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Father-in-law visit
Apr. 30th, 2007 11:23 amI'm coming into my last week of teaching, so my preparation load is lighter than usual: no lab to write, no homework to write, and I just have to throw together a summary of the Big Bang and the nature of the Universe. No biggie, mate. :)
This was a good thing, because Jen's Dad and uncle showed up on Saturday afternoon for a visit. He's moving to California from Cleveland, and he's driving a small truck and trailer cross-country. We were expecting them, but that night; they had the wrong phone number so they couldn't warn us. They wanted to stay in a motel, so once we sent them off to the nearest motel we finished cleaning the house. ;) (Jen and I have different philosophies about why one cleans the house for guests. I've always thought that one cleans the house to maintain the fiction that one lives like that all the time, while Jen sees cleaning the house as an act of hospitality. Normally the result is the same, but since our guests had already seen our house in its pre-cleaned state, I said, "Better not clean too much or it will be too obvious." which makes sense in my philosophy but not hers. Very interesting.) Anyway....
Their early arrival also meant that we had to entertain them unexpectedly. We still don't have a car (any day now), and as it was now 1pm, rental car places were closed. At the very least, we had to pick them up from the hotel, since they couldn't drive the truck arounde everywhere; we could have used public transportation beyond that. We called a local friend to see if she could pick them up at the motel; when the friend turned out to be feeling sick, I volunteered to just borrow the car and pick them up myself, which led to the offer of the car for the weekend, as her husband was out of town. That worked out very well and made Jen feel a lot better.
After all that, we didn't do a heck of a lot. My father-in-law, still getting over treatment for throat cancer (the cancer is gone), has some trouble with solid foods, so we went to Jason's Deli which has 11 types of soup (and free ice cream). :) After that, we stopped by the Dallas Arboretum, but they close at 5pm (why so early, I have no idea), so we ended up walking along the shore of White Rock Lake, where we saw a number of ducks, a coot, and even a heron. Then we came home and watched Dr. Strangelove, which I had from Netflix because I'd never seen it before. Not sure I "love"d it, but it was "strange". I found the pacing to be slower than I'm used to, particularly for a comedy, so that one starts to laugh at things which aren't really funny just because one is expecting a joke. They went back to the motel, and took off Sunday. It's amazing that Dallas is the midway point between Cleveland and Los Angeles, so they have three more days of driving.
In other news, I've been trying to finish this paper that's been on the drawing board for the past year. I thought I'd get the first draft done last night in one last push, but decided that it needed more work than I thought and more work than I had the energy for. It looks like a paper, though, and I like it. Once I get the draft done, I need to have somebody look it over; it's been a few years since I've written a research paper. Not sure who that will be yet.
This was a good thing, because Jen's Dad and uncle showed up on Saturday afternoon for a visit. He's moving to California from Cleveland, and he's driving a small truck and trailer cross-country. We were expecting them, but that night; they had the wrong phone number so they couldn't warn us. They wanted to stay in a motel, so once we sent them off to the nearest motel we finished cleaning the house. ;) (Jen and I have different philosophies about why one cleans the house for guests. I've always thought that one cleans the house to maintain the fiction that one lives like that all the time, while Jen sees cleaning the house as an act of hospitality. Normally the result is the same, but since our guests had already seen our house in its pre-cleaned state, I said, "Better not clean too much or it will be too obvious." which makes sense in my philosophy but not hers. Very interesting.) Anyway....
Their early arrival also meant that we had to entertain them unexpectedly. We still don't have a car (any day now), and as it was now 1pm, rental car places were closed. At the very least, we had to pick them up from the hotel, since they couldn't drive the truck arounde everywhere; we could have used public transportation beyond that. We called a local friend to see if she could pick them up at the motel; when the friend turned out to be feeling sick, I volunteered to just borrow the car and pick them up myself, which led to the offer of the car for the weekend, as her husband was out of town. That worked out very well and made Jen feel a lot better.
After all that, we didn't do a heck of a lot. My father-in-law, still getting over treatment for throat cancer (the cancer is gone), has some trouble with solid foods, so we went to Jason's Deli which has 11 types of soup (and free ice cream). :) After that, we stopped by the Dallas Arboretum, but they close at 5pm (why so early, I have no idea), so we ended up walking along the shore of White Rock Lake, where we saw a number of ducks, a coot, and even a heron. Then we came home and watched Dr. Strangelove, which I had from Netflix because I'd never seen it before. Not sure I "love"d it, but it was "strange". I found the pacing to be slower than I'm used to, particularly for a comedy, so that one starts to laugh at things which aren't really funny just because one is expecting a joke. They went back to the motel, and took off Sunday. It's amazing that Dallas is the midway point between Cleveland and Los Angeles, so they have three more days of driving.
In other news, I've been trying to finish this paper that's been on the drawing board for the past year. I thought I'd get the first draft done last night in one last push, but decided that it needed more work than I thought and more work than I had the energy for. It looks like a paper, though, and I like it. Once I get the draft done, I need to have somebody look it over; it's been a few years since I've written a research paper. Not sure who that will be yet.
