auntiemeesh | (no subject)

Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas! to those of you who celebrate. I hope you all have a wonderful day with family and friends gathered near.

*hugs to you all*

I've skimmed through my flist for the past few days, but I won't really be able to read everything until I get home. I do hope to go back and read all the holiday drabbles and Yule fics you've all written, but it will take a little while to get it done.

The GREs are done, my friends! Thank you to everyone who wished me luck. In this modern age of computers, you get an unofficial score as soon as you're done with the test, so I know roughly how I did. I got a 710 on the verbal and a 5-something on the math. I was so relieved that it was over 500 that I failed to take in the actual number, but I'll get scores sent to me in a few weeks. I won't get my essay scores until then. But it's done, done, done! *does a little dance of joy*

The test actually went a lot quicker than I expected. It's scheduled as a four hour test, so Lyda Pearl dropped me off and wandered over to a nearby mall to kill lots of time (Mr. P was supposed to come with us for this leg of the trip, but he and the girls were driving the micro car and it's brakes seized up, causing a ghastly smell of burned rubber to fill the air and he was forced to turn around and get the car fixed before continuing on to his holiday destination- although he did make it eventually). However, I zipped right through the test and was done in less than two and a half hours. LP and I wandered separately through the mall, her killing time and me vainly searching for her because I didn't have her cell phone number with me, lol, until we both headed back to the car to wait for the other, at nearly the exact same time! It worked out well.

Yesterday was a driving day. I drove the first hour or so, from Portland, ME to just over the New Hampshire border. The turnpike driving wasn't bad, except there are toll booths every so often (in PA, you pick up a ticket at the onramp and pay at the off ramp and don't have any booths in between- in ME, there are booths placed every so often along the turnpike and you pay at each of them). The booths proved a challenge for me with my lack of stick-shift driving experience. I failed to land anywhere near the toll booth operator at both of them, requiring lots of stallings and restartings to get where I needed to be and then move on, but I made it through in the end.

Most of the driving was in urban traffic (although traffic was unexpectedly light yesterday) so

lyda_pearl felt more comfortable being the one behind the wheel, and I was perfectly happy with that, so she did the majority of the driving. I think that I'll be able to do more the rest of the way, however, as we won't be driving through any more really big urban sprawl, at least for a good long while.

I saw something I'd never seen or even heard of before. Sundogs are way cool! I don't know how I'd never seen this before, or even heard of it, but it was so beautiful. I was very frustrated that our camera was packed away in the back. But it was just this little spot of rainbow about 22degrees from the sun. It lingered much longer than a regular rainbow would, and gradually grew bigger as we drove and the sun changed angles in relation to the clouds. I was wearing my sunglasses and the color showed up really strongly, but when I took my glasses off to see it directly, it was almost impossible, because it was too close to the sun to really look at. So pretty!

We were expecting it to rain the whole way, but we had blue skies and warm weather the whole way, with temps in the mid-50s. Not really winter weather, but neither of us minded, lol. We made it the Bee's by 5:30, in plenty of time for Potato Soup (a family Christmas eve tradition). Afterwards we went to Ant Bee's church, where she is in the choir and the handbell group, both of which made a truly joyful noise! Then it was on to a party hosted by a friend of hers, just a few doors down the street from her house, where we stayed until nearly midnight. By then

lyda_pearl and I were both practically comatose, so it was time to come home and go to bed.

Today is a day of rest, and spending time with the Ant Bee, and then the driving begins again tomorrow.

ani_no_mouse has a computer at work, but not at home, so I may not be back on line again much if at all, until I get home. So, you'll all get the long, involved story of our trip then. *g*