We have had a wonderful visit with Lorena.  We arrived as scheduled in Puerto Vallarta — but our bags did not.  After searching and waiting and praying and hoping and filling out missing luggage forms, we finally carried our carry-on bags (which we now call our carry-on-and-on-and-on-and-on bags) down to the cambio where we exchanged some USD for pesos, hiked up over the main road into Pto. Vallarta and over to a bus stop.  After waiting quite a while, we paid a taxi driver $10 USD to carry us over to the bus terminal (which was a huge Christmas bonus for him.)  There we bought tickets for a TAP direct bus to Tepic.  We left at just after 2:00 p.m. and arrived in Tepic at almost 7:00 p.m. where we caught a taxi to the house.

Some special travel moments:

Watching the worst movie I think I have ever seen (Little Miss Sunshine) on the flight from Denver.  It was like watching a train wreck because the sickening fascination was watching to see if it could possibly get any worse.

Watching Jean Claude Van Damm kick butt and save the American Embassy in Outer Slobovia (in Spanish) on the bus trip from Puerto Vallarta to Tepic.  The bus trip was surprisingly mundane.  Only once did I have to forcefully remind myself to breathe.  High in the Sierra Madre, we got behind a truck overloaded with sugar cane that was travelling at most at 2 or 3 miles per hour.  Our bus paused uncertainly for a long moment before pulling out and passing from almost a dead stop around a blind curve with nothing dropping away to our right.  The only comfort I had was knowing that the curvy mountain road would not allow anyone to be travelling very fast down the road.  Still, I could only visualize all the trucks and busses I have seen crumpled up at the bottoms of the mountains — and wonder if ours would be one of them.

We got to Tepic as the family was beginning their Christmas dinner and gift exchange.  Lorena burst into tears as we walked in (as we all did.)  We greeted her and began talking to her, so we missed the exchanges and all, but the meeting was wonderful.  Yesterday, I spent most of the day spelling with her, and we are chasing lost luggage around today.  Early tomorrow morning, we must catch a taxi to the bus terminal here in Tepic and ride a bus back to Vallarta to fly out just after noon.

I will try to update again then.  Take care.  We love you all, and Lorena sends special greetings to all her friends and family.

Merry late christmas everyone

Michael still in Denver Library where the lovely ladies are nice!!!  (They apparently reserve the surly, sadistic, sociopathic people jobs for United Airlines and and Homeland Security at DIA.)  The folks here in Denver have been fantastic.

Yesterday, we had to go buy socks, underwear, coats for the girls, shoes for the girls, a pair of pants and a shirt for me.  United had better not complain about our carry-on luggage, or I may end up an inmate at Guantanamo Bay…  We had to buy a cellular phone charger also, since our cell phone died since our charger is in our luggage that we cannot reclaim…

I did pay $5.00 for five minutes of computer use at the airport — only to find xanga blocked — and the computer didn’t work anyway when I tried to send emails to alert folks to what is going on.

On the positive side, though, the girls have had a blast seeing and playing in the snow — although they did warrant much more than their share of incredulous looks from Denverites whose stares seemed to be drawn invariably to the girls’ flip-flops and crocs sans socks.  After we bought shoes, the girls seemed amazed at how warm their feet tend to stay now.  Ah, my poor little tropical flowers.

Rainey has been our link to Mexico.  Hopefully, we will be down there tomorrow, winter wardrobe and all.  Unfortunately, we still have to fly back to Texas on Wednesday.  Blizzards sure make for short visits.

Amazingly, we met a ple-tho-ra of folks in DIA who had connections to Brownwood.  Three different folks had lived there, with one young lady going to school with Jesse and Thomas Smith (Kim ? whose family ran the China Inn Restaurant.)

Hopefully, tonight will not be near as miserable our first 24 hours in the airport.  We are supposed to fly out at 8:50 tomorrow morning, with a two-hour prior-to-departure check in.  However, they are advising travelers to arrive out there 4 hours early — and I sure don’t want them to give our seats away. 

Michael in beautiful Denver, Colorado.  We made the flight into DIA (Denver International Airport) fine.  Shortly afterwards, however, we were DOA.  The flight to Denver was very rough, to the point that the girls were given an all-too-real, all-too-close, all-to-graphic air-sickness-bag demonstration by some kiddos on the plane.  Had we not landed as quickly as we did, the girls have assured me that they would have practiced using the bags themselves just in case they ever became ill while flying.

Anyway, we made it off the plane, into DIA, and onto the plane to Pto. Vallarta — where we proceded to sit for an hour while the flight crew debated whether or not we would fly off into the wild blue norther.  However, it turned out that at DIA we were DOA because we, finally, were deplanned and told to go claim our luggage.  Stephanie and I left Lya guarding the carry-on bags while we made the trek from concourse B through concourse A and into the main terminal to where the baggage claim was located.  Where we were informed that United was not allowing any luggage to be reclaimed.  Which meant, since we were carrying fragile Christmas gifts in our carry-ons, we had no changes of clothes, toiletries, etc.  Mumbling horrible imprecations against United, Stephanie and I headed back to concourse B to find Lya.

That was when we learned that we had exited the secure area of the airport so we would have to go back through the long line at security again.  Which was bearable except that both of us had left our boarding passes and passports with Lya in one of our carry-ons.  We screamed at one official after another until finally one of them seemed to give a rip and sent us to where we could get a security pass.  One.  I informed him that Hell would be frozen over AND palm trees would be growing in Denver before I would split my family up any farther.  He sent me to see his supervisor.  Who sent me another five miles to see his supervisor.  Who sent me to see his supervisor.  Who finally seemed to take my snarling, saliva-frothing demeanor seriously and told us that he would make an exception “just this once” to give us two security clearances.  It was good he did.  I have never gone postal, but I was about ready to go airportal.

About an hour later, we finally made it back to Lya where we were told to go to one of the red telephones for a direct line to United Reservations.  The line was about 5 miles long.  All 4 thousand stranded folks seemed to have the same idea.  A United representative told us to go to a counter and have a personnel member help us.  The personnel we found told us to go us a red phone.  I am having flashbacks…  AAAUGGHHH!!!!

Well, my time is about to expire.  Suffice it to say that we froze the first night in terminal B.  (Stephanie slept in a cardboard box, Lya slept under a counter, and I (who had given my coat to Stephanie) sat and shivered all night.

Late the next day, we finally were able to get into a Hotel in Denver.  Now we are heading back out to the airport to spend some more time in airpost hell.  (I told them at the airport that I saw all the signs saying Denver Airport — but it sure felt like Purgatory to me.)

Between 2 and 3 feet of snow — and the girls were wearing flip-flops and no socks.  It has been miserable.  Now $50 to go back to the airport for another miserable all-nighter.  We are supposed to fly out at 9:00 tomorrow morning.  Take care.  We love you all.  I am in the Public Library in Denver right now, and they are closing.  Wish us luck and keep us in your prayers.

We are frantically trying to get up and away to go see Lorena.  This last week has been total chaos — and we are far, far behind the curve.  Anyway, we get to fly out of DFW at 6:45 in the morning, bushy eyed and bright tailed (I am sure) — to go sit in the Denver airport for awhile.  [We are to arrive in Denver at 7:45 and fly out for Puerto Vallarta at 8:50.  (Herb and Marion, I will try to call you tonight.)]

Arriving in Puerto Vallarta at 1:20 p.m. on United flight 1669, we will catch a taxi to the bus station and catch a bus to Tepic.  God only knows when we will get in there, but it will be okay.

Life has really been interesting, and I will give you some more info when I get back.  Suffice it to say that we are now a criminal gang.  (Stephanie was invited over to a house to say goodbye to some friends a couple of days before she went to Mexico last time — only to arrive just before the police arrived to find alcohol present.  Needless to say, she was ticketed for MIP, and we had a few apoplectic moments getting statements from different folks that she had just arrived at the soiré just before the police arrived, unaware that alcohol was present, and that she had not touched any alcohol.  The JP and the County Attorney (longtime acquaintances who know us and our situation) worked wonderfully with us to clear her record and allow her to leave on time.

Now it is my turn.  Last Friday night, I stayed with one of my sisters who is going through a very difficult experience.  At 2:00 a.m., the doorbell began jangling, her dog went crazy — as did her two small children.  I jumped out of bed and ran outside half dressed to find a group of juveniles scattered up and down the street.  They had toilet papered three or four houses on the street and were now apparently ringing doorbells.  I caught one of them and called the police.  However, before the police arrived, a MOTHER of one of the teenagers pulled up in her SUV with a herd of other kids.  She wouldn’t identify herself, but she demanded that I release the kiddo whose hand I was holding (while I was still on the phone with law enforcement), and even tried to tear him away from me.  I told her someone was going to be there when the police arrived.  Needless to say, my luck is holding true, because I was charged with assault of a minor by contact so now I get to deal with that.  It will not be a problem, but if it is not resolved quickly, that wonderful mother will be identified on here and all over town because I have many colleagues whom I need to protect from this type of parent   (What kind of parent CHAPERONES teenagers around town at 2:00 and 3:00 a.m. to toilet paper houses and ring doorbells anyway?)  At least, thank God, they were doing nothing more nefarious than that because my first fear was that it had something to do with my sister’s situation.

Anyway, the girls have had great fun poking fun at their father, the criminal…  Y’all send me CARE packages while I am in prison…  (Again, I am hyperbolizing.  This will resolve itself fine.  It just amazes me how the law tends to protect the miscreant.  The ticketing officer told me that in my situation, he probably would have done the same thing “but it is still illegal.”  Most folks I have talked to have indicated that the teenager probably would have been much the worse for wear had the group been harassing them…

Well, I have to go because I still have a ton of stuff to do.  Thank you all for your support.

Well, it is Texas as usual.  A couple of weeks ago, we were over 80 degrees F until the cold front blew in with freezing rain, sleet, and snow — and we lost half a day of school with two frigid weeks of freezing temps, some in the single digits. 

Now, for the past week, we have been back up in the 70′s, and today we almost hit 80.  It looks as if the only way the folks around here  are going to have a white Christmas is if enough Wal-Mart bags are thrown out of cars and blown out of pick-ups to cover all the trees and the ground and the roofs.  Come to think about it, that should only take a couple of dozen more bags, judging from the number I see blowing around…  Scientists in the future will definitely refer to our age as the Plasticine Period.

I had dinner and a wonderful, bittersweet evening with Duane and Nony Godwin today.  They are doing great (which is especially wonderful since Duane spent a week in the hospital recently).  Neither Lorena nor I would be here if it weren’t for them.  Stephanie took it upon herself to customize their Christmas card, and she did a beautiful job.  We have so many friends for whom the apellation “friend” is far too unworthy.  Thank you.

I tried to call Lorena again last night without success.  We will try again tonight.  I know she has to be excited at the prospect of seeing us again.  We certainly are.  And I cannot wait not only to see her and talk to her directly but to see how she has progressed and what she is capable of doing now.  I so want her prediction of needing two more years of therapy to be accurate.  But her miracle continues.  To God be the glory…

Hello from the flu ward.  We have been having a blast around here.  No diagnosis, but it sure felt like the flu to me.  After having a flu shot.  One would think that those bugs would at least have the decency to wait until the sting of the vaccination had died before laying one low.

Anyway, I am alive, and Stephanie  seems to have only mildly been  affected.  (Mostly, she just stays sleepy, especially in my classes — so, come to think of it, how does that indicate anything outside the norm?)  She really wasn’t feeling well, but she certainly did not suffer as much as I have.  Thank goodness for that, because I am not a good nurse at all.

Nonetheless, it has been a week since I have been on here.  In one more week, Stephi, Lya, and I will be in Tepic by this time, visiting Lorena.  It will be the first time in a year that I will have gotten to see her, and I cannot wait.  To say I am (we are) emotional about the prospects of seeing her again is. at the very best, a gross understatement.  It is depressing around here because Lorena was our hearth-mother.  She did the decorating and the mood setting and the carol playing and all the wonderful stuff.  I just appreciated it and enjoyed it and loved it and never, ever thought of the remotest possibility that it might ever end for years and years and years.  And then it did, and none of us have been the same…  Neither has Christmas nor Thanksgiving nor Easter nor birthdays nor life itself.  Life goes on, but much of living does not.  We tend to exist.

We will call Lorena later tonight.  I can’t wait…

Two weeks from today, Stephi, Lya and I fly to Mexico to see Lorena.  We cannot wait.  It has been a year since Lya and I have seen her.  We are all excited at the prospect of a reunion. 

Today has been a very difficult day due to some family issues here.  (We are fine.  It involved the extended family, and several people have been grievously hurt.  I feel sick at heart and about as depressed as a frog on the road.  Such is life, though, all too often, and so many have it so much worse than do we.  That sure doesn’t make it much easier to experience, though.

The good thing is that it is two weeks to see Lorena again.  (And Lya would want me to point out that it is 9 days until her birthday…  Yay!!!!)  Take care.

Hello again.  The weather in Texas has been up to its usual shenanigans again.  Last Wednesday, we hit 80 here in Stephenville by mid afternoon.  Then, about 5:00 p.m., a norther blew in and the temperature dropped forty degrees in just a few minutes.  It started raining, sleeting, and then snowing — and getting colder.  We had no problem getting to school, but the temperatures continued dropping so that school was dismissed at 1:00 p.m. with the Thursday morning start postponed until 10:00 a.m.  It sure was nice.

Saturday, I had to get up early to drive into Fort Worth to attend a science continuing education field trip sponsored by one of the local colleges and the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History.  The sun was out, but the weather was still cold — and the ground was WET from all the rain and sleet and snow.  We hunted three sites (one on the Jacksboro Highway and two on the outskirts of Benbrook), finding and keying many nice fossils.  [I had let the folks know early on that I was going to get very upset if I caught someone pointing at me while exclaiming, "I found one!!!"]  We also got about six inches of wet Fort Worth clay gummed up around our shoes.  I figured that if I had had a way to take all the clay home that I collected on my shoes at the three sites, I would have had enough land to build a small house on…

On the way back through Weatherford, I decided to give Bill and Dana Crabbs a phone call.  I have not seen them for years even though we had had a date earlier this year that I had to cancel.  They were home and, being the consummate actors that they are, they were even able to feign joy at hearing my voice while urging me to stop by to visit them.  My precogniscience was working well, so, reluctantly, I agreed to stop by even before the invitation was voiced.

Bill was principal at Chico when I taught there, and Dana taught computers.  My nominal home was a fourteen foot travel trailer, but, in actuallity, I lived at their house.  Their daughter Holly was in elementary school.  Dana’s brother David was in high school, and he was always there.  Bob and Ann Adkins, friends of Dana and Bill’s from Fort Worth, were there half the time as well.  I enjoyed some spectacularly wonderful times at their house and in their company. 

Lorena and I visited Dana and Bill a few times, and we stayed with Bob and Ann before we went to Germany after we got married.  (Bob and Ann had stayed with me in Germany a couple of times before Lorena and I married.)  David had started working at Lockheed Martin in Fort Worth, and he and his family had lived in Korea a few years while we were in Germany.  He has a daughter Rainey’s age, so we got to visit occassionally at soccer games where the girls competed against each other.  Bridget, his wife, is a surgical nurse at Harris Southwest in Fort Worth.  Holly teaches at Weatherford, but I had not seen her for twenty years.  All in all, we simply had not kept in touch as we should have.

Thus it was with wonderful, pleased surprise that I learned that David and Bridget, Holly and Luke (and Logan and Lukas), Bob and Ann, and Bridget’s brother Micky would all be coming over.  Let it suffice to say that we had a wonderful time — and I got home not-so-early-Sunday morning worse for wear.  It was worth it if only for the jar of kimchee that David and Bridget gave me…

more later.  gotta go…

Life has been hectic lately.  And this is a really hard time of the year for us.  Thanksgiving and Christmas were always special times for us, and Lorena made them extra special.  Now it is so hard to get into the spirit of either of them.  So we exist, which is better than not…  But it is hard.

The girls are doing well.  Stephanie is tickled because she is working the counter at Comet Cleaners.  Considering that she has an incredibly intelligent mother, it is understandable that she learned the procedures and processes in only a couple of days whereas, she was told, most new employees take a couple of weeks.  She quickly fit in with the hispanic employees when they learned that she could speak Spanish.  Now she closes up the place each night — and she is slated to open for them at 8:00 in the morning.  Best of all, she really loves the work — almost as much as she loves the paycheck.

Lya is doing great as well.  She is running circles and spoiling and being spoiled by the Mad Max.  She is such a special little girl, and I love her with all my heart.  I only wish she didn’t have to go through all of this.

Rainey is working as a massage therapist in a salon in Dublin — and she is doing great.  Her boyfriend’s grandmother took her on a cruise from Galveston hopscotching down the Mexican coast to Belize.  She got to do all the typical touristy swimming, snorkeling, shopping, and sightseeing.  She sent me a text message (interrupting my class) extolling the beauty of Chichen Itza.  That young lady is incredibly competent and self sufficient and independent and all the other similar adjectives that are so incapable of doing her justice.  I am so blessed to have her as part of my life.

But that is true of all my girls, most of all Lorena.  She has been doing great.  Always better.  We will be going down for Christmas, and it will be so good to see her again.  I have not gotten to see her since last Christmas, and I can’t wait.  Our latest calls have been emotional, and I know that she is feeling the poignancy of the season as much or more than we are.  She wants so badly to come back to Stephenville to see friends and relatives, and she mentions that now each time we call.

We finally got the computer up and running again.  Actually it is only crawling VERY, VERY slowly.  I am going to have to have Amauri look it over and see what the problem is.  Plate tectonics work faster than this thing does currently.  It has just been hard to get on here and be forced to think and to remember both the way things were and the way things were supposed to be.  Now we only have the way things are, and they really are great, no matter how deep the hurt is in my heart.  I don’t deserve the incredible ladies in my life…

Well, it is late, and I must get to bed.  I have to be at the Region 11 Service Center in Fort Worth at 8:00 in the morning for a continuing education seminar, so I will have to leave here about 6:00 or so.  I am really looking forward to that!!!!

So, Candy, here is a post.  Brittany said I had to put one on.  As did a ton of other folks for the past two weeks.  We will get back on here more often.  There is a lot of catching up that we must do.  Lorena’s miracle continues, and that is the important thing.  The very most important thing of all.