This was a Wednesday evening with not much needing to be done at home. So we went out to Applebees for dinner. The restaurant was very busy! We got there about 6:30 pm and waited for a half-hour before being seated. This is one of the better restaurants in town and we both enjoy the food. As usual, I ate too much (no room for dessert!) and waddled out of the restaurant.

Happy Twelfth Birthday, Michael! Congratulations, James, on the new job! Rabbit Rabbit, everyone.

I’ve been arranging for a business trip to Manila, Philippines. Originally I was going to leave next week on the 8th and return on the 18th. However, one of the key people that I need to work with over there had an urgent matter come up and would not be there during that time. So the schedule now is that I’ll leave on February 20th and return on March 1st. I have had a very nice pair of Bose noise cancelling headsets. These headsets have literally been used and abused for tens of thousands of airline miles. They are almost essential when flying (or when running the snowblower) to reduce all of the surrounding noise and make it possible to listen to music or movies at a reasonable sound level. They’ve broken a couple of times and have been glued and patched back together, with glue on top of glue and patch on top of patch. Well, last week after finishing up blowing the snow out of the driveway and walks, I managed to hook the cord from the headsets to my iPod and yanked the headphones off so they fell just right onto the cement and broke. This attempt to glue them back together ended up cementing too much stuff together, and the headsets finally bit the dust. With the impending trip, I ended up ordering online a new headset and shipped it 2nd day air so it would be here for the trip. It arrived safely yesterday, and now in plenty of time for the upcoming trip. I’ve also gotten my dental sleep apnea device as well. Hopefully I’ll be able to get some sleep on the flight over and back this time. The Manila trip is a long trip. My flight leaves Pocatello at 6:40 a.m. MST and I arrive in Manila at 10:20 p.m. the following day Manila time (or 7:20 a.m. the following day Pocatello time). In real time, I get up about 4 a.m. MST on the 20th and will arrive at my hotel in Manila 9:00 a.m. MST on the 21st for a total time of 29 hours from arising to collapsing. Getting a few hours of real sleep on the trip would be a great benefit. So, most everything is ready for a now-delayed trip. The routing this time will be Pocatello to Salt Lake City to Portland, Oregon, to Tokyo’s Narita Airport, to Manila and then back the same way.

We’re in a pattern of snow, melt, snow, melt. We’ve gotten what seems to be twice as much snow this winter as last winter. A really good storm that closed schools and businesses would be very nice! It’s been a long time since we’ve been snowed in!