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Sean got home around eleven o'clock last night. He left his hotel for the airport around nine a.m. Saturday (Sydney time), the plane left around noon time Saturday... thirteen and a half hour flight to San Francisco. Land in S.F. about twenty to eight Saturday morning (San Francisco time) and his flight to Boston took off around noon (which was three o'clock Saturday afternoon here on the east coast and seven a.m. Sunday in Sydney). So, by the time he reached home Saturday night it was early Sunday afternoon in Sydney (and to his body's internal clock) and twenty-eight hours had passed since he had left the hotel. He looks great... and Nancy and I will both swear that he grew taller in the sixteen days he's been gone. He brought back lots of gifts and souvenirs including a Japanese language (English subtitles) anime for his sister, books, CDs, posters, etc. for various people... and a package of brightly colored flavored condoms for one of his sister's (female) friends. It was an expensive time (the travel and hotel were free but he had to cover meals and admission fees, etc.) but it was a fantastic trip. He visited the Sydney zoo and also a smaller one that just featured Australian wildlife, visited the Powerhouse museum complex, rode the monorail and the subway and took a ferry and a speedboat, went on an outback tour via 4-wheel drive vehicles, went cave exploring, saw a championship rugby match at the new Olympic stadium, and climbed the top of Harbour Bridge (yes, walking up the main cables!) and had a thoroughly wonderful time. Not only does he seem taller that when he left, he honestly seems to have gained in maturity and self-confidence. He hadn't eaten since the Sydney--San Francisco leg of his trip... he just had coffee at the San Francisco airport and then was dozing off when the meal was being served on the flight to Boston... and asked for some pasta, quick, emergency pasta needed, starving teenager. So I fixed him some spaghetti with tomato sauce and some nice big chunks of Italian bread. When I came downstairs this morning I discovered that he'd been up all night and had polished off a box of frozen French-bread pizza during the night. After breakfast he asked if I'd give him a hand at rearranging his bedroom furniture... so we spent a half an hour or so moving furniture around. Have to admit, his new arrangement does seem to provide more open floor space. However, sometime between eleven and noon he crashed and is now sound asleep. Nancy and I went out to run some errands and I took his film into CVS for processing. Last week I got some film processed there and had the images put on the cvs.com webpage and then downloaded them from there to my C drive and then uploaded some to geocities (see Aug. 30th entry ) but the clerk today told me that you cannot download from their site anymore. When I asked what was the point she said you could email them to people or order prints but you couldn't download. When I protested that I had done that very thing just last week she insisted that some customers had complained they couldn't do it and when she checked with the company she was told that was correct, that you can no longer download from their site. I don't think she knows what she is talking about. Just right click and select SAVE AS... but I'm not willing to spend an extra four bucks a roll and have it take three or days to process in the face of any uncertainty about being able to download... so I just ordered one hour processing. (Which means the pictures should have been ready an hour or so ago, so I think I'm going to go and pick them up now.) If he wants to email any of them or put them on his webpage he'll just have to scan them. We haven't used our scanner much lately... the pictures tend to not feed through evenly and end up tilted to one side or another which then means a long time spent trying to get them straight. Really need to pick up a flatbed scanner, I guess... and a CD-burner... and Jennifer wants an internal zip drive for her PC... and I'd like to get a converter card to take video tape input and digitize it so it can be written to a CD (to save old home videos before the tape deteriorates with age)... and set up a home network... and... and... Hope your holiday weekend isn't as rainy as ours. |