![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Dec. 16th, 2007
The family has left the building
Dec. 16th, 2007 09:48 amMy parents hit the road at around 0815 this morning. On one level I feel relieved to have them out of the house, because things still aren't nearly unpacked and organized enough here to comfortably sustain company. On another level I miss them being here because I only see them twice a year at best, and the house feels a lot more lived-in when there's company. Stupid Catch-22.
To summarize my family's visit: They arrived at 1145 Friday morning and, once I got them situated in the house, they slept until late afternoon -- slim surprise when you take into account that they had left Florida at 1430 Thursday and driven through the night without stopping to sleep. That night our friends Heather and Garry K joined us for dinner at Cheddar's, just as planned. It was a pretty nice evening! There was plenty of good food as well as fun conversation. As an added bonus, we got my mother on the way to being soused by starting her off with Kahlua on the rocks and following it up with a Mudslide. I don't think any of us were prepared for how large that drink turned out to be. Amazingly, she finished the entire thing. Between her and my dad it's slim wonder I'm a lush, eh?
Saturday was relatively low-key and quiet. All of us lounged around the house while my parents continued to recover from their two weeks of work in Florida. Or maybe they were recovering from driving 1,200 miles in just under 22 hours straight. In the afternoon there was talk of them heading for home but we consulted the weather and decided that the snow wasn't worth worrying about. For dinner I treated everyone to bd's Mongolian Barbeque and then hauled them over to the new Bass Pro Shop. We split apart and wandered the store, each of us gravitating to the various areas that interested us -- my dad and I were in the hunting section in no time, mom went to check out the seafood restaurant and![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lady_curmudgeon was blissed out in the clothing section. While we looked over the selection of firearms Dad pointed out the FNH Five-seveN, which looks like a nice pistol. I may look into getting one at some point in 2008. I'm sure the state will work on making it nearly impossible to purchase the second I start getting serious about it, but that's a different rant.
We retired to the house around 2030 and watched the news to get a better idea of the weather for tomorrow. Naturally the local stations were making the snow out to be some sort of huge scary death-bringing Terror from the Arctic, boosting their early Saturday predictions of 1-2" in my area up to nearly 9" for the 9pm news. What the hell? All I had to do was look outside the house to see that there was barely even a flurry occuring, and when we came in after dinner there wasn't more than a quarter of an inch on the ground. The best part of the evening was probably when the reporter was interviewing people about how they were "coping" with the snow. During the interview the screen was showing side shots of earlier in the day where that same person was armed with a shovel and scraping maybe an eighth of an inch off a sidewalk. They barely even had a shovelful at the end of the walk, but I guess this was done to help convey the "hardship." Seriously, when did the northern Midwest get so terrified of snow? I don't get it.
Today I will relax, work on some house chores and plan an attack on Curmudgeon's malfunctioning computer.
Gosh darn, I said it feels so right
To summarize my family's visit: They arrived at 1145 Friday morning and, once I got them situated in the house, they slept until late afternoon -- slim surprise when you take into account that they had left Florida at 1430 Thursday and driven through the night without stopping to sleep. That night our friends Heather and Garry K joined us for dinner at Cheddar's, just as planned. It was a pretty nice evening! There was plenty of good food as well as fun conversation. As an added bonus, we got my mother on the way to being soused by starting her off with Kahlua on the rocks and following it up with a Mudslide. I don't think any of us were prepared for how large that drink turned out to be. Amazingly, she finished the entire thing. Between her and my dad it's slim wonder I'm a lush, eh?
Saturday was relatively low-key and quiet. All of us lounged around the house while my parents continued to recover from their two weeks of work in Florida. Or maybe they were recovering from driving 1,200 miles in just under 22 hours straight. In the afternoon there was talk of them heading for home but we consulted the weather and decided that the snow wasn't worth worrying about. For dinner I treated everyone to bd's Mongolian Barbeque and then hauled them over to the new Bass Pro Shop. We split apart and wandered the store, each of us gravitating to the various areas that interested us -- my dad and I were in the hunting section in no time, mom went to check out the seafood restaurant and
lady_curmudgeon was blissed out in the clothing section. While we looked over the selection of firearms Dad pointed out the FNH Five-seveN, which looks like a nice pistol. I may look into getting one at some point in 2008. I'm sure the state will work on making it nearly impossible to purchase the second I start getting serious about it, but that's a different rant.We retired to the house around 2030 and watched the news to get a better idea of the weather for tomorrow. Naturally the local stations were making the snow out to be some sort of huge scary death-bringing Terror from the Arctic, boosting their early Saturday predictions of 1-2" in my area up to nearly 9" for the 9pm news. What the hell? All I had to do was look outside the house to see that there was barely even a flurry occuring, and when we came in after dinner there wasn't more than a quarter of an inch on the ground. The best part of the evening was probably when the reporter was interviewing people about how they were "coping" with the snow. During the interview the screen was showing side shots of earlier in the day where that same person was armed with a shovel and scraping maybe an eighth of an inch off a sidewalk. They barely even had a shovelful at the end of the walk, but I guess this was done to help convey the "hardship." Seriously, when did the northern Midwest get so terrified of snow? I don't get it.
Today I will relax, work on some house chores and plan an attack on Curmudgeon's malfunctioning computer.
Gosh darn, I said it feels so right