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My brother, who has a career in superscience, has created a self aware robot minion using a child's toy, simple electronics, suspicious programming know-how, and a Wii.
Fear it. Also fear Bob's inevitable path towards professional costumed aggression.
***UPDATE***
Bob's evil invention made Gizmodo! And probably a zillion other places by now.
So we got off the train, drove to Mom's house in Sequim, Washington, and got a good night's sleep after a long day of travelling. We spent the next week hanging out with Mom and Dad, seeing Bob for a few days, working (Doc has a huge job right now and worked all day every day and half the nights too... when you own your own business, the work is unpredictable), taking the dog for long walks in the forest, snoozing on the patio in the 65 degree sunshine, picking strawberries (44 pounds, from Cameron Berry Farm!), going in to town, going to the beach with the dog, buying fireworks from the Indian reservation down the road and shooting them off on the driveway on the 4th of July, eating lots and lots of Mom's delicious cooking and Dad's smoked brisket, seeing aunts and uncles and cousins and old family friends, shopping (thanks, Mom, for the new maternity clothes!), playing endless fetch with the dog, watching Jonny Quest with Doc and Bob, sitting wrapped in a blanket in front of the fireplace (yes, in July!), enjoying the smell of fresh fir trees and sweet grasses, and generally having a wonderful, relaxing time.
The weather was absolutely fabulous. We had a few days of rain and/or mist but the rest of the time was sunshine almost all day long. The temperature stayed around 60 or so on the rainy days, and might have reached 70 on the sunny days. Cool enough to need long sleeves in the shade!
Labels: Doc, family, vacation, washington
December has been an eventful month but I haven't been posting much. I extend my apologies to my two readers (who perhaps didn't even notice that I've been MIA, or perhaps were waiting with baited breath for my next genius missive).
In early December Doc and I went to Boston so I could go to the Web Design World conference (which turned out to be about 70% fantastic, which is a great ratio for a conference) and spend a couple of days with my brother Bob. We had a great time, in part because it was so cold and snowy. The city was decked out in twinkly colored Christmas lights that looked so pretty with the snowy scenery.
The first day that we spent with Bob, we'd planned to go to the science museum and aquarium but they both closed early because it was snowing. I thought that northerners could still function in the snow, but apparently not! We spent a long afternoon riding the subway around to our various destinations only to find out that they'd already closed down. Then when we got back to the car at the train stop a mile from Bob's apartment in Somerville, it took us about 90 minutes to get home due to incredible non-moving traffic. We ate pizza for dinner and Bob and Doc played Rock Band for a while.
Luckily Boston has a great snowplow system, so by the next morning the streets were clear enough that we were able to get ourselves down to the aquarium.
I wish we'd had more time to spend with Bob, but we had to leave the next morning. It was a lot of fun, though.
Over Christmas, we visited Doc's mom and grandmother and great-aunt and brother and sisters and their families in Derby (near Wichita), Kansas. That was a heck of a lot more people than I'm used to being around, but it was a lot of fun nonetheless. Doc's grandma Rose and great-aunt Pat are in their late 80s but sharp as tacks and very up-to-date on what's going on in the world. It was great seeing them again, and we plan to come visit more often now that they're closer to us than they were in Idaho for all those years. All our nieces and nephews (most of whom are in their teens, and there's about ten or so of them) got into a snowball fight on Christmas day with some of the moms and dads in the backyard. Doc got some great photography of people in mid-throw or mid-being-hit. He avoided getting into the fight until the very end by claiming "hey, don't hit the guy with the camera, please"... but then threw a snowball at his sister on the way in. Sigh... brothers!
It snowed throughout the midwest the night before we drove to Kansas so by the time we reached the Kansas border everything was pretty well blanketed with snow. The residential streets in Derby hadn't been cleared and so the driving was a bit iffy. On the way home on the 26th it had started snowing again but we didn't have any trouble driving this time. We stopped at a restaurant in Arcadia, Oklahoma, called Pops 66. It has really interesting future-modern architecture and 500+ different types of bottled soda. Neato.
For Christmas Doc and I went a little lighter than normal with the gifts, by choice. He gave me some really nice things though, including some balsamic vinegar, bamboo cooking spoons, and this gorgeous Le Creuset cast-iron skillet. I adore it. I can barely lift it, it's so heavy!! And the enamel is droolworthy bright beautiful red.
I've had the whole week of Christmas off, and I don't go back to work until January 3. This week I'm taking it easy, trying to get a little exercise in, watching movies, hanging out with Doc. Saturday we went to Six Flags with Brittney and Chris. I could only go on two rollercoasters this year; I just didn't feel up to going on some of the bigger rides. It was really crowded at the park, much moreso than in previous years. Wait times in line for the rides seemed about as long as they are in the summer. We had a nasty dinner experience too: we waited in line at a little kiosk with the "Papa John's Pizza" label on it, but I can tell you definitively that the pizza was NOT Papa John's quality. It was some of the nastiest pizza I have had in recent memory. For $7 per slice I would at least expect the cheese to be completely melted, but it wasn't. I could only eat half of it. I complained at the guest services desk that they were misleading people by putting a brand name label on disgusting sub-par crappy foodservice pizza.
But, that icky food experience got made up for a little while later. We ran across a kiosk run by some grandmotherly type ladies with crockpots who sold baked potatoes, sweet potatoes, roasted corn, cocoa, hot cider, and OMIGOD cinnamon rolls fresh out of the oven with frosting ladled on out of a crockpot. I loves me a grandma with a crockpot of warm icing!!
Tonight is New Year's Eve and I am perfectly content that we are staying in tonight and maybe watching some movies and ordering pizza. I'm not sure that any of our friends are having parties this year, and we're not either. We've hosted NYE parties in the past, but after hosting Halloween and Thanksgiving and then being out of town so much in December, we just didn't feel up to it this year.
Happy 2008 to everyone! It's going to be an exciting year!
Bob digs out his car from underneath 8 inches of fresh powdery snow.
The parking lot behind Bob's building.
The blue sky against the snow was gorgeous.
A view looking out over the snowy rooftops of Somerville.
We finally made it to the New England Aquarium; we tried to go the day before but it closed early due to snowstorm.
Doc and I went to Boston for a conference (Web Design World, which was really a fantastic conference) and to visit Bob for a few days. Boston is a beautiful city, especially in winter. It's been really cold and wet and snowy here, and I love it.
The churches in Boston are so beautiful that they almost make me want to actually GO to church!
We took a self portrait on the street.
This is the Christian Science Church.
The Boston Public Library is one of the most beautiful buildings I have ever seen. This is part of the main entrance hall and stairs.
The library had an exhibit of intricately detailed dioramas.
I love Johnny Cupcakes!! Especially the cupcake-and-crossbones logo.
Me and Doc next to a subway station.
I love wearing my scarf and coat.
Not the Old North Church, but the Old South Church.
A big pile of icy snow.
Today we ate breakfast at a place down the street from Bob, then hopped on the subway to go to the Aquarium and the Science Museum. By the time we started off to the train station, the snow was coming down pretty heavily.
Bob and I at the Aquarium. It had closed 2 hours before we got there, due to heavy snow.
This is the snowstorm that seemed to be shutting down the whole city.
Thanksgiving went well! We have way too much food left over, as usual. Anyone want some stuffing or mashed potatoes?
Doc's turkey was awesome; it keeps getting better every year (this coming from someone who doesn't even really like turkey!). He had to leave it in the oven a full hour longer than he planned, in order to get the temperature up to that minimum safety level (170 degrees F). Not sure why that was; perhaps our 25 year old oven is not working quite right. But most of our guests arrived shortly before it was done, so the timing worked out pretty well in the end.
I have a ton of wine (thanks dad!) left over along with about a cubic meter of stuffing. That ought to get me through the next few days quite nicely :)
Besides the fact that our food seemed to be a hit, the highlight of the evening for me was playing a few lively games of Catch Phrase Music Edition, where you have to get your teammates to say the title of a song that appears in the little device's window, without saying any of the words in the title or revealing the artist. It took us a while to get into the groove but once we warmed up to it, we had a lot of fun. Bob was trying to get his team (Brittney and Chris) to say the word "from" by telling them "on a Christmas package, not 'to,' but ..." and Brittney yelled, "NOT TOO EXPENSIVE!" That just cracked me up. Also, "A Gravy Kind of Love" is CLOSE to the name of the Phil Collins song, and appropriate for this holiday, but not quite right.
Today I did nothing but sleep, read, eat, and nap. A few other things like showering and writing a little, too. But really and truly this was a lazy lazy day. It helps that the temperature didn't even hit 50 today... cold grey weather makes me want to snuggle under a blanket all day. Also, it snowed yesterday! On Thanksgiving! In Texas! It didn't last long, and turned into sleet after a few minutes, but still, it was pretty cool. We had a fire going all day, and had to turn on the heater upstairs.
Wow, sometimes a week goes by and I haven't posted, and I don't know how that happens. I just lose days at a time. Weird.
My brother Bob has been in town for a few days, which has been fun. We went to trivia at Trinity Hall on Sunday night. The questions were really tough this week, and we met our goal to come in Not Last. Third from last is pretty respectable, isn't it?!
I took today off work and spent pretty much the whole day cooking! It was tiring, but fun. I made:
I mentioned in a previous post from my recent vacation that I saw one of my cousins for the first time in years, and initially thought that his becoming a father had mellowed his angry energy. As it turns out, he's not actually interested in assuming the responsibility of being a father and is instead "allowing" his wife to do all the work of raising their two young sons, ages 3 years and 5 months. The wife is overwhelmed and cries daily. My sweet generous mom offered to babysit the kids one day a week while she's living nearby, so the wife can go have some time to herself or with friends.
It's so sad how self-centered he has turned out, because he was always such a caring, responsible kid when we were growing up. He is the oldest of the cousins; two years older than his brother and me.
I listened to an episode of This American Life recently on the subject of summer camp, and the differences between "camp kids" and "non-camp kids." Kids who go to camp seem to have a shared understanding of this amazing experience, and it can be the most important thing in your young life. They look forward all year to summer. Its a very emotional response, a feeling of belonging to something special that other people don't understand.
I felt that way too when I was young, only it wasn't about camp; it was about going to Washington State each summer to see my grandma and hang out with my cousins John, Reed, and Lissy for a few weeks. I cannot even find the words to express how much these summers meant to me, how much I looked forward to them. I belonged to a special group of kids who got to stay with my amazing Grandma in her house in the forest above the beach, far away from civilization. It was magic.
Grandma died from ovarian cancer in 1984, when I was 11. That was the end of summers in Washington. My mom and her brother and sister had to sell Grandma's house, I think because they didn't think they could afford to keep it, something about taxes (one of the biggest regrets in her life, she now says). I was fast approaching the age where I might not have wanted to spend summers away from my friends, hanging out with my little brothers, so I'm glad in a way that my memories remain as magical as they do, untainted by the bad attitudes of adolescence.
Grandma's house
Grandma lived on Johnson's point, a little peninsula of land north of Olympia. Her house was a little one-bedroom A-frame with a finished attic, painted red, on 5 acres of wooded land. It sat about 20 feet back from the edge of a bank that, in my memory, was hundreds of feet high, but was probably in reality more like 30 feet above the beach. She had a small deck out the front door that overlooked the water, and a carport and shed in back. Behind the house was a small garden, and beyond that, the 5 acres of wild ferny fir-filled forest.
The living room had a large picture window overlooking the deck, a wood burning stove, and an open kitchen area. Upstairs was a large open room, and the peaked roof made the whole thing a big triangle. A large wardrobe separated the room into two halves (it was so large that the house was built around it; there's no way to get it out!) and a bed was on the side nearest to the beach. My parents slept there. Us kids slept on Japanese futon mattresses in the little angled spaces under the eaves.
Mattress Rides
The stairs were located near the back door, with a door at both the bottom and the top. We loved to take one of the futon mattresses, position it at the top of the stairs, and take a flying leap, stomach first, sliding down the stairway and tumbling out into the hallway at the bottom. Or, knocking head-first against the door at the bottom of the stairs if we had it closed, which was more fun than it sounds now.
At the top of the stairway, when you turned right there was a small bathroom (toilet and sink only), and when you turned left, you met up with the door to The Attic Space.
The Attic Space
I absolutely adored this little attic space. Through the door, down a tiny hallway, around the corner, and then BAM! Books galore. Boxes of old clothing, magazines, and newspapers. It smelled like a library. It was here that I discovered Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, Japanese story books, and dozens of back issues of Reader's Digest. I would pick a book, lie on a braided rug on the dusty wooden floor, and read for hours until the daylight coming through the small window faded away. I never thought of Tom Sawyer as a book that we were forced to read for school; it was a fantastic story that I discovered in Grandma's house.
The Madrona Tree
To get to the beach, you had to carefully pick your way down a series of mossy wooden steps laid on narrow tracks cut horizontally into the bank, surrounded by tangly trees and blackberry vines. A few yards away, the stairs met up with another set from next-door neighbor Fran's house, and from there proceeded practically straight down, ladder-fashion, until they reached the beach.
(apologies for the poor quality of the photo; it was taken in 1996 on my very first digital camera, an Apple QuickTake 200, with 640x480 @ 72dpi resolution!)
Each neighbor owned a little parcel of the beach, but it was a really friendly community and everyone knew everyone else. Nobody minded other peoples' kids and grandkids playing on their section of beach. Near the Vavers' property to the west, a madrona tree grew practically horizontally out of the bank at beach level. We loved to climb in, up, and through this tree. Madrona trees have very smooth bright orange flesh and thin green bark that easily peels off. And we LOVED to peel. We also carved all our names into the big branch of this tree one year, and for years and years afterwards we could still see the impressions.
One of our favorite things to do was have a "weenie roast" on the beach. Hot dogs, potato chips, sodas, sitting on a blanket under the trees, trying to avoid the sand fleas. I never did like hot dogs, no matter how hard I tried, and would often just eat cheese and mustard in a bun without the hot dog messing things up. Sometimes for dessert we'd roast marshmallows and make s'mores. I wasn't much into the marshmallows and would rather just eat melted chocolate on a graham cracker!
Fourth of July
Fireworks were legal where Grandma lived, and so every year around the first of July, Uncle John would take all of us kids to a fireworks stand in town, where we'd blow our hard-earned allowances on black cats, jumping jacks, snakes, tanks, roman candles, sparklers, and such. Uncle John would go to a nearby Indian Reservation and pick up the "grownup" fireworks — bottle rockets, M80s. We were never allowed to touch those, only to watch.
So on July Fourth, we'd have a weenie roast on the beach, and when it got dark we'd set off all our fireworks. One of our favorite things to do was to enclose a lit Jumping Jack inside an empty clam shell and toss it into the water. We also had our own little family "urban legend': Supposedly when Uncle John was a boy, he shot off a roman candle but instead of digging it down into the sand like he was supposed to, he held it in his hand while it was shooting off. He dropped it and realized in a sudden panic that he couldn't see, so he ran screaming back to Grandma that he was blind! Until, of course, she told him to open his eyes.
Treehouse
About halfway between Grandma's house and the road, down her long gravel driveway through the forest, was a most magnificent treehouse. It had been built some time in the 1950s, I think, and I'm really not sure who built it, actually. But it was completely falling apart, totally dangerous, and quite off-limits to us kids. So of course we spent as much time as we could in it without getting caught. It seemed so far up in the tree, up a little rotting ladder of planks nailed to the trunk, but most likely it was only 10 or 15 feet off the ground. Inside was a little kid-sized sofa, a real glass window, and some plates and silverware on a little table. I think it was even carpeted. Everything was dusty and covered in moss and lichens, but we absolutely loved it. A pulley on a metal cable ran from the trunk near the treehouse door down to the base of another tree a few yards away. None of us were ever quite brave enough to haul the pulley up to the top and use it as a zip line, but we all sure thought about it a lot.
Auntie Fran
Auntie Fran and Uncle Stu lived next door to Grandma, in their own wonderful house overlooking the beach, complete with an acre or two of apple orchards. They were not blood related, but might as well be, we were all so close. I think we spent as much time at Fran's house as we did at Grandma's, especially when her grandson Jesse, who was about my age, was in town.
Fran also had a pool! Why would we want to swim in a pool when there was a perfectly good beach just yards away? Well, when the water in the Sound is around 50 degrees, it's hard to swim in it for long without going numb! Fran's pool was large and rectangular, and surrounded by large glass panels on north and south, the house on the east, and the poolhouse on the west. The poolhouse had a little room with a pullout sofa for guests and a bathroom with a shower and a closet that had pool toys and extra swimsuits in it.
TRON and Dilly Bars
When we weren't in her pool, we might be watching a movie on her VCR. Not many people had VCRs in the early 1980s. I first saw one of my all-time favorite movies, TRON, in Fran's living room. Sometimes she would take a few of us kids into town in the back of her little blue Toyota pickup (these were the days before it was unsafe to do so!), and we'd stop at the electronics store to pick up a movie (these were the days before Blockbuster, when you rented movies out of a little room at the back of appliance stores that sold VCRs). Sometimes we would stop off at Dairy Queen for some Dilly Bars, which Fran always kept stocked in her freezer for us.
Jesse
Jesse was one of my best friends, and during the school year we would write each other letters in a secret cipher code that we invented. Jesse and his little brother Jeff had a gasoline-powered go-kart! Under adult semi-supervision, we were even allowed to drive it. We had great fun tearing up and down the long gravel driveway out to the road, and back again. Once my cousin Lissy, when she was probably only six years old, panicked and forgot where the brake was and almost ran full-speed into Grandma's house. The semi-supervision increased to full-on overprotectiveness after that.
Once, Jesse and I got ahold of an old hammock somewhere. We cleared out a little space in the forest behind Grandma's garden, tied it between two fir trees, and decided that we would make a little money by charging for hammock rides. (Who we planned to charge, I have no idea!) We needed something announcing our new business, so I got some magic markers and a sheet of paper and made a sign to tack up to a tree in front of our shop. Being practical, we realized that we probably needed to put a weight limit on the hammock, so we did what any reasonable 9 year olds would do: we asked my mom how much she weighed. We were just thinking, well, adults are adults and they probably all weigh the same, so we'll just ask the closest one. My mom, on the other hand, was probably thinking, "These kids think I'm the biggest person around!" She decided to have some fun with it and told us "I weigh 379 and 3/4 pounds!" Having no concept of scale, or even any idea how much WE weighed ourselves, we took her at her word and wrote, "Weight Limit: 379 and 3/4 pounds!"
*****
I guess I don't have a really good closing to this whole story, other than to say that these few memories are only the first ones that popped to mind. I have so many others. These were some of the most amazing and wonderful times in my childhood.
Labels: family, memories, vacation, washington
Saturday we spent mostly with Mike. We ate breakfast at what is apparently the only bagel shop in the entirety of the Seattle area (with Mike, as usual, not eating). Then we went with Mom to an appliance shop where she is ordering her new kitchen appliances for the new house. Good thing, too, 'cause she changed her mind about all of them once she was able to see them in person and talk to a salesperson. She picked a dishwasher, stove, oven, refrigerator, range hood, and microwave oven.
Then we accompanied Mike to the liquor store for a bottle of his favorite tequila (which, I worry, serves as his dinner on many nights). Don't let it be said that my family can't drink. I'm the odd one out, it would seem, as far as alcohol habits; one or two drinks per week is more than enough for my tastes.
Mike seems to be opening up a little as the days wear on, and by that I mean he's not responding entirely in monosyllables and occasionally you can actually hear what he says. I really feel bad for him and feel like I should be a good sister and do something to help him, but I think he's still at a point where he doesn't want help and doesn't particularly even want to feel better, and I totally understand that. So I've been giving him his space, not forcing conversations, trying to make him smile on occasion, and talking with him about things that interest him (food, wine, migraine).
His house is in such disrepair it's depressing. All the renovations that he and Vanessa started (actually I think it was entirely Mike doing the work) just sit half finished. He has no motivation to complete them, and I don't think I would either in his situation.
We sat around the house in the afternoon, working on our computers or watching the TV. In the evening, Mom and I drove out to a place called Triple XXX Root Beer Drive In in Issaquah to pick up dinner (burgers, fries, root beer floats). The place was a retro-nostalgia 50s style drive in diner, with 50s music on the loudspeakers, people with their classic cars in the parking lot, and 50s memorabilia plastered over every square inch of the place. Mike asked us to bring him some insanely large super special burger that was at least 8 inches in diameter.
Last night the moon and clouds looked particularly pretty, so I took some long exposure pictures after it finally got dark enough, which was about 10:45 p.m. (the days are longer here in the summers than in Texas because of how far north it is).
Today we drove out to Sequim to show Mike the house and get his opinions on things that might need to be done, such as reinforcing the floors underneath the kitchen and bathroom. Mike has done a lot of renovation on his house and he does beautiful work, so Mom wanted to see if he thought that they needed to make any changes. I told him that he could get a second job as a contractor.
That drive to Sequim is LOOOOOONG. It's about 140 miles from Mike's house to there, each way. I've done it 3 times now. I think, all told, I've probably been in the car for 3500 miles in the past 9 days. I'm really tired of it, but the funny thing is, these drives back and forth to Sequim seem MUCH longer than the 650 mile days we were doing to get here in the first place.
At least on the way back we stopped by John's (about the halfway point) so Mike could try to get Mom's outgoing e-mail to work (no dice), so it was nice to have a little break. I laid under their cherry tree outside and called Doc. I can't wait to see him tomorrow.
This evening we went to a nice Italian place called Grazie's (in Factoria) for dinner. The food was nice, and I even tasted Mike's CALAMARI, if you can believe it! Not the little deep fried rubber bands that a lot of places serve as an appetizer, but a calamari steak. It had a nice taste, but the texture was a little odd and smooth. I could probably dig it if I didn't think about what it was. And for dessert: the most amazing thing in the world, a taste I had no idea existed. Flourless chocolate cake – not too sweet – and a glass of port wine. Oh. My. God.
Tomorrow I go home. My flight gets in to Dallas at 5:30. I have had a nice time but am looking forward to my cats, my own bed, and especially my Doc.
Labels: family, roadtrip, vacation, washington
This morning I got up early again and went walking in Gig Harbor with Mom, Aunt Sue, and family friend Yasuko. We walked around the harbor and marina and through the downtown area, then stopped for coffee and scones. Yasuko is a bit older than Mom and Sue, and as a teenager Mom babysat her kids.
It turns out that her daughter, Christine Wada, works in Hollywood and was the costumer for one of my favorite movies, O Brother Where Art Thou. She's done costumes for a lot of movies, including a few Coen Brothers films.
We drove up to Sequim with John and Sue so Mom could meet with the plumber and get the fixtures and tub choices finalized. We walked around the property for a bit first, and it had rained earlier in the day, so everything was wet. It was cold, too! I would say between 50 and 55 degrees.
Later we ate lunch at a little cafe on the waterfront, more of a dive really. It looked like a place where old people go to sit all day and smoke cigarettes. The fish and chips were excellent, very lightly battered so not too heavy. I really and truly love malt vinegar on my fish and chips. Who needs tartar sauce?
While Mom was at the plumber's shop, the rest of us went to a few antique/junk shops to see if they might be places Mom would like to go to search for old doorknobs and other authentic house accessories. Then we got blizzards at Dairy Queen.
Note to self: Never eat fish, chips, and ice cream for the same meal. Ever. Again. You will regret it.
Traffic was awful coming back home; a bad accident had shut down the highway. We exited and tried to take back roads. John was driving mom's car and knows the ins and outs, but as it turned out, so did everyone else. It probably would have been quicker to stay on the highway.
I took a few photos at John's, of his house and the surrounding forest.
Later, we left John and Sue's as they had to pack up for their monthlong vacation at their Alaskan island cabin, and drove back to Redmond to Mike's house. I was not feeling well at all (again: fish, chips and ice cream are a bad combination) and so I pretty much laid around for the rest of the evening, reading and feeling sorry for myself.
We'll spend tomorrow with Mike. No idea what we will do.
Labels: family, food, roadtrip, vacation, washington
Not a whole lot to report for today. We came out to my Uncle John's house this morning and hung out here all day, talking, having cheese and diet Pepsi on their patio, running errands. Brittney calls him "the flip off uncle" because I have a photo of me and my brothers and my mom and him on the sofa in my house on the night before my wedding, and he has a huge grin on his face and he's flipping off the camera.
Late afternoon I took Tilly and went running up and down the HUGE hill on the main road near their house. We didn't go very far, partly because there was not much of a shoulder to the road and I was afraid she would get into the street, but mostly because I don't do 20% grades very well. Texas is FLAT and that's what I'm used to!
This evening my cousin John Evan and his wife and kids came for dinner, along with family friend Yasuko, whose kids my mom used to babysit for in the early 1960s. The Richardson kids seemed to get all the energy in the family while the McCormack kids are much calmer. It took a lot out of me, to be "on" for that long. John seems a lot calmer than he used to; not as much angry energy. I think being a dad has helped him a lot.
Tomorrow we go back to the property in Sequim for Mom to meet with the plumber. She was hoping that would happen today but he needed to meet tomorrow instead. Hopefully we will also be able to take Tilly to the beach to play in the water.
I know I've only been gone six days, but I feel a little homesick for Doc and the cats and my own bed. Actually I am VERY homesick for Doc... it's really hard to not be with him for this long. I've loved spending a lot of time with my mom but I really wish he was here too.
Labels: Doc, family, roadtrip, vacation, washington
We made it to our final destination! I cannot believe we drove 2500 miles in 3-1/2 days, especially with a dog and cat along for the ride.
Mom and I are now staying with my brother Mike in Redmond, just outside of Seattle.Too tired to type now. Will recap in the morning.
Okay, I am now a bit more refreshed than I was when I started this post yesterday.
We had breakfast in Couer d'Alene, Idaho, with Doc's mom this morning. We ate at a lovely ritzy resort restaurant on the lake. Not that the restaurant was that ritzy, but the resort sure was. It was really great to see her, and now that she's moving to Derby, Kansas, we'll be able to visit more often.
Our drive was mainly uneventful. Eastern Washington is surprisingly plain and flat.
The Columbia Valley Gorge is somewhere in the middle, and it is quite beautiful.
Western Washington, however, is much more interesting.
We got to Mike's house in the early evening and sat out on his back porch for a little while until he got home from work. Then he took me for a ride on his new motorcycle. I cannot believe I got on the back of a bike! The last time I was on one, I was an infant in a cardboard box on the back of my dad's motorcycle in the early 1970s.
My brother's girlfriend of four years recently left him and it's like all the life has gone out of him. He won't eat, he barely responds when you talk to him, and doesn't smile. I know he'll pull through it eventually but he's in a bad place right now, and it makes me really sad that there's nothing I can do.
Tomorrow Mom and I will go to Sequim to see her new house in progress.
Labels: family, roadtrip, vacation, washington
We are making seriously good time on this roadtrip. I think we are a full day ahead of schedule! We have driven about 650 miles each day since Friday, and are now in Couer d'Alene, Idaho.
Today's route:
90 from Sheridan, Wyoming straight on through to Couer d'Alene, Idaho. One road, 650 miles!
Montana is much more picturesque than Wyoming. It is named Big Sky Country for a good reason. It seems to be rather sparsely populated and everyone has a view of verdant hills teeming with evergreens or snow-capped mountains. The skies are enormous and blue and filled with puffy white and gray clouds.
Here is a photo of our hotel from last night, which used to be a flour mill:
I can't believe I've been getting up at 5:45 every morning since Friday. It's actually not as hard to do when you go to bed by 9:30 p.m.! First thing after waking up, I put on my shorts and hoodie and running shoes and take Tilly outside for a short jog. We've been going about a mile or so, which is not very far for someone who's supposed to be training for a marathon, but I'm on limited time and I've got a dog who probably can't go as far as I need to. Anyway, I think I'm doing good to be getting any exercise at ALL on a cross country roadtrip.
This morning I let Tilly off-leash in the hotel parking lot (it's fenced on 3 sides from the street with a nice grassy area at the back), and ran her from one side to the other at top speed for a few minutes. She can outrun me, easily, even when I sprint. She has this awesome bounding run and she'll cross diagonally in front of me as if to trip me up, and then she'll stop at the end of the parking lot and look back at me like she's laughing.
As we drove through these beautiful hills and valleys today, I wanted to stop on the roadside and let her out to just run up and down the hillsides. Too bad most of them had fences a few dozen yards back from the highway. I guess somebody owns every square inch of America.
We stopped to pee in a cute little town called Livingston, where I overheard the woman behind the store counter at the Exxon station tell a local customer "And she actually asked me, 'How safe are your hotels?' And I told her 'Honey, I'm at work and my house is unlocked, that's what kind of town this is!' And she sniffed and walked out without a word!"
We ate lunch at a Quizno's in Butte, where Tilly charmed everyone who walked past our patio table. And later in the afternoon we stopped for gas in Wallace, Idaho, a tiny town nestled along a river in a valley, that is very well kept up and apparently just held some sort of weekend festival. There were far more cars parked in the antiquey looking downtown area than could possibly belong to just the residents.
And now we're at the La Quinta in Couer d'Alene. We got a bottle of wine and had cheese, fruit, snap peas and crackers in the room for dinner.
Tomorrow morning we are having breakfast with Doc's mom, who is driving down from Sandpoint about 40 miles north of here. I'm looking forward to seeing her.
Today was a pretty damn boring drive. We covered the entire states of Colorado and Wyoming from south to north.
Today's route:
25 from Trinidad, Colorado to Buffalo, Wyoming (600 miles)
90 from Buffalo to Sheridan, Wyoming (30 miles)
As we were leaving Trinidad, I noticed that it has a Stargate!
That 600 mile stretch from Trinidad to Buffalo was, nearly without exception, unendingly boring.
Outside of Colorado Springs we drove past Pike's Peak, but we weren't sure exactly which one it was in the mountain range because nothing looked impressive or terribly peaky and we kind of thought it was supposed to be rather pointy. I called Doc a bit later to express my disappointment in Mr. Pike and his so-called "peak," and he said that when you're travelling across America at 25 miles a day on horseback, after going through Kansas you tend to be easily impressed.
The most interesting event of the day was the windstorm that blew through as we were standing outside the Loaf 'N Jug gas station in Casper, Wyoming (seriously, it was called the Loaf 'N Jug, how awesome is that?!), trying to get the dog to pee. The gust slammed into us and then a cloud of dirt and gravel came roaring in without warning. We ran for the car, dirt in our eyes and stinging the backs of our legs and arms. We waited until it subsided a little before getting back on the highway, but the muddy rain made it hard to see for a while.
Tonight we are staying at the Mill Inn in Sheridan, Wyoming. It is an old flour mill converted into motel rooms, very nicely decorated with Old West art, wooden furniture, track lighting, and Starbucks coffee in the room. Instead of going out for dinner, we bought cheese and crackers and fruit and snow peas at a grocery store, and looked in vain for some place to buy wine.
Tilly and Tigger are doing really well. Tigger has had some intestinal upsets in her carrier, but once you let her out to roam around the backseat, she does fine. I think the carrier makes her nervous. She loves being in the motel rooms, she just wanders a bit and then curls up on the bed and goes right to sleep.
I have some photos of the hotel but it is late, we are getting up at 5:30 a.m. tomorrow, and I will just post them tomorrow instead.
I woke up at 5:50 a.m. (no, I have not been replaced with an a robot that is a morning person) and walked out of the motel room in my pajamas to take the dog outside, and it was 57 degrees. In June. This does not compute, my brain is short circuiting.
I'm really glad that I brought my hoodie with me, I'm going to have to dig it out of the trunk of the car!
Gotta go, time to pack up the car and get on the road. I'll write more tonight.
Mom and I began our Crazy Summer Roadtrip A La Thelma And Louise But Without The Murders and Driving Off Cliffs this morning.
(I've posted my photos on Flickr.)
It's funny how your perception of how long you're spending in the car (or, I suppose, any mode of transportation) is relative to your total travel time. For instance, the 4-1/2 hour drive to Houston from Dallas seems to take absolutely forever, yet the eleven hours we spent in the car today seemed to go by fairly quickly, and I think that it's because I know we have another three or four full days still to drive. So does 1/4 of a journey always feel like 1/4 of a journey, no matter how long that journey is?
At any rate, we spent most of today in Texas. I've lived here my whole life (sigh) and I still marvel at the fact that one can drive literally all day and still be in this same damn state.
That being said, West Texas skies are amazing. So big.
Here is the route for today:
635 to 35 in Dallas.
35 to 380 in Denton.
380 to 287 in Decatur.
287 to 40 in Amarillo.
40 to 385 in Vega.
385 to 87 in Dalhart.
87 to 25 in Raton, NM.
And 25 to Trinidad, CO, which is where we are right now.
Just outside of Amarillo, we stopped at Cadillac Ranch. I have wanted to see Cadillac Ranch ever since I first heard of it years ago, and now I am very happy that I can cross this one off my Must Do Before I Die list. It seems a little less "larger than life" than I was expecting (Cadillacs 20 feet tall? Not so much), but it was still pretty cool.
Normally I really like New Mexico, but today it completely sucked. The little northeast corner that we drove through had road construction literally the entire way, and the speed limit averaged 45.
Tilly and Tigger (mom's black lab puppy and stripey cat) did amazingly well in the car. Tigger spent most of the time curled up in her litterbox on the floor behind the driver's seat, and Tilly slept on her fuzzy sheepskin dog bed on top of the luggage in the backseat. We made a lot of puppy pee stops (although Tilly was much more interested in chasing grasshoppers), and it was really nice to stop frequently just to get out and stretch.
In fact, I really like travelling without a set schedule. We don't have to be in Seattle on a particular day and we don't have motel reservations anywhere along the way. It is so much more relaxing this way.
So now we are in a motel in Trinidad, which is just inside the Colorado border. We found a nice place that has free wi-fi (woot!) and takes dogs and cats, but the tradeoff is that we are in a smoking room that smells really awfully strongly of tobacco. We were just too tired to drive any further to look for another place, though.
Sprint tells me that I have full coverage in Trinidad, but it lies. I am on stupid Roaming, which I do not use, so I cannot call anyone. Not that I particularly enjoy talking on the phone, but I did get two calls that I couldn't answer so as not to rack up hideous roaming charges.
Our new web designer started at work this week. There's a lot for him to absorb but he's doing a fine job so far. I'm having to learn how to be a boss, which is kind of weird. I'm spending a lot of my time this week training him, and I'm not getting much of my own work done.
However, after tomorrow I do not have to care for a week and a half. I'm leaving on a roadtrip with my mom from Dallas to Seattle. Two women, a hyperactive labrador retriever, and an angry cat, 5 days, 2500 miles.
There was a slight change in plans last week, and now we are driving Mom's comfy Honda Accord instead of Dad's small-cab stick-shift pickup truck, with the dog in the middle and the cat carrier under the passenger's feet!
I plan to take lots of pictures, stop at weird roadside attractions, and blog from the road! Love you, laptop. :)
Sorry for the two week hiatus. I just haven't felt much like writing lately.
Last weekend we held a garage sale. Mom and Dad, whose house is finally on the market in Houston in preparation for their move to Sequim this summer, brought up 3 vehicle-loads of stuff to sell over the past several weeks. Doc and I had some stuff too, and Brittney and Chris brought a few things over. Kat was sick and couldn't come hang out, but she did make us the most fabulous purple-painted sparkly garage sale signs. I am certain they drew more business than standard signs would.
I've decided that will be my last garage sale; they're tiring and time-consuming and I really hate haggling with people who want to give you five cents for something that you're asking $3, and which cost you $100 new.
However, at garage sales you always meet interesting characters who purchase interesting items, and I make up little stories in my head about why they want what they want. I've always thought it would be interesting to be a checkout clerk at a supermarket for the same reason.
Anyway, here are two examples of strange people we met: Mom was trying to sell a pair of lambswool nipple warmers (never used! new in package!) that were a gift from a New Zealander friend with a sense of humor. She also had a tiny flip calendar of penis art from around the world and through the ages, as well as a David (Michelangelo's statue) puzzle and postcard, featuring the most important bit, and various other naughty things. Mom unloaded them all on a lady who was extremely chatty and asked us if any of us wanted to feel her recent lap-band surgery. Feel a stranger's recent surgery scar? Sure, why not! You only live once!
And then there was the enormously fat old man who walked bent over with a cane, who has come to every garage sale we've had over the years, and asked us if we'd all had our mammograms. It seemed creepy until I remembered his life story that I'd heard twice before – his wife is battling breast cancer, and also his grandson was murdered in south Texas – and he seemed to need to sit down with us and tell us the same exact 30-minute-long story for the third year in a row. I guess it's therapy for him or something.
Brittney and Chris sold almost all of their items, and between Mom and I we sold about 2/3 of our junk. The rest we dropped off at the Salvation Army the next day. For the number of items we sold, we didn't make huge amounts of money, but it will be enough to help Mom and I on our Texas-to-Seattle roadtrip next month.
Labels: family
My parents sold the house I grew up in and moved several years ago. My mom was heartbroken -- this was the house she'd raised her children in. I was sad to see my parents leave, of course, but I'd said goodbye to the house long before that. Seeing it turned over to another family wasn't an overly emotional event for me at the time.
However... it has been brought to my attention that this house is once again on the market, and through the magic of the Internets (a.k.a. a series of tubes), I found the realty company's photos.
Now, I fully realize it's not my house anymore, I haven't lived there since 1990 (well, and that brief period in 1994 after college). And I fully realize that all homeowners do things to houses to suit their own tastes, to make them uniquely theirs.
But this is just making me sad. Look what they've done! The Disturbingly Ornate Antique Jampacked Christmas Fairy threw up all over the house!! And aren't you supposed to, you know, put away most of your decor and things, and go kind of minimalist, if you're trying to sell your house? I guess these people never heard that little tidbit of advice.
Oh yes... this one was MY room. Now it's junky floral -- and it is a pretty damn small room for all the crap that's apparently in it. Under that yellow paint are layers of pink (the original, when I was very small), light blue, black with Jackson Pollock white drops (when my parents went out of town for a week; boy did I get in trouble for that), and also paintings that both I and my youngest brother painted directly on the walls.
My parents' bedroom. Boy, that bed almost doesn't fit, does it? And what's with the "JUS CUZ" on the wall? That's just weird.
The living room. I'm not sure if they could fit any more furniture in here. And what's going on in that back corner? Are those bows?
I'm not certain, but I think that this used to be my dad's study.
And I think this was our lovely covered patio room - big windows, tile floor, very light outdoorsy feel. Ha!
Standing in the kitchen, looking at the breakfast area.
And standing in the breakfast area, looking into the kitchen. Are those easter eggs hanging from the ceiling? Or is it fruit? And they obviously don't do any actual cooking -- there's an Oriental rug in the kitchen! That makes me really sad -- this is the kitchen where my mom taught me everything I know about cooking. This was a kitchen filled with love and knowledge and a lot of spilled flour. Now it's just decorative.
It seems like all my brother did in grad school was write haiku, yet he still managed to get his PhD in mathematics last summer. The kid must be smart or something. :)
why topology?
there is only one reason
its spelled p. h. d.
statistics, haiku
both involve counting
only one is fun
dude! look at my hand
its so weird and colorful
oh my god i'm high!
2^3+20
= 24+4
a number haiku!
(x-π)^2
= x^2+π^2
-2πx
y=6x
implies 1/2 y =
x+x+x
just reading the book
is not an effective way
to teach to the class
haiku may have five
syllables on the last line
but bobku has one more
second hand smoke kills
says the surgeon general
so, i'll stick to first
My mom sent up a bankers box full of papers of mine she's saved since I was very young. Drawings, stories, report cards, school programs, and more. I've just begun to scratch the surface of what's inside.
I found a book I made in December 1983, made of sheets of colored construction paper (do they even make this stuff anymore? Thick soft-surfaced felty paper, in dull colors or the ubiquitous beige called "manila") and held together by yarn and holiday ribbon through hole punches. It's called "This is Me and my Family!!" In it I wrote stories about a perfect day with my family, what would happen if I had to leave my home, a blue ribbon, a mystery story about me going missing, and...
The best part is the 11-page photo album at the back of the book. I don't remember a lot of these pictures, and there sure are some cute ones, like the following of Mike when he was maybe 3 or 4.Yukky Little BrothersHere is a list of good and bad things concerning little brothers (To your advantage or disadvantage)
Good Things.Bad Things.
- You don't get hand-me downs.
- You get to boss them around.
- You get to babysit. [this was a GOOD thing? -ed.]
- You go to bed later than they do.
- You have to set examples.
- You're stuck with all the chores.
- You have to share.
- You have to do everything for them: Ex - get the cereal down.
- They're tattletales.
- They never get in trouble, "they don't know any better."
- They always watch what they want on T.V.
I had a flat tire yesterday. My dad noticed it as he was taking some stuff out to their car -- he and Mom were getting ready to drive back to Houston after spending Thanksgiving with us. My spare was also flat, so Dad drove me and the tire to Firestone to get a new one. I spoke to the guy behind the counter, showed him the paperwork from when I bought the tire only 2 years ago, took him out to Dad's car to retrieve the flat tire, and stood with him while he determined whether it could to be fixed or if I'd need a new one.
A few minutes later, he came back to give me the verdict... and he spoke directly to my father the entire time. My father, who up until now had been standing in the background.
It's not like this guy was old enough to have remembered a time before the women's movement either.
Last night I dreamed that I lived in a little apartment in a New York style apartment building, in a row of nearly identical apartment buildings that was completely enclosed in a shell from the outside world. In the center of the neighborhood was an expanse of green space, a little park about the same footprint as an apartment building, and one end of it opened to a dock and the sea beyond, with a big industrial garage door that would open and close.
Everyone was in a panic and in the process of evacuating because we had been invaded by aliens, although we never actually saw the aliens themselves and there was nowhere to evacuate to. They had landed on the rooftops of our buildings and were slowly taking over. Even though we couldn't see them, we knew their paths because wherever they went, everything turned dark and crumbly and dead. Walls, plants, furniture. And people who'd been "infected" or whatever began to look like zombies, with tattered clothing and purple circles around their dark dead-looking eyes. I was one of the unofficial leaders trying to get the remaining people to safety, and I was lucky in that even though I was running around everywhere, through infected areas, I hadn't been turned into a zombie yet. I wasn't sure where we were going to take people anymore, because the park had been taken over by the aliens. I thought that maybe it was possible for us all to gather on the roofs, since the park wasn't safe anymore and we had nowhere else to go, but then remembered that the roofs were probably where all the aliens were gathered.
I noticed that Bob and someone else were up on the 3rd floor of one of the buildings, and they needed help. I found another leader, who radioed to someone out on a boat that she was "Missy" from the health department and she needed two life jackets. I guess they were only giving supplies to the actual people in charge, so we had to pretend to be those people in order to get anything done. Then she told me that I had to go pretend to be this fictional Missy and get those life jackets to (somehow) rescue Bob. I ran down to the dock and realized that Missy from the health department WAS actually there looking for life preservers, and that I'd probably be caught if I tried to pretend to be her. Somehow, I got them anyway. I ran back to Bob's building and tried to toss an orange life preserver through the open window. It took several tries, but I got one through. Then I bent down to pick up the green one to toss it in, but in that few second interval, his apartment had been taken over, and the window was shut and dark. I was too late.
Back at the park, I looked into a first floor room of one of the buildings and saw a classroom full of little purple-eyed zombie children, staring straight ahead at the zombie teacher with rapt attention. Moments before, it had been a regular classroom full of regular children, and it scared me how instantaneous the transformation was.
Then I found myself sitting with several other people at a picnic bench in the park, cooking. I had a little kerosene burner on the table in front of me, and a frying pan full of oil. Everyone was looking to me to feed them. Next to the pan was an arrangement of ingredients, and I wasn't really sure we should eat any of them because most of them were vegetables that had been taken over by the aliens. I guess if alien stir-fry is all you have to eat, though, that's what you eat.
I cut several slices from an alien zucchini, and there were dark sad faces in the zucchini. You know those tubes of holiday sugar-cookie dough you can buy that have designs in the middle, so when you cut them into slices, each one has a Christmas tree, or a bunny, or a pumpkin design in the middle? That's what these zucchini were like, only they had dark unhappy human-looking faces as their designs. But the minute I put them into the hot oil, the slices grew to giant proportions, taking up almost the entire pan, and the dark sad faces turned bright and happy and sunshiny. That is when we realized the answer: the alien menace could be eradicated through heat! I woke up before we got a chance to test whether it was just plain old heat that would do it, or if everything had to be purified in hot oil.
I had some nightmares while napping this afternoon. One sad, one scary. I was in a large house in a neighborhood that backed up onto a river, a very small river that was really more of a creek in size. There were rows of rickety wooden lawn chairs between the house and the river, facing the house. I was sitting in one at dusk with my feet up on the wall of the house, and I looked down and realized the legs of the lawnchair were only about 2 inches from the rim of the riverbank. I moved the lawnchair closer to the house and continued reading my mail. One piece was a flyer for a dentist's office that featured a large photo of a little girl that looked just like Brittney might have at that age. Another one was for an insurance company that also featured a large photo of Brittney, and I knew that she didn't know they had used her photo.
The house I was at alternated between being Auntie Fran's house (although it didn't look anything like her actual house) and a shed on Grandma's property (which she didn't actually have in real life).
I got out of my lawn chair and realized that I could go see Grandma's house. On the other side of the river were rows of new condominiums and fancy shops, facing away from us. I knew that her house was somewhere in those rows of condos, and that the beach and ocean must be on the other side. Bob came outside and we decided to walk across the "river" and onto a sidewalk on the other side that paralleled the river. We walked for a little ways until we came to a T where the sidewalk turned and went between two of the shops out onto the beach on the other side. At this point the timing of the dream changed from dusk to bright daylight.
On the beach, I kept looking at the shopfronts trying to find Grandma's house. Hundreds of teenagers were hanging out on the beach and on the front porches of the condo units and in front of the stores. I recognized some of the features of the beach, like the bulkhead wall, but all along the beach, the bank was only about six feet tall. I started crying and I couldn't stop, and I couldn't figure out why. Bob and I kept walking and looking for Grandma's house, and none of the houses looked anything like hers. Finally I just sat down in the sand and began to sob.
That's when I woke up, "dry crying." Sobbing without tears. It was weird.
In another part of the dream, I was at the movies with Doc, in a huge theatre with non-stadium-style seating. Before the movie was over, the management asked everyone in our section of seats to clear out. We didn't take them seriously, and we didn't think anyone else in our section moved either. As the credits began to roll, our whole section of seats suddenly jerked forward and, as if it was on carnival-ride tracks, rolled forward underneath the stage, and dived DOWN, moving faster and faster downhill in pitch blackness. We had no idea what was happening or where we were going (storage? a giant crushing machine) or if we could ever get out.
I've been incredibly busy the past couple of weeks working on a freelance book project (designing cover, laying out insides), so between that and the mini-vacation that I took to Lubbock and Houston last week, I haven't had a whole lot of free time.
The book is DONE! I think. Just waiting on final client approval and then I'll FTP it off to the printer this evening or tomorrow. I don't know what I shall do with myself and all of my free time. The whole process has been kind of a nightmare of way-too-close deadlines. I think that we'll all know better for next time, to allow ourselves about 300% more time at the end of the process, between final copyediting and the printer deadline.
Doc had some crucial work stuff come up, so he unfortunately wasn't able to go on vacation with me. I knew I'd miss him, but I didn't realize quite how much I'd miss him. It was only 5 days, too. We've both been gone before, to conferences and other work-related things, so I wonder if maybe this time it was because we expected up until just a few days before that we'd be going on the vacation together.
Anyway, the vacation. I went to Lubbock to watch Bob, my BABY BROTHER, get his PhD. That was pretty surreal. It sure made me feel old. Mom reminded me that when we were young kids, a friend of hers tested our I.Q.s for some schoolwork she was doing. Apparently Mike and I are unusually smart, but Bob is off the charts. He moved to Boston for his new job with a government contractor and he has to get security clearance... which I guess means he can't tell me what he actually does. Heh. Not that I think I'd quite understand it anyway.... his degree was in math and his job has something to do with that.
Lubbock burned hot (though not as hot as Dallas has been) and dry, except for the Sunday morning thunderstorm that I went jogging in. I know that Montana is known as "Big Sky Country" but I think West Texas deserves that descriptor too. The skies are just... big. Huge. This poem is called "Mesa" and I wrote it in 1994 or 1995.
sometimes we long forSo yeah. I talk about hating Texas and wanting to move to somewhere that has cool rain, tall trees, hills, and doesn't regularly reach 90 or 100 degrees during the summers. But I think that part of me will always be drawn to the desert... landscapes like West Texas and New Mexico, with flats and mesas and big blue skies and violent storms.
the night after the day
day
of endless blue sky
where the shimmering heat of the west texas sun
bounces in ripples from the road
and bakes color into golden skin
a full tank and nothing to do
yes the day is good but still
we wait for the night
after the day when black lines on the gray asphalt
ooze shiny, sticky on a beautiful barren land
a thin ribbon stretching miles through sage and sand
reaching for the place the sun will rest
and mesas in the distance
sit flat, too flat
blue sky days go on forever
as we wait for the night
we wait as sleepy engine drones on
-but silent enough out here-
away from civilization and towards civilization
hot wind and the top off your car
my hair gets lighter; your lips get redder
even as the sun drops
and evening sneaks into the air, the sky
like the colors of me
even as the sun sets and azure turns to chrome turns to dust
turns to rust
even as the stars emerge
like ice crystals on black velvet
and the engine stops
we lay on the mesa
we make love with the stars with each other
lying on the mesa
on someone's table waiting, waiting to be eaten up
on a world whose sky spins too fast overhead
we lay on the mesa
we see the divine at work
making stars, blowing winds, growing trees
sending the thunder to you and me
on the mesa
the night storm lightning piles up in the western sky
we lie
heat insidiously soaks up from the ground
and wind lifts the hairs on our arms
the mesa is not the end of the line you say
your finger traces my lips
is it enough to get us there?
yes this is the night after the day yes
there will be yes another day
yes another day for us to lie
and wait for night
on the mesa
I recognized a lot of the city from previous times I'd been in Lubbock. Actually the whole trip brought back some interesting memories, stuff I haven't thought about in eight or ten years, so that was kind of weird.so my quest has led me here,
here to a landspace of dry endless sands
and it is my oasis
i thirst for truth and for knowledge
and here i can drink from your mind
cool breeze in bright blue skies here
and the fury of the storm
Sunday I flew to Houston via Dallas to visit mom and dad for a couple of days. That was nice and relaxing. We did some shopping, some cooking, and lots of eating. I performed minor surgery on mom's 4-year-old iMac (as she said, it was so fucked up that I had to "use the unfucking software to fix it.") They're moving to Sequim next summer, and so she had me take photos of some of the furniture that they aren't going to take with them, in case we want any of it.
this is the latest in bob's growing collection of skin art!!
"but i neeeeeeed tacos! i need them or i will explode! that happens to me sometimes..."
"i miss you, cupcake"
"i wanna watch the scary monkey show!"
"chicken!! i'm gonna eat you."
"me and the squirrel are friends."
"why is his head so BIG? why IS his head so big? WHY is his head so big?"
"hi, floor! make me a sammitch!"
"to make room for the tuna!"
"i'm floatin!"
"say moosey fate! say moosey fate!"
and, not gir, but definitely one of my favorites:
"invader's blood runs through my veins like giant radioactive rubber pants! the pants command me! do not ignore my veins!"
apparently i am the master of surprises.
i have pulled off my second successful surprise party in the past year and a half. i did not know i had this talent in me. the first one was doc's birthday party in las vegas in 2004.
and last saturday we threw my mom a surprise 60th birthday party. to say she was surprised is an understatement. we had been planning this since last october. 30-plus people knew about it, and somehow nobody spilled the beans! i have no idea how that happened, but i'm glad it did!
in order to get her to come up to dallas that weekend, doc had a clever idea that i tell her that i had to do a cooking demo on sunday morning, and since arushi isn't here, i wanted her to come up and help me with it. the sticky part was, i needed her to come up on saturday, not on friday night like she normally would do if she was coming for the weekend. so we told her that doc had a sleep study thing on friday night, and that we had doctor appointments all day saturday, and wouldn't be home until about 6 p.m., so could she please come up saturday afternoon instead.
she thought that was a great idea, and said that dad might come too, so he could see his parents, but she wasn't sure if he'd come with her or not. little did she know, he was totally in on the plan too.
i decided to make it a dinner party, and cooked for 25. note to self: not so much pasta next time. 3 pounds is plenty for 25 people. i furiously shopped on thursday night (sam's club, which kathryn was gracious enough to take me to) and friday afternoon and evening (party city for decorations, central market and albertson's for the rest of the food). i had a party rental place deliver wooden folding chairs and tablecloths, because there was no way i was going to be able to collect and borrow enough chairs for everyone. i still had diane's folding tables that we borrowed for the garage sale last may, and those came in handy as dinner tables.
bob drove in on friday night, and mike and vanessa flew in that same evening. we all met up friday night, after i had worked several hours making filling, icing, and layer cakes for the Raspberry Almond Cream Chiffon Cake (ooh la la). after they all arrived, we drove out to mercado juarez, mike's favorite restaurant in dallas and one that we used to go to for special occasions while we were growing up. it is as good as i remember. after dinner we came back to our house, and i started work on the chocolate cinnamon sheet cake, which i decided halfway through to convert to a round cake.
i got up early on saturday and continued my cooking and also cleaning the house. doc had to work all day on a difficult project, but helped where he could, and mike, bob, and vanessa pitched in as well. the cakes turned out great, although i did have to make more custard for the chiffon cake because i used too much inbetween the layers. i improvised and created a chocolate whipped cream icing to go around the outside of the converted chocolate cinnnamon cake. vanessa made the salad; the meat sauce came together beautifully, and my focaccia bread turned out perfect.
everyone arrived on time (mostly), and dad got mom here precisely at 6:35. all the guests had parked down the street and so mom did not suspect a thing until i answered the door. she came in and couldn't figure out why doc was taking photographs of her, and then she saw someone on the couch with another camera (julie), and then everyone who was gathered near the kitchen came out and yelled "surprise!"
she was surprised.
we had hidden mike, vanessa, and bob upstairs. after mom had started getting over the initial shock and had greeted all her friends, bob came downstairs and surprised her again. and a few minutes later, mike and vanessa came down. judging from her reaction to seeing bob, i was afraid she was going to have a heart attack when she saw mike and vanessa!
anyway, the party went great, lots of wine was consumed, and people seemed to enjoy dinner and dessert a great deal. brett and kathryn were immensely helpful with getting the pasta and alfredo sauce finished so that i could do other things. thanks, guys!
mom's friend sarah created a huge poster-sized image of a woman on a bathing suit on a beach, and i had supplied her with mom's glamour shots picture so that sarah could put mom's head on this body. then she covered the whole poster with index cards containing trivia about mom, and she slowly revealed the picture as questions were asked and answered.
