So now on to the rest of the stuff that has been going on this past week or so. As a somewhat ironic juxtaposition (tangent: every time I use that word I think of my 7th grade English teacher. It was a vocabulary word I just can't get out of my head.), as we were laughing our butts off at the comedy club, my grandfather was taking his leave. My dad called the house and my cell phone (which I had left at home) a little before we got home. We eventually connected to get the news I figured was coming.
Originally the funeral seemed like it would be the next weekend. This was fine with me as we weren't final for the month and I was still way behind because of the auditors. Then my dad called at about 4 on Friday afternoon to tell me the service was on Tuesday and we had to fly out Sunday afternoon. I managed to catch Katie and Mike right before he left for the day to give them the bad news. It was pretty much, "give us what you have and finish the rest when you get back." I stayed a little late to get as far as I could before I had to leave.
Adam got on the phone with my dad to make the flight and hotel arrangements. I admit I wasn't paying attention since I was feeding the cats and getting ready to go to dinner with my UWO acounting friends. Perhaps this is relevant. Up to intepretation I guess. He booked everything and we both left to go our separate ways for dinner.
Saturday was our party. I was busy from 7 until people showed up - and Adam's grandma and Sarah showed up an hour early. After everyone left I did a whole lot of dishes and managed to get everything cleaned up before heading to bed.
Sunday we were out the door before 10. We went down to Sheboygan Falls and picked up my dad and Cheryl. The drive to Milwaukee wasn't bad - nice that all the construction is done. We parked and went to check in. Here's where the fun began. All the Midwest computers were down - not just at Milwaukee, but nation-wide. So we couldn't check in online or at the kiosks in the airport. This meant there were lines. We got to an agent and he couldn't find our reservations. It took a minute and then he told us we had seats - on a flight on the 13th. We looked at our confirmation from Orbitz only to find that our entire trip - flight, hotel, and car - was booked for the 13-15th instead of the 6-8th.
So Adam got on the phone with Orbitz to try and get things changed. Now, I don't know who was to blame for the mix-up, and that's neither here nor there at this point, but Adam sure was the hero for getting things done. He was on the phone with some idiot from Orbitz for an hour and a half trying to get him to change our flight, hotel, and car. He was on hold for a great deal of that time and I can attest to the bad hold music. When he was told that the wait time for the Orbitz guy to talk to a Midwest rep was an hour and a half, my dad went to the agents at Milwaukee and thankfully they were sympathetic. The supervisor there switched our flights to the right weekend (without a change fee) and we moved on to security.
The lines there weren't bad, but Adam was still on the phone with Orbitz working on getting the hotel reservation changed and you can't go through security while talking on the phone. So we... loitered in the open area in front of the security lines. And it took a lot longer than I had expected for a guard to come over and ask us what we were doing. Finally Adam decided to chance it and put his phone - still on - in the tub and sent it through, hoping he'd still be on hold when it came back out the other side. Fate shone on us and that's exactly what happened. We made it through without a problem and headed to the gate. As we were boarding Adam got the confirmation that our hotel had been changed and the car had been cancelled. He booked a different car as we were sitting on the plane at the gate.
We arrived in Pittsburgh on time, deplaned, and headed to the rental car desk. We got the Hyundai Sonata Adam wanted, got situated, and headed to the hotel. We had decided to stay at the same hotel, the Super 8, that we had stayed at in August. It was decent and had good proximity to food and the places we'd be going. We got there only to find out that our reservation had been declined. There was some confusion - we'd booked through Orbitz, but they were trying to get payment from Priceline. While they tried to figure it out we went to dinner at Max & Erma's. About halfway through our meal we got a call from the hotel saying they'd fixed it and we were good to go. After we indulged in some of their famous fresh-baked cookies we went back to check in. For some reason, even though we had booked two of the same room, they had given us one king and one double room. Luckily the person working at the desk suggested that one of us take the handicap room since no one had requested it for the days we'd be there. We got to our rooms, dropped off our stuff, and headed over to Aunt Marilyn's house to visit with everyone for a little while before calling it a night.
Monday morning we met my dad and Cheryl downstairs in the breakfast room. It was unimpressive and Cheryl suggested we go to King's - she'd seen a TV ad that they had $3.99 breakfast meals. So we went back to the room for our coats and headed out. After a very tasty breakfast we headed to Marshalls - Adam was in search of a new pair of pants. While he was unsuccessful, I did find some cute Christmas socks. We then went back to the hotel to wait for Evan to arrive. His flight had been delayed in Cincinnati so we decided to go to lunch and wait for him there.
We stopped by Aunt Marilyn's house first to pick up my grandma's wheelchair and then went to Ichiban Japanese Steakhouse. Adam was pumped at the opportunity to have sushi again. I was happy to see they had forks. Evan arrived 10-15 minutes later and he, my dad, and Cheryl had hibachi while Adam had sushi and I had teriyaki chicken. After we were done Evan headed over to check into the hotel and take a shower (and, I suspect, a nap) and the rest of us headed to the funeral home.
The visitation was from 2-8, which everyone agreed was a long time. We stayed from 1:30 until a little after 4. I didn't know what I was supposed to be doing and I was just uncomfortable with the whole thing. I can't imagine what it must have been like for my grandma, but I sure as hell wouldn't want to spend 6 hours sitting next to a dead body. After we left we called my brother to make sure he could bring my dad and Cheryl back with him and then we took a nap and watched some TV. They returned around 8:45 and we went to Eat 'N Park for dinner. Cute place.
We met the next morning, checked out, and went to King's again for breakfast. Our waitress the previous morning had left halfway through our meal because she aggravated a knee injury. She wasn't there on Tuesday and apparently was out indefinitely. Yikes. After another nice meal we made a Starbucks run before heading out to the funeral home again. This time we were a little late, but still beat Aunt Marilyn. :)
The service itself was in the chapel. It began with a military service conducted by the local retired service members. They shot rifles and everything. I may not support what we're doing in parts of the world, but it's hard not to be moved when service people salute a fallen comrade. On the other hand, at the luncheon at Oakhill Church after the service, my grandma said that my grandpa would not have liked that part of the service. He was a veteran, yes, but he was drafted, he didn't volunteer, and his lack of discussion on the topic would seem to indicate his attitude toward his service days was not a positive one.
After the military part was done, my Uncle John officiated the rest of the service. Both he and Aunt Marilyn gave eulogies along with a short, but heartfelt addition from my Uncle Paul. My dad played the piano. It was tough, but for the most part uplifting. I've been lucky in life and this was the first funeral for a family member and only the third funeral I've attended, ever. I guess I just don't know how to react in these situations. It's hard to sit there and listen when my ideology is so different from the beliefs that make the whole thing bearable to most everyone around me. I respect what they need and I don't want to be disrespectful, but at the same time I can't say things I don't mean. It's a difficult thing.
Anyway. After the service I made myself useful by helping clean up the myriad of pictures and flowers in the visitation room. We got them all loaded into Lori and Dave's van. As we prepared to drive to the church for the lunch Adam checked our flight status. We knew the weather in Milwaukee was supposed to be evil, but when he said our flight was cancelled I initially thought he was joking. As my brother, dad, and Cheryl went to see where my great-grandparents were (and where my grandfather would eventually be - it was a private internment) Adam and I went to the church. When we got there he got back on the phone to try and reschedule our flight. All flights from PGH to MKE were cancelled on Tuesday so we were rebooked on the 6am flight on Wednesday morning. The church had wi-fi so Adam brought his laptop in so we could find a hotel for the night.
On the bright side, this bought us more time since we didn't have to return the rental car until 5pm. We were able to drive back to Aunt Marilyn's house after lunch and visit for a while again. We left, got back to the airport just in time to return the car, got a shuttle to the hotel, and checked in. We ordered in dinner from an Italian place and ate in the breakfast area of the hotel. We had wake-up calls for 3:30 the next morning. Harsh. We were in bed by about 9, checking the weather before we shut the TV off.
In all honesty, I didn't expect our flight to go on Wednesday morning. We were up before our alarm went off. I checked the weather online and when I saw everything in the Fox Valley had been cancelled I thought we were doomed. The flight status still said "on time" though so we took the shuttle to the airport, went through security (Adam had checked in online and printed boarding passes the night before at the church) and went to the gate. There was a plane sitting at the gate when we got there. The pilot showed up a few minutes later, looked out the window and said "that's not our plane." He got on his phone to figure out where the plane he was supposed to fly was. As he was talking, the bigger plane showed up and parked at the gate next door. Apparently the plane at our gate was one that came in from Milwaukee last night and didn't go back. It was about half the size of the plane we were on so apparently they couldn't fly back into bad weather with it. The pilot promised us he'd get us back. We boarded, squished into our seats (we had been lucky on the flight out - it hadn't been full and we'd each gotten our own seat) and took off. It was a bumpy ride, but it's a short flight so it was doable. We landed in Milwaukee in the rain. We could see snow on the side of the runways, but nothing too bad. We deplaned, found our car, and headed north.
Eventually we hit the dividing line between the rain and the snow. By the time we got to Sheboygan Falls it was nasty. The plows hadn't gotten to the road by Dad and Cheryl's house yet so we got stuck turning onto the street and then stuck again turning into their driveway. Adam managed to get back onto the street but got stuck a third time. We saw the plow at the end of the road and decided to try and clear the driveway enough that we could pull back in and then wait for the plow to clear the street. At least I think that was the plan. Unfortunately their one-stage snow blower was no match for the foot of snow in the driveway. We had barely made a dent when the plow went by, clearing the other side of the street. We then changed game plans and went to work un-digging the car. We figured we'd follow the path created by the plow to get back to the main (already plowed) roads.
It took a while (and a really big shovel) but we got the wheels cleared out. By the time we were back in business the plow had gotten all the way back down to clear out the other road leading to the highway. We danced around a little with the plow (it was long and had four blades) but eventually made it back to highway 23. Which sucked. 23 is always horrible in the snow. We ended up in the middle of a line of semis, which was nice because they made a path for us, but was scary because, well, what if someone started to slip? Luckily it was slow going, but we got back to Fond du Lac safely. Highway 41 was a vast improvement and even though it had started to snow harder and was windy, even the Butte des Morts bridge wasn't too bad.
It was being met with 5 feet of snow at the end of our driveway that topped this trip off. We parked in front of the house, climbed through the snow (seriously, up to my chest), and suited up for winter. It was particularly harsh in that we had had no snow up until this blizzard. We saw grass when we left. No grass showing now!
Adam had tuned-up the snow blower before we left so that was a good thing. I unpacked while he cleared the driveway. Took awhile. And it was snowing again when he came inside. I was supposed to be back at work, but with the way things were going I decided to just scrap that idea. We spent the evening catching up on some DVR shows and going to bed early. We'd been up at 2:30, you know.
Thursday morning was back to work - and the scariest email inbox ever. Add to that the dangling ends of month-end and various "urgent" requests. Both Thursday and Friday were crazy-busy. I considered going into work today, but ultimately decided my sanity was more important. I have vacation scheduled next Friday and all of Christmas week. Hopefully I'll be caught up by then.
So, thus ends the adventure that was our trip to PA. Adam has a theory: my grandpa was notorius for not liking to travel. Perhaps this horrible trip was his way of trying to make us hate to travel too. Maybe our flight cancellation was his way of giving us more time to visit with relatives, while ultimately getting us back to where we needed to be. Who can say? All I know is I never want to go on a trip like this again. It sucked.
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