Big storms blew through here last night starting around 3AM. That means the dogs were up. Libby is catching Snowball’s storm anxiety. G got up with Snowball and after about 30 minutes I was up and downstairs with Libby. That was after I had checked my email on my phone while in bed (bad habit, I know) and read this:

“Sooooooo… [one of the other guys on the trip] and I were going to go do some recon at the train station tonight to make sure we were able to be helpful and organized on Thursday evening.  On my way to pick him up I received a call from Amtrak letting me know that our train has been canceled. Apparently Minot is going to flood again later this week due to heavy rains and larger than normal water flows being released from Canadian dams.

[Wife] and I have been exploring alternate plans (again) and are expecting to hear back tomorrow [today, Tuesday] on availability and prices for charter buses.  When we were dealing with a similar situation two weeks ago this option was the most comparable in price, travel “style”, and duration.  We’re optimistic that we can find one.

Since the number of people participating in the charter bus directly affects the price per person, we’ll need to know tomorrow [today, Tuesday] whether this change in travel arrangement will impact your decision on traveling with the group.  Our family is still looking forward to traveling with all of you and is committed to providing a group travel option.

Our goal is to have a final decision on how the group is traveling by Tuesday night.  We’ll update you throughout the day as we hear from the various travel companies we contacted tonight as well as from all of you.

Feel free to contact us if you have any concerns.

Talking with G at 3:30 in the morning wasn’t that satisfying, I must say. I was looking forward to the train, not the least of which because we had paid extra for a sleeper and I knew I would arrive in a state resembling rested. If slept in a coach seat, not so much. And G would arrive with knees in good shape as well.

We could rent a car and drive across country but realistically that would add a couple of days (and hotel bills) on to either end of the trip. 1500 miles is a long way to go with just two drivers and a deadline. Even if we let DS2 drive through the straightaways, I’m not in the mood to drive the mountains with G. And unless we took an extra day (or two?) we’d be doing some of that driving at night. Not a good idea IMHO.

So, we have to realistically face the fact that we’ll be on a charter bus with 50 people we don’t know very well, at least half of whom are children and teens. Some of the children are as young as early elementary aged and at least one of them has behavioral issues related to Autism spectrum disorder.

The associate pastor weighed in from confirmation camp this morning and on Facebook said the trip was “going to be even more epic.” Yeah. That’s the word I was looking for. Epic.

And then we finally got a call from yet another person from Home Depot claiming the carpet failure at the townhouse was the dog’s fault but they would pay for an “independent” inspector to come out and decide what was the issue. I told G later that if they were paying for it he wasn’t independent. We should call our realtor and get the name of an inspector from him and pay for it ourselves.

The guy actually said “If you had told our sales people there were going to be dogs they wouldn’t have recommended this carpet. They are trained to recommend something else.” Oh really? Like something that doesn’t run after two months of wear? First, the salesperson never said that. Second, I think we did tell them there might be dogs. Third, when we picked the carpet we were just picking it “to sell the house” and we had no idea what the new owners would have or not have. Kids? Dogs? Ferrets? What does it matter? You should clearly label your inferior products for those people who want to throw away their money.

All that before 9:00 AM.

I’m working from home today to take DS2 to the orthodontist where they need to laser off some gum on a wisdom tooth. This poor kid has had braces on since the summer of 2006!

And I have the project from hell at work that I am doing my best to get to a point I can hand it off at the end of day Thursday and the project manager can finish carrying it “over the goal line.” That is unless we have to board the bus(es) earlier than Thursday evening. As I said, 1500 miles is a long way to drive.

So, I took half off a 5 year expired Lorazapam this morning to cope with this tsunami of anxiety. Even if it’s just the placebo effect at this point, something has got to give.