the holiday rundown, a week later.
houston: wasn't so bad. we spent a couple of mostly enjoyable days with my family at my grandma's house, though alvin and i stayed at a very nasty embassy suites that should be condemned, leveled, and made into a shopping mall because it was that awful. alvin deserves an award for being very good and not at all complainy about putting up with my family for a full 12 hours on christmas day. for christmas i got a lovely ipod nano from my parents and also, for reasons i'm not sure about, a liter of mexican vanilla that is made with ingredients that are known to cause liver failure and internal bleeding. they love me, they love me not, they love me, they want my internal organs to stop working while i bleed to death? need to ask them about that.
savannah: i've wanted to visit since i read midnight in the garden of good and evil. the town is small and historic with lots of parks, treacherous cobblestone, nice people, and many varieties of grits. alvin and i slept a lot and ate a lot and walked around a lot (mostly looking for coffee and invariably ending up at starbucks--the only place that was open past 9 pm--at least twice a day). but the best part of our trip, sleeping aside, was the tour 0f mercer house that was ostensibly all about the antiques that jim williams collected while he lived there. i think we were all like, yeah, this 900 year old vase is nice and all, but we wanna hear about the death and mayhem that we KNOW happened here because we read the book. after the tour was over the person standing next to me asked the tour guide where in the house the murder took place, to which she repsonded that mr. williams was acquitted of all charges. and then she STILL wouldn't tell us where the unofficial murder happened. pssst...the study. (the butler did it, with the candlestick.)
flying: the flight to savannah was mostly terror-free. my least favorite part of flying is takeoff but the little girl in the seat in front of me made it all better. she was about three, and i figured she'd be freaked out during takeoff. isn't everyone? but no, apparently this particular child was above being afraid, because we started the trek down the runway and the whole time she was saying: wheee! wheee! wheee! and it was so funny that i almost forgot that i was freaked out. i was much better on this flight than any previous flights, and as alvin pointed out there were no fingernail marks in his skin when we landed. that's progress.
the flight back was less fun because the airport people couldn't decide whether or not our flight was going to be delayed for three hours (it wasn't), so in the meantime i ate a hamburger and ended up sorely regretting that decision. and then there was the turbulence. maybe i'm just hyper-aware of these things, but i've never ever, until this particular flight, felt the plane rock from side to side. what the hell was that? it was like being on a boat and not even the dramamine helped it. i was horribly jealous of alvin, who was not only able to read a book during the plane-swaying but also claimed he couldn't feel it. gah. liar.
and i was doing ok, really, until the ground disappeared. ok, not so much the ground as the lights on the ground. it didn't occur to me at the time that either clouds were obscuring the lights or that we were flying over vacant land. what did occur to me was that we had become real-life victims of the langoliers and that, obviously, the ground really had disappeared and we were going to die. and it got worse when i overheard the flight attendent say that it was freeeezing in the cockpit and i was like, oh my god the ground has disappeared AND the pilots are going to freeze to death and who's going to fly the plane we're going to diiiiieeeee. btw, this is what i mean by irrational fears. so while i thought after that first flight that i had gotten over my fear of flying, it turns out that i've only gotten over the god-awful fear of flying during the day. i still need to work on the flying at night bit, preferably by avoiding it. to my credit i was very quiet about the langolier incident; i closed my window when the ground went away and when i opened it again later, the ground had reappeard and all was well, er, better again.
and, finally, new years: i entertained kate and linda by falling asleep well before midnight after spending most of the evening complaining about not feeling good. go me--i really know how to party. like an 80 year old.
savannah: i've wanted to visit since i read midnight in the garden of good and evil. the town is small and historic with lots of parks, treacherous cobblestone, nice people, and many varieties of grits. alvin and i slept a lot and ate a lot and walked around a lot (mostly looking for coffee and invariably ending up at starbucks--the only place that was open past 9 pm--at least twice a day). but the best part of our trip, sleeping aside, was the tour 0f mercer house that was ostensibly all about the antiques that jim williams collected while he lived there. i think we were all like, yeah, this 900 year old vase is nice and all, but we wanna hear about the death and mayhem that we KNOW happened here because we read the book. after the tour was over the person standing next to me asked the tour guide where in the house the murder took place, to which she repsonded that mr. williams was acquitted of all charges. and then she STILL wouldn't tell us where the unofficial murder happened. pssst...the study. (the butler did it, with the candlestick.)
flying: the flight to savannah was mostly terror-free. my least favorite part of flying is takeoff but the little girl in the seat in front of me made it all better. she was about three, and i figured she'd be freaked out during takeoff. isn't everyone? but no, apparently this particular child was above being afraid, because we started the trek down the runway and the whole time she was saying: wheee! wheee! wheee! and it was so funny that i almost forgot that i was freaked out. i was much better on this flight than any previous flights, and as alvin pointed out there were no fingernail marks in his skin when we landed. that's progress.
the flight back was less fun because the airport people couldn't decide whether or not our flight was going to be delayed for three hours (it wasn't), so in the meantime i ate a hamburger and ended up sorely regretting that decision. and then there was the turbulence. maybe i'm just hyper-aware of these things, but i've never ever, until this particular flight, felt the plane rock from side to side. what the hell was that? it was like being on a boat and not even the dramamine helped it. i was horribly jealous of alvin, who was not only able to read a book during the plane-swaying but also claimed he couldn't feel it. gah. liar.
and i was doing ok, really, until the ground disappeared. ok, not so much the ground as the lights on the ground. it didn't occur to me at the time that either clouds were obscuring the lights or that we were flying over vacant land. what did occur to me was that we had become real-life victims of the langoliers and that, obviously, the ground really had disappeared and we were going to die. and it got worse when i overheard the flight attendent say that it was freeeezing in the cockpit and i was like, oh my god the ground has disappeared AND the pilots are going to freeze to death and who's going to fly the plane we're going to diiiiieeeee. btw, this is what i mean by irrational fears. so while i thought after that first flight that i had gotten over my fear of flying, it turns out that i've only gotten over the god-awful fear of flying during the day. i still need to work on the flying at night bit, preferably by avoiding it. to my credit i was very quiet about the langolier incident; i closed my window when the ground went away and when i opened it again later, the ground had reappeard and all was well, er, better again.
and, finally, new years: i entertained kate and linda by falling asleep well before midnight after spending most of the evening complaining about not feeling good. go me--i really know how to party. like an 80 year old.
posted by sarah at 11:55 AM
3 Comments:
I need to ask you more about this "Mexican Vanilla"
It sounds like the carcinogenic sasparilla that they sell in Taiwan.
the toxic ingredient is coumarin.
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/011207.html
and yeah, i'm afraid of driving, too...
i'll mail your game & dvd to you before the weekend, linda, and you don't have to pay postage. i'll even be extra careful not to cough on them, promise.
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