Weekend Update

Most of the weekend was absorbed with prep for our Twelfth Night party. Margie’s folks were out (celebrating Ginger’s birthday). Their being here made it a much more relaxed scramble. Ginger helped Margie with the food prep, while Jim helped with both the cleaning and in getting the buffet cabinet doors on, etc. Both were invaluable (and freed me up to do some other deep cleaning tasks that otherwise wouldn’t have happened, such as the loft).

The party itself was pretty successful. Gobs of food of course. The buffet was finished enough that it demonstrated its value for party service. Pretty thin attendance from both out offices — Margie had forgotten to remind people, and my day-to-day contact with a lot of the folks at the office isn’t what it used to be. Fair number of folks from the church, though, and various other local friends. We probably had about 25 all told, plus us.

Katherine was the charmer of the evening, despite her dismay over discovering that her Mouse Trap game was missing its “cage.”

The next morning was the interminable annual parish meeting. Despite efforts to keep it snappy, we still ran 2½ hours. Eek. Most interesting bit is that we elected five new Vestry members rather than the normal three (one third); we had one additional resignation, and another one becoming the Senior Warden. A new Junior Warden, too, so half faces in the group will be new. That’s got some real potential for problems or for improvements. We’ll see.

Rest of Sunday was scheduled to be Consortium Game Day. We ended up starting pretty late, between domestic improvement tasks (hanging new curtains) and the Testerfolk being delayed. And then, as we started playing in earnest, it began to snow — first a few flakes, then quite a few more, with gusty winds, too.

Jim and Ginger were due to fly out around 9. I was already considering driving them out early, around 5:30, but by 5 it was looking pretty awful out, so we left then — as did Randy and Stan, both of whom had long drives.

Took about two hours, each way. Lots of stalls and accidents to slowly wend past. Got home, ate some grub, headed for bed …

Margie checked the flight schedule. Oops, their flight, scheduled for 9, hadn’t left yet. And then we found it had been cancelled …

Took a bit of time, but Margie finally got someone at Frontier to tell her that all of the Orange County-bound passengers had been put another flight, to LAX. So at least they got back to California …

(Parenthetically, the Subaru performed like a champ. I’d recommend one to anyone without hesitation.)

I’m working from home this morning. I suspect everything’s pretty icy out. I may end up going in later on, or I may decide not to — it’s only supposed to get into the 20s today. Brr.

(And, as an interesting side experiment, I’m working out of the “office” upstairs. I set my computer up here over the weekend, since eating and cleaning and partying forestalled the usual spot at the breakfast table. We’ll see how that goes; it may be a good long-term idea. Or not.)

UPDATE: Jim and Ginger’s odyssey was a bit more complex than that.

Though their flight was cancelled, that cancellation was not actually posted at the gate. They only found out about it when they overheard some conversation.

They finally tracked down some Frontier folks, and were offered a flight to LA, Ontario, or San Diego; the first two would include ground transportation to Orange County.

They chose the LA flight, which was delayed getting out, of course. It boarded at 10, but got stuck in a horrible line at the de-icers, not taking off until closer to Midnight.

When they got to LA, they trucked down the Jetway, and asked the nice gate attendant where they should go for their ground transportation.

Um …

The gate attendant didn’t know anything about it. She didn’t know there was a flight arriving full of refugees from another cancelled flight that needed transport down to Orange Co.

Fortunately, Jim, being the take-charge sort of guy he is, got things straightened out quickly. (If you told me that he called the president of Frontier Airlines, whose son happened to have been in his Boy Scout troop, I wouldn’t be surprised. So far as I know, he didn’t and he wasn’t, but you never know.)

So off they and several others go down to OC, concerned whether they’ll be able to get their cars out of steerage down there. Orange County airport (actually named John Wayne Orange County, but still betraying its Santa Ana Airport origins in its destination code, SNA) closes down at 11 or so, and doesn’t open again until 7. Not because of any lack of business, but because of the protests of the surrounding affluent neighborhoods that those jets have the nerve to overfly. So there was a very real possibility that some folks wouldn’t be able to get their cars.

Well, it all worked out okay. Everyone entertained themselves on the shuttle ride down by bitching about Frontier. One guy was supposed to go up to the Doubletree Hotel, but discovered when he called that the Doubletree wouldn’t send their own bus down to the airport after it was closed, so the in-laws transported him there on their way home.

It turned out that he was actually a trainer who did work for Frontier, and didn’t feel it would be safe for him to mention it to the band of surly Frontier-haters on the way down. Probably wisely.

And they got home in the 3 a.m. range, but they got home, which is the important thing.

UPDATE 2: Doyce weighs in on the party.