I’m back in Delaware. I had a terrific visit with my daughter and her little family. (see the last post). The drive home from Huntsville took a little longer than it should have. For starters, my car was covered with ice, It took a while to get it scraped off (should have been a warning). I left my daughter’s house at about 4am on President’s Day, hoping that the traffic around Washington DC would be a little less than normal because of the holiday (it wasn’t). Wow, were the roads in Huntsville icy! For the first time, I utilized the detour feature on our GPS. I needed it to get around the barricaded roads that the police determined were too icy to drive on. The trip home was a few hours longer than the trip to Huntsville, due to the icy start and the continuing snow, but Bonnie and I made it home safely and without incident.
My wife arrived home from Brasil on Friday. She got to miss the snowstorms and much of the cold. It’s nice to have her back. I would have liked to spend more time in Brasil myself this winter. The future of my employment remains very much in question, so I don’t have vacation this year – although I am slowly earning it as I go along. As it stands, I couldn’t take vacation if I wanted to – There’s nobody to fill in for me. Guess that I’ll just have to take the extra pay…
Yesterday, just two days before my employment was scheduled to end, I received an e-mail that offered me the opportunity to remain at the refinery until the middle of April. Cool. A few more weeks, a few more thousand dollars – it’s a good thing. If you look long enough, you can find a silver lining in almost every cloud – I believe that I can blame this job-related stress for the condition of my rapidly-thinning hair. (I wonder if that’s a Workman’s Comp claim?) Rumors of the sale of the Delaware City refinery persist, and it’s possible that this latest employment extension will take us up to the sale. That would be a nice thing.
As I am writing this, it’s snowing outside. As late as yesterday, forecasters were predicting a foot of snow for our area. Most of the day, the temperature stayed above freezing – the snow that fell melted instantly. The temperature’s dropped now, so I suppose we’ll get some snow accumulation overnight. Accuweather’s site is now predicting 2-4 inches. Not that I’m complaining – I’ve shoveled quite
enough snow this year already. My car’s parked out on the street for an easy getaway in the morning – just in case. Punxsutawney Phil, that famous groundhog, DID see his shadow back on Feb. 2. Looks like we’re getting those six weeks more of winter that he promised us.
Yesterday, I replaced a cracked LCD screen in a little HP Mini 110 netbook that was injured while in Brasil. That was an interesting job. I was able to find a screen on E-bay for a reasonable price, and the swap work took about two hours – had to completely disassemble the thing. Uh, no way is this something that you could have done in a shop – you can buy a new one for about $299. I’ll bet the repair bill would have been close to that. We received the little thing as a premium for signing up for Verizon’s internet (since switched to FIOS).
Things are back to normal. Monica fixed some home made soup for dinner made from some weird vegetable that she bought at the produce store. I forget what it was called, but it was certainly very tasty. Home made apple pie for dessert was awesome. MMmmmm.
I like normal.
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