I'm in slightly odd circumstances right now so please pardon me if entries are late or shorter than typical this weekend. My parents and I set out early for a weekend trip up to the relatives I visited way back in March, to one of those curious and entertaining New England states I'm so evasive about naming. This is just a short trip -- I'm to be back to sitting nervously in my office on Monday -- but it's a chance to see and visit and find plans abruptly change based on how hot it feels or how tired we are when it's later in the day than we had anticipated when plans were initially made.
While it's nice visiting, I have to admit I'm losing my thrill for being roused by my father exploring new dimensions of volume for the television set. It's also tiring being tucked into the backseat where to get at the cupholder requires pulling down the midsection of the back seat, where it digs into the side of my torso and into my leg, because the car was apparently inflicted with ergonomic design and ergonomic designers are short, bitter people trying to punish the tall. Also it took six hours for my occasional requests for air conditioning to be met with the air conditioner being moved from ``foot/vent'' to ``vent'', that is, the method that actually brings cool air into the back seat.
It wouldn't be a trip without amusing anecdotes breaking out along the way, but to be honest the only good one came when we got to thinking where to eat lunch. As we were waiting for traffic to smooth out around New Haven (traffic will never smooth out around New Haven) my mother announced we should get lunch in Mystic. (New Haven is basically center-west on the ocean; Mystic is about as far east as you can get without running into Rhode Islanders pushing johnnycakes on you or having amusing radiation-inspired creatures maul you.) A bit of traffic later, including those random stretches where the passing lane will abruptly come to a halt, only to resume when you move over to the right, later, and we decided that where we were was close enough to Mystic, and we got lunch at a seafood place. That was rather satisfying, although the loaf of bread they gave us was glazed with sugar on top for some strange reason, possibly to make our fingers sticky before the entree.
Trivia: Japan exported about 200 million pencils in 1918. Source: The Pencil, Henry Petroski.
Currently Reading: Gnarl!, Rudy Rucker.