Ilanarama!

Dear United Airlines,

You have had a major hub in Denver for as long as I have flown in and out of there. In fact, you own most of the DIA gate-estate, a whole concourse just for you. So one would assume that you know what Denver weather is like.

Specifically, one would assume that you know it occasionally snows in Denver. In fact, one would assume that you know it occasionally snows in Denver in October. One would assume that you could cope with five inches or so of October snow. Apparently, one is wrong.

It's clear to me that you don't want to own up to having no clue about what to do in the snow. The gate agents told us, "Don't ask us what's going on, see the departure board." The departure board told us, "Flight 7075 on time, boarding now." The gate agents told us, "We have no control over the incorrect information on the departure board." The departure board told us our flight was boarding three different times before finally admitting to canceling our flight four hours after the original time. The gate agents told us, "Sorry, this is a weather-related cancelation and therefore you're responsible for finding and paying for a hotel room until we can fly you out. Which, if you want a confirmed seat, will be in five days."

The Hertz agents told us, "Sure, we can rent you a one-way 4WD SUV to Durango."

In conclusion, HATEHATESTABBITYSTABSTABANVILFOAD.

No love,
Me.

I got my hair cut yesterday, and the guy who does my hair is doing this new thing now: he blow-dried my hair and then ironed it straight before cutting, so that he could line up and cut all the layers precisely. The thing is, my hair is thick and wavy-to-curly. I have never seen myself with straight hair before, and I couldn't stop staring at myself in the mirror. I mean, it is so totally smooth and straight. I look like a completely different person.

Husbands being what they are, I couldn't get a straight answer out of mine as to whether he preferred it straight or curly. When I told him I could buy a straightening iron and do it like this every day, he just laughed at me and pointed out that I never even bother to blow-dry it normally, and just walk around with wet hair until it dries, and did I really think I was going to spend that much time every day on my hair? He has a point.

Lookit the cute widdle lynx kitten!

(Full story from the Durango Herald is here. It would be so cool to see lynx on one of our hikes, but it's pretty unlikely, of course.)

Saturday July 2nd: worked on house. Woo.

Sunday July 3rd: went to cookout party at inlaws' ranch. Ate elk shish-ke-babs and too much lemon pie. Got drunk on gin and tonics, strawberry daquiris, and red wine. Fell asleep immediately upon returning home, woke up two hours later, and slept not a wink until 7 am due to consumption of excessive alcohol.

Monday July 4th: worked on house. Went downtown to see parade and ran into our old political friends from when we were heavily involved in local stuff last fall. Remembered most people's names. Watched fireworks from 9th street bridge, which also gave us a great vantage point for the brush fire that started in the cemetery when some of the ashes that fell weren't quite burnt out.

Gosh, that was fun. Let's do it every year.

Fake mud to spray on the SUV you never actually drive off-road.

What boggles me is that people are buying it.

I happen to have wireless net access for a few hours, and have been unraveling the mess that is my email. Which, um, I haven't been getting, and now have all at once. Anyway, thanks caitlinburke for pointing out the problem with the feed of sv_windom - I didn't change anything, I guess either LJ or Blogger has decided to only export the first and last so many words. Sorry, folks! I guess you have to click on the little clicky thing if you want to read our amazing adventures. Woo.

Since I've been letting people in various circles and various lists know about our website changes and upcoming adventures, I thought I'd take a quick look at the website stats to see if people are actually listening to me and going to look. Our web machine is run by a friend, and she has Webalyzer stats, so it only gives the top so many hits (and referrers, and pages, etc.) but it's better than nothing. I almost forgot it existed because I haven't looked at the stats in a very long time.

So for the first week of November I thought I might see some hits on our blogger page, and indeed it's the fourth-most-requested URL. But the most popular by far - nearly double the hits of the next most-requested - is, oddly, a page from our cruising logs, and at first I was completely baffled as to why people were looking at this particular page out of all our adventures. Then I saw the search terms used to find our site. The most popular (again, by a ridiculous amount): boobies.

As it turns out, if you do a Google image search on "boobies" ( this picture from that log entry on shows up on the first page. )

Those of you who followed the Amazing Sailing Adventures of Britt and Ilana a few years back will be happy (I hope!) to know that (1) we're doing it again this year, and (2) I have revamped our Windom site and added a shiny new weblog for you to follow along at home.

( Cut tags - now with 50% fewer grams of carbohydrate! )

Mmm, pomegranate.