walkingshadow (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
walkingshadow) wrote2002-03-11 10:24 pm
walkingshadow) wrote2002-03-11 10:24 pm
Spring Break
I really needed that week away. Not so much because classes were stressful or there were special things waiting for me at home (besides the usual unconditional love), but because I desperately needed to catch up on 1) sleep and 2) three weeks, or 150 pages, of anthropology reading. Also, my parents seem to like having me around.
I forget what it's like to eat real meals. The dining hall does a good job, and I manage to feed myself between the yogurt and sandwiches and cereal, but I forget my mother's cooking, on a stove and in an oven, a plate of food. We were always one of those sit-down families. I wouldn't have said that I miss it, but it's nice to go back to.
I drove in at about 8:30 Friday night. Saturday was my birthday, and the birthday dinner that evolved had at least three of the five elements of farce. Running gags, stock characters, an improbable situation wildly spiralling out of the control of the hapless main characters. Never a dull moment.
Originally, my parents wanted to take me out, wherever I wanted to go. Our first mistake was in answering the phone. My grandmother invited herself along for the celebration. Then I committed the second and ultimately most fatal error. Like the dutiful granddaughter I so rarely am, I called my grandfather to let him know I had safely arrived in town, and to ask him if he was interested in having breakfast on the beach with us tomorrow (because we could). He invited us all out for that night. Should have seen that coming. Now we're six people, if our cousin Marian was coming; and we might as well invite her now, right? Then the phone rings again. My dad answers and has a very terse conversation, ending by saying he'll call back in fifteen minutes. He hangs up the phone and says we're up to eight. Including my aunt and uncle, who'd been called by my grandfather and invited along for the ride. My mother and I remain philosophical and derive no small amusement from the situation. Turns out Marian couldn't make it. So we're seven. I refuse to be constrained by the preferences of who's coming, and opt for the Red Thai Room, a small but highly successful and delicious establishment in Hollywood's downtown. I operate the carpool, collecting the grandparents who can't drive and (thank god) don't anymore, and we all finally end up at the restaurant.
Ah, the dinner. Mine was excellent. Thai food is one of my favorites. I had a lovely time; I was skillfully, if unintentionally, entertained. Because it's either that or jack your blood pressure up to danger levels and start throwing crockery. Marian has coined the phrase "Inane Dinner Conversation" (IDC) to describe the phenomenon. It came from the scene in While You Were Sleeping where the family is sitting around the table and talking back and forth about very tall actors, the beef and Nazis of Argentina, and the creaminess of the mashed potatoes. It's a riot, and a situation we can and do recreate over our own family meals.
Both my grandmother and my grandfather are completely deaf, and in vehement denial of it. So, for the record, is my father, though he's not nearly as bad (in terms of deafness, not vehemence). This right away makes for interesting exchanges. Everything gets repeated, repeatedly, and usually isn't understood right in the end. Oy. Then the menu was difficult to read. So there was the exchange of reading glasses that we've come to expect at all family gatherings, especially seders. And my grandfather doesn't eat anything spicy. This is a man who never orders anything but pepper steak when we go for Chinese. Which is frequently. But everyone seemed to enjoy his or her meal. There was lots of sharing and exclaiming and chopsticks practice. We finished up with ice cream in another little shop a couple of blocks over. Then we returned the grandparents to their respective condos and retreated home ourselves. I love my family, I really do.
The rest of the week passed uneventfully. I challenged my father to Scrabble and slaughtered him, three out of three. We played again a few nights later (one game apiece) while watching The Hunt for the Red October. Highly exciting stuff. Hell yeah, you let Sean Connery into the country. Sean Connery is very cool. I'd let Alec Baldwin into the country too, but he was already an American, so it wasn't an issue.
And after being home again, I've never been so happy to see my computer at school. Well, except for when I got back from Intersession, when we'd been apart for four weeks instead of just one. Because the scrap metal they have at home is a very slow seven years old. It's slower now than when it was first bought, which is hard to imagine. I won't even get into the modem speed (14.4K), or how much AOL sucks. Just booting. up. and opening applications takes a palpable effort from the machine. One looks on in doubtful apprehension, expecting it to freeze at any moment. God knows it fulfills that prophecy often enough.
Part of the reason my parents haven't invested in a new one, is that my father is the Anti-Technology. He's a smart man, but anything related to electronics completely escapes him. He's still not quite clear on the "TV/VCR" button on the remote control; every once in a while we're hear static from the other room and he'll yell that he can't get any channels. You don't want to know how many tapes he's ruined by either screwing up the timer set-up, or recording over something else. And he's the same way with the computer.
On this trip I got to calmly explain the Copy/Cut/Paste function in the word processor. The calmness was a facade. He just doesn't understand the fundamentals of the machine; he has no intuitions as to how it works inside. I appreciate this. It's just hard not to get hysterical when you're explaining for the FIFTH time how to save a document to your own folder. So making him start over with a whole new machine would not be a pretty sight. It'll have to happen one of these days though, when the current one coughs one final time and refuses to turn over. We have our fingers crossed that at least the important files will be backed up.
The anthropology was read, and I got a bead on the poem of the week. Worked on the sleeping, but with only moderate success. I slept in every day, but I had an unusual amount of trouble falling asleep at night, lying there for an hour or so, and then waking up two or three times in the very early hours of the morning. Really low-quality sleep. Apparently I've got things on my mind, and I was never any good at just turning them off. Something to work on. For now it's back to the daily grind; counting the days until the next vacation.
I forget what it's like to eat real meals. The dining hall does a good job, and I manage to feed myself between the yogurt and sandwiches and cereal, but I forget my mother's cooking, on a stove and in an oven, a plate of food. We were always one of those sit-down families. I wouldn't have said that I miss it, but it's nice to go back to.
I drove in at about 8:30 Friday night. Saturday was my birthday, and the birthday dinner that evolved had at least three of the five elements of farce. Running gags, stock characters, an improbable situation wildly spiralling out of the control of the hapless main characters. Never a dull moment.
Originally, my parents wanted to take me out, wherever I wanted to go. Our first mistake was in answering the phone. My grandmother invited herself along for the celebration. Then I committed the second and ultimately most fatal error. Like the dutiful granddaughter I so rarely am, I called my grandfather to let him know I had safely arrived in town, and to ask him if he was interested in having breakfast on the beach with us tomorrow (because we could). He invited us all out for that night. Should have seen that coming. Now we're six people, if our cousin Marian was coming; and we might as well invite her now, right? Then the phone rings again. My dad answers and has a very terse conversation, ending by saying he'll call back in fifteen minutes. He hangs up the phone and says we're up to eight. Including my aunt and uncle, who'd been called by my grandfather and invited along for the ride. My mother and I remain philosophical and derive no small amusement from the situation. Turns out Marian couldn't make it. So we're seven. I refuse to be constrained by the preferences of who's coming, and opt for the Red Thai Room, a small but highly successful and delicious establishment in Hollywood's downtown. I operate the carpool, collecting the grandparents who can't drive and (thank god) don't anymore, and we all finally end up at the restaurant.
Ah, the dinner. Mine was excellent. Thai food is one of my favorites. I had a lovely time; I was skillfully, if unintentionally, entertained. Because it's either that or jack your blood pressure up to danger levels and start throwing crockery. Marian has coined the phrase "Inane Dinner Conversation" (IDC) to describe the phenomenon. It came from the scene in While You Were Sleeping where the family is sitting around the table and talking back and forth about very tall actors, the beef and Nazis of Argentina, and the creaminess of the mashed potatoes. It's a riot, and a situation we can and do recreate over our own family meals.
Both my grandmother and my grandfather are completely deaf, and in vehement denial of it. So, for the record, is my father, though he's not nearly as bad (in terms of deafness, not vehemence). This right away makes for interesting exchanges. Everything gets repeated, repeatedly, and usually isn't understood right in the end. Oy. Then the menu was difficult to read. So there was the exchange of reading glasses that we've come to expect at all family gatherings, especially seders. And my grandfather doesn't eat anything spicy. This is a man who never orders anything but pepper steak when we go for Chinese. Which is frequently. But everyone seemed to enjoy his or her meal. There was lots of sharing and exclaiming and chopsticks practice. We finished up with ice cream in another little shop a couple of blocks over. Then we returned the grandparents to their respective condos and retreated home ourselves. I love my family, I really do.
The rest of the week passed uneventfully. I challenged my father to Scrabble and slaughtered him, three out of three. We played again a few nights later (one game apiece) while watching The Hunt for the Red October. Highly exciting stuff. Hell yeah, you let Sean Connery into the country. Sean Connery is very cool. I'd let Alec Baldwin into the country too, but he was already an American, so it wasn't an issue.
And after being home again, I've never been so happy to see my computer at school. Well, except for when I got back from Intersession, when we'd been apart for four weeks instead of just one. Because the scrap metal they have at home is a very slow seven years old. It's slower now than when it was first bought, which is hard to imagine. I won't even get into the modem speed (14.4K), or how much AOL sucks. Just booting. up. and opening applications takes a palpable effort from the machine. One looks on in doubtful apprehension, expecting it to freeze at any moment. God knows it fulfills that prophecy often enough.
Part of the reason my parents haven't invested in a new one, is that my father is the Anti-Technology. He's a smart man, but anything related to electronics completely escapes him. He's still not quite clear on the "TV/VCR" button on the remote control; every once in a while we're hear static from the other room and he'll yell that he can't get any channels. You don't want to know how many tapes he's ruined by either screwing up the timer set-up, or recording over something else. And he's the same way with the computer.
On this trip I got to calmly explain the Copy/Cut/Paste function in the word processor. The calmness was a facade. He just doesn't understand the fundamentals of the machine; he has no intuitions as to how it works inside. I appreciate this. It's just hard not to get hysterical when you're explaining for the FIFTH time how to save a document to your own folder. So making him start over with a whole new machine would not be a pretty sight. It'll have to happen one of these days though, when the current one coughs one final time and refuses to turn over. We have our fingers crossed that at least the important files will be backed up.
The anthropology was read, and I got a bead on the poem of the week. Worked on the sleeping, but with only moderate success. I slept in every day, but I had an unusual amount of trouble falling asleep at night, lying there for an hour or so, and then waking up two or three times in the very early hours of the morning. Really low-quality sleep. Apparently I've got things on my mind, and I was never any good at just turning them off. Something to work on. For now it's back to the daily grind; counting the days until the next vacation.