{"id":721,"date":"2004-05-25T20:29:29","date_gmt":"2004-05-26T01:29:29","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=721"},"modified":"2004-05-25T20:29:29","modified_gmt":"2004-05-26T01:29:29","slug":"travel-reflections-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/?p=721","title":{"rendered":"Travel Reflections (I)"},"content":{"rendered":"

The good parts of the trip:<\/strong>
\n-cheap tickets on Frontier<\/a> and Southwest<\/a>
\n-hanging out at the Mall of America on the night we spent near the airport in MSP before flying out
\n-the pool and spa at the airport in MSP
\n-the Lake Wobegon USA store at the Mall of America — a dangerous place for me to know about
\n-seeing my family again
\n-seeing Jon’s family again
\n-being back in San Jose for the first time since Christmas 2002
\n-coffee with Abra and tea with Mrs. Griffin (neighbor who shared the Gospel with me)
\n-sushi on my birthday!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
\n-having a $tarbuck$<\/a> in Claremont and San Jose (it’s nice to have a frappucino on occasion)
\n-Joanna (my sister-in-law) graduating from Pitzer<\/a>
\n-Bernadine Dorn speaking at the graduation (ex-Weathermen member and currently a child law professor at Northwestern)
\n-the 12 cream puffs I had at the President’s reception the day before the graduation
\n-meeting Alyssa (in-law’s new cat) and Homer and Jethro (my mom’s new hooligans)
\n-seeing my mother’s resplendent Maine Coon sissy cat again (who happens to like me)
\n-watching Secondhand Lions<\/em> with my parents
\n-reading the Harry Potter books at my parents’ house with Jethro snuggled in my arms
\n-seeing my dad’s best friend and his wife again (we stayed with them in Las Vegas)
\n-the rainbows in Utah
\n-the beautiful scenery in the West (which was very green as it’s spring)
\n-the NEW CAR (’92 Volvo 740 wagon)
\n-a decent bathroom in our hotel room in Omaha
\n-seeing my cats when I got home<\/p>\n

The bad parts of the trip:<\/strong>
\n-running from one end of DIA to the other to make our connection without being able to stop in the bathroom because we couldn’t find our gate
\n-the sinus infection\/bronchitis I’ve been fighting for two weeks (will be seeing my PA about that tomorrow<\/del> saw my spiffy cool PA who gave me drugs — all is right with the world)
\n-the idiotic drunken frat boys on our flight from Ontario to SJC
\n-finding out that my parents’ cat Mouse went out two weeks ago and never returned (translation: he went off by himself somewhere to die)
\n-having to say good-bye to my parents at SJC on Friday
\n-having to say good-bye to my in-laws in Claremont on Friday
\n-the highway system in Las Vegas
\n-the drivers in Las Vegas
\n-the casino where we ate (the buffet was great but we had to walk around the casino floor to get there — lots of noise, smoke, and hypnotized people gambling away their grocery money)
\n-the street numbers in Salt Lake City (it’s made to confuse non-Mormons)
\n-the fact that they were doing roadwork on every<\/em><\/strong> highway in SLC in the direction that we were headed
\n-the Moonie who accosted us at the Applebee’s<\/a> in Cheyenne
\n-the idiots trying to road-race me on I-80 going through central Nebraska
\n-gas prices (insert “nasty comment about Dubya being linked to the oil companies” here)
\n-the shower stall-sized bathrooms in our motels in MSP, SLC, and Cheyenne
\n-not being able to find Finian when we got home (he was hiding under the curtains)
\n-the realization of how far I really am from where I grew up and the disorientation I felt on the road after being “home” but being away from where I live (more on this later)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The good parts of the trip: -cheap tickets on Frontier and Southwest -hanging out at the Mall of America on the night we spent near the airport in MSP before flying out -the pool and spa at the airport in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travel"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p38xoO-bD","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-filled.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}