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2011-01-08 - 10:06 a.m. photo © 2011 by elaine radfordnatural fiber optic, ulexiteDH wants me to hold off on further cabbing excitements until he's re-worked the plumbing. No use taking a chance of damaging our fancy new set of wheels. I couldn't resist putting this Ulexite cab on the 1200, 3000, and 8000 wheels, though. This is natural fiber optic, a very soft stone indeed, and back in the day we didn't seem to have much success getting a good polish on very soft stones -- Mohs hardness 2.5 or thereabouts, methinks. Look at the shine on that puppy now! Delta published their "ATL weather waiver" because ATL is a pathetic airport and can't operate in any kind of weather. They hinted very, very strongly that you should re-book, although if you didn't and your flight was cancelled, they would send you a "full refund." Yeah, right. While a full refund for a non-refundable ticket is better than no refund, I really didn't want to give up the trip. I tried to get in touch with IMOM in a variety of frantic and frustrating ways but nothing works -- he stopped answering his phone five years ago, and he didn't decide to wake up and answer it today, his mom's phone is cut off so she can't run upstairs and yell at him, he didn't respond to text messages or email. Meanwhile, they were running out of available seats on the necessary flights. Finally, I had to make an executive decision. We could fly out Saturday and be sure of missing the snowstorm. But I couldn't be sure that I'd be able to get in touch with IMOM in time to let him know that we were leaving a few days early. (As it turned out, I have not been able to locate him, so if I'd taken the plane out this morning, he would have missed it for certain.) Or, we could fly out on our regularly scheduled day, but we'd have to leave 3 hours earlier so we could connect in a non-problematical airport. The risk here is that the storm might spread, and we'll still lose the trip, since we'll be leaving that day of the storm. But what else could I do? I decided to go ahead and re-book through the SLC connection. Time will tell if I made the right decision. Oh, and despite the weather waiver, when I tried to re-book (as they requested) through their website, they asked for more money, EVEN THOUGH THE CHANGE IS HELPING THEM OUT AND IS SUPPOSED TO BE FREE WITH THE WEATHER WAIVER. I finally had to call, and the poor agent I got on the phone had a lot of trouble getting the weather waiver put through herself, although she finally did., She said she had to get a special code, and she still had to run it twice, before she could change our flights for free. But she did it. Yay, you go, girl! Now I've still got to find IMOM and see if I can get him to the airport on time. Because I think he'll be more than a little bitter if I take off on the trip by myself.
some unnatural fiber optics -- ha ha, synthetic or manmade or whatever you like to call it -- so that you can compare them with their natural inspiration
All Rights Reserved, Copyright 2002-2017 by Elaine Radford
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