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Dec. 29th, 2016 10:47 pmIt ended up taking us a lot longer to get on the road yesterday than we’d planned, so we didn’t get to Kalamazoo until around 5:00. My parents and my brother came by about an hour after we arrived, and we all went to dinner. The hotel where we are doesn’t have a restaurant, but the Holiday Inn next door does, and we ate there.
We talked a bit about the ways that the internet has changed learning and research. Mom commented that, when she looks at videos about refinishing furniture, a lot of the people don’t have the slightest clue how to do what they claim to be expert in. My brother commented that it’s now so easy to look things up that nobody bothers to memorize anything. We all talked about encyclopedias and how neat we used to think they were. Well, Cordelia didn’t. She doesn’t remember encyclopedias at all.
My parents are having some issues with the cold and the snow after more than a decade in Baton Rouge. They had thought they were ready for it, that they remembered, but it’s different when it’s 2F and there’s a foot of snow on the ground. Their dogs love the snow, but one of them has little body fat and very thin fur and so has to come inside regularly or she’ll freeze. The other dog is apparently much more suited to cold weather and so is loving the time outside. Mom said that that dog is normally a couch potato in Baton Rouge because it’s too hot for her.
Today, we got up just barely in time to have some of the free breakfast that the hotel does (closing up at 9:00 on weekdays). I was surprised— Most breakfast things like that do scrambled eggs, but this buffet had peeled hard boiled eggs and a bunch of very rubbery looking fried eggs. There was a boxy machine that made pancakes on demand and pork sausage that was mild enough that I could eat it but otherwise not much of note, just lots of bread adjacent stuff.
My parents had things they needed to do for the early part of the morning, so they got here about 11:00, and we all went to the Kalamazoo Air Zoo. Scott was in seventh heaven. My parents had somehow missed his enthusiasm for planes and how much he knows about them, so they were a little astonished. Scott and my step-father hiked to the secondary building while Cordelia and I got smoothies and sat with my mother and talked. The secondary building had things that people could actually climb into and had an area where a bunch of people were restoring a plane that had recently been pulled out of Lake Michigan.
Apparently Lake Michigan was the training ground for aircraft carrier pilots during WWII, and a number of planes went down there. At this point, it’s a race against time to recover them because of zebra mussels. The plane they were working on was one that had gone down right after take off when the engine just died with no explanation. It was the pilot’s third time going up, and he wasn’t even injured, but they weren’t able to save the plane.
(The 'aircraft carriers' on Lake Michigan were some sort of repurposed cruise ships that had had paddle wheels and such. My step-father said his best guess was that they’d been brought in from the Mississippi.)
Scott really very much wants to do the sort of work that these guys were doing. It’s a volunteer gig, and they’re constantly looking for people with a love of planes and some skill with tools. Scott says that, maybe, when he retires, he’ll be able to do something like that.
We had lunch at a Japanese restaurant that Scott found via Google. Then we all drove twenty minutes to Three Rivers to visit a very large used book store called Lowry’s. I bought a lot of used romance novels, things the library doesn’t have, at a little more than half what I’d pay on Amazon, and some mysteries.
My parents had to head back to Lawton before I was done browsing. There’s a limit to how long they can leave the dogs alone. About then, it started snowing more heavily. The road back to Kalamazoo goes through a good bit of very, very flat farmland, so the wind was whipping through. I called my mother when we got back to our hotel and told her that I didn’t think they should drive back our way for dinner. My brother disagreed vehemently because he considers that sort of weather trivial, something that happens every week or so all winter. Our parents tried to come to Kalamazoo but ended up turning back. My brother says that their mistake was trying to take 94, that they should have taken Red Arrow (an old highway) because nobody ever goes more than 45 mph along that and because, unlike 94, it has shelter from the wind. I pointed out to him that it’s been at least two decades since either of them drove in the snow. That makes a huge difference.
We had dinner with my brother in a pub sort of place called Gallagher’s. Scott and I both had chicken pot pie and weren’t entirely satisfied with it. My brother picked the place because it was only about five minutes from our hotel and pretty easy to find. I’m pretty sure Cordelia was bored stiff by the conversation which was mostly political griping. (My brother reports that our mother has been hearing people at the hardware store talking about how Trump’s cabinet picks prove that he’s abandoning the people who voted for him. Van Buren County is about as red as it gets, so this is actually a fairly big deal.)
Tomorrow, Scott’s hoping that he, Cordelia, and my parents can go to a movie. He’s also talking about trying to find a store that carries superhero related t-shirts that Cordelia will like. I’m not optimistic on that bit because she’s already rejected the sort of thing that Target carries. I will likely just hang out in our room all day, either listening to audiobooks or watching Steven Universe.
My left foot is killing me from the walking I did today. My Achille’s tendon hurts a lot, and the area where it attaches to my heel (is that the calcaneous bone? I seem to remember it being, but we did bones in seventh grade, so…) is a bit puffy. Also, my skin seems to be reacting to the sock glue, so having a day when I don’t need it would be really nice.
We talked a bit about the ways that the internet has changed learning and research. Mom commented that, when she looks at videos about refinishing furniture, a lot of the people don’t have the slightest clue how to do what they claim to be expert in. My brother commented that it’s now so easy to look things up that nobody bothers to memorize anything. We all talked about encyclopedias and how neat we used to think they were. Well, Cordelia didn’t. She doesn’t remember encyclopedias at all.
My parents are having some issues with the cold and the snow after more than a decade in Baton Rouge. They had thought they were ready for it, that they remembered, but it’s different when it’s 2F and there’s a foot of snow on the ground. Their dogs love the snow, but one of them has little body fat and very thin fur and so has to come inside regularly or she’ll freeze. The other dog is apparently much more suited to cold weather and so is loving the time outside. Mom said that that dog is normally a couch potato in Baton Rouge because it’s too hot for her.
Today, we got up just barely in time to have some of the free breakfast that the hotel does (closing up at 9:00 on weekdays). I was surprised— Most breakfast things like that do scrambled eggs, but this buffet had peeled hard boiled eggs and a bunch of very rubbery looking fried eggs. There was a boxy machine that made pancakes on demand and pork sausage that was mild enough that I could eat it but otherwise not much of note, just lots of bread adjacent stuff.
My parents had things they needed to do for the early part of the morning, so they got here about 11:00, and we all went to the Kalamazoo Air Zoo. Scott was in seventh heaven. My parents had somehow missed his enthusiasm for planes and how much he knows about them, so they were a little astonished. Scott and my step-father hiked to the secondary building while Cordelia and I got smoothies and sat with my mother and talked. The secondary building had things that people could actually climb into and had an area where a bunch of people were restoring a plane that had recently been pulled out of Lake Michigan.
Apparently Lake Michigan was the training ground for aircraft carrier pilots during WWII, and a number of planes went down there. At this point, it’s a race against time to recover them because of zebra mussels. The plane they were working on was one that had gone down right after take off when the engine just died with no explanation. It was the pilot’s third time going up, and he wasn’t even injured, but they weren’t able to save the plane.
(The 'aircraft carriers' on Lake Michigan were some sort of repurposed cruise ships that had had paddle wheels and such. My step-father said his best guess was that they’d been brought in from the Mississippi.)
Scott really very much wants to do the sort of work that these guys were doing. It’s a volunteer gig, and they’re constantly looking for people with a love of planes and some skill with tools. Scott says that, maybe, when he retires, he’ll be able to do something like that.
We had lunch at a Japanese restaurant that Scott found via Google. Then we all drove twenty minutes to Three Rivers to visit a very large used book store called Lowry’s. I bought a lot of used romance novels, things the library doesn’t have, at a little more than half what I’d pay on Amazon, and some mysteries.
My parents had to head back to Lawton before I was done browsing. There’s a limit to how long they can leave the dogs alone. About then, it started snowing more heavily. The road back to Kalamazoo goes through a good bit of very, very flat farmland, so the wind was whipping through. I called my mother when we got back to our hotel and told her that I didn’t think they should drive back our way for dinner. My brother disagreed vehemently because he considers that sort of weather trivial, something that happens every week or so all winter. Our parents tried to come to Kalamazoo but ended up turning back. My brother says that their mistake was trying to take 94, that they should have taken Red Arrow (an old highway) because nobody ever goes more than 45 mph along that and because, unlike 94, it has shelter from the wind. I pointed out to him that it’s been at least two decades since either of them drove in the snow. That makes a huge difference.
We had dinner with my brother in a pub sort of place called Gallagher’s. Scott and I both had chicken pot pie and weren’t entirely satisfied with it. My brother picked the place because it was only about five minutes from our hotel and pretty easy to find. I’m pretty sure Cordelia was bored stiff by the conversation which was mostly political griping. (My brother reports that our mother has been hearing people at the hardware store talking about how Trump’s cabinet picks prove that he’s abandoning the people who voted for him. Van Buren County is about as red as it gets, so this is actually a fairly big deal.)
Tomorrow, Scott’s hoping that he, Cordelia, and my parents can go to a movie. He’s also talking about trying to find a store that carries superhero related t-shirts that Cordelia will like. I’m not optimistic on that bit because she’s already rejected the sort of thing that Target carries. I will likely just hang out in our room all day, either listening to audiobooks or watching Steven Universe.
My left foot is killing me from the walking I did today. My Achille’s tendon hurts a lot, and the area where it attaches to my heel (is that the calcaneous bone? I seem to remember it being, but we did bones in seventh grade, so…) is a bit puffy. Also, my skin seems to be reacting to the sock glue, so having a day when I don’t need it would be really nice.
