We're still in Homer, but packing. We'll be leaving 11/1/01 for Tacoma on the "red eye" out of Anchorage early morning of the 2^nd, arriving around 5:30am. Now we're just making some last social rounds and making sure we've got everything packed up!

We've made it to Jim & Michell's (Jeanie's little brother and his girlfriend's) place in Tacoma, WA. Landed around 5:45a, hit the bus 6:15a, made it to their place, visited and ate a bit, and have been napping until 3:30p.

Called to get our Japanese Encephalitis imunizations, they'll be calling us back probably Monday.

Jeanie got to enjoy some Xmas fun (we'll be missing it in SE Asia), opening a gift from Jim & Michelle that was never sent (all the Miskelly siblings do it). Fully accompanied by holiday music even. I hear Michelle was diggin' it, the Xmas spirit began to posses her after Halloween.

Tom (Jeanie's Dad), will be coming in around 8:00p. Not sure what's up for us after that.

Wow, here we go, we're on our way!

Ah, vacation mode.

Michelle made an awesome lasagna that we ate on for two days, yum! We did our part to thwart the terroists and traveled on the Tacoma Narrows susspension bridge, and walked around Point defiance park. As Tom is retired Navy, we headed to the base in Bremerton, and checked out the decomissioned aircraft carriers, over 1,000 feet long. Amazing.

Sunday we went to the Art Institute of Seattle where Jim & Michelle are going to school. A well equiped facility, and we just spent some time leaching Internet access. The architecture around Seattle's downtown was fun to look at. We scored cheap produce at Pike Place Market, and Jeanie impressed her Dad with her new skill in identifying seafood (King and Dungeness crab, King salmon, and Halibut).

It's been a while since the last update, I'm naughty. It wasn't just a matter of being to busy, hopefully I will be cut some slack as my efforts were being redirected into weening myself from the laptop, and this investment should empower us when doing serious traveling.

I'm proud to say I bring you this posting from my PDA! I have roughly demonstrated web browsing, web page composing, file uploading, manipulation of images from Jeanie's digital camera, and most necessary email functions. For the geeks reading this, I'll fill you in with the details in a later post. There are still some issues to work out, but my Graffiti sure has improved!

The Thanksgiving lowdown. We actually had two this year. The first was with Jeanie's folks before they left last Saturday. We had some great eats, Michelle struck again!

On Thanksgiving Day, Jim and Michelle were invited to share the holiday with us and Dave's family. We stopped by Andy and Joan's (Dave's Uncle and Aunt) before heading to his Grandparents. We saw Judy, Mike and Jack (He says "Hi" to Adam and Zak), and watched Drew open gifts early from Kris and family. She got some great sparkly pants (she's turning 3), and a toy vacuum cleaner, which for some reason Al thought would be great. And against our better judgement of what's an appropriate gift for a girl in the 21^st century, she loved it!

Jeanie wasn't sure what to expect on her meeting Grandpa. As she met each of Dave's family the question would arise, "Have you met Grandpa Rudy?", and then a burst of laughter. The actually meeting was of course nothing scary, and Jeanie, Jim, and Michelle, were taken in with hugs and sincere words of welcome. Gramps said we can have whatever we want, so long as we start with an eggnog each. What eggnogs! Gramps mixes them a little strong, and for those who aren't as seasoned drinkers as our hosts, it was quite the start to the evening.

We had a great time, catching up with the cousins, playing ping pong, pool, video games, piano, oh yeah, and ate very well.