2001-11-26
Thanksgiving weekend, posted at 8:13 a.m.
Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com Woah. I'm back in the city.The drive to Michigan on Wednesday night took 15 hours. The drive back to Maryland took 13 hours. Pennsylvania was almost entirely stop-and-go. I couldn't believe it. I had to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all, as we ended up at a standstill at one point for nearly fifteen minutes out in the middle of nowhere.
Out of four days that I had off for the weekend, I was in the car for 31 hours (15+13+3 hours in between South Haven and Detroit on Saturday). Over a quarter of my time off was spent driving. Needless to say, I'm going to seriously rethink what I do during the Thanksgiving holiday next year. I am totally kicking myself for driving home this weekend rather than driving five hours to North Carolina and spending Thanksgiving with my grandparents, aunt, and uncle. Yes, it was nice to see my family, and then some friends on Saturday night. But I should have weighed the pros and cons a bit more than I did. After all, I return home in 26 days on Dec. 21; I was a bit homesick, but I could have waited 26 days longer to go home. I probably wouldn't be as exhausted as I am right now if I had waited and traveled to North Carolina instead this weekend. As it was, the weekend was tiring, and I spent most of the time either driving or being really tired (or both at the same time, which is a dangerous combination).
On the positive side of things, though, I did get to learn all about John Adams. We listened to the nine hours of his life (which was, unbelievably, the abridged version), and he was a pretty interesting guy. Afterwards, we wished it had been longer; we finished the CDs while we were still in Pennsylvania. Mike (the guy I taught with last year who moved to DC, not my third roommate) and I ended up driving home together without Jason, so we go to know each other a bit better. Jason ended up heading back with Bart and Lashonia from Battle Creek, and we met up along the way. Despite the fact that Mike and I left two hours earlier from the far east edge of Michigan and Jason, Bart, and Lashonia left at 12:30 from the west side of the state, we ended up arriving at our meeting point outside of Hagersburg at the same time. They timed their ride a bit better, and ended up getting off the toll roads and bypassing much of the traffic that we got caught in. The fact that they shaved their trip shorter by at least four hours (when you factor in the distance) caused Mike and I to engage in another bout of delirium. Yesterday, things were so wacky with traffic that we just had to laugh at it all to stay sane.
In between the mammoth drive, the weekend was pretty good. Thanksgiving was good; my mother made me vegetarian meatballs and I filled up on those and all the other fixings that were prepared. Thursday night consisted of sitting around and watching Survivor (I had missed two weeks in a row, but it was just as exciting as I had remembered, despite the fact that the rest of my family watched Friends), Will & Grace (it was my sister's first time watching it, and the episode - which I still didn't think was nearly as good as most of the ones from last year - converted her into a fan), and ER (okay episode). After a rather fruitless shopping excursion in the wee hours of morning on Friday (the stores in Kalamazoo just don't nearly seem as cool now that I live in a bustling metropolis), I took a long nap. My sister and I went out on that night for the first time since she turned 21, and that was pretty fun. I did a bit of pre-drinking and ended up being pretty significantly sloshed by 12:15am - I danced (to an awful rendition of "Honky Tonk Woman" by this middling bar band at a restaurant called the Dutch Mill), saw some old aquaintances from high school (at this quasi-European bar called Tello's), and ended up going home a good two hours earlier than my sister did. I was exhausted. I left on Saturday morning for the Detroit area, and arrived at Gale's at around 4. We played a couple of games of Trivial Pursuit while we waited for Nate to arrange everything else. We ended up eating at a cool restaurant called the Loco Bar and going to the Second City Comedy Club. It was fun. I wished I wasn't so tired, though. I was exhuasted by the time the show ended just shy of 1am, and had to get up at 7am. Ugh. Then, the long drive back here was how Sunday was spent.
Holden was wonderful during the trip. He and Molly got along very well at home (although seeing them together reminded me what a great dog Molly is and how well-trained she is, and how far Holden has to go), with nary a growl or unhappy bark between them. He was more patient with the 31 hours in the car than I was, sleeping peacefully in the back seat or stoically looking out the window. Staying at Gale's small 7th-floor apartment alone while we went out proved no problem for him. Visiting my grandmother with Alzheimer's for about an hour on Sunday morning was another thing he handled with extreme patience and good nature - grandma isn't all there, but loved visiting with the dog (she pretty much ignored me). She fed him a whole bag of potato chips (to the point where Holden wouldn't eat any more) and tried to feed him a banana. "You know, grandma, dogs don't really like bananas," I kept telling her. But she had fun, which was nice to see. She called him up on her bed and hugged and petted him, and I got some great pictures of it.
The only stain on Holden's otherwise spotless record for the weekend was a fit of barking that occurred on Sunday morning, leaving Gale's apartment. This tall, lanky, African-American guy holding a bag of papers and some newspapers in his hand walked by while Holden was doing his morning business. Holden, very suddenly, was spooked and started angrily barking at the guy. He was on a leash, so no damage done, but the guy - who was a security worker at the apartment complex - had to walk a few steps out of his path. I have no idea why Holden did what he did. Whatever points he had won with Gale - who is comically harsh with Holden - were lost with the encounter. We theorized as to why he did it. Since he acted just like he acts when the mailman comes, we were wondering if the body-type and race, which was exactly the same as our mailman, could have set him off. Or the fact that he was carrying a bag that looked like mail. Whatever the case, we in the house used to find it sort of funny and cool ("he's protecting us") that he barked and growled and mailman and the mail coming into the slots before, but we have to nip that sort of behavior in the bud.
At grandma's nursing home room, a funny moment occurred. Holden was a little whiny and was pacing back and forth, so I told him to sit down. Grandma says, "Don't tell him to sit down. He doesn't know who he is yet, and shouldn't have to sit." I think she meant "where" he is, but I still found it funny.
It was nice to see Gale, Nate, and my old friend Chris, who I hadn't seen in a few years. Chris was an RA with me, and we became pretty good friends. The next year, he was my suitemate, as he decided to just be a normal student and not an RA. He wasn't very happy that year with classes or life in general, and one night I came home to find him extremely drunk, his room majorly trashed, his door ripped off the hinges, and him incohrently babbling with a pair of scissors in his hand. As visions of suicide training danced in my head, I stayed with him until the police and paramedics arrived. It was very scary - definitely one of the scariest moments of my life, as he was a good friend and I literally thought he would do the worst thing imaginable right at that moment. I remember asking him in a sweet voice, "Hey Chris, can I borrow those scissors from you, buddy?", and getting a rather frightening response. He later apologized and we had long conversations about things, and we had basically lost touch over the last couple of years. So it was really nice to see him so happy and well-adjusted.
Anyhow, I got some lesson-planning to do. See you later.