measi's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Wiped We survived the weekend. *big sigh of relief* I was never worried about [erich] getting along with my dad. My dad's a pretty laid-back, goofy guy. Anne's a bit harder to read, and even I'm still having trouble reading her. She can be very friendly, but once something that doesn't interest her comes up in conversation, she becomes a bit snippy. My grandmother is the one I was worried about-- per my entries that show my tenuous relationship with her. Erich essentially saw what makes me insanely goofy. Having this crew as relatives prevents you from becoming anything else. Seriously. Everything went just fine. Erich's a bit freaked by my Uncle Chris, who is a bit of a flamboyant guy and goofy looking (always has been). He lives in Virginia and hosts a couple of TV shows-- one cooking, one flea-market antique hunter-ing, on a station called "Good Life TV." I guess it's a cable network common down in the D.C. area. I've never seen the shows. Personally, I think Uncle Chris developed the flamboyance as a way to attract attention-- as the youngest of four boys and next-in-line from the hippie brother, he just created his rather... unusual style and charm. He's a sweetheart, though. So's my Uncle Ray, who tends to be the more sarcastic, grounded one of the bunch. My cousins were all there-- we're all an adult crew now, which seems odd. I still have this vision of Laura and Greg being about 10 and 8, respectively, and Ally just being this tiny 4 year old. But we've all grown up. Ally (the youngest) is now in college. My dad seemed to be doing well. I didn't have much of a chance to just sit down and talk to him alone, but that's become the way of things since he remarried. It frustrates me, but hopefully I can sit and just talk to him sometime over the holidays while I"m home. I'm still resisting the urge to not look at him funny because he shaved his mustache off. It looks so weird. (and since this was only the second time in 18 months I've seen him, I'm still not used to it.) My grandmother was on her best behavior-- or perhaps she's finally starting to mellow a bit with age. I'm not sure. In any case, we had a good time. On Sunday morning, Erich and I took a couple hours and did the local exploration for our trip down-- we went to Hopewell Furnace, which was only a short drive away from my grandmother's house. I'd been there as a child and just vaguely remembered it. It's the site of one of the Revolutionary-War iron forges. Although my grandmother had commented before we left that it was falling into disrepair, it didn't look *that* bad off. Some paint is needed here and there, but other than that, things looked like they were in pretty good shape. There's a working water wheel, and apparently during the summer they do some live exhibits of what used to happen. It's just a pretty little area, too-- the entire forge community is nestled below a hill, and the woods surround everything. On the other side of the site center, there's an orchard with at least two dozen types of apples, many are the "historic" ones that you don't see in supermarkets. If you've paid the entrance for Hopewell, the apples are 50 cents a pound. We wandered around the orchard, trying to get a variety of apples, but most of the trees were already past peak. They don't use pesticides in the orchard, so "good" apples were up to the luck of Nature. We did manage, with some searching and luck with our ten-foot basket pole, to come up with about 8 pounds of apples! (we didn't realize we had so many!). Most of them are York apples, but we have some others that I've never heard of (Jeffris, . I'm going to try my hand at making an apple pie sometime this week. After having an early dinner with everyone, we got on the road to come home around 3:45. We got a little lost getting out of Reading, but once we were on the highway, things weren't too bad. We decided to try taking I-87 north all the way to Albany, rather than get off at I-84 and diagonal Connecticut. The time was pretty comparable. We stopped a few times at rest stations and such, but in a straight drive, I think they're within 15 minutes of each other. If that's the case, I-87 is almost a better choice because it's much less stressful. But the downfall is that you're on a toll road-- the tolls are higher, and you can't get off to go to a restaurant without paying more money. It all evens out, I guess. We got home at around 11, and I was pretty wiped out. I still feel groggy. But we had a good time, and I'm extremely relieved... 10:25 a.m. - 7 October 2002 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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