gwyn | Merci, gracias, danke schon, arigato

Thank you so much for all the lovely birthday wishes bestowed upon me from my friends list. It was very sweet to open that up today and read so many nice notes, and to see the individual emails people sent. I know how eyeball-rollingly corny it sounds to say, but the gift of people's time and thoughts for a quick comment on a story or a birthday wish or something like that is the best present a girl can receive. I plan to respond to everyone who sent mail!

I will actually have time for that tonight, it seems like. Thanks to the weather, none of my plans have come to fruition and I'm kind of stuck here in snowy hillville, not so much due to snow as to ice. We got hit fairly hard last night and if the ice on the roads refreezes tonight as expected, they'll probably close down the bridge, which means it wasn't really safe for

mlyn to come over. And that's why I left my cranky post yesterday here -- when I finally got a look at the DOT cam around the Mt. Vernon area, it was looking pretty bad, and though there were some clear spots, there are a couple dozen miles of winding road on the way to the border past Bellingham that there are no cameras for, and I figured would be pretty bad. Turns out that it was pretty bad; I guess they posted warnings for people heading toward the border. The Westin was just being... I don't know. I knew that I was past the cancellation date, but they made such a big deal about how I couldn't cancel if I made my reservation over the internet and blah blah, and I couldn't seem to make anyone understand that I just wanted to postpone it. And they kept making me call other people -- the main corporate number, the front desk of the hotel, the internet people, and I got to a point where I was actually in tears. Stupid, yeah, but... it was so awful and the language barriers were getting to me and all I wanted to do was postpone and I couldn't understand why they wouldn't let you do that for a fee, like the airlines. I mean, when the freaking airlines are a business model, you know things are bad.

I finally did get to talk to a lovely Scottish woman who went the extra mile for me. When I told m'lyn that I thought we should cancel, she apparently took it upon herself to call the hotel and ask to speak to someone in authority (I hadn't yet been able to tell her that the Scottish woman was helping me) and told them my Tragic Tale of Woe (why I was going on this trip, etc.) and they said our reservation was postponed till Friday. I have no great belief that the weather will help me out, but... This whole thing has been so screwy since the beginning. I originally had planned to go with my dear old friend from DC, who was coming to town, but then he changed his plans, and m'lyn said she could go, and then it snowed, and... It seems God or whoever that bastard up there is doesn't want me to go to Vancouver! It really was helpful to do something like that last year; I'm not sure it has been worth all the hassle this year.

So yesterday I went shopping to look for some stuff to put in the new closet and office systems that are coming soon from Closet Factory. Tomorrow they come to install the new wardrobe and closet interior in the bedroom, and then next weekend they will do the office system. Dad came by today and brought me presents -- so typical of my dad. Amazon confuses him, so he writes stuff down from my wishlist and then goes to get it, but can't find it, so he buys something similar and it's always the thing I don't need. I love him, but he's not so good with that stuff. It doesn't occur to him that the things on a wishlist like electronics or something were chosen because of specific features that I needed, not so much because I just wanted them in general. So he gave me a nice new Motorola cordless phone, though I didn't need or want a second handset (for god's sake, my house is 700 square feet! And there's just me here!), and it has pretty much the opposite of all the features that I needed from the phone I did want. The labelmaker was miles away. It's very sweet, and very exasperating, and I love my dad, but he's such a guy.

And today it's been cleaning cat vomit and cleaning toilets and sinks and getting everything out of the bedroom for the closet installers. No haircut and color birthday special though, because my stylist cancelled due to snow, and then by the time dad left, it was too late to go to the cemetery without getting stuck in rush hour. I suppose not everyone celebrates by going to the cemetery, but I did want to leave something at sis_r's and mom's grave. I'm sure sis_r would understand though, and she'd laugh about dad's gifts if i told her since Dad's appliance obsession drove her nuts. I bought myself a new bag in her honor yesterday, since she'd have just talked me into it if she had been here to shop with me.