home again, and back into future planning

The account in words of our trip to New York, Allentown, and Philadelphia is posted here; I don’t have pictures up yet.

Short version: Because Ted now has Diamond status and because the flights were very crowded because Dutch kids were on Fall vacation, we got upgraded to business class both ways. It’s so much nicer when you aren’t squished and get decent food! We walked all over Manhattan for a couple of days (we recommend the Belvedere Hotel – decent prices for NYC, comfortble rooms, fab location), then drove to Allentown where we spent far too much time sitting around the house where my brother and SIL. They live with her honorary aunt and uncle, as does her adult grandson; other relatives are constantly tropping through, hollering at each other, and there are decorations and collectibles on every conceivable surface. I found the place exhausting. But we did get lots of time with the baby sleeping on us and lots of time with my family and other assorted in-laws. Then we retreated to my parents’ house, which actually seemed serene by contrast. We hung pictures for my parents, which hadn’t been done since they got their walls retextured a few years ago, and only put one hole in the wall in the process. (The shared wall with the house next door turned out to be plaster over brick, not wallboard with a space behind it as we’d unconsciously expected. Oops. We spackled, and it’s behind a picture anyway.) Saturday we got snowed on, so we didn’t make it to the Halloween party I’d been looking forward to, and Sunday was my nephew’s christening. It was a bit hard to watch them Christianizing him, but my parents and brother will make sure he knows about both sides of his heritage, and he’ll make up his own mind later anyway. For all I know, he’ll end up a Buddhist monk. At the moment he is adorable but a bit boring, as he sleeps almost all the time.

I think I’ve gotten over my feelings of not knowing what I wanted to knit, and now I want to knit all the things at once – finish my current sock and then start a cowl from a skein of Kidsilk Haze I’ve had for years, and maybe a Moebius scarf out of some silk/alpaca I’ve had since giving up on the wrap it was supposed to be. (I judged the match of pattern and yarn badly; that pattern needed a yarn with good stitch definition.) I’m also hankering to make my nephew a Christmas stocking, but it’s a bit late to start now; maybe next year. The current sock has been going for a month, but that’s because when I started it I was still working on a skirt (which still needs buttons, as well as a ribbon to stabilize the waistband) and then I stopped to know a couple of cowls, which I’ve given to my mom and SIL. Both the Kidsilk and the alpaca yarn are reddish, but you can’t have too many red scarves, can you?

I’ve also started doing more serious research into RVs, for our planned year of travel around the US, currently planned to start at the beginning of 2013. That’s close enough not to feel like forever away, so the research is less frustrating and more fun. We’ll need a big-ass truck (F350 or something like it) and a fifth wheel toyhauler, because we want to take bikes, kayaks, and at least one rowing machine. We don’t know what kind of kayaks to buy, yet, and their length will determine how big a ‘garage’ we’ll need. So far, we’re looking at something like a Voyager - a bit fancy, but it will be our full-time house for a year. The hard part is all the contradictory requirements – we need the biggest possible living space and storage with the smallest possible length and weight, for ease in driving and finding places to stay. A tesseract would be about right, or a pocket claudication as in Diane Duane’s Young Wizards books or the tents in Harry Potter. Maybe the 2013 models will be equipped with one.

Mirrored from Dichroic Reflections.