the essence

I safely made in back from PA before all of the snow fell. But barely. My flight left Friday night but not before they asked for any volunteers with flexible travel plans. I called Ray & decided I was flexible enough so I took the airlines offer to get a refund on my plane ticket plus an extra $200 voucher, a night at a hotel & a flight out the next morning.

They were even able to pull my bag off of the plane. But, I was then left lugging 4 bags around the airport (I don't pack lightly!) & outside to where it was literally freezing (remember the impending snow) to wait for a shuttle to the Ramada. Unforunately, by the time the shuttle would reach my stop it was full so I finally walked all the way down to a stop farther ahead & finally got to my room after about an hour.

The next morning I caught a 10:00 flight home, but unlike my direct flights before I had to make a stop in Jacksonville. The good thing is that it wasn't too long, just long enough for me to find the Starbucks & sit & drink some coffee for a bit (apparently the Philadelphia airport does not believe in Starbucks OR updating their airport to the 21st century).

By the time I got to Tampa Ray was working so Conrad & Rach were kind enough to pick me up. They even came inside the airport to meet me!

Anyway by the time I got home I was exhausted. But, I was also dazzled by Ray's painting job for the week. He put in about 25 hours of painting while I was gone & got a lot accomplished! It feels like we're so much closer to being finished with painting now.

Sunday I had speaker duty which means we had the speaker, Larry Price, over fun lunch. Because he was from out of town he & his wife stayed all day. Which was completely fine, they were very nice to talk to & have around. Rach & Con were there for most of the time too because Larry is the speaker for the week of camp that Conrad is directing so they were able to meet about that. Keith also ended up being there as his last day as our roommate.

My coffee & Grey's Anatomy buddy is gone! Speaking of which, have you seen the past couple of Grey's Anatomy's? Excellent! Plus, Patrick Dempsey is just so gorgeous.