The Pie Stands Alone

It is the ultimate judgement on how discombobulated this Christmas holiday has been. Normally, it is required that there be two (2) pecan pies. This ensures that everyone who wants some gets a piece. This year, we baked only one (1) pecan pie. It sat untouched until two days after Christmas. The final sliver was not consumed until last evening.

2009 still has one more opportunity to bite me: the de-icing delays at Newark (my transfer point) are currently 3 hours and climbing. And keep in mind that de-icing delays are experienced in the plane. This means that the deicing delays do not decrease the possibility that I will miss my (half-hour-window) connection entirely. Fortunately, they were able to double-book us onto the next flight out just in case. But at the moment I'm not betting on arriving in SFO this year. (Note: currently I'm posting from Portland, and Continental is still claiming that our Portland-Newark flight will be on time, so all of the delays are still potential at this point.)

Bye Bye 2009

My return travel adventures are still on-going at this point. The blow-by-blow saga has been / is being posted on Facebook and will not be repeated here. Suffice it to say that, rather than being on a plane between Newark and San Francisco at the moment (as I was originally scheduled to be), I'm on a bus between Portland and Boston. But with any luck I'll be flying out of Boston in the morning, and in the mean time Continental AIrlines is paying for all sorts of things like taxis and buses and meals and hotel rooms.

I even managed to get in some work on the novel (here on the bus ... which has wi-fi). I'm still doing a few little fill-in scenes that needed more background work. I did succeed in getting all the name work done by the end of the year, although I haven't quite completed a thrice-revised complete draft of Part I. The fill-in scenes and the detailed complete review-pass ended up needing more concentrated attention that I was able to give during holiday visiting. (The name work was quite convenient to do when I was constantly picking it up and putting it down among other activities.)

I think I'll spend the weekend recovering from my vacation.