LAS VEGAS VACATED

Well, as of Wednesday, the Reids no longer live in Henderson, Nevada. After loading up a 24' U-haul truck, Tom, Kate & Mom drove the truck - Tom specifically - to Sacramento on Monday. I flew down to Sacramento Monday night (Dec. 1) to drive the truck up to Portland the next day.

The flight was interesting to say the least. It wasn't full, and after I sat down the Captain addressed the passengers instead of the flight attendant. Uh oh, this can't be good I thought to myself. After delivering a pair of time-worn California recall election jokes - "This is your captain, and I want you to know I recently lost the California recall election" and "Like Gary Coleman, I came up just a little bit short" - he delivered the news I was waiting for. Some aspect of the air conditioning system (?!) was malfunctioning, so we would not be able to fly above 24,000', roughly 10,000' below normal altitude. The scientific reason escapes me, so I won't even try to explain that one.

The bottom line is that the flight rumbled and bumped around like a high-speed roller coaster, only with a perfectly horizontal track for most of the ride. Nothing dramatic or scary, just non-stop and disconcerting enough to make you realize just how good you had it at 35,000'.

The drive from Sacramento to Portland was a long day, but for the most part, the weather was very cooperative. The best by far, ironically, was the Siskiyou Summit in the State of Jefferson. The clouds rolled back just north of Weed and we didn't see many again until the Rogue Valley in Oregon. We stopped to snap a photo of Mt. Shasta, which slowly became visible as its veil of clouds lifted with the sun. I snapped a photo, posted below.



We also made a stop in Medford to visit the Harry & David store where Mom stocked up on chocolate truffles and bought a decorative bench with a little girl and boy kissing, or something like that. We finally got into Portland a little after 7pm and given that we left Sacramento at 6:30am with a few stops along the way, I'd say that was pretty good time for a U-haul.

Once we arrived, however, I must have misunderstood the storage place because it was closed and we couldn't unload the truck. We saved that for the following day which took a few hours to complete. After we finished, took some items to Goodwill and then returned the truck, it was time for Mom to catch her plane to Vegas. All in all, it was a pretty smooth process.

Nobody knows when they will be shopping and buying a home up here, but I did find out today that they'll be driving over in the middle of next week for a short visit and to store some additional items. Sounds like a plan.

THANKSGIVING IN SAN ANTONIO

After a less-than-pleasant start (getting up at 3am to catch a 5:45am flight out of PDX - which was delayed and jumbled our reservations so we had to wheel and deal to sit next to each other), we got into San Antonio on Thanksgiving for a very nice visit with Jill's grandmother Charlotte, who I posted about last time. Jill's parents were already in San Antonio for a few days before we arrived.

Charlotte was in very good spirits and the visit was enjoyed by all. Even though she's off of some important medication temporarily due to the antibiotics, everything else seemed to be just fine. She did have some pain in her knee, though. But she managed to get around okay and we all went out to her favorite Chinese restaurant Saturday night - Kowloon - after which we got lost for about 15 minutes trying to get back to Art & Lorrae's. We won't mention who was leading the pack!



We got to play cards - rummy dum-dum - which Jill won consistently, even besting "Garbage Arm" Charlotte, who never met a discard she didn't like. Oh, well. Jill won a couple bucks that evening.

While we were there, we got to visit Market Square near downtown San Antonio. The area had a nice, old San Antonio feel - architecture, parks, features - but there more than a few shops with either overly expensive crap or really cheap crap. We didn't find much we were really interested in, unfortunately, but the experience and food were worth it.

We also got to visit the Peace Market held at Esperanza Peace & Justice Center in San Antonio. The market featured hand-made goods from San Antonio and various places in Latin America. I can't say we were tremendously impressed with most of the items there, but we did purchase a carved gourd from Peru that had a little story and illustrations carved into it. There were huipiles from Guatemala as well, but the prices they wanted were quite high - we must have a fortune in huipiles based on what we saw there. We'd rather go back to Guatemala and purchase them so that we know who got our money.

But overall, it was a great visit and it was very good to see Charlotte. It was obvious that having visitors made her feel a bit better.

TOM MISSES THE CALIFORNIA BAR EXAM BY 3 MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS

That's right.. if Tom had answered three more multiple choice questions correctly, he could be practicing law in California. So close, it must be maddening. Well, it looks like he and Kate will be taking the Oregon bar exam in February. We look forward to the visit, however brief or long.