Uncategorized

The link should take you to some pictures of our cruise to the Caribbean. Just click on the title that says Pictures of cruise. It will take you directly to the page with pictures.

We just got back from a cruise to the Caribbean and it was wonderful to get away. Its not that bad here in San Antonio but it was nice to get away. The weather was great. We cruised on Holland America out of Ft. Lauderdale, FL. Our ports of call were Tortola, Grand Turks, St. Thomas (USVI) and Half Moon Cay. I even found some jewelry (small pieces) that I liked in St. Thomas. I don’t often buy jewelry but it was nice to find some pieces I liked.

I did take my camera with me and I hope to get some pictures up. I’ll put up a link as soon as I get those up.

We are still working on the house and actually had some work done while we were away. They’ve been putting up new lighting, molding and painting. Its making a tremendous difference. Before we left we did order a new couch, love seat and coffee table. We also ordered some drapes and carpet. That is why the painting was done while we were gone. They are painting a couple of rooms so furniture has been moved around so they can paint. But once the painting is done the carpet will be installed. Hopefully shortly after that the furniture will be available and we will have more of the house done. It won’t be the end of the work, but at least we keep getting closer.

After our last bit of work we had a couple of oops’. We sprung a leak in the ceiling in two places. Found those one night when it rained pretty continuously. But all in all it is coming along. Its a lot slower process then I expected. Its been an interesting learning experience.

We made it through Christmas and New Year. It wasn’t as bad as we thought it would be.

Things here at the house are slowly coming along. We got a lot of stuff out to Goodwill. We started working with a decorator to get furniture. We had renovations started. Those we started are now done, but that means we have to get started on more that need to be done. This will be a process that will take some time. We have to do some in stages – the most important ones first.

Yesterday and today San Antonio has been in the grips of a small ice storm. Not that any ice storm is really small, but this isn’t what I would call huge. It has closed down a lot of the freeways, lots of business, etc. Its now in the afternoon and some things are starting to melt, slowly, very slowly. But I’m not expecting much melt today. Sunset is in a couple of hours and we’ll start cooling down again. Since the current temperature here is 32, anything that has melted will get the chance to refreeze again tonight. By sometime Fri. we should be doing better.

Take a look at just a few pictures from this storm. These are from here at the house.

It figures, my husband just came down sick. I have yard people finishing up the yard (they’ve been here a week) and the painter is patching ceilings. I’m making the “executive decisions” without him. I can’t do too bad of a job, I know most of what he wants, just not some of the fine details.

But we went to a family Xmas dinner on Sunday. It was interesting. It was held at a country club. The service was awful. It was like a comedy of mistakes. The carrots were so rubbery you could bend them in half. The rolls showed up at the end of the dinner. The turkey was good, but they didn’t have enough gravy. The coffee was so strong my husband was choking on it. I refused to eat any of the pie it looked so bad. They said the apple pie was rubbery. The punch tasted like kool-ade. You just had to laugh at all of it. But it was good to meet some of the family members I had not met before. And of course there were kids. Hopefully my husband didn’t catch something from one of them.

I’m hoping this is just a 24 hour stomach flu sort of thing. That’s my hope. We’ll see.

FOLLOW UP: This was no 24 hour bug. It took him a week to get over it. We were told it was just an intestinal bug. Thank heavens I didn’t get it too.

Well San Antonio really doesn’t know what winter is like. Its cool, its chilly, but it is hardly as bad as can be. The worse part about the cold here is the wind. Now that part can get to you. Though we get colder temperatures in Seattle, they can get a wind here that makes it much worse. But at least here it doesn’t stay this cool for long. This past week its been cool, a couple of nights near freezing (not below), but the middle of next week its supposed to be in the mid 70’s. This definitely is not Seattle.

Now for the house. Work has been started. Fri. they preped the master bath for work and Sat. they came in and put in a new access space in the ceiling. They’ll be back on Mon. to continue that and get started on the master bathroom ceiling. On Tues. they will start the kitchen ceiling. The house is a mess but I figure that’s okay. When they’re done this will be nice. Also on Mon. we are supposed to have a crew come in and get started on the trees outside. They are supposed to thin out the dead braches, cut back a hedge and reshape it, cut ground cover from around trees and put in a gravel/rock walk path in the back yard. Work inside the house will take a while, not sure how long, but the outside work is expected to take about a week.

It’ll take a while but we’re getting there. Its a good feeling to get it started.

Winter has finally arrived in San Antonio. I arrived at 5 AM. How do I know that you ask? At 5 AM the temperature dropped from the 70’s to just below 40 in one hour. What a way for it to arrive!

But its not that bad. We did get wind, gusts to 43 here, but that’s all. It is still sunny and clear. And where the weather has cooled down, and the nights will stay below 40 for the next few nights, early next week the daytime temps will be back in the 50’s and 60’s. Most places would not consider that cold, but here it is definitely cooler than it had been. Actually it was nice to go out to a brisk morning. It sure beats the warm humid nights we had.

I’m actually glad to see it cool down. I kind of miss that change in weather. But we’ll see what else this area has to offer. Since I’m new to the area, we’re still learning.

Where Seattle has had its share of bad weather — rain, wind and now snow, San Antonio has its own issues. We have just gone into a tornado watch until 2AM Thursday morning. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t miss being stuck at home because the roads are covered in snow and ice. We are able to view our home online so we do know how bad the weather is in Bellevue. The low today was 17 at our house in WA. It barely made it to freezing today. It spend the day below that. Not fun by any stretch. Though we did speak with a neighbor who said he and his son were sledding down our street. Since we do live on a hill area I’m sure they had a lot of fun. Its also nice that nobody got hurt, always a possibility when sledding down city streets.

But I’m not used to tornado watches. I’m not sure how I would know a tornado is coming. Do they have sirens? What do they sound like? I’m not from this area so its new to me. I do realize that the probability is low that it would hit here. I also have been told that its more likely to hit the hill country about an hour north of this area. That’s some concillation, but I am aware of the damage a tornado can cause. And that can be considerable. Let’s just hope that it find some open area with nothing to cause harm to. And there is lots of area in Texas like that – flat open land with not much but scrub on it. I hope any tornado stays there.

San Antonio is not Seattle. It is a beautiful day. Clear blue skies and we should get to about 74 degrees today. And its supposed to be in the high 60’s to mid 70’s for the next few days. And no rain to speak of in sight. On the flip side the aquifers are a bit on the low side here which is not good. This really is an arid climate. But after driving through rain, its a nice change.

Since I’m new to blogs I’m still learning how this works. For those who have put comments with questions, I don’t seem to have a way to reply to your questions. Especially those that are listed as anonymous. So I’m working on how to reply – just part of the learning process.

We’ve made it to San Antonio, TX. The car is a mess and needs a good washing. One nice thing you realize is that open roads, those that don’t go through major cities have some high speed limits. Some roads have had 75 – 80 mph speed limits. But of course, there’s nothing out there. And I mean nothing. Radio stations can be hard to come by. But you can make good time and go far. And it means that today we did about 425 miles in about 7 hours, including stops for gas. But the good news is we are safe and sound in San Antonio.

Wondering what the pictures is about? Well its at a rest area in the middle of nowhere. The front sign says “Pet Area”. The far back one says “Beware of Rattlesnakes”.

Vegas at night. Taken fron the walk way between MGM Grand and New York, New York hotels.

Today is Tuesday Nov. 14. We started our journey in Seattle. We left Tuesday, Nov. 7 from Seattle. Our first stop was Ontario, OR. From there we drove to Provo, UT. We left Provo for Las Vegas. We stopped for a couple of days in Las Vegas to meet with a friend. It was also nice to take the break since we’ve been driving full 8 hour days. It was nice to have a few days of decent food and the chance too walk around.

Its interesting driving from Seattle to San Antonio, TX. The landscape changes so much and so does the air. In Las Vegas the humidity was in the single digits – very dry. Nothing like what Seattle was when we left. Also as we’ve driven south the temperature has also changed considerable. Actually we left Seattle when we did because of the weather. We were running before a storm. Seattle, Idaho and Utah all had temperatures that would be dropping and snow would be coming to some of the areas we would drive through. As was, we were only one day before the storm, but we’ve made it this far safely.

Our current travel has taken us from Las Vegas, NV to Tucson, AZ. We got a late start today, but still made it in before sundown. Tomorrow we drive through El Paso into Van Horn, TX. The day after, Thursday we should make San Antonio.