RSS-Subscribers: It's Redirect Time!

Hello!

I'm writing this one last post in the Blogger version for those who RSS-feed or e-mail subscribe to this blog.  You will need to adjust your feed to my new URL:

http://www.thevollmerfamily.com/MajorMom/

I'm not sure how many of my readers link to this site elsewhere, but you can save a few seconds if you change your link to the above URL.  If you choose not to adjust your links, that's okay, I got the Blogspot page to automatically redirect, but it'll take 5-8 seconds or so.

If you have an e-mail subscription, you will have to stay tuned while I troubleshoot my Feedburner status.  I'm trying to migrate it smoothly, but it isn't working out so well.

Thanks for your patience!

Happy New Year! It's Resolution Time....Again....

Happy New Year everyone!  Our family had a fun weekend celebrating with friends and some folks from Dave's squadron.  One of his senior NCOs was promoted this week, so he had double reason to celebrate!

As usual, it's time for everyone to come forward with their resolutions.

"I will eat less and exercise more!"

"I will stop using foul language!"

"I will stop spoiling my children!"

I've tried 'em all.  Yet here I am, seemingly no different at the end of the year than I was at the beginning.  One of the very first posts on this particular blog was about the New Year's resolution.  Why use January 1st as an excuse to institute change?  If you want to change, just start changing, right?

This year, I resolve to better manage my time and stop wasting evenings.  I have started vegging in front of the TV and computer more and more after the kids go to bed, when that ought to be more valuable time to get productive stuff done.

In 2008 I had started knitting and crocheting more after the kids went to bed, and since we moved to Florida I'd been doing less of it -- I think the warm weather has something to do with it, but it's now wintertime and I need to get going again.  It's so much more productive than just staring at a screen all evening.


Who else made resolutions?

NaBloPoMo FAIL

Why I FAILED to post yesterday, and thus FAILED at the NaBloPoMo contest for this year.

1.) I was playing Glitch quite a bit on Sunday.  I was trying to earn enough money for a super-big new house and that took about 3 hours of my day.

2.) I was busy with Cub Scouts.  Timmy's den took a hike at the Naval Live Oaks nature area and then I spent some time catching up with planning afterwards.  Here's a picture to enjoy!

After our hike we did leaf rubbings with discussed the kinds of trees we saw.

3.) Dave's parents took us to a nice dinner at one of the family's favorite restaurants, Mandarin Moon, in Gulf Breeze.

4.) I have a lot of TV to watch on Sunday nights!  Amazing Race, Dexter, and Boardwalk Empire are all on!  Typically I do my blogging during TV time in the evenings, but last night I think I was vegging more than usual.

5.) I just plain forgot.  It had crossed my mind to write more about the Naval Live Oaks hiking, but simply didn't get to it.  I might still later today, I have some nice pictures from other times we'd been there, yesterday I only got a couple pictures.

November NaBloPoMo -- My Attempt to Post Daily for 30 Days...

Today I added my name...my blog...to the rolls of the National Blog Post Month list, brought to you by BlogHer.com.  Feel free to join in...

I have a lot of talk about this month, including updates on Dave's post-surgery recovery, which should make this easy to do.  Even if I just take an iPhone picture and e-mail it to the blog (which I've done before), I can meet this goal!

By signing up I apparently have a chance to win some prizes.  I'll let you know if I win -- I have to be actually blogging daily in order to get the prize.

Pay No Attention, Nothing to See Here....

This is just a filler post to run a fun little experiment.  I am going to compare RSS Graffiti with Networked Blogs and see which syndication posts to my Facebook page faster.

I'm leaning towards keeping RSS Graffiti because it didn't require the widget on my site, nor did it require me to pick 5 blogs to follow like Networked Blogs does (note -- I proceeded with the registration after only selecting two blogs to follow: Fotomom and Sergeant Major Mom).  If I keep Networked Blogs I will add more to follow.

Howie - Our Photographic Challenge!

Photo by Fotomom.

While Maryann AKA Fotomom was here visiting last week she took a really sweet picture of Howie in our kitchen.  After she got home this week, she took some time to dress up the picture and wrote a lovely blog post about him and how she made the great picture!

Photographers have been challenged many times with Howie.  Here are a couple of the not-so-great professional family pictures with Howie.

November 2002.

October 2005.

Howie does a good job with sitting still and letting the camera do his thing (hint: just say the magic word, "WALK?" and he'll look right at you attentively!), if only he showed up better-looking...Maryann got it right by taking advantage of the white-colored setting.

Google+: Good Idea or Bad Idea?

I use that line with my kids a lot when they're making questionable decisions.  If one of them is feeding grass clumps to the dog, I'll ask "Good idea?  Or bad idea?"  Usually that's enough to make them think before continuing.

I got a (not-quite sanctioned) invitation to join Google+, Google's new social network, last week from GeekMom Jules.  Several of us GeekMoms have been checking out the assorted Google+ features, from the photo sharing, to the statuses to the "Hangout" area where you can web chat with other Google+ users.  The privacy settings are very likeable (default privacy is "no one can see much", seemingly the opposite of Facebook's privacy where the default is often "everyone can see everything unless you manually change that").

Anyway, in terms of the social network, I think Google+ is on the right track for a smoother-running social network than Facebook.  I'm hoping it doesn't get overrun by corporate pages and multi-player games the way Facebook has in recent months.

However, I'm sitting here with a clenched jaw waiting for the kinks to get ironed out of the other Google products that are supposed to nicely tie into Google+.

A couple days ago it was published that Google will be rolling their Picasa and Blogger brands into their own names, and with it will come some more tie-ins to Google+.

I've been slowly-but-surely uploading and sharing my vacation pictures in the middle of this transition and was faced with some difficulty sharing my Picasa albums with my family.  What I have typically done is upload the photos to Picasaweb with captions, then e-mail the album to myself.  Finally, I forward that album to a pre-set list of friends/family.  This week I attempted to e-mail the album to myself and nothing happened after hitting that "Share" button.

Actually, something did happen: the album posted to my Google+ news stream.  Because my e-mail address was tied into my Google+ account, some assumption was made that Google+ news stream is somehow equivalent to an e-mail inbox.  I managed a workaround by using a non-Google+ enabled e-mail address that I have.

But then when I tried to share the photos with my pre-set friends/family e-mail list, several of them couldn't see the pictures unless they had their own Google.com login/passwords.  This used to not be the case and it's very upsetting that my parents (among the main audience for my family's photos) can't easily see the pictures anymore.

Similarly, this morning I discovered that several pre-sets in my Blogger (soon to be Google Blogs) account were reset without my knowledge.  I used to have 10 e-mail addresses who'd receive automatic copies of my blog posts when published.  Who knows how long they hadn't been receiving them.  Chances are they missed most of my vacation posts....

Thanks for letting me vent...I'm hopeful that Google is taking in everyone's feedback (including this post) and will be sympathetic to those who don't necessarily want a Google.com login/password to enjoy the Internet.

Our Guests for the Week...And My Favorite Sign

This week we have friends from North Carolina visiting: Maryann (AKA Fotomom), Joey and Johnny.  Jacob and Joey were in the same preschool from 2005-2008 and were two peas in a pod, while Timmy and Johnny were best buddies as the respective little brothers.  We took dozens of great road trips together!

Joey and Johnny obviously knew about the trip (they were getting on a plane, how could they not?) but we kept the visit a big surprise from my boys until they saw their friends in the baggage claim area at Pensacola Airport last night.

Johnny couldn't get over how short Timmy's hair is!

It took Jacob a few minutes to sink in that his friends are really here!

On the way back from the airport, I gave Fotomom a challenge: to photograph the famous Pensacola Beach sign in the dark.  I slowed down the truck to about 30 mph and Maryann gave it a shot with a "sports" setting on her Canon camera.  I love it!

It's so incredibly gaudy I LOVE IT!  Photo: Maryann G. (Fotomom)

I love that sign because it reminds me of Vegas.  The yellow emblem's lights radiate outwards, and the lights in the words "Pensacola Beach" sparkle.

It reminds me of those old-fashioned Holiday Inn signs:

Road Trip 2011: A Test and a Cute Picture

This is a test to see if my e-mail customers are getting my posts.  Meanwhile enjoy this picture of the boys shoveling coal at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania:

Ironing Out A Few Kinks...

This is a test post, just trying to iron out a few kinks as I get that Facebook page running.  I'm trying out a couple of different RSS-feed capabilities, and whoever's is fastest with transferring posts from Blogger to Facebook wins :-)

All in The Name of Laziness...

At the risk of sounding megalomaniacal, this evening I started a Facebook page expressly for this blog.  I didn't mean to, it just sort of happened...and while on vacation, at that!  Facebook made some changes over the past few months about how a "Group" or "Fan Page" is used and managed...in addition, RSS feeds into my own personal page have fallen apart earlier this month.  I used to have automatic Facebook profile notifications when I'd post to Picasaweb, You Tube and Blogger.  None of it happens automatically anymore...

"Oh no, Major Mom has to do work?  Stop the world!"

What motivated me to do it this weekend?  I tossed out a couple of quick posts over the weekend about Dave's Father's Day ode on GeekMom and his feature article in N-Scale Magazine.  For some reason, the Twitter connection that posts new blog posts straight to Facebook (in the form of a shortened URL like this one) automatically decided to send the same post every hour for 4 hours to Twitter...and therefore to Facebook.

I didn't mean to be so spammy, really, I didn't!

Therefore, because I was hit with a double whammy of (a) no more Blogger post imports and (b) multiple notifications of the same blog post from Twitter, I set up a page that expressly imports my blog posts, and the only people who will see those blog posts on Facebook now are those who "Like" the page.  If you are on Facebook, you should be able to see the tag on the right hand side inviting you to "Like" the page (if you haven't already).  If you aren't on Facebook, then I guess all you see is a Facebook.com logo.

In addition, I added a "Tweet This" type of widget to each of the posts.  It's right before the first words of the post.  If you like what you read, then if you have a Twitter account, you can share it via Twitter.  Go ahead, Tweet it!

I've been realizing that Facebook and Twitter, being the microblogs they are, doesn't have a user-friendly archive capability.  Try paging back in time on your profile page and see how far back you can go...it'll go back a ways, but in my case you only see about 2-3 days worth of posts at a time.  You have to click "Older Posts" over...and over...and over...and over....

Compare that to this blog, where you can easily search posts by year, by month, by label topic, or a generic keyword search.  You can page back all the way to the beginning quite easily.

PS: I'm also writing this to test how quickly it'll import to Facebook.  I get the feeling it still isn't quick...

Happy Belated Father's Day!

Happy Belated Father's Day to any of my Dad readers!  We were happy to get to spend time with Dave's Dad early in the day at Dave's family reunion in Pennsylvania, then we drove down to my parents' house in West Virginia in time for dinner with my Dad.

Earlier in the week GeekMom solicited the writers for some posts for Father's Day. I was encouraged to write one about Dave's model railroading and the project he'd been doing with Jacob.  It was shown over at GeekMom on Father's Day!

With Dave's recent N-Scale Magazine article (on the shelves right now!) and this week's talk at the N-Scale Convention in Hershey, PA, it was appropriate to show off a little about him!

MilSpouse Friday Fill-In #45

I'm tickled about two things about this week's Friday Fill-in:

a.) I'm typing this while we're cruising up I-65 between Montgomery and Birmingham, AL.  I schedule it to post on Fridays, but I usually write these up on Thursdays as soon as "Wifey's" questions come in.  We got one of those nifty Verizon 4G modems so Dave can do homework with a cellular network connection while we're driving.  However, he's the one driving right now, so I have a chance to catch up on e-mails and blog posting!

b.) Look who submitted question #3 below!!

1. Underwear Parties, how old is too old? submitted by Wookie & Co.

As long as you wear -- ahem -- underwear, then Underwear Parties should be fair game.  It's all in fun!

2. What was your favorite class in high school? submitted by Adventures of M-Squared

Geometry, pre-calculus, calculus, and music.  I actually really liked my AP U.S. History class too, although at the time I thought it was torture.  Looking back, it turns out I learned a LOT from Mrs. Whaley.

3. Have you ever convinced packers/movers to pack something they aren’t supposed to for a PCS? submitted by Ground Control to Major Mom

Snicker.  With a nice enough tip for the movers, we've been able to convince packers to take care of our liquor for us more than once.  This was easy coming from Korea (our best move ever!).  We bought two cases of wine from Trader Joe's just before we left Nebraska last fall.  The packer was happy to pack those cases for us :)

We've also had a lot of typically-illegal items packed accidentally: light bulbs, filled piggy banks, batteries in remote controls, etc.  When your kids' GeoTrax stuff requires over 50 batteries alone, it's hard to keep up....

4. Blogging plays a growing role in the media. If you were asked to embed as a blogger with a deployed military unit, would you go? What do you think your blog would be like? submitted by To the Nth

I think I would love to go -- if the military unit thought I was appropriately trained to be with them.

5. Do you think kids should attend year-round school? submitted by Marrying the Navy

This issue hit us closely when my husband was stationed in Raleigh, NC (for a school tour).  In 2007 Wake County Public Schools made year-round schools the standard instead of the exception and we were making decisions about our oldest son starting Kindergarten while we were living there.

If we weren't a military family, we'd be all for year-round schools.  There are a multitude of educational benefits to year round schooling, but I have to admit that as a military family, I like having the summer break as a chunk of time to PCS without worrying about mid-year transfers and missed schoolwork.

Year round schooling is also nice for vacation planning -- 3 week breaks in the "off months" helps vacation planning: cheaper travel, less heat, less crowds.

Another Guest Post

I guess good recipes travel fast!  I was delightfully surprised when one of Brandie @ The Country Cook's friends, Laurie @ Feeding My Ohana, contacted me about how excited she was to see a non-commercial simple Huli Huli Chicken marinade recipe at The Country Cook a couple weeks ago.  Laurie tried it and gave it a thumbs up!

Last Wednesday she featured the recipe, with a summary of my two blog posts from Memorial Day weekend 2009, on her blog.  She graciously omitted the chicken mutilation pictures, lol!  She added a key part to the recipe that I'd been forgetting about all these years: Shouting "HULI!" when you turn the chicken on the grill.

You can't forget to do that!

Celebrity!

My dear friend Brandie at The Country Cook has a surprise waiting for us this morning!  My first ever guest-blog-post!  The Country Cook is fun because each of Brandie's recipes has a great story to go along.  I had the PERFECT recipe to add to her blog and was so excited to get to share it!

Blogger Problems, But Here's a Pretty Gardenia

UPDATE: Whatever is going on is related to my Safari browser. So here I am using Firefox and everything seems fine. Phew!

Apparently my Blogger account (not Google account, just the Blogging part of it) is having some problems, so I will be attempting to do some blogging via e-mail, which is the only way I know how to get posts in at the moment.

This won't look very good, and I don't know how many pictures I can incorporate this way.
Until Blogger figures out which way is up...we'll muddle along.

Coming soon...black-velvet slugs, garden updates and the CREPE MYRTLES are starting to bloom!
I'll leave you with this pretty picture of a gardenia from my garden that I took last week just before I headed to Nebraska.

To My RSS Subscribers...

Note: If you don't know what RSS is, it's short for "Really Simple Syndication".  It's a mechanism for having one's blog posts delivered to your inbox, Google Reader or other web syndication tool.  This keeps you from having to visit a webpage every few days.  My new posts can be handed to you on a silver platter!  I RSS-subscribe to about 20 blogs this way and it's great!

I want to apologize to my RSS subscribers in case you had every one of my 500+ blog posts pushed to you over the past 2 weeks as I'd been updating the "labels" on each post.  On 99% of the posts, there were no changes to the post itself, I just added a label or two, that's all.  On those that might have had edits, they were probably to clean out some dead links or freshen up some pictures.

Perhaps you're wondering "What is a 'label'?"  Well, at the bottom of this blog post (right under the time stamp) you'll see one: "blogging".  If you click on that link for "blogging", you'll find all the blog posts that I've labeled as such.

I didn't do this before and recently I've started to regret it.  I have so many smart-ass and punny blog titles that don't help sum up the topic of what I'm writing about.  I was looking for a blog post about Howie's recent injury and the title is "Oops He Did It Again".  (Not to be confused with "Oops I Did It Again" which was about Jim Cantore and The Weather Channel).  That title didn't help me find the post very well, but now that it's labeled "Howie", it'll come up when I do a search.

This will also help me when I'm searching for birds I've blogged about, or flowers, or our travels.

It'll help you too if you have a reason to refer to my blog.  If you only want to subscribe to my blog for certain labels (if you're only interested in my cooking or my moving antics), you can follow these directions.

With the labeling I'm able to bring a couple new features.

I installed a new widget called LinkWithin, which brings you relevant blog posts at the end of each of post.  The labels help the web crawler tool find the relevant posts more easily.

Another feature on the right hand side is the "Label Cloud".  You might have to scroll down a little to see it.  The most relevant labels are sized by how many of each post there is.  I like how it gives an idea of what topics I cover the most.  Click any one of those links and you'll be presented all blog posts with that particular label.

Finally, if you don't do so already, there's a means for you to subscribe to my blogposts via e-mail.  The subscription box is in the upper right.  If you choose to subscribe via this tool, it's anonymous...I only know how many subscribers I have, not who they are.

I need to thank Brandie at The Country Cook for some of the ideas I stole.  I had a pretty innovative blog back in the day when I first started things, but I guess I fell behind with the times.  I finally took the time to play a little catch up!

My First-Ever Blog Post, Revisited!

...which wasn't on this blog.

It was on MySpace in July 2006.

that's just the link to one blog.  To see everything I wrote between July 2006 and August 2007 -- I stood up this Blogger.com blog in December 2007 -- use this link and select the "More" button at the bottom of the page until you get to July 2007 posts.

I'm guessing most of you won't care, and that's okay.  I barely care myself.  I hadn't been to MySpace in quite some time and it's way different  now.  In fact, it's not even really "MySpace", but "My_".  Really???  I connected my Facebook and Twitter accounts to it -- so it isn't sitting absolutely dormant, but really I don't pay that site much mind anymore.

Enjoy!

My Blog Before the Blog: Some Memories of the Apex Chlorine Fire...

Today I was uploading recipes to the Pioneer Woman's public cooking website: Tasty Kitchen. A pretty neat website -- like a Facebook for amateur cooks. Or Ravelry.com, which is a community for yarn craftsmen.

Anyway, one of the recipes I had uploaded was the Linguini Salad that I make for pot lucks and picnic. I wanted to add a picture, so I was scouring this blog, my picture libraries and old Facebook posts for one of the beautiful close-up pictures I've taken of that salad, which is very handsome with all the colors.

So far, no luck, but one of the things I ventured across were my old My Space Blog Posts, still out there for the world to see! My first post was in July of 2006, and discussed my boys fighting and arguing all the time. Lovely.

But of note, I am going to cut and paste the narrative I wrote about our Apex Chlorine Fire evacuation experience. That was fun to read, and I'm glad I recorded the event and it's still available for me to share with you on this particular blog.

Enjoy!

Sunday, October 08, 2006

Dave and I have oftentimes joked that there's some sort of weather disaster that's happened in every place we've lived since we've been married.  Ice storms, tornadoes, 100-year monsoon flooding events, and (most recently for us) 4 hurricanes to strike FL in one season.  Granted, a toxic chemical fire forcing mass evacuation isn't a weather disaster, but we're thinking we need to add it to the list of wackiness that seems to plague the Vollmers at least once during each PCS/military move.

If you've been living in a bubble, there was a large explosion at a hazardous waste treatment facility in an industrial park near the center of Apex, NC.  That explosion led to numerous fires and subsequent explosions as the fires spread to other hazardous material storage units.  The fire started around 10:30pm Thursday and was fully extinguished overnight Friday night/Saturday morning.

First and foremost, know that we're all okay...we were given permission to return to our homes at 9am this morning and we were among the first to go through the entrance to our development at 9am on the nose.

Our house is about 2/3 mile from the building pictured above.  We could easily see the smoke from our front porch.

We heard several of the explosions while Dave and I were watching ER on TV Thursday night, and we also heard wave after wave of fire and police sirens...but it wasn't till the 11pm news that we learned that there was a potential chlorine gas cloud floating around over Apex.

Dave and I had to act quickly...rumors were rampant, and Dave and I did some quick checks of wind conditions around Apex to see if we were in more or less danger.  That was hard to do because at the time there was a cold front just to the north of the area and winds were quite erratic throughout just ahead of the front.

By 11:30, Dave and I decided to leave.  By this time, they deemed everyone in a 1 mile radius should leave their homes.  As the crow flies, our house is well within 1 mile.  So I called every phone number I know in the neighborhood, alerting them to turn on their TVs and decide whether they were going to leave.  Most of those families I had called were actually outside the 1 mile radius...so for them (at the time) it would have been more precautionary.

Dave and I threw some snacks, coloring supplies, diapers/wipes and empty sippy cups in a laundry basket with a couple of blankets.  We quickly loaded up the kids, dog, Pack n' Play, jackets, dog food and hopped into the family van.  At the last second I quickly grabbed the NC State parking pass from Dave's car and put it in the van's window.  Good thing we did.

So we drove over to Dave's office.  He had a key to the building and his office so we got everyone inside and put the kids back to sleep.  We put Jake on some blankets on the floor of the office, and for Timmy we planned to just let him sleep in his stroller.  Jake was taking the whole thing very well, doing what we were asking him to do without argument (lately that's been rare).  He was really tired, though, and I'm sure that was a factor.

Dave wasn't too keen on our going to his office because there was no TV anywhere that he could access.  But he quickly found that WRAL, the CBS affiliate, was maintaining live webcast of the news coverage, which was constant without commercials until at least 4am.  At one point the chief meteorologist, Greg Fishel, came on and was giving a forecast of how winds were acting around this cold front passing through overnight and mentioned that he didn't have "air quality" experience so he couldn't speak to the characteristics of the chlorine gas cloud and how it would act under the existing wind conditions.

I recommended that Dave call up WRAL and ask Greg Fishel is he could use some help from someone with experience in chemical downwind forecasting.  Dave and Greg know each other through our alumni association, and the two have played in a little band our chapter has.  So Dave called up the switchboard and offered up his services.  They spoke extensively on the phone, then Dave offered to come by the station (next door to NC State…about a 5 minute drive).

Dave was at WRAL from about 1-3am Thursday morning.  He didn't go on the air and he made the point of calling himself a grad student with Air Force experience.  He didn't want the media to think he was some sort of official Air Force forecaster for this matter.  Good call.  Greg Fishel mentioned that he had an "air quality" expert on hand to help him.  Even though he wasn't really air quality, at least he wasn't dragged in front of the camera!

Not long after we arrived, we quickly hopped onto Marriott.com and made a hotel reservation for Friday and Saturday night, just in case.  If things were bad beyond Saturday, I knew we could all go up to my Mom's house, about 3 ½ hours from here.

Right after Dave left for the station, Timmy woke up.  And was like a tornado through Dave's office!  He shares the office with many other grad students and Timmy was wanting to climb up into chairs and play with the computers.  NO Timmy!  NO Timmy!  NO Timmy!  So for 2 hours I was trying to keep Timmy off the computers while at the same time convince him to go back to sleep.

When Dave returned I strapped Timmy right back into the van and drove around a bit—at about 3:15 he fell back to sleep.

So I got back to the office, put Timmy on the floor next to Jake, and tried to sleep on the floor with the boys.  We didn't bring many blankets and I ended up using them on all the kids, so I was just trying to sleep in jeans, a t-shirt and a short jacket…the clothes I was wearing all day Thursday.  Couldn't do it.  I was SO COLD!  So after about ½ hour, I went out to the van and tried to sleep on the bench seat at the back of the van.  It wasn't as cold but it was far less comfortable.  I was able to sleep from 4am – 6:45.  Dave came out to the van to tell me the kids were stirring and we'd have to get a move on quickly.  Just as Dave was walking out, my cell phone was ringing.

PART II

It was Lisa Coleman, an Air Force friend who teaches AFROTC on campus.  She offered us the use of one of her classrooms if we needed the space.  It turned out I didn't have anywhere to go while Jake was at preschool.  So that was a very gracious offer!

Dave, by the way, didn't sleep a wink that night…he had to even give his jacket to the boys while they slept, he was too cold to try to sleep.  He stayed up all night surfing the web and even set up a Facebook page.

So the family went to Chick-fil-a for breakfast, then I dropped off Jake at preschool, then Dave back at his office on campus.  After that it was a short little jog to main campus.  This is where the last-minute parking pass came in handy…I could park right across the street from the AFROTC detachment and zip right in.  Lisa met me at the parking garage and we were quite the sight on campus – not many people walking around with dogs and toddlers in a stroller.

Lisa put us in the classroom with a DVD player and I watched a program about the rise of China's middle class while Timmy played with a pen and a stack of recycled paper.  Howie (the dog) was with us, too.  We stayed over there about 2 hours and Timmy was pretty well behaved the whole time.  When he ran out of paper to draw on he helped himself to drawing on the tabletop…

While we were in the classroom, another one of the instructors, named Capt. Don Land, stopped by to invite the family to use his apartment in Cary while he and his wife were out of town for the weekend.  What a wonderful invitation!  We made some arrangements, and it was nice to have plans for a roof over our heads through Monday, if necessary.

After I left the AFROTC detachment, I was able to go back to pick up Jake and then make a trip to Walmart.

Earlier Friday morning, Dave and I had to make a small shopping list of provisions we HAD to have to endure another day with just the clothes on our backs.  Luckily, I had thrown my travel toiletry kit in the van, and I always keep activities for the boys in the van in case we end up at the emergency room or something.  The toiletry was pretty good, but I realized Friday morning that some items were missing, like deodorant.

Anyway, one of the things we were going to have to come up with underwear for everyone.  Sigh…we also picked up diapers for Timmy, fleece PJs for the boys (it was in the 60s Thursday night, the low 50s Friday night), a brush, comb, toothbrush for Jake, water, caffineated soda and some coloring stuff for the kids.  It wasn't too bad, I guess.  I noticed that the choices in men's underwear was pretty slim.

By this time, the press conferences we were seeing on the news weren't offering us much hope.  I figured with what we had we could last till we got to my Mom's house…except for more changes of clothes.  My Mom had been calling several times making sure everyone was okay, and in one of the conversations she offered that my sister Margaret would have some clothes that would fit my boys.  Two of her sons are 2 ½ and 5, so they're each one year older than my two kids.  Meaning their clothes would be a bit big, but certainly tolerable in public.

So it's now about 2pm Friday, the media is telling us things like "residents need to be prepared to spend 2-3 days away".  I had a phone number for the County Emergency Management that I could call at anytime and check the status of returning home.  I probably called them about every 3 hours checking.  And I'm with the boys and dog, still looking for something to do.  Most of my local friends are scattered to the winds, and obviously we can't just go to someone's house…most of Jake's friends also live in the parts of Apex that had to evacuate.  So I went to the local mall for a walk.  My sister works at the mall, so it was convenient that I could talk to her and ask about clothes for the boys.

So we went to Crabtree Valley Mall in northern Raleigh.  My sister works at a "Calendar Club" franchise so I went to say HI to her and we chatted for a bit.  Timmy was fast asleep in his stroller, and Jake enjoyed looking at calendars…particularly the dog calendars.  Margaret pointed out how many other people were wandering through the mall – zombie-like – wearing clothes that resembled pajamas.  So many families were unearthed later than we were – many at 2-3am!

After visiting with my sister, we left the mall, picked up Dave at school and decided to have an early dinner, which was really an attempt to buy a bit more time for the authorities to decide to let us back into our homes.  In the back of my head I figured someone might foot the bill for this inconvenience, so I asked if we could go somewhere nice, even though the family was gross and stinky from not having showered yet since Thursday morning.  We headed to Macaroni Grill in Cary…we went early enough that (for once) there was no wait and we made it through there in minimal time.

Afterwards we headed over to Don and Lindsay Land's apartment for a brief tour, and to pick up a key.  We agreed that we'd use their apartment starting Saturday morning, if the authorities still weren't letting us come home.

And after ALL THAT…we placed another call to the County Emergency Management and we were once again told – no, we can't go home yet.

So we checked into the Residence Inn in North Raleigh, got the kids much-needed baths, enjoyed nice hot showers and immediately went to bed!

As soon as Timmy's howling woke us up at 7:40am Saturday, I called the County Emergency Management number and got great news: our neighborhood would reopen at 9am Saturday!  Whoo hoo!

Let me tell you…the family wasted NO time eating breakfast, throwing everything willy-nilly into the car and speeding back to Apex.  We rolled through the entrance to our neighborhood at 9am on the nose…many other cars were returning as quickly as possible, too.

It was great to be home, but it was a short trip home – at 10:30am I had to leave with the boys for not one, but two birthday parties.  We were gone till 8pm…and we returned a little early because Timmy got 2nd degree burns on the palms of both his hands and we needed a trip to the emergency room.  But that's another story….

In closing, we have phone numbers to call for EQ Industries if we're interested in getting reimbursed for our "inconvenience".  I think we could get back about $200 in the hotel and meals, and perhaps even that new underwear!

Thanks to Lisa Coleman, John and Bethany Hong, Don and Lindsay Land and the Baba Family for their gracious offers for us to stay at their homes.  I'm glad we didn't have to impose – we can be quite the zoo!  Also, thanks to the dozens of people who e-mailed us upon realizing, "Hey, I know someone in Apex!  Oh yeah, the Vollmers!"

Finally, we would like to thank Hurricane Frances, the source of our September 2004 evacuation that provided us the experience we needed to remain calm and organized during this recent adventure.

-Patricia

Oops, I Did It Again!

Well, it looks like my flapping of the gums has once again made it into mainstream media....

For those unaware, I had written a blog post about the USAF's "Above All" campaign of 2008.  It was a positive discussion about it, a little tongue-in-cheek at worst.  I think I make mention of videogaming teenagers perhaps being the target of some of the commercials.

Later that week, the Shreveport Times published an article about the ad campaign, and mentioned folks in the blogosphere approving the campaign and citing my blog as an example. I was flattered.

It happened again this week. My pontifications online have found their way into the hands of the media.

This time, it's regarding some of The Weather Channel's programming choices. And this time, it was via my Twitter feed.   I don't think this will sink any fleets.  In particular, on April 23rd, there was some significant severe weather forecast locally, and TWC proceeded in showing their "Flick and a Forecast" -- a weather themed movie, which that night was "The Avengers". I was really really mad about this. I had a few conversations on Facebook with people about it, discussing how these decisions are purely driven by the wants of the advertisers, who'd prefer to sell time for programs that keep the viewers on The Weather Channel for 30 minutes or more. "Your Local on the 8s" doesn't sell advertising.

On April 30th, severe weather was predicted again, and this time TWC elected to not show their Flick and a Forecast film in the areas impacted by the storms. Jim Cantore tweeted about this and I had replied that I thought that was smart of them.

Yes, I follow Jim Cantore on Twitter. I've always been a fan of his weather-weenie-ness, since I was a teenager.

Here's the article that came out yesterday. No, it isn't the New York Times or Huffington Post, and I have to give props to Dave's friend Britt King who found this...I'm not sure I would have known about it otherwise.

This certainly isn't a big deal, any more than anything, it's a reminder to Twitter users that your tweets are VERY public domain. Watch what you say -- it could end up in someone's blog a month later.