So, um, it turns out that someone living fairly close to Matt's mom has a wireless LAN set up and it's not password-protected. Which means it takes my computer all of about 2 seconds to hook in.

Yes, there are ways to tell that someone is using your wireless LAN -- but if you're tech-savvy enough to know how to use them, then you're well beyond tech-savvy enough to know you should put a password on it. And this is a highspeed connection, so I doubt they're even noticing a slowdown.

So I can get online, and provide some updates, and um... if you live in the Chicagoland area and you have a LAN named CKMHOME, well... thanks for the boost. And you might want to consider putting a password on that puppy.

Anyway, our Trip So Far:

Penny went beyond all expectations, hopes, and dreams on the trip yesterday.

She did not nap in the car on the way to the airport, as I'd hoped she would. But she didn't get too fussy while we waited in the airport for our flight, either. (She did get bored. But, hell, I got bored. We were there for over two hours, between the time we figured we'd eat up sitting in traffic and then didn't; and the flight being overbooked so they were looking for three people to voluntarily bump.)

Then we got on the plane and she was very excited about seeing the other planes out the window. She pitched a small fit when the flight attendant told me she had to sit in her seat and not on my lap for takeoff, but the waterworks turned off like a faucet as soon as I offered her a sucker if she'd sit nicely in her seat.

As soon as they told us we could turn our "portable electronics" on, I pulled out the laptop and started up Lion King. Penny mostly did her zombie trick of staring at the movie without blinking until it ended, though she did break eye contact occasionally to sip on her juice or eat the nuts I handed her.

Again, she got slightly restless for the end of the flight, but she remained in good spirits.

After we got off the plane, we had to walk from one end of O'Hare to the other, to get our bags. Penny walked at least 75% of that on her own two feet. (We did make her hold our hands, of course. But it was a huge improvement over having to carry the bags and her.) She was TOTALLY FASCINATED by moving walkways and especially escalators. If it wouldn't have meant abandoning our carryon, I could've entertained her for the whole forty-five minutes it took our bags to show up just riding the escalators.

She napped in the car on the way to Jill's, and then after some initial wake-up cranks (Penny wakes up slow, just like me, and is especially grouchy if she is woken instead of waking up on her own) she immediately glommed on to "Gwamma" as An All-Around Great Friend. Which, of course, won her many pony-points from Jill.

Not that many were needed. Check out this picture, which should give you some small idea of how excited Jill was for Penny's visit. Also, not shown in the picture is a sled, which she thought Penny might enjoy being pulled on. She'd stocked up on cheese and yogurt, and actually had *cookies* in the house. She'd also dug out an old wind-up kiddie record player (left over from Matt's childhood, I think) and a small stack of books.

Penny, by the way, fell immediately in love with The Very Busy Spider and has made me read it to her about twelve times already. Earlier tonight, just after dinner, she put off having ice cream so that she could flip through the book and tell me -- entirely unprompted -- what each animal was and what it said to the spider. I almost fell over in astonishment. Naturally, she has decided that it is my book to read to her. Stupid spiders.

Anyway, she went to bed late, but slept hard, until well after 7 this morning.

Today was rougher; she was kind of demanding and cranky all day, wanting to do things we didn't want her to do, and not wanting to do things we did want. Twoness. But it's not like she was at her worst, or anything. I suspect she was still just a little bit tired from yesterday's travel.

But she played in the snow with Matt and Jill (for the rest of the day, she kept begging/demanding/insisting, "SNOW PLEASE!") and was fairly cheerful despite boredom when we went to visit some friends that Matt has known since he was scarcely older than Penny is, now.

I don't know what we're doing tomorrow (though I'm certain we will be back out in the snow at least a couple of times). Saturday evening, I think we're going to Matt's sister's for dinner. Maybe? I'm not sure. I'm even less sure about Sunday; I was kind of assuming we'd pack up and go over to Matt's grandparents' place in the early afternoon, but Jill has a turkey in the fridge, and I expect she's planning for us to stick around to eat it. We'll see, I guess.

I'm refusing to try to plan ahead. It'd just make me grouchy when the plans got changed at the last minute. So mostly I'm trying to keep Penny from wrecking Jill's house entirely, and goofing off on the computer. Which is much easier, now that we've discovered an internet connection. :-D

I'll update again later, if I can... If I can't... Have yourself a merry little Christmas.