Something is getting the bird seed during the night. The first time, the bird feeder was knocked to the ground and all the seed spilled out. So, that night, Guillermo brought the bird feeder inside. But that next night, something attacked the suet feeder which hadn't been bothered before, and actually took the entire thing off the tree and carried it away!!!
So, the regular bird feeder is taken care of during the nights, and we need to buy a new suet feeder for the woodpeckers. The regular bird feeder is still a problem during the day though, as the squirrels are relentless with it. Guillermo has been fashioning all kinds of things trying to discourage them. But they are quite determined!!!
We bought our tickets today for the trip back to Spain. We leave March 1st.
Also, today I drove into San Antonio to meet with Elrod friends for lunch at Sea Island. I wasn't going to make the drive because it was such lousy weather outside, but after checking the radar and seeing that it wasn't going to be pouring rain, I decided to go ahead and drive in. The drive was a little scary because it was so foggy in places it was hard to see, but I drove real slow and took it easy so it all worked out. I'm glad I decided to go because it was so nice getting together with my friends again.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Lake level
I've been meaning to get some pictures of the lake ever since we moved in here a little over a week ago. It's incredible how low the level of the lake is. Where once there was just water, there now are big patches of land. The people who own the house we're staying in are lucky that their house is located where it is, because they still have a good amount of water behind their property. But they also have a view to pieces of land where there once used to be water. Everyday we see the water level go down just a little bit further.
Here's the view now, from the back patio. It used to be nothing but water all the way to the hill in the background.
The view to the right is looking more like a river than a lake.
This is a picture from Sweden that I forgot to post back on the days when we were actually there. Anyway, this kind of meatball sandwich was the very first thing we ate when we arrived in Sweden. This picture though, was taken at Arlanda Airport in Stockholm on the day we left Sweden.
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Consulate hassles drag on
On Tuesday, January 10th, we went to the Consulate in Houston. Since we are living 30 minutes past Helotes, we had to get up extra early to get to San Antonio, navigate through the rush hour traffic IN San Antonio, and then get out on the other side of San Antonio in good time to get us to Houston by 11am, which is when we had an appointment. It was a good weather day so the drive was nice and easy.
We found the consulate, kind of remembering where it was from the last time we were there, and went in all hopeful. The lady took our passports and we sat down to wait. She came back a few minutes later saying there was a little problem. Of course. Well, she said that Guillermo's passport didn't have any blank page left on which to place his visa so they couldn't give him his. We had kind of worried about this, but there was one blank page at the end and we figured the visa could be put on that page. Well, the lady wouldn't budge, said it was against the law to place anything on that last page and that we should go get more pages added. Yeah, like it was that easy. Here we had driven 250 miles and now it was seeming like it was for nothing. They said I had enough blank pages for my visa to be placed, by the way.
Guillermo was just stunned and frustrated. We left the consulate and decided to call the passport office and they wouldn't even talk to us and said we couldn't come in unless we had an appointment. The passport office did tell Guillermo that it was up to the issuing country whether to place something on that last page or not, but that there was no law against it. So, we went BACK up to the consulate and told the lady that, but she just wouldn't do it. She claimed she even checked with her supervisor, who also said they won't do it. We left the consulate 2 hours after arriving, still in shock and wondering what we were going to do. We did get her to put MY visa in my passport, at least, before leaving.
So, we drove back home. We were coming to the decision that we needed to get to a post office as soon as possible and look into the possibility of either getting new pages added to Guillermo's passport or just getting a whole brand new one.
So, the next day, Guillermo goes to the Leon Valley post office and talks with a nice guy there who helped him figure out his options. The end result was that on Thursday, Guillermo filled out forms to renew his passport, got some new passport photos taken, paid for the renewal and a fee to get the passport expedited, and now we wait for this new passport to arrive!
We found the consulate, kind of remembering where it was from the last time we were there, and went in all hopeful. The lady took our passports and we sat down to wait. She came back a few minutes later saying there was a little problem. Of course. Well, she said that Guillermo's passport didn't have any blank page left on which to place his visa so they couldn't give him his. We had kind of worried about this, but there was one blank page at the end and we figured the visa could be put on that page. Well, the lady wouldn't budge, said it was against the law to place anything on that last page and that we should go get more pages added. Yeah, like it was that easy. Here we had driven 250 miles and now it was seeming like it was for nothing. They said I had enough blank pages for my visa to be placed, by the way.
Guillermo was just stunned and frustrated. We left the consulate and decided to call the passport office and they wouldn't even talk to us and said we couldn't come in unless we had an appointment. The passport office did tell Guillermo that it was up to the issuing country whether to place something on that last page or not, but that there was no law against it. So, we went BACK up to the consulate and told the lady that, but she just wouldn't do it. She claimed she even checked with her supervisor, who also said they won't do it. We left the consulate 2 hours after arriving, still in shock and wondering what we were going to do. We did get her to put MY visa in my passport, at least, before leaving.
So, we drove back home. We were coming to the decision that we needed to get to a post office as soon as possible and look into the possibility of either getting new pages added to Guillermo's passport or just getting a whole brand new one.
So, the next day, Guillermo goes to the Leon Valley post office and talks with a nice guy there who helped him figure out his options. The end result was that on Thursday, Guillermo filled out forms to renew his passport, got some new passport photos taken, paid for the renewal and a fee to get the passport expedited, and now we wait for this new passport to arrive!
It's good to be back in San Antonio!
From Jan. 5th through Jan. 7th we lived in a decent Best Western hotel room near the San Antonio airport. It was nice there, excellent breakfasts every morning, good internet in the room, and all the comforts we needed. It was a good place to stay put for a while, take it easy and relax while we were recovering from our long flight back on the 4th. We were also right in San Antonio, so that was a plus as far as trying to get things taken care of.
On the 8th of January, we moved out to the lake house again. We were shocked to see how much the lake level had dropped! There was now an island in the middle of the lake, or more like a peninsula stretching from the opposite side. The situation with the lake sure is sad.
The night of the 8th, it rained all night long. And the 9th was a cold and extremely windy day, so we stayed inside the entire day.
On the 8th of January, we moved out to the lake house again. We were shocked to see how much the lake level had dropped! There was now an island in the middle of the lake, or more like a peninsula stretching from the opposite side. The situation with the lake sure is sad.
The night of the 8th, it rained all night long. And the 9th was a cold and extremely windy day, so we stayed inside the entire day.
Thursday, January 5, 2012
January 4th - from Europe to the US
Well, this was some day, that's for sure.
We all got up around 7 this morning, and apparently none of us slept much at all during the night. And it rained all night, too. We told Andrew, well, at least you don't have to take 3 flights today. And he said, Well, at least you all can veg in your airplane seats. Who knows who had it worse!!
So, Andrew dropped us off at the airport at 8 (it was drizzling). We checked in our bags (they could only check them to New York unfortunately) and then we went to get a little croissant and juice for breakfast. We figured there'd be other places to get more to eat once we went past security. After going through security, we discovered that there was NOTHING available to us except the same little type of cafe like where we had gotten our croissant and juice. It was frustrating because we could see all kinds of shops on the other side of the glass wall. I tried to figure out how to get to them, and eventually found a way to get over there, but when I tried to buy something, they wanted a boarding pass and when they saw it said Air France, they said they couldn't sell me anything. So, the good stuff was on the Swiss side of the airport, and a little section was allotted to the French side of the airport. Oh well, finally our plane came and we were off.
At every airport, it seemed we were always dropped off at a gate that was on the opposite side of where we needed to be for our next flight. We finally found our gate (62) at Paris's airport and were going to look for a place to relax and use the computer and get something to eat, when we realized that all the people at gate 61 were actually from gate 62 and that our plane was already boarding!!! An hour before the plane was due to take off! So we quickly joined ALL the people in line (and there were a LOT of people). I asked the person in line in front of us about the reason why we were boarding already, and she said it was because the plane was a double-decker. Wow, turns out we were going to be flying one of the new Airbus 380 planes! It took about an hour to board all those people - the plane holds about 534 passengers. We were on the lower level, but we had good seats behind a wall, which meant we had lots of leg room.
When the plane took off, we could watch the take off on a video screen as if we were sitting on top of the plane. It was very interesting! For dinner we were served an excellent meal with any beverage you wanted and we opted for champagne and beer.
There were lots of movies to choose from to watch, and the good part was that each seat had their OWN movie - which meant that you could pause the movie or even shut the video off and the movie you were on would start right up again where you left off. There was lots of music and games to choose from also. There was definitely plenty to keep you occupied on this plane.
But once we landed in New York, things took a downhill turn. Not at first because at least they had one thing set up well. They had people handing out "quick connect" cards to those people who had connecting flights. So, that put us in a good line that wasn't snaking around 8 or 9 times. We were able to get through customs quickly enough and then we had to get our luggage and recheck it. That went fine, too, but at the counter where we checked our bags on to San Antonio, they said they couldn't issue us the boarding passes we needed for our next flight. That we needed to go to Terminal 3 (we were in Terminal 2). So,we walk out the door, thinking Terminal 3 is fairly close but it turned out being a long walk out in the cold weather. We get to the new terminal and inside it was total chaos. Unbelievably long lines to the check-in counters, and the line to go through security wasn't a line, but just a mass of people. We tried checking in at a kiosk but that didn't work because it said we needed to see an agent due to a flight change. We were just incredulous that we were going to have to stand in those incredibly long lines just to get a boarding pass. While Guillermo held a place in line, I went searching for someone who could help us. And I finally found a sympathetic Delta employee who was walking around - he took our passports and told us to stay right where we were and he went and got us our boarding passes. Then we prepared to get among the mass of people trying to go through security.
But the same employee who helped us all of a sudden announced out loud that there was another place where people can go through security and whoever wanted to could follow him. So we decided to follow him, which turned out to be a lot of work also, because he took us OUTSIDE and made us walk a LONG way in the cold to a different place for security. And here we were, so tired and hungry - it was unbelievable what we were having to go through. We finally get to security and that went quickly enough so at least that was good. Then once past security, we were told that our flight would be going out of gate 12 in Terminal 3, so that was good. We get to gate 12 and they tell us that no, the flight to San Antonio is going to leave out of gate 23 - BACK IN TERMINAL 2!!!!
We told the people what we had been through already and asked them to get us a cart to take us back to Terminal 2, which they were glad to do. We waited a little while for that cart, but once on it, we just couldn't believe how far it was back to Terminal 2. We were glad we were on that cart! All the gates around gate 23 were just packed with people - the whole area looked like it was Christmas Eve or something. We got a little something to eat, then parked ourselves at one of the tables that had ipads and used the internet there for a little while.
Our plane was scheduled to leave an hour or so later than its original take off time so we just waited and waited. The last horrible thing was the boarding process. They were boarding 4 different flights through gate 23 at the same time. It was a mess. Then, once we get through, we had to walk a long gang-walk type thing (outside, but at least it was covered all around, but still, it was COLD!) It was a long walk to our plane but we finally get on, the plane ride is quite bumpy, but we get to San Antonio at the time we had been scheduled to arrive anyway. We call our hotel for a pick-up, we get our luggage and then we're finally, blissfully, in a nice comfortable bed and settled in for the evening!
We all got up around 7 this morning, and apparently none of us slept much at all during the night. And it rained all night, too. We told Andrew, well, at least you don't have to take 3 flights today. And he said, Well, at least you all can veg in your airplane seats. Who knows who had it worse!!
So, Andrew dropped us off at the airport at 8 (it was drizzling). We checked in our bags (they could only check them to New York unfortunately) and then we went to get a little croissant and juice for breakfast. We figured there'd be other places to get more to eat once we went past security. After going through security, we discovered that there was NOTHING available to us except the same little type of cafe like where we had gotten our croissant and juice. It was frustrating because we could see all kinds of shops on the other side of the glass wall. I tried to figure out how to get to them, and eventually found a way to get over there, but when I tried to buy something, they wanted a boarding pass and when they saw it said Air France, they said they couldn't sell me anything. So, the good stuff was on the Swiss side of the airport, and a little section was allotted to the French side of the airport. Oh well, finally our plane came and we were off.
At every airport, it seemed we were always dropped off at a gate that was on the opposite side of where we needed to be for our next flight. We finally found our gate (62) at Paris's airport and were going to look for a place to relax and use the computer and get something to eat, when we realized that all the people at gate 61 were actually from gate 62 and that our plane was already boarding!!! An hour before the plane was due to take off! So we quickly joined ALL the people in line (and there were a LOT of people). I asked the person in line in front of us about the reason why we were boarding already, and she said it was because the plane was a double-decker. Wow, turns out we were going to be flying one of the new Airbus 380 planes! It took about an hour to board all those people - the plane holds about 534 passengers. We were on the lower level, but we had good seats behind a wall, which meant we had lots of leg room.
When the plane took off, we could watch the take off on a video screen as if we were sitting on top of the plane. It was very interesting! For dinner we were served an excellent meal with any beverage you wanted and we opted for champagne and beer.
There were lots of movies to choose from to watch, and the good part was that each seat had their OWN movie - which meant that you could pause the movie or even shut the video off and the movie you were on would start right up again where you left off. There was lots of music and games to choose from also. There was definitely plenty to keep you occupied on this plane.
But once we landed in New York, things took a downhill turn. Not at first because at least they had one thing set up well. They had people handing out "quick connect" cards to those people who had connecting flights. So, that put us in a good line that wasn't snaking around 8 or 9 times. We were able to get through customs quickly enough and then we had to get our luggage and recheck it. That went fine, too, but at the counter where we checked our bags on to San Antonio, they said they couldn't issue us the boarding passes we needed for our next flight. That we needed to go to Terminal 3 (we were in Terminal 2). So,we walk out the door, thinking Terminal 3 is fairly close but it turned out being a long walk out in the cold weather. We get to the new terminal and inside it was total chaos. Unbelievably long lines to the check-in counters, and the line to go through security wasn't a line, but just a mass of people. We tried checking in at a kiosk but that didn't work because it said we needed to see an agent due to a flight change. We were just incredulous that we were going to have to stand in those incredibly long lines just to get a boarding pass. While Guillermo held a place in line, I went searching for someone who could help us. And I finally found a sympathetic Delta employee who was walking around - he took our passports and told us to stay right where we were and he went and got us our boarding passes. Then we prepared to get among the mass of people trying to go through security.
But the same employee who helped us all of a sudden announced out loud that there was another place where people can go through security and whoever wanted to could follow him. So we decided to follow him, which turned out to be a lot of work also, because he took us OUTSIDE and made us walk a LONG way in the cold to a different place for security. And here we were, so tired and hungry - it was unbelievable what we were having to go through. We finally get to security and that went quickly enough so at least that was good. Then once past security, we were told that our flight would be going out of gate 12 in Terminal 3, so that was good. We get to gate 12 and they tell us that no, the flight to San Antonio is going to leave out of gate 23 - BACK IN TERMINAL 2!!!!
We told the people what we had been through already and asked them to get us a cart to take us back to Terminal 2, which they were glad to do. We waited a little while for that cart, but once on it, we just couldn't believe how far it was back to Terminal 2. We were glad we were on that cart! All the gates around gate 23 were just packed with people - the whole area looked like it was Christmas Eve or something. We got a little something to eat, then parked ourselves at one of the tables that had ipads and used the internet there for a little while.
Our plane was scheduled to leave an hour or so later than its original take off time so we just waited and waited. The last horrible thing was the boarding process. They were boarding 4 different flights through gate 23 at the same time. It was a mess. Then, once we get through, we had to walk a long gang-walk type thing (outside, but at least it was covered all around, but still, it was COLD!) It was a long walk to our plane but we finally get on, the plane ride is quite bumpy, but we get to San Antonio at the time we had been scheduled to arrive anyway. We call our hotel for a pick-up, we get our luggage and then we're finally, blissfully, in a nice comfortable bed and settled in for the evening!
Sunday, January 1, 2012
Happy 2012!
Happy New Year!
It´s a beautiful sunny day here in Spain, although it is a little cold. But the weather looks beautiful.
Having to use the internet at internet cafes, so there´s no chance to add pictures or anything. But we´ll be home in 3 days, and maybe we can add pictures then.
It´s a beautiful sunny day here in Spain, although it is a little cold. But the weather looks beautiful.
Having to use the internet at internet cafes, so there´s no chance to add pictures or anything. But we´ll be home in 3 days, and maybe we can add pictures then.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)