instruments, loops, and tweaking notes and phrases to create compositions that rival the best of cheesy television music. Some of his tracks could have been in any of the Beverly Hills Cop movies.

Then Kelly got in the act and started applying her more formal music training. Click here to listen to her first published composition: Modernize Me. Click on the picture to see just 10 seconds of Kelly’s composition in GarageBand.

I think Danny and Kelly are working on putting together an entire CD. Advanced orders can be placed here.

Doo The Math

An actual conversation when five of us drove home from celebrating Nicole’s Dean’s List achievement. (Pizza and iPod.)

Jeb: “Kelly, did you go on poop patrol?”

Kelly: “Yes. I picked up 18 poops.”

Jeb: “That’s not divisible by four.” (I pay a quarter per, so I like it when the number is divisible by four.)

Kelly: “No, so that’s $4.50.”

Jeb: “I’ll give you $5.00 and you can give me fifty cents.”

Kelly: “OK… you know I’ve noticed every time we do poop patrol, it always is an even number.”

Jeb: “That’s interesting. I think you are right.”

(Pause.)

Kathy: “Well we do have two dogs.”

(Much laughter.)

Congratulations to Nicole!

Chat Home for Money

In the old days we would write home for money, and Mom and Dad would send a check. That’s now replaced with instant messaging and instant web-based funds transfer. Our last installment at UGA:

NDCasksDadforMoney.jpg

Not sure why she is using Grandad’s photo for her chat ICON. Something she and Danny were up to. I suppose it is an honor.

Claire on Yahoo!

After watching AWStats start building for a day, I saw where “praying mantis” was one of the search phrases that brought someone to mac.fiveforks.com. That is a pretty common phrase, so I was surprised anyone would find there way here.

I noticed that Yahoo! had referred several people today, so I did a search on Yahoo but did not see mac.five. I then did a search on the Yahoo! Images search, and there was Mary Claire on the first results page looking at a praying mantis on a banana!

This comes from MCC’s Bug Page, which to Yahoo! is kind of famous.