What I Did Over Columbus Day Weekend

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This is, as the title says, the account of what I did on Columbus Day weekend. Of course, since quite likely the only ones who have any idea what Columbus Day is (or at least when it is, if anyone reads this more than a few weeks from now) are the researchers in the US, maybe I should tell when it is... In the US, Columbus Day is celebrated the closest Monday to the eleventh of October, traditionally, anyway. Not many people get it off anymore though, even though it is a federal holiday, so no mail is delivered, most (all?) banks are closed, and state workers don't have to work1.

Friday2

I got up at my usual time (5.30), and turned on my computer, put my contacts in, hooked up to the internet, got dressed, brushed my hair, then checked my email before signing on to h2g2, just like always3. Guess what I saw? Right there, from the h2g2 Editorial Team? An email telling me that my entry had been recommended! That definitely put me in a good mood for the rest of the day...

So I went to work happy, and spent a satisfying amount of the day telling people about my entry, and that I wasn't gone yet. I left work at 2.30, since I had arranged to leave early, and met Tom out front. All the stuff I had gotten together out of the storage closet was in the car4, and we were on our way.

After two and a half hours, we reached Redding, where Tom's parents live, and where we lived before moving to Sacramento. We had been strongly invited to stop by for dinner at six. Since we were an hour early, we went to the mall5 to get gifts for Grandma, Aunt Candy, Gage, and Daddy Bob6. First stop was the bookstore, where I spotted a book Light would have loved... After we finished our shopping, we headed over to the hotel where Thomas and Patty live. Thomas insisted on checking the car, since we had gotten a long printout from the mechanic, detailing all that they wanted to do to it... He found the problem with the axle, and insisted on (bear with me, anyone who knows anything about cars, because I might not get this quite right) stuffing the booty with grease. And we ate dinner late. We didn't end up leaving Redding until nearly 8pm... So, after being away from home for five and a half hours, we'd only travelled for two and a half...

So, we were finally on our way. About an hour or so out of Redding, Tom turns to me and says, in a voice that implied that he would have been slapping his forehead if he weren't shifting, 'Sleeping bags!' I had no idea what he was talking about. Turned out that, when he was talking to Daddy Bob the previous weekend, when I had called to remind him we were coming, they had spoken of the need for us to bring our pillows and sleeping bags. While I had heard Tom say, 'I'll make sure Amy makes a list of what we need to bring,' I had thought he was referring to all the stuff of Daddy Bob's that we had been storing for him, and never asked. Tom assumed that I'd overheard that we needed sleeping bags, not realizing that all I heard was him saying 'Yes, Bob,' over and over. So we passed the next few miles with each of us trying to take the blame... We finally agreed to share, and then tried to figure out what to do...

Anyway, on and on we (well, Tom) drove... We stopped at a rest stop and slept for an hour7. Since this takes us into the next day, I'll now start on...

Saturday

Actually, now that I think about it, it was already Saturday when we stopped to sleep, but I'll leave it as-is anyway... Anyway, after some problems finding the highway again from the rest area8, we got into another discussion, this time about each other's relatives, and the merits and demerits of same. We do tend to get into um, interesting discussions on the road, since I can't dodge them as easily... And I have trouble with the concept of 'the passenger's job is to talk and keep the driver awake'... Anyway, with that over with, we kept going, with just one more stop before we got to Grandma's - we had to fuel the car and ourselves. We finally arrived at 5.30 am. Time elapsed since leaving work - 15 hours! Time spent actually travelling (ie, minus Redding, sleep, and eating) - 10 hours. (Funny, last time I did the math, it came out to eight and a half to nine hours - of course, that was at 5.30 on Saturday!) It was very strange going to bed at the time that I normally get up on weekdays... Though I didn't fall asleep until 6.30.

Anyway, we got up around ten. I hopped into the shower, and it did wake me up some... We took Grandma, Aunt Candy and Gage out for brunch, and then went back to the house. Tom and Gage went into Gage's room (where we slept while at Grandma's) and played basketball on Gage's Playstation. I stayed in the living room and chatted for a bit, then I went into the room to watch the guys, and to lie down for awhile, because my Uncle Ray was coming in a couple of hours, and I was just a little tired9.

Uncle Ray10 came over at three, along with one of his grandsons. Grandpa Hopper and Dee would have come, but Dee wasn't feeling well. I almost got to see my cousin Kim, whom I haven't seen for over 15 years, but her baby had just fallen asleep, and she didn't want to wake him up... I understand, but it would have been really cool to see her again... Tom, Gage, and Steven (my second cousin) went next door to the church playground to play basketball - Tom says he didn't beat the boys too badly (Gage is 11, Steven is 9). I stayed at the house, and caught up with family news. I exchanged email addresses with Uncle Ray, and I might just end up bringing some family members to h2g2 eventually...

Well, after Uncle Ray went home, everyone sat around and talked some more until dinner was ready. Grandma made Swiss steak, which I love (which was why she made it...). After dinner, we dug out all the components of the Marble Game, which I hadn't gotten to play for years, and which neither Tom nor Gage had ever played before. I love the Marble Game (I've been playing it for over 20 years!), especially when there are four people playing, because then you get to play partners. I partnered with Gage, and Tom partnered with Grandma, so each novice was paired with an expert. I think Tom was a little surprised at how cut-throat I can get when playing... Gage and I won. Then Aunt Candy, Tom and I played Scrabble. I got really crappy letters... I mean, I was the one who was supposed to go first, but I didn't have any vowels! How can you make words with no vowels...? If I remember right, Tom won. By the time we finished, I was so tired that everything was funny... And we had to get up for church the next morning, so we went to bed.

Sunday

A lot of times, when visiting people out of town11, deciding on a church to attend can be difficult. However, considering that Grandma's house is literally next door to a church makes that decision easy! The fact that it's an Assembly of God church, which is the denomination Tom and I have been attending the most often for the last couple of years12 makes the decision that much easier... All we needed to know was the service time, and we had the choice of calling and asking, or of walking for less than a minute to see if the times were on the sign. Guess which option I chose? Turns out that, in Oregon, even for local calls, you have to dial the area code (which you didn't have to do when I lived there). So I got that extremely annoying message telling me that the number could not be completed as dialed... So I put my shoes on, and walked over. Turned out the first service was at 8.30, which is when I got up, and the second started at 10.30. That, if it's not obvious, is the one we went to...

It was a nice service. Maybe one of these times, we'll get to see a normal sermon there. Both times we've been, it's been something different than usual... The first time, it was the Sunday before Christmas, 1999, so it was a Christmas service. This time, there was a guest pastor.

We had to leave Grandma's right after church, because we had to go to Crescent City, California to see my stepdad, Daddy Bob13. It's a long drive (took almost seven hours) and we were planning on taking him out for a late dinner when we got there. Not much of note happened during the drive, except that, a couple of hours into it, odd metal-rubbing-metal noises started coming from the front of the car14...

When we finally pulled into Crescent City, it was later than we'd planned on, but we went to WalMart anyway, because we had to get a blanket or a sleeping bag or something15... When we had been discussing the sleeping bag dilemma Friday night, I had claimed we could get a sleeping bag fairly cheap, since we only needed it for indoors. We looked at blankets first, and then I said, 'Well, let's at least just look at the sleeping bags before we buy this - we might find one cheaper.' Tom didn't think so, but he humoured me. As we came up to the sleeping bags (from the expensive end), he said, 'So where are these ten dollar sleeping bags?' And there they were...$9.96 (plus sales tax). I like being right once in a while... Especially when I think I'm going to be wrong...

We made our purchase, and then headed for Daddy Bob's apartment. We hadn't been visiting since he moved, but we knew where the complex was, because anyone who has lived in Crescent City (that's where Tom and I met) knows where Seawood is... Unfortunately, since the energy problems in California, the apartment managers reduced the lighting, and the apartment numbers are almost impossible to read after dark from a car...

We finally found the apartment, after driving past it three times. We were supposed to be there at 7 pm but, by the time we got to the door, it was a quarter to eight. There was a note on the door stating that Daddy Bob had had to go eat, as he's diabetic, and we were late. It also said to wait, so I tried the door... We went in, and decided that we should get some take-out, since we had not eaten. Tom called the restaurant, then went to get the food. As we were eating, we discussed the possible repercussions of us being late enough that Daddy Bob had had to leave. If I'd been thinking, I would have realised that, at worst, we'd get the 'I was so worried, you should have called...' speech, but Tom was so convinced that we'd get a royal chewing out that he got me worried about it too. After we ate, we sat down and watched TV, expecting Daddy Bob to get back any minute. Quite a bit later16, a friend of the family came over to leave a note on the door. We heard her, and opened the door. She told us that Daddy Bob was in the hospital emergency room! Needless to say, we rushed over17...

Anyway, the three of us got to go back to the apartment, and we watched the news. (I'm not a big news watcher, but Daddy Bob is...) When I found myself doing the conversion from UK time to figure out what time it was there, instead of looking at my watch, I figured it was time to go to bed... (I suppose that last sentence would make more sense if I told you that there was a live interview with Britain's Prime Minister on TV just then... I like Frankie Roberto interviews better...)

Monday

Well, we're finally on the last day of the weekend...

Basically, all we did on Monday was watch CNN some more... Well, actually, no, let me back up... We got up somewhere between nine and ten am, and Daddy Bob made us breakfast. We didn't have time to do all that much, because we had to leave by two pm, since I had to return to work on Tuesday. So that's why the men watched the news, while I went through Mom's video collection, seeing what I wanted to borrow18.

We ate a late lunch, and then we left. We had already studied the map so that we knew the shortest route back home, and so we took it. If it hadn't have been for some road construction, we would have gotten home around (or maybe even before) ten pm, my normal bedtime. However, because of it, we got home just before eleven, and I ended up getting up early the next day to take my shower, instead of risking the shower waking me up before going to bed...

So was this as boring as originally advertised, or what?


Amy Pawloski


25.10.01. Front Page

Back Issue Page

1Now, don't all yell out at once where I work... I had a three day weekend...2OK, so Friday isn't the first day of the weekend, but who's writing this, hmm?3Who, me? Addicted?4Unfortunately, not everything we were going to need that weekend was in the car, but I'll get to that later...5Smallest mall I've ever known. The one in Eureka is much bigger, although Redding's a bigger town.6We hadn't seen any of them since April 2000...7If you're ever going north on I-5, on either side of Medford there are hardly any rest areas, but once you've stopped and slept, they'll pop up every 40 miles or so (I'll do the conversion to metric later)...8You'd think the sign-putter-uppers assumed that people just automatically know how to get from the area to the highway when the way leads through a town...9Gee, I wonder why? Could getting only four and a half hours of sleep in 30 hours possibly have something to do with it? (Actually, since I didn't actually fall asleep during my nap, it was longer than that...)10Hadn't seen him for over four years, maybe over five...11In this case, out of state!12No, I don't think God really cares what building you walk into, or what part of His Body you fellowship with...13What else should I call him? Father Robert?14It was the brakes, which worked OK for the remainder of the trip, and the brake shoes have been replaced, so we're fine... 15We didn't need pillows, because Grandma had given us decorative pillows for our couch, so we decided to use them.16I don't know how much later, as I wasn't watching the clock, but I'd guess about an hour or so...17It turned out OK - he got to go home that night... If someone asks for details, I'll give them, but this is dragging on...18If you didn't already know, the reason I haven't mentioned Mom in all this is that we lost her a year ago last April...

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