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Christmas Travel, II
Wednesday, 29 December 2004 05:15 pm...indeed, we are both glad to be home. It took about six hours to get here from Upstate NY where my parents live, and we successfully avoided crowds at the border as well as Toronto rush-hour.
I wanted to say more about our time in Ithaca, then I'll talk about my parents' house,and a bit about the holiday season in general.
As I started to say in my last entry, I spent a few hours walking and chatting with Jeremy, who is one of the nicest people I've had the pleasure of knowing over the years. We talked about cloning, great apes and whether it's cruel to NOT give them free access to television in zoos, mars vacations, what it's like working at google, the SF Bay area versus Ithaca, and a subscription news website whose name I've misplaced, which he described as a sort of "open source CIA" and sounded pretty interesting. I've not seen him in almost five years, but we were able to talk about lots of the same sorts of things we used to talk about, that is to say, not very much and quite a lot at the same time.
In the evening, d. and I had dinner at Anna-Lisa and John's house, a family we know through the Quaker meeting. They are a pair of displaced Southerners who came to Ithaca for Anna-Lisa's PhD (in, I believe, Rural Development). We had a wonderful discussion on what defines a "sense of place" for a community, and how to possibly develop a sense of place in cities and rural areas that have hollowed out due to displacement into suburbs. She had interesting things to say about what to do with dead malls, besides bulldozing them. The main point is, we're stuck with malls instead of town commons, so we might as well make the most of them.
They have a teenage daughter who, amazingly enough, is TOO engaged in volunteer activities. I find myself jealous of the Quaker teenagers I know, who have so many opportunities to spend time with other like-minded (pacifist, left-wing, civic-minded) teens, instead of the numbskulls who I went to high-school with. I expect there's a Christmas message in there somewhere, itching to get out, but I don't think I'll be able to rescue it this evening... Anyway, these parents have an awful time with their daughter trying to go her own way and insisting she's not understood, which strikes me as sort of funny.
Monday morning, I photocopied our Christmas letter and bought stamps. Which is only worth commenting on because the Staples store's photocopiers should be entered as an exhibit into "how not to set up a copier interface". I'm not shabby in the way of figuring out things like self-serve photocopiers. And I couldn't manage to make my copies without two separate interventions from the nice Photocopier Lady.
All I'll say about this is, if you need to put a little sticker inside the copier explain things, you're doing something wrong because the interface shouldn't need extra stickers. But a sticker to tell the user to put the page FLUSH RIGHT instead of flush left, had better go on the left-hand side where the user expects to put their page, 'cause they'll never see the sticker if it's flush right as well. End of rant about copiers.
On Monday, d, I, and dan's mom all drove up to Pulaski, NY, which is exactly half-way between his parents' house and mine. We had a quite successful first meeting of my parents and his mom. (d's dad unfortunately had to work). I feel reasonably good about the next meeting, whenever that happens. The tough part was getting them together the first time (after what, coming up on eight years?)
Onward, d. and I headed upstate to my parents' house in the Middle of Nowhere upstate NY. The major high-point of the visit was seeing my grandmother, who lives with them. Her hearing's pretty much gone, and she is rather senile, but she's doing great for 97. Basically, she sits around knitting her days away. She got a big kick out of Rover, who does different tricks than my parents' cocker spaniel, and had about as much fun as Rover did when they played fetch together. She knitted me a big afghan, but mom hadn't had time to finish it off for her, so I'll pick it up the next time I visit.
The visit was otherwise pretty unremarkable; I learned that my parents would like to retire soon, if my dad can find somebody to buy the family maple sugaring business. My mom says she'd love to retire to Ithaca, which would be super. I just need to keep my fingers crossed that both of these will work out, hopefully in the next decade or so while they're still in the position of cleaning out their OWN house (rather than requiring that their kids do it). This is mostly dan's obsession (worrying about when our parents die) but it's rubbed off on me a bit too.
I saw my brothers for approximately seven hours, before they left for Watertown. Both of them have a more antagonistic relationship with our dad (to the point where neither of them enjoy spending the night at my parents'). I often wonder how that happened, and whether it could be more than dad getting crankier as he gets older. It's complicated, and I would like to have the chance to talk with them (my siblings) about it, though we didn't get the chance on this visit.
d and I left this morning, successfully bringing with us the dog-bed that I had left behind on my last visit. Unfortunately, we seem to have left behind the crockpot that dan's sister gave us for christmas. Ah well, I expect dan's mom will get it to us eventually.
Home again, I have an overwhelming urge to clean. I've talked about this with my brother Zack; he has the same reaction to being at my parents' house. It's tougher for him, though, because he doesn't own much stuff. So far as I can tell, he apparently makes up for it by going and cleaning our other brother's apartment instead.
Update: I'd meant to write about the holiday season in general, but I don't remember what I was going to say, and this entry is long enough anyway.
I hope everybody else's holidays are going well.
I wanted to say more about our time in Ithaca, then I'll talk about my parents' house,
As I started to say in my last entry, I spent a few hours walking and chatting with Jeremy, who is one of the nicest people I've had the pleasure of knowing over the years. We talked about cloning, great apes and whether it's cruel to NOT give them free access to television in zoos, mars vacations, what it's like working at google, the SF Bay area versus Ithaca, and a subscription news website whose name I've misplaced, which he described as a sort of "open source CIA" and sounded pretty interesting. I've not seen him in almost five years, but we were able to talk about lots of the same sorts of things we used to talk about, that is to say, not very much and quite a lot at the same time.
In the evening, d. and I had dinner at Anna-Lisa and John's house, a family we know through the Quaker meeting. They are a pair of displaced Southerners who came to Ithaca for Anna-Lisa's PhD (in, I believe, Rural Development). We had a wonderful discussion on what defines a "sense of place" for a community, and how to possibly develop a sense of place in cities and rural areas that have hollowed out due to displacement into suburbs. She had interesting things to say about what to do with dead malls, besides bulldozing them. The main point is, we're stuck with malls instead of town commons, so we might as well make the most of them.
They have a teenage daughter who, amazingly enough, is TOO engaged in volunteer activities. I find myself jealous of the Quaker teenagers I know, who have so many opportunities to spend time with other like-minded (pacifist, left-wing, civic-minded) teens, instead of the numbskulls who I went to high-school with. I expect there's a Christmas message in there somewhere, itching to get out, but I don't think I'll be able to rescue it this evening... Anyway, these parents have an awful time with their daughter trying to go her own way and insisting she's not understood, which strikes me as sort of funny.
Monday morning, I photocopied our Christmas letter and bought stamps. Which is only worth commenting on because the Staples store's photocopiers should be entered as an exhibit into "how not to set up a copier interface". I'm not shabby in the way of figuring out things like self-serve photocopiers. And I couldn't manage to make my copies without two separate interventions from the nice Photocopier Lady.
All I'll say about this is, if you need to put a little sticker inside the copier explain things, you're doing something wrong because the interface shouldn't need extra stickers. But a sticker to tell the user to put the page FLUSH RIGHT instead of flush left, had better go on the left-hand side where the user expects to put their page, 'cause they'll never see the sticker if it's flush right as well. End of rant about copiers.
On Monday, d, I, and dan's mom all drove up to Pulaski, NY, which is exactly half-way between his parents' house and mine. We had a quite successful first meeting of my parents and his mom. (d's dad unfortunately had to work). I feel reasonably good about the next meeting, whenever that happens. The tough part was getting them together the first time (after what, coming up on eight years?)
Onward, d. and I headed upstate to my parents' house in the Middle of Nowhere upstate NY. The major high-point of the visit was seeing my grandmother, who lives with them. Her hearing's pretty much gone, and she is rather senile, but she's doing great for 97. Basically, she sits around knitting her days away. She got a big kick out of Rover, who does different tricks than my parents' cocker spaniel, and had about as much fun as Rover did when they played fetch together. She knitted me a big afghan, but mom hadn't had time to finish it off for her, so I'll pick it up the next time I visit.
The visit was otherwise pretty unremarkable; I learned that my parents would like to retire soon, if my dad can find somebody to buy the family maple sugaring business. My mom says she'd love to retire to Ithaca, which would be super. I just need to keep my fingers crossed that both of these will work out, hopefully in the next decade or so while they're still in the position of cleaning out their OWN house (rather than requiring that their kids do it). This is mostly dan's obsession (worrying about when our parents die) but it's rubbed off on me a bit too.
I saw my brothers for approximately seven hours, before they left for Watertown. Both of them have a more antagonistic relationship with our dad (to the point where neither of them enjoy spending the night at my parents'). I often wonder how that happened, and whether it could be more than dad getting crankier as he gets older. It's complicated, and I would like to have the chance to talk with them (my siblings) about it, though we didn't get the chance on this visit.
d and I left this morning, successfully bringing with us the dog-bed that I had left behind on my last visit. Unfortunately, we seem to have left behind the crockpot that dan's sister gave us for christmas. Ah well, I expect dan's mom will get it to us eventually.
Home again, I have an overwhelming urge to clean. I've talked about this with my brother Zack; he has the same reaction to being at my parents' house. It's tougher for him, though, because he doesn't own much stuff. So far as I can tell, he apparently makes up for it by going and cleaning our other brother's apartment instead.
Update: I'd meant to write about the holiday season in general, but I don't remember what I was going to say, and this entry is long enough anyway.
I hope everybody else's holidays are going well.
