… hurricanes hardly ever happen.
So, I just got back from my Thanksgiving road trip, very successful.
As I said earlier, I’d been dealing with a miserable sinus thing for a couple of weeks. (Tentative diagnosis: leaf mold allergy) Post-nasal drip, irritated throat, coughing, Mucinex, cough syrup, the whole bit. I had a colonoscopy scheduled last Monday, and my fear was that I would still be sick enough that I’d go through the prep and then they wouldn’t let me have the procedure. But it was mostly gone by then and the colonoscopy went fine. My buddy Susan picked me up (just like the one a year and a half ago) and again I took her to brunch afterward. (results of the last one had been concerning, which is why this one was only 18 months later, but this one turned out fine. Three to five years before the next one.)
I’d also spent prep day prepping for Christmas – here, deconstructing the crystal chandelier and sconces in the dining room and cleaning them. That’s something C used to do once a year and it really makes a difference. It’s not difficult, and I’d cleverly pulled out the documentation for all that which showed how to reattach the various blobs and strands. Looks great now. I will be spending the next couple of days doing some final prep before bringing all the Xmas stuff up from the storage closet.
Anyway, on Tuesday, I picked up a rental car and drove diagonally the length of the state to Rochester, which takes about a day. The car itself drove fine, but the stereo system was being a little bitch and it was completely annoying. Plug in my phone to Apple CarPlay and it starts working fine. I listen to my podcast or audiobook or music or whatever. The GPS interrupts to give me a direction and the audio system freaks out and drops the phone completely, cutting over to Sirius XM and blast music at about 5 times the volume of whatever I was listening to. No amount of rebooting or resetting gets the system to see the phone again – I eventually realize that the only fix is just to leave it plugged in and at some random time in the future, the car goes, ‘oh hey a phone’ and then it starts working again until the next terrifying audio event.
So that really sucked. I will say that on the last couple days of driving, it was better behaved, but still not great.
Anyway, I ate McDonalds for both breakfast and lunch, ate my car snacks (chocolate covered pretzels) and drank coffee and soda and water and stopped reasonably frequently for bio-breaks. About halfway up, the rain started and the last three hours of driving were miserable, especially when I got to Rochester and its nest of highways. By the time I got to the Adamses, I had to actually get out of the car to make sure I had the right house because I couldn’t see a damn thing.
But I did get there just fine and was welcomed by my dear friends Susanna and Patrick, who have hosted me for Thanksgiving every year since we lost Charles, and we had a lovely time. I took them out for dinner Tuesday night. Wed was about Thanksgiving prep, and Thursday was Thanksgiving itself. There were nine of us, pretty much the same crowd (and food) as always, and it was delightful.
Friday we went out shopping (weather sucked, so didn’t do a lot). There’s a great gift store called Parkleigh on Park Avenue which has gifts and paper goods and lots of cosmetic-type things, and I usually splurge on hand creams, which I did again. And there’s a marvelous chocolate shop called Stevers where I picked up gifts for the rest of the trip. And then, just like last year, we went to Roc Cinema to drink Irish coffees while watching Wicked. As expected, Part 2 wasn’t as good as Part 1, because while Act 1 of the stage show is very tight and well-crafted, Act 2 of the stage show is a mess and there was only so much they could do to fix it. But it was very entertaining and “For Good” was as lovely as you could ask for.
Fun pizza dinner afterward in a mostly empty restaurant, and we chatted a lot with the cutie-bear who was our waiter (who did casually drop that he likes girls, and I was like, ‘dammit’). A really nice evening all around.
Saturday I got up early to drive down to Roscoe, in the Catskills, to visit my in-laws. Charles’s brother and his wife live there, and both nieces had come in – Sam with her family (and 3 dogs!) from Minnesota, and Allie from Ithaca. I knew that Sam and her husband and the kids needed to get to bed early to get up very very early to make the 18-hour drive back to MN, so this was a time-boxed event. I showed up around noon, distributed the chocolates I bought (a real hit) and coasters I’d knitted, and we had a great afternoon sitting around eating and chatting while the big doofy dogs rotated around getting pets (and lying under the kitchen table and farting really noticeably).
Richard and Charles didn’t really look alike, but they are brothers and there was enough similarities in profile and expressions that just watching Rich move around was like, ‘oh, yeah, I’d forgotten that, I miss that’.
I took off about 5:30 and went to the same inn I’d stayed at the last time (where I locked myself out of my room – I made sure not to have that happen this time). Got settled, watched news and knitted. Wasn’t sure I wanted dinner, but by the time it was about 700, I decided to go out. Turned out there was an Italian restaurant on the main drag right down the street, so I walked there and had a delightful classic Italian-American meal of salad, bread, wine and baked ziti. Yum.
Sunday morning I walked the other way to the very-close-by famous Roscoe Diner and had breakfast. Then headed up to Rhinebeck and Patti and Peter’s place. The drive featured nice light snow, which was pretty to drive in, but I realized once I got there wouldn’t be that pleasant to, for instance, walk around downtown Rhinebeck in. The three of us went out to lunch at a neat Brazilian/Polish (!!!) restaurant in Red Hook called “Misto” – I had the meatloaf sandwich on focaccia, which was fantastic. Then Peter went home and Patti and I went to Hudson to go to a craft fair right by the enormous antiques warehouse we’d been to before. Lots of interesting crafts, and also things like amazingly thick beautiful socks made out of sheep’s wool (from their own sheep) which were hugely expensive. I didn’t get one, but I did buy a pretty-smelling bar of goat’s milk soap. Patti bought some local distillery’s bourbon, and I’m kind of regretting I didn’t get some myself. A tour through the antique barn (which, if you had the stamina and interest, you could easily spend a whole day in) and then to home.
Due to Thanksgiving ‘issues’ which resulted in them hosting it (surprise!) and lots of leftovers, dinner (courtesy of Peter) was homemade turkey noodle soup and homemade chicken pot pie, both delicious. I’d brought them chocolates as well, so those got sampled, and Patti made an apple crisp, quite wonderful, which we ate while watching a really funny Xmas move called Love Hard.
And then I got up leisurely yesterday and worked my way home, after some peanut butter English muffins. I got a parking space (yay), so leisurely unpacked and started laundry, then brought the car back. (I visited the cemetery along the way, it had been a while.) Got home, finished the laundry, and finally did nail down the perfect temperature and timing of chickie nuggies in the air fryer.
Oh, speaking of movies, I watched a really funny buddy comedy called Playdate, starring Kevin James and a hilarious Alan Ritchson. Delightful except the very end had a throwaway plot resolution that, if you stop to think about it, was kind of horrible. On the level of Luke blowing up the Death Star. “Yay, our team”… and then “OMG all those people”. But the movie itself is quite silly, so maybe don’t take it quite that seriously? I don’t know.
The audiobook I listened to while driving is of a book I read last year. N.R. Walker has a pretty funny series of MM Christmas romances and this was the fourth one. I hadn’t like the book as much as the others because Colson, the closeted sheriff’s deputy, is so freaked out about coming out it’s frustrating. But of course it resolves nicely. I did laugh when his new British boyfriend gifts them a pair of socks, one of American flags and one of British flags, to split up so they could each have a mismatched pair, and Colson says, “oh, just like Alex and Prince Henry”. And I’m like, he’s so closeted he can’t function and he’s still read Red, White and Royal Blue? (or seen the movie)
Speaking of gay romances turned into film, apparently Heated Rivalry is quite something. I’ve never read the book.
But anyway, I’m now reading the 5th Hartbridge book, which is fun so far, and I also finished a book called The Nightmare before Kissmas that involves (much like Arthur Christmas) the family that runs Christmas, and the Christmas prince falls deeply in lust and the love with the Halloween prince. And that’s plenty, but there’s also a lot of political shenanigans and it’s got some real depth going on, much more than I expected.
Speaking of political shenanigans, I just started watching The Diplomat and I gather from all my friends that I’m very late getting on this train, but it’s amazing and I want to binge the whole thing.
OK, so back to the grind. My first workday today since two Fridays ago, let’s see what horrors await.
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