susancalvin (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} susancalvin) wrote,@ 2006-01-06 15:38:00 |
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Blogging backlog
I hate the feeling of knowing that I haven't updated my livejournal for a long time and so I have so much to recap but then I'm too lazy to write about it all so I procrastinate and then I have even more stuff I feel like I should recap and really, this shouldn't be an added stressor to my life.
Fine, here's my story: I just got back from Florida yesterday. I was home for about 3 weeks, 10 days of which were spent on a weirdly nostalgic roadtrip. See, when I was little, my family used to drive up the East Coast every summer for a few weeks in August. In retrospect, it's clear that my parents always had a plan for where we were going since they had things like AAA triptiks and hotel reservations, but to me, it pretty much seemed like we were driving until we felt like stopping. A few times we visited my second cousins in New Jersey and Boston, once we made it as far as Quebec City, but mostly, we ended up in the Smoky Mountains. I'm pretty sure that the last time I went on one of these trips, I was still in high school.
We had talked about going to Puerto Rico over winter break but plane tickets became expensive literally overnight, and I suggested a roadtrip instead. Jokingly, I pointed out that we hadn't been to the Smokies for a while.medtecher instantly latched on to the idea and demanded skiing. Well, between my sister from Los Angeles and the rest of my family in South Florida, my desire for a few weeks on the beach were overruled. We were driving north to find winter.
It ended up being really great. We spent 3 days in Gatlinburg, TN, the biggest tourist trap outside of Niagara, one day in Knoxville (the American Museum of Science and Energy in Oak Ridge is heavy on pro-bomb propaganda and light on actual information about the Manahattan Project but the Jim Campbell exhibit at the Knoxville Museum of Art is seriously cool (geekily, my favorite pieces were the ones in which increasing amounts of random noise are added to the images of Shannon and Nyquist)), and then 3 days in Asheville, NC.
In North Carolina, we went snowboarding at Wolf Laurel (see link for why I am now cranky and feel obligated to write them a letter explaining why I will be taking my business elsewhere when I am next (?) in the market for some NC skiing). The first day was full of suck. My siblings and I took a lesson, but I'm not sure how much it helped. The slopes were really icy and the parts of the day that weren't spent on my hands and knees were spent primarily flat on my ass. The second day, the sun came out and with it, the wonders of snowboarding in a tshirt on wonderful, sloooow slush. I actually managed to make it down a few times without falling. My brother, however, was not so lucky. After the first day, he declared that he hated snowboarding, he never wanted to do it again, and he was sure that the lodge had wireless ethernet. Could he please just borrow a laptop and sit the next day out? After an extended session of cajoling, he was finally convinced to give it one more try, and on his first run down the next morning, fell hard on his wrist, necessitating a trip to the emergency room and a giant brace thingy for the rest of the trip. He hates us now.
Well, I think that about does it for a reasonable recap. My next post will probably be a book review, since I actually got some reading done over break.
I hate the feeling of knowing that I haven't updated my livejournal for a long time and so I have so much to recap but then I'm too lazy to write about it all so I procrastinate and then I have even more stuff I feel like I should recap and really, this shouldn't be an added stressor to my life.
Fine, here's my story: I just got back from Florida yesterday. I was home for about 3 weeks, 10 days of which were spent on a weirdly nostalgic roadtrip. See, when I was little, my family used to drive up the East Coast every summer for a few weeks in August. In retrospect, it's clear that my parents always had a plan for where we were going since they had things like AAA triptiks and hotel reservations, but to me, it pretty much seemed like we were driving until we felt like stopping. A few times we visited my second cousins in New Jersey and Boston, once we made it as far as Quebec City, but mostly, we ended up in the Smoky Mountains. I'm pretty sure that the last time I went on one of these trips, I was still in high school.
We had talked about going to Puerto Rico over winter break but plane tickets became expensive literally overnight, and I suggested a roadtrip instead. Jokingly, I pointed out that we hadn't been to the Smokies for a while.
medtecher instantly latched on to the idea and demanded skiing. Well, between my sister from Los Angeles and the rest of my family in South Florida, my desire for a few weeks on the beach were overruled. We were driving north to find winter.It ended up being really great. We spent 3 days in Gatlinburg, TN, the biggest tourist trap outside of Niagara, one day in Knoxville (the American Museum of Science and Energy in Oak Ridge is heavy on pro-bomb propaganda and light on actual information about the Manahattan Project but the Jim Campbell exhibit at the Knoxville Museum of Art is seriously cool (geekily, my favorite pieces were the ones in which increasing amounts of random noise are added to the images of Shannon and Nyquist)), and then 3 days in Asheville, NC.
In North Carolina, we went snowboarding at Wolf Laurel (see link for why I am now cranky and feel obligated to write them a letter explaining why I will be taking my business elsewhere when I am next (?) in the market for some NC skiing). The first day was full of suck. My siblings and I took a lesson, but I'm not sure how much it helped. The slopes were really icy and the parts of the day that weren't spent on my hands and knees were spent primarily flat on my ass. The second day, the sun came out and with it, the wonders of snowboarding in a tshirt on wonderful, sloooow slush. I actually managed to make it down a few times without falling. My brother, however, was not so lucky. After the first day, he declared that he hated snowboarding, he never wanted to do it again, and he was sure that the lodge had wireless ethernet. Could he please just borrow a laptop and sit the next day out? After an extended session of cajoling, he was finally convinced to give it one more try, and on his first run down the next morning, fell hard on his wrist, necessitating a trip to the emergency room and a giant brace thingy for the rest of the trip. He hates us now.
Well, I think that about does it for a reasonable recap. My next post will probably be a book review, since I actually got some reading done over break.
