When the girlfriend is off at a conference and one is left alone between Christmas and New Years with her parents, what does one do with one's time? The correct answer should be that one uses all that free time to work on one's dissertation or, at the very least, read some text(s) pertaining to one's dissertation. One does not spend many idle hours gallivanting on the interwebs and playing YahooGames. Sigh. I'm useless.
Actually, despite our heinous heinous trip here and the fact that this is the first Christmas I haven't spent with my own family, Christmas was truly lovely.
April's parents spoiled me with presents (an excellent and quite useful lap-desk-thing for my laptop, stainless steel cup and table-/teaspoon measures, fancy tea, fancy lotion, a pretty blue Chinese silk toiletry bag, and a few other sundries I can't quite remember off the top of my head). Her aunts sent some very nice pajamas and lavender honey and soap and few other things all wrapped in Christmas-y tea towels in their Christmas package for me, and her brother's family gave me this gorgeous little Japanese tea set with a tiny pot and clay cups and, of course, some tea to go with it.
Not that I came empty-handed. Her father: slippers (which he's worn non-stop since Christmas day--yay) and a worst-case scenario outdoor almanac (which he read in its entirety yesterday afternoon, occasionally relaying helpful facts out loud, like how to tell which way is up if you're buried alive). Her mother: a bean-bag-type neck pillow since she always falls asleep watching tv in the strangest positions and a sporty, spring jacket in brown and seafoam green. Her brother and his partner: a Car Talk CD (he's a mechanic) and a red, Chinese silk jewelry bag. And I gave each of her brother's kids both clothes (Quiksilver shirts for the two boys and a pink monkey t-shirt for the six-year-old girl) and toys/games (a car racing game for the oldest boy to play on his new laptop, a 20-questions hand-held game and Wallace and Gromit DVD for the middle boy, and a learn-to-draw Disney princesses DVD-kit for the girl).
Now, I'm biding my time awaiting April's return. We've watched a lot of movies and her mom and I went to one of the malls today so I could look for something else for my parents. April will be back Saturday and we'll probably enjoy the Boxing Week sales with some more shopping (stupid Canadian dollar, why are you so strong?) and then celebrate New Years trying not to lose money at a casino in the city with the rest of the family.
And, to top it all off, I'll get to have a second Christmas with my parents in early January when I get back. At this rate, I'm going to get to extend the holiday right up until my birthday.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Monday, December 24, 2007
eight states, one province, seven days
Considering the week I’ve had, starting with the 13 hour blizzard drive to Virginia, and concluding with our 20 hour drive from Northern Colorado to Calgary, Alberta, you’d think I was training for The Amazing Race.Thankfully, I am not. And traveling across eight states and one province over the course of a week (and this doesn’t even including the states I flew over getting from Virginia to Colorado) has made me much less inclined towards travel, in general, and road trips, specifically.
I’d like to be say that our Calgary road trip was uneventful and less painful than I thought it would be, but unfortunately that’s not the case. We left April’s apartment at 6:30am, her dog and lots of luggage and Christmas presents in tow, and arrived at her parents’ house in Calgary at 2:30am. We stopped every two to three hours to let the dog out and get gas (at my insistence that we keep the gas tank at least half full to avoid becoming the new Donner party) and entertained ourselves with the first Harry Potter audio book and trying to stay on the road.
Weather conditions, despite multiple reports to the contrary, were not amusing. April drove the first leg, and we started to get a little worried once we entered Wyoming and could see huge clouds on the horizon.
We tried to remain optimistic, but it seemed that each time one of us said “well this isn’t too bad” or “at least we can still see the road,” things would get worse. By the time we were mid-way through Wyoming, April was fighting to both keep the car from being blown off the interstate by huge gusts of wind and see where she was driving through all the blowing snow.
Because I wasn’t driving, I had the luxury to be flippant about the road conditions, commenting on the beauty of the winter landscape. But I would pay dearly for my cheek once I took over the wheel.
Soon, I was driving and conditions cleared for just long enough to lure me into complacency before they got suddenly and horribly worse. The road filled with snow, the four wheel drive wasn’t on—I had forgotten to turn it back on because of the abruptness of the snow’s return and because, in my car, it’s an automatic function—and April was asleep. I tried to drive carefully, listening to Harry Potter, when all of the sudden I hit ice and the car spun to the side at 50 mph. I held onto the steering wheel tightly and tried to pry my foot off the brake (knowing that braking only makes the skidding worse). April woke up in a panic to the sound of me cursing loudly and the sight of the car skidding rapidly sideways down the middle of the interstate. After a few, very long, seconds, we glided to a halt facing backwards but still on the road. As I was trying to turn the car around, still slipping and sliding on the ice, a truck driver decided he couldn’t wait for me and passed me on the shoulder. Luckily, the few other cars on the road stopped and waited while I tried to coax the car forwards.
My hands were shaking and April offered to drive but there were no convenient exits for another hour or so, and I wasn’t about to pull over on the side of the road and end up sliding into the ditch. I consider myself a good and fairly calm driver, but after that I was pretty much a nervous wreak for the rest of the drive (i.e. the next 16 hours) even though once we got to Montana weather conditions cleared up for the most part.
Finally, we were able to trade places and I felt the weight of all my anxiety fade away as I sunk into the passenger seat, totally spent. Unfortunately, when it was my turn to drive again, later in the night, I pulled out of a Safeway parking lot right into three lanes of oncoming one-way traffic! In my defense, there were no signs, but this didn’t help much to calm my already frayed nerves.
Throughout the night, April and I referred to my 180 degree spin-out as “the teacup incident” (because of something my mother said comparing it to that Disney Land teacup ride), but levity aside I was still terrified long after all the ice had melted away. Later, as I was driving the last leg through southern Alberta, I kept feeling phantom ice beneath our tires, imagining the road sliding out from under us with the rotation of the earth, navy sky and dark pavement blurring together.
Still, despite my anxiety and our near-misses, we made it safely to Calgary and are now ensconced here, seemingly gaining a new pound every hour as we’re stuffed full of food and candy. Tonight, there will be eleven people at the dinner table and a room of presents and I can’t think of a better place to be.
Merry Holidays everyone!
I’d like to be say that our Calgary road trip was uneventful and less painful than I thought it would be, but unfortunately that’s not the case. We left April’s apartment at 6:30am, her dog and lots of luggage and Christmas presents in tow, and arrived at her parents’ house in Calgary at 2:30am. We stopped every two to three hours to let the dog out and get gas (at my insistence that we keep the gas tank at least half full to avoid becoming the new Donner party) and entertained ourselves with the first Harry Potter audio book and trying to stay on the road.
Weather conditions, despite multiple reports to the contrary, were not amusing. April drove the first leg, and we started to get a little worried once we entered Wyoming and could see huge clouds on the horizon.
We tried to remain optimistic, but it seemed that each time one of us said “well this isn’t too bad” or “at least we can still see the road,” things would get worse. By the time we were mid-way through Wyoming, April was fighting to both keep the car from being blown off the interstate by huge gusts of wind and see where she was driving through all the blowing snow.
Because I wasn’t driving, I had the luxury to be flippant about the road conditions, commenting on the beauty of the winter landscape. But I would pay dearly for my cheek once I took over the wheel.
Soon, I was driving and conditions cleared for just long enough to lure me into complacency before they got suddenly and horribly worse. The road filled with snow, the four wheel drive wasn’t on—I had forgotten to turn it back on because of the abruptness of the snow’s return and because, in my car, it’s an automatic function—and April was asleep. I tried to drive carefully, listening to Harry Potter, when all of the sudden I hit ice and the car spun to the side at 50 mph. I held onto the steering wheel tightly and tried to pry my foot off the brake (knowing that braking only makes the skidding worse). April woke up in a panic to the sound of me cursing loudly and the sight of the car skidding rapidly sideways down the middle of the interstate. After a few, very long, seconds, we glided to a halt facing backwards but still on the road. As I was trying to turn the car around, still slipping and sliding on the ice, a truck driver decided he couldn’t wait for me and passed me on the shoulder. Luckily, the few other cars on the road stopped and waited while I tried to coax the car forwards.
My hands were shaking and April offered to drive but there were no convenient exits for another hour or so, and I wasn’t about to pull over on the side of the road and end up sliding into the ditch. I consider myself a good and fairly calm driver, but after that I was pretty much a nervous wreak for the rest of the drive (i.e. the next 16 hours) even though once we got to Montana weather conditions cleared up for the most part.
Finally, we were able to trade places and I felt the weight of all my anxiety fade away as I sunk into the passenger seat, totally spent. Unfortunately, when it was my turn to drive again, later in the night, I pulled out of a Safeway parking lot right into three lanes of oncoming one-way traffic! In my defense, there were no signs, but this didn’t help much to calm my already frayed nerves.
Throughout the night, April and I referred to my 180 degree spin-out as “the teacup incident” (because of something my mother said comparing it to that Disney Land teacup ride), but levity aside I was still terrified long after all the ice had melted away. Later, as I was driving the last leg through southern Alberta, I kept feeling phantom ice beneath our tires, imagining the road sliding out from under us with the rotation of the earth, navy sky and dark pavement blurring together.
Still, despite my anxiety and our near-misses, we made it safely to Calgary and are now ensconced here, seemingly gaining a new pound every hour as we’re stuffed full of food and candy. Tonight, there will be eleven people at the dinner table and a room of presents and I can’t think of a better place to be.
Merry Holidays everyone!
Sunday, December 16, 2007
bare branches in winter are a form of writing*
I'm in my parents' house in Virginia, and the trees outside sound like they're performing some sort of wild, frenzied dance in the force of the wind. It's a bit hard for me to wrap my mind around being in Virginia. That it's Sunday. That it's evening. I just woke up an hour ago, actually, having driven the entire night from Western New York to avoid getting caught in a tremendous blizzard.
As of this time yesterday I was still thinking that I would sleep normally, get up early today, and drive carefully out of the city, heavy snow or not. But the forecast kept getting worse and worse, and by 9pm last night, my father was calling me with frantic ultimatums: "Either you leave now or you'll be stuck there until Tuesday morning." This situation, while feasible, would have been unacceptable for me personally, since I'm leaving for Denver on Wednesday to spend Christmas with April and her parents in Canada (more on this in another post--our travel plans are too confusing for me to explain at the moment). So, I packed and cleaned double-time, fielding bi-hourly phone calls from my father (to the point that I was yelling into the phone every time he called, "Every time you call me it slows me down! Stop calling. I'm working on it!").
At about 10:15pm, I estimated my time of departure at T-30 minutes (keeping a countdown in my head). This is when my mother calls: "We think you should just stay there. It's getting too dangerous." I'm mid zipping up my suitcase. I look out of the window. The snow is coming down fast, but the flakes are small, icy.
"Um. No. Now I'm leaving. I'm almost ready to go. I need to just go. It doesn't look so bad outside.” This isn’t a lie. Not really. My mother acquiesces hesitantly and I hang up.
I call my pet-sitter. Ask her if she can feed the cats in the morning. Of course she says “sure,” wishes me luck.
I pack the car frenetically in a sweater because I’m so over-heated from bustling around my house for two hours. By the time I’m done, I’m covered in ice and snow. I say goodbye to my cats and bird, all of whom look at me with deeply perplexed expressions. I know they’ll be in good hands while I’m gone, but the rushed departure has made these rather simple pet-goodbyes much harder.
Once I start driving, I realize that it’s going to be slow, but not awful, as long as I drive south as expediently as possible. My parents talk to me on my cell phone for a while, dispensing helpful advice and informing me of road conditions, much like Lara Croft’s team of computer experts in Tomb Raider.
We chat while I drive until I realize that, in my haste, I forgot to charge my cell phone. I’m at about 35%. Enough for emergencies, but not enough to talk all night. And I can’t find my car charger anywhere. I reluctantly hang up, promising to call again in two hours. I call April, tell her I’ve left and will call her when I get there.
The drive is challenging and slow, but I don’t really feel unsafe until I’m in the Pennsylvania hill country and I suddenly think that I’m alone, no other cars, driving in a combination of sleet and snow and freezing rain between huge rocky crags. What if something happened to my car, what if I end up in one of those made-for-tv disaster/horror films about highway murders or starving to death while trapped under ten feet of snow? Actually, starving to death doesn’t concern me as much because I packed enough food and water for ten car trips.
I eat snack food compulsively for the next few hours, driving slowly through snow which turns to freezing rain, stop to buy some Vault soda at a 24-hour supermarket at 3am and keep driving until I hit a rest area just south of Carlisle, PA. It’s only raining here, no more snow. It’s 6am and I’ve been driving for 7 hours, so I stop and sleep until 8:30am.
The worst part of the drive has to be the half an hour after waking up but before I get coffee. I can barely keep my eyes open and focused on the road.
Finally, I veer off the interstate for my favorite part of the drive: the last two hours through rural Virginia. It’s a gorgeous morning and the landscape is stunning, like waking up to find the whole world has changed while you were asleep. Everything is glistening. The trees are covered from trunk to branch in ice—coated and smooth and gleaming—and I imagine for a moment that I’m driving through a field of huge snowflakes, shimmering in the hazy sunlight.
April calls me, worried, because I’ve been on the road for twelve hours with no word. I assure her that I’m fine and, since I’m so close to home, we talk until the battery of my phone is almost dead.
When I get to my parents’ house at noon, my mother calls down from the balcony, “You’re here!” and comes out to help me unpack. My father, who’s been up all night monitoring my progress, comes outside in a shirt and no pants, hugs me and proclaims he’s going back to bed.
I drag my suitcase upstairs, change into pajamas, climb into my childhood loft and sleep for five hours. When I wake up, my parents have gone to their weekly Sunday afternoon tango lesson and I’m alone in the dim, empty house with the trees performing their harried wind-dance outside.
I make a few phone calls, check my email, still in a daze.
My parents come home. I greet my mother and look at her plaintively, bare feet on the hardwood, my sweatshirt hood pulled over my head.
“You’re hungry, aren’t you?” She says.
I nod, pleased she knows me so well. She laughs.
“We’re glad you’re here.”
Me too.
-------------------------------
* NOTE: The title line is from an incredibly germane Billy Collins poem, Winter Syntax.
Winter Syntax, by Billy Collins
A sentence starts out like a lone traveler
heading into a blizzard at midnight,
tilting into the wind, one arm shielding his face,
the tails of his thin coat flapping behind him.
There are easier ways of making sense,
the connoisseurship of gesture, for example.
You hold a girl's face in your hands like a vase.
You lift a gun from the glove compartment
and toss it out the window into the desert heat.
These cool moments are blazing with silence.
The full moon makes sense. When a cloud crosses it
it becomes as eloquent as a bicycle leaning
outside a drugstore or a dog who sleeps all afternoon
in a corner of the couch.
Bare branches in winter are a form of writing.
The unclothed body is autobiography.
Every lake is a vowel, every island a noun.
But the traveler persists in his misery,
struggling all night through the deepening snow,
leaving a faint alphabet of bootprints
on the white hills and the white floors of valleys,
a message for field mice and passing crows.
At dawn he will spot the vine of smoke
rising from your chimney, and when he stands
before you shivering, draped in sparkling frost,
a smile will appear in the beard of icicles,
and the man will express a complete thought.
As of this time yesterday I was still thinking that I would sleep normally, get up early today, and drive carefully out of the city, heavy snow or not. But the forecast kept getting worse and worse, and by 9pm last night, my father was calling me with frantic ultimatums: "Either you leave now or you'll be stuck there until Tuesday morning." This situation, while feasible, would have been unacceptable for me personally, since I'm leaving for Denver on Wednesday to spend Christmas with April and her parents in Canada (more on this in another post--our travel plans are too confusing for me to explain at the moment). So, I packed and cleaned double-time, fielding bi-hourly phone calls from my father (to the point that I was yelling into the phone every time he called, "Every time you call me it slows me down! Stop calling. I'm working on it!").
At about 10:15pm, I estimated my time of departure at T-30 minutes (keeping a countdown in my head). This is when my mother calls: "We think you should just stay there. It's getting too dangerous." I'm mid zipping up my suitcase. I look out of the window. The snow is coming down fast, but the flakes are small, icy.
"Um. No. Now I'm leaving. I'm almost ready to go. I need to just go. It doesn't look so bad outside.” This isn’t a lie. Not really. My mother acquiesces hesitantly and I hang up.
I call my pet-sitter. Ask her if she can feed the cats in the morning. Of course she says “sure,” wishes me luck.
I pack the car frenetically in a sweater because I’m so over-heated from bustling around my house for two hours. By the time I’m done, I’m covered in ice and snow. I say goodbye to my cats and bird, all of whom look at me with deeply perplexed expressions. I know they’ll be in good hands while I’m gone, but the rushed departure has made these rather simple pet-goodbyes much harder.
Once I start driving, I realize that it’s going to be slow, but not awful, as long as I drive south as expediently as possible. My parents talk to me on my cell phone for a while, dispensing helpful advice and informing me of road conditions, much like Lara Croft’s team of computer experts in Tomb Raider.
We chat while I drive until I realize that, in my haste, I forgot to charge my cell phone. I’m at about 35%. Enough for emergencies, but not enough to talk all night. And I can’t find my car charger anywhere. I reluctantly hang up, promising to call again in two hours. I call April, tell her I’ve left and will call her when I get there.
The drive is challenging and slow, but I don’t really feel unsafe until I’m in the Pennsylvania hill country and I suddenly think that I’m alone, no other cars, driving in a combination of sleet and snow and freezing rain between huge rocky crags. What if something happened to my car, what if I end up in one of those made-for-tv disaster/horror films about highway murders or starving to death while trapped under ten feet of snow? Actually, starving to death doesn’t concern me as much because I packed enough food and water for ten car trips.
I eat snack food compulsively for the next few hours, driving slowly through snow which turns to freezing rain, stop to buy some Vault soda at a 24-hour supermarket at 3am and keep driving until I hit a rest area just south of Carlisle, PA. It’s only raining here, no more snow. It’s 6am and I’ve been driving for 7 hours, so I stop and sleep until 8:30am.
The worst part of the drive has to be the half an hour after waking up but before I get coffee. I can barely keep my eyes open and focused on the road.
Finally, I veer off the interstate for my favorite part of the drive: the last two hours through rural Virginia. It’s a gorgeous morning and the landscape is stunning, like waking up to find the whole world has changed while you were asleep. Everything is glistening. The trees are covered from trunk to branch in ice—coated and smooth and gleaming—and I imagine for a moment that I’m driving through a field of huge snowflakes, shimmering in the hazy sunlight.
April calls me, worried, because I’ve been on the road for twelve hours with no word. I assure her that I’m fine and, since I’m so close to home, we talk until the battery of my phone is almost dead.When I get to my parents’ house at noon, my mother calls down from the balcony, “You’re here!” and comes out to help me unpack. My father, who’s been up all night monitoring my progress, comes outside in a shirt and no pants, hugs me and proclaims he’s going back to bed.
I drag my suitcase upstairs, change into pajamas, climb into my childhood loft and sleep for five hours. When I wake up, my parents have gone to their weekly Sunday afternoon tango lesson and I’m alone in the dim, empty house with the trees performing their harried wind-dance outside.
I make a few phone calls, check my email, still in a daze.
My parents come home. I greet my mother and look at her plaintively, bare feet on the hardwood, my sweatshirt hood pulled over my head.
“You’re hungry, aren’t you?” She says.
I nod, pleased she knows me so well. She laughs.
“We’re glad you’re here.”
Me too.
-------------------------------
* NOTE: The title line is from an incredibly germane Billy Collins poem, Winter Syntax.
Winter Syntax, by Billy Collins
A sentence starts out like a lone traveler
heading into a blizzard at midnight,
tilting into the wind, one arm shielding his face,
the tails of his thin coat flapping behind him.
There are easier ways of making sense,
the connoisseurship of gesture, for example.
You hold a girl's face in your hands like a vase.
You lift a gun from the glove compartment
and toss it out the window into the desert heat.
These cool moments are blazing with silence.
The full moon makes sense. When a cloud crosses it
it becomes as eloquent as a bicycle leaning
outside a drugstore or a dog who sleeps all afternoon
in a corner of the couch.
Bare branches in winter are a form of writing.
The unclothed body is autobiography.
Every lake is a vowel, every island a noun.
But the traveler persists in his misery,
struggling all night through the deepening snow,
leaving a faint alphabet of bootprints
on the white hills and the white floors of valleys,
a message for field mice and passing crows.
At dawn he will spot the vine of smoke
rising from your chimney, and when he stands
before you shivering, draped in sparkling frost,
a smile will appear in the beard of icicles,
and the man will express a complete thought.
Friday, December 07, 2007
winter wonderland
A blog posting by my old middle-school friend, M, prompted me to think about my relationship to snow. She made a very astute observation about why us Southerners-by-upbringing (and I use the term southern loosely, as some would not consider Virginia southern, per se) are much more appreciative of snow (generally speaking) than Northerners.
Two words: snow days.
I have fond childhood memories of days, sometimes even weeks, off from school--sledding with my friends down treacherous slopes, making snow angels, building forts. Of course, it wasn't all fun and games: sometimes the power went out (once, when I was in 3rd or 4th grade, a power outage at my parents' house afforded me a multiple-day sleepover with one of my close friends; maybe my parents were cold and in the dark, but I was having a grand old time). Also, snow days meant we had to make up class over other holidays (like Memorial Day), and the School Board could tack on up to something like 10 more days of school in June. But somehow none of this mattered. The sight of snow still fills me with childlike glee despite its ubiquity here in "lake effect" land.
And now that April has safely made it back home from her visit this past weekend--after being stranded here for a day when the airport shut down during our mini-blizzard on Monday--I can speak freely and say that, as frustrating as the whole flight cancellation fiasco was, I still found our first snowstorm of the season immeasurably beautiful. I mean, if I can still love snow after all the havoc it caused last year--ice damming, heavy roof leakage, basement flooding--then my affection must be quite deep-seated indeed.
Snow appreciation is a tenuous issue, though, geographically speaking. My friends who come from warmer climes (California, for example, or Georgia) do not appreciate the snow at all because they find the entire idea of being cold anathema to their general existence. Friends who grew up in the North, Midwest or Canada tend to think of snow as just something to be endured (unless they're skiers or snowboarders, but that's another story) because it afforded them no school-free pleasure as children. Perhaps you need to be from somewhere with relatively moderate weather--and where the city does not keep an adequate number of snowplows on hand--to find that delicate balance of the ability to tolerate colder weather while still appreciating snow's, I don't know, snowy-ness.
Or maybe it's just me, rhapsodizing about snow on my blog at two in the morning. Who knows.
Two words: snow days.
I have fond childhood memories of days, sometimes even weeks, off from school--sledding with my friends down treacherous slopes, making snow angels, building forts. Of course, it wasn't all fun and games: sometimes the power went out (once, when I was in 3rd or 4th grade, a power outage at my parents' house afforded me a multiple-day sleepover with one of my close friends; maybe my parents were cold and in the dark, but I was having a grand old time). Also, snow days meant we had to make up class over other holidays (like Memorial Day), and the School Board could tack on up to something like 10 more days of school in June. But somehow none of this mattered. The sight of snow still fills me with childlike glee despite its ubiquity here in "lake effect" land.
And now that April has safely made it back home from her visit this past weekend--after being stranded here for a day when the airport shut down during our mini-blizzard on Monday--I can speak freely and say that, as frustrating as the whole flight cancellation fiasco was, I still found our first snowstorm of the season immeasurably beautiful. I mean, if I can still love snow after all the havoc it caused last year--ice damming, heavy roof leakage, basement flooding--then my affection must be quite deep-seated indeed.
Snow appreciation is a tenuous issue, though, geographically speaking. My friends who come from warmer climes (California, for example, or Georgia) do not appreciate the snow at all because they find the entire idea of being cold anathema to their general existence. Friends who grew up in the North, Midwest or Canada tend to think of snow as just something to be endured (unless they're skiers or snowboarders, but that's another story) because it afforded them no school-free pleasure as children. Perhaps you need to be from somewhere with relatively moderate weather--and where the city does not keep an adequate number of snowplows on hand--to find that delicate balance of the ability to tolerate colder weather while still appreciating snow's, I don't know, snowy-ness.
Or maybe it's just me, rhapsodizing about snow on my blog at two in the morning. Who knows.
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