It’s that time of year again: time to head to Dallas for our yearly pilgrimage. I’m writing this post using Ecto somewhere above Kentucky, I believe, and should be able to post it once we actually get to my in-laws.
I finally dumped Cingular in favor of T-Mobile, but our order wasn’t completed in time for us to receive the phones before leaving for Dallas, so we had Let’s Talk ship our new RAZRs to Dallas ahead of us. I’m pretty psyched to get to try ’em out, and maybe the Bluetooth Contacts sync will actually work with the Powerbook this time, unlike with my fargin’ old Nokia 6820. (Note: Never buy a Nokia. Ever. Their OS stinks, their menu trees are ridiculously complex and it’s impossible to do the simplest things, well, simply.)
The flight has been uneventful thus far. What has been particularly striking to me is the sheer number of people sporting the trademark white iPod headphones. They’re quite popular amongst the holiday traveling set, ‘twould seem.
Traveling with a 2 month old infant has been interesting. Will has done fine, with nary a peep out of the lad for most of the flight. His ears don’t seem to be bothered by the pressure changes, which is an utter blessing. In fact, nothing about the child himself has been burdensome, rather, the sheer volume of baby accouterments that one is forced to drag along is stunning. Fortunately, there is a pack-n-play awaiting our arrival, so we didn’t have to pack that.
The time in Dallas will be interesting and event-filled, as we’re headed to my wife’s cousin’s wedding and then have to make the full rounds of TX relatives in order to give them all a little Will Time™.
Updates may be sporadic, as I don’t know how often I’ll be able to get online – the in-laws have SBC DSL, but I’m fairly sure that I won’t have the option while in Shreveport, LA for the wedding.
Blogging From The In-Laws, 2005 Edition (Day 2)
Little-known Egyptology/Travel Fact of the Day:
Archaeologists have long thought that Egyptian mummies were ancient Egyptians’ attempts at conveying their (rich) loved ones into the afterlife. After several intensive hours of study, I have come to the conclusion that several hundred years’ worth of archaeologists and Egyptologists were, in fact, wrong. Mummies were not dead rich Egyptians; rather, they were the world’s first airline passengers.
Those flying Pharoah’s United Kingdom Airline (or its value-priced sister airline, Ted) were subjected to dessicatingly dry air, fierce changes in pressure and a constant diet of dried fruits and crackers, which often resulted in passengers reaching their destinations as little more than husks of their former selves. Much of this technology has persisted to this very day, as anyone who has flown on a major air carrier can attest. And, while historians have long argued that Egyptians removed the vital organs of mummies in order to preserve them, recent findings would suggest that the organs were in fact removed by passengers themselves in order to make their way through the Egyptian Transportation Safety Administration (ETSA) security checks. Fortunately, scanning technologies have advanced to significant enough of a degree that passengers are no longer required to remove their own heart and lungs in order to board an airplane.
I hope that those responsible for propagating incorrect historical conjectures will correct their theories soon, as continued confusion in the archaeological world might result, should they decline to do so.
Blogging From The In-Laws, 2005 Edition (Days 3,4 & 5, Recap)
We left Dallas and headed to Longview, TX on Friday to make our way to my wife’s grandmother’s house. Friday night, Will and the wife spent time with the extended family, as this was the first time for many of them to get a chance to see Will. Oohing, aahing and general compliments were in adbundance. My father-in-law and I, on the other hand, hit the road again and ventured to Nacagdoches, TX to pick my brother-in-law up from Stephen F.. It was there that I learned of my son’s apparent new nickname, Bob Sapp, Jr., given to him by my bro-in-law’s roommate upon first seeing pictures of Will.
Saturday morning, we headed to Bossier City, LA (pronounced Bo–zhurr by most of the locals, although I heard a Boo–zhurr or two as well) for my wife’s cousin’s wedding. Home of Barksdale Air Force Base, which is in turn home to the USAF’s B-52 fleet, this sunny little hamlet lies just to the east of Shreveport, the Atlantic City of the South, apparently. (Stupid Yankee Carpetbagger Question: Every implementation of organized large-scale gambling that I have ever seen has invariably involved the Mob. Does this hold for Shreveport? Is there a Shreveport Mafia? Huey Long Follow-Up Question: Might not the importation of hundreds of Mafiosi actually lower the per capita corruption rating for the state of Louisiana?) The wedding ceremony was held in the Air Force base’s chapel, as the cousin-in-law’s fiance is an AF captain and, from what I saw of it, was a good one. Will started fussing about half way through and, since I’m not a blood relative, I offered to take him outside so as not to disturb those who are so connected. Will and I enjoyed the cool afternoon Louisiana air and caught snippets of the service through the closed chapel doors.
We stuck around after the ceremony and helped clean up, then headed to a hotel for the reception and dinner. A good time was had by all.
Yesterday involved a good amount of lying about, eating entirely too much and chatting with relatives, as is par for the course at “Nana’s” house, while today included more eating, more talking and a search for Christmas presents. Wheee haw.
Blogging From The In-Laws, 2005 Edition (Days 3,4 & 5, Recap)
We left Dallas and headed to Longview, TX on Friday to make our way to my wife’s grandmother’s house. Friday night, Will and the wife spent time with the extended family, as this was the first time for many of them to get a chance to see Will. Oohing, aahing and general compliments were in adbundance. My father-in-law and I, on the other hand, hit the road again and ventured to Nacagdoches, TX to pick my brother-in-law up from Stephen F.. It was there that I learned of my son’s apparent new nickname, Bob Sapp, Jr., given to him by my bro-in-law’s roommate upon first seeing pictures of Will.
Saturday morning, we headed to Bossier City, LA (pronounced Bo–zhurr by most of the locals, although I heard a Boo–zhurr or two as well) for my wife’s cousin’s wedding. Home of Barksdale Air Force Base, which is in turn home to the USAF’s B-52 fleet, this sunny little hamlet lies just to the east of Shreveport, the Atlantic City of the South, apparently. (Stupid Yankee Carpetbagger Question: Every implementation of organized large-scale gambling that I have ever seen has invariably involved the Mob. Does this hold for Shreveport? Is there a Shreveport Mafia? Huey Long Follow-Up Question: Might not the importation of hundreds of Mafiosi actually lower the per capita corruption rating for the state of Louisiana?) The wedding ceremony was held in the Air Force base’s chapel, as the cousin-in-law’s fiance is an AF captain and, from what I saw of it, was a good one. Will started fussing about half way through and, since I’m not a blood relative, I offered to take him outside so as not to disturb those who are so connected. Will and I enjoyed the cool afternoon Louisiana air and caught snippets of the service through the closed chapel doors.
We stuck around after the ceremony and helped clean up, then headed to a hotel for the reception and dinner. A good time was had by all.
Yesterday involved a good amount of lying about, eating entirely too much and chatting with relatives, as is par for the course at “Nana’s” house, while today included more eating, more talking and a search for Christmas presents. Wheee haw.
Blogging From The In-Laws, 2005 Edition (Days 6 & 7, Recap)
The bits, they fly through the very air around me!
We returned from Longview yesterday and settled back in to the in-laws’ house in Dallas. It’s quite nice from an access-to-the-Internet[s] perspective, as they just recently installed a wireless connection. My wife’s grandmother, although blessed with a high speed cable connection, has little need for a home/small office router/firewall combo, let alone a wireless one, and so my access to the ‘Net was constrained to limited times and a single room while in Longview.
Moving to a wireless and laptop paradigm at home has been an interesting transition and it is one that I have begun to take for granted. No longer is my Internet access confined to a single room and a single, immovable desktop. Instead, I am free to roam the house and surf at will, from the living room to the dining room to the bed room and back again. It’s wildly addicting, unfortunately, and causes me to chafe at the prospect of going without. And yes, I do realize just how sad/worrisome that is.
Information Isolation
Okay, I’ll admit it: I’m an information junkie. I have an almost insatiable desire to be “in the know”, to keep up with what’s going on in the world. These yearly trips offer me a chance to step back and reevaluate just how bad I’ve gotten, as access is never a given and always sporadic, at best. With my feed readers set up at work and at home, I am able to keep tabs on a whole host of sites, from the political to news to the technological. This ability gives me a sense of connectedness and a bit of a (false?) sense of control of my situation. It’s worrying to me to not be swimming in the information stream. I know that I’m a bit of a rarity in my desire for information, at least if my friends and family serve as any indicator. I’m forced to “cut bacK” to a blog entry every couple of days and a really thorough going-through of the headlines perhaps a bit more often.
In the end, though, it really does make me wonder: would it be so bad if I didn’t post today? What harm could possibly befall me if I don’t follow every last in and out of the NSA wiretapping “scandal”? Am I missing out on anything by removing myself from the infostream, or am I actually missing out on more of life by obsessing?
Guess I pretty much answered my own rhetorical question. G’night, then.
Blogging From The In-Laws, 2005 Edition (Days 6 & 7, Recap)
The bits, they fly through the very air around me!
We returned from Longview yesterday and settled back in to the in-laws’ house in Dallas. It’s quite nice from an access-to-the-Internet[s] perspective, as they just recently installed a wireless connection. My wife’s grandmother, although blessed with a high speed cable connection, has little need for a home/small office router/firewall combo, let alone a wireless one, and so my access to the ‘Net was constrained to limited times and a single room while in Longview.
Moving to a wireless and laptop paradigm at home has been an interesting transition and it is one that I have begun to take for granted. No longer is my Internet access confined to a single room and a single, immovable desktop. Instead, I am free to roam the house and surf at will, from the living room to the dining room to the bed room and back again. It’s wildly addicting, unfortunately, and causes me to chafe at the prospect of going without. And yes, I do realize just how sad/worrisome that is.
Information Isolation
Okay, I’ll admit it: I’m an information junkie. I have an almost insatiable desire to be “in the know”, to keep up with what’s going on in the world. These yearly trips offer me a chance to step back and reevaluate just how bad I’ve gotten, as access is never a given and always sporadic, at best. With my feed readers set up at work and at home, I am able to keep tabs on a whole host of sites, from the political to news to the technological. This ability gives me a sense of connectedness and a bit of a (false?) sense of control of my situation. It’s worrying to me to not be swimming in the information stream. I know that I’m a bit of a rarity in my desire for information, at least if my friends and family serve as any indicator. I’m forced to “cut bacK” to a blog entry every couple of days and a really thorough going-through of the headlines perhaps a bit more often.
In the end, though, it really does make me wonder: would it be so bad if I didn’t post today? What harm could possibly befall me if I don’t follow every last in and out of the NSA wiretapping “scandal”? Am I missing out on anything by removing myself from the infostream, or am I actually missing out on more of life by obsessing?
Guess I pretty much answered my own rhetorical question. G’night, then.
Blogging From The In-Laws, 2005 Edition (Days 8 & 9)
You can never go home again.
This year’s excursion to Dallas has been an odd one in more than a few ways. With the birth of Will, we were looking to spare a few bucks and so ended up coming down almost a week earlier than normal in order to beat the Christmas rush. The wedding that occurred a mere day and a half after our arrival and the car travel that accompanied it threw our schedules off even further, resulting in the whole trip feeling simultaneously interminable and abbreviated, if that’s possible.
Furthering the displacement is the fact that my wife’s parents moved out of their previous house a few months prior to our arrival and into a “discipleship house” that they are taking responsibility for. The Christian ministry they’re a part of (they don’t like to be referred to as a “church”, as their purposes are primarily service-oriented and less of what one might consider traditional “church fare”) has sponsored such a house for men for several years. Young men from troubled backgrounds, often coming from drug and alcohol addicted states or recent brushes with the law, agree to a fairly regimented and structured life where they are given caring surroundings and Christian teaching/discipleship in order to help them get their feet under themselves and become mature believers. My in-laws felt led to establish an analog with a mission to serve similarly situated young women. They also have long had a heart for the homeless population of Dallas and the house chosen for this mission is right off Central Expressway in a neighborhood that hosts a fairly large homeless population, meaning that they are able to serve the needs of the homeless fairly directly. I’ve gone out with them to hand out baked potatoes and it’s a wonder to see the ways in which they’ve already started gaining the trust and respect of the homeless people in the neighborhood in these first few months.
I’m amazed at the work they’ve been able to accomplish in such a short time, but the change inherent in such an endeavor, combined with the fact that there are now several non-family members living in the house with my in-laws only increases the displacement I feel. We had begun to get into a bit of a pattern over the past few years, with events playing out fairly uniformly from year to year; now, there’s a grandson added to the mix, as well as a change in locales and a fairly drastic change in scheduling.
It’s an odd sensation, almost equivalent to the feelings I had when my parents moved immediately after I graduated High School. Returning “home” from college never felt quite right, and their house, while familiar, still doesn’t feel like a “home”. Andy probably knows exactly what I’m talking about, as his parents executed a similar maneuver post-H.S. as well as my wife’s family [they’ve moved twice since she graduated, to be clear. -ed.], while Brad will soon be able to speak to the feeling himself, although I’d imagine his relocation to S.C. has probably hastened the non-home sensation.
We’re due to observe Christmas tomorrow afternoon, so we have a real chance to start some new traditions, with my son getting a ground floor opportunity to help shape them. It should be fun.
I’ll never get used to it being 60° at Christmas, though…
Blogging From The In-Laws, 2005 Edition (Days 8 & 9)
You can never go home again.
This year’s excursion to Dallas has been an odd one in more than a few ways. With the birth of Will, we were looking to spare a few bucks and so ended up coming down almost a week earlier than normal in order to beat the Christmas rush. The wedding that occurred a mere day and a half after our arrival and the car travel that accompanied it threw our schedules off even further, resulting in the whole trip feeling simultaneously interminable and abbreviated, if that’s possible.
Furthering the displacement is the fact that my wife’s parents moved out of their previous house a few months prior to our arrival and into a “discipleship house” that they are taking responsibility for. The Christian ministry they’re a part of (they don’t like to be referred to as a “church”, as their purposes are primarily service-oriented and less of what one might consider traditional “church fare”) has sponsored such a house for men for several years. Young men from troubled backgrounds, often coming from drug and alcohol addicted states or recent brushes with the law, agree to a fairly regimented and structured life where they are given caring surroundings and Christian teaching/discipleship in order to help them get their feet under themselves and become mature believers. My in-laws felt led to establish an analog with a mission to serve similarly situated young women. They also have long had a heart for the homeless population of Dallas and the house chosen for this mission is right off Central Expressway in a neighborhood that hosts a fairly large homeless population, meaning that they are able to serve the needs of the homeless fairly directly. I’ve gone out with them to hand out baked potatoes and it’s a wonder to see the ways in which they’ve already started gaining the trust and respect of the homeless people in the neighborhood in these first few months.
I’m amazed at the work they’ve been able to accomplish in such a short time, but the change inherent in such an endeavor, combined with the fact that there are now several non-family members living in the house with my in-laws only increases the displacement I feel. We had begun to get into a bit of a pattern over the past few years, with events playing out fairly uniformly from year to year; now, there’s a grandson added to the mix, as well as a change in locales and a fairly drastic change in scheduling.
It’s an odd sensation, almost equivalent to the feelings I had when my parents moved immediately after I graduated High School. Returning “home” from college never felt quite right, and their house, while familiar, still doesn’t feel like a “home”. Andy probably knows exactly what I’m talking about, as his parents executed a similar maneuver post-H.S. as well as my wife’s family [they’ve moved twice since she graduated, to be clear. -ed.], while Brad will soon be able to speak to the feeling himself, although I’d imagine his relocation to S.C. has probably hastened the non-home sensation.
We’re due to observe Christmas tomorrow afternoon, so we have a real chance to start some new traditions, with my son getting a ground floor opportunity to help shape them. It should be fun.
I’ll never get used to it being 60° at Christmas, though…
Blogging From The In-Laws, 2005 Edition (Days 10 & 11)
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a Good, errrm, Morning!
Good morning, and a merry Christmas to you all. Christmas Day dawned bright and warm here in Dallas and, from the looks of things, it’s unseasonably warm back up north of the Mason-Dixon, as well. Alas, no White Christmas. If only we had signed the Kyoto Protocol! *wink*
Christmas Props
- Thanks go out to my brother-in-law for the Relient K CD, as well as the superlative Batman: Year One. Frank Miller’s dark take on Batman’s origins makes for very compelling reading and provided obvious inspiration for Batman Begins.
- Speaking of Batman Begins, thanks go out to my mother- and father-in-law for the DVD of such, as well as the DVD of Serenity. It don’t get much better’n that.
- Thanks go out to my sister-in-law for the kickin’ new “do” and all the styling products that accompany it. Now I can look like something other than an utter schlub at work and at play. *grin*
Christmas Admissions
A couple guilty Christmastime confessions:
- I tear up at the end of It’s A Wonderful Life every year. You know the scene: The entire town turns out to donate money to George Bailey in order to keep him out of the pokey. I get a little choked up even thinking about it.
- I don’t care what anyone says, the first two Home Alone movies are works of near Three Stooges level comedic genius.
Christmas Tip
To Brad, and any other recipients of Video iPods this year: take a look at No-Frills DVD2iPod. You may enjoy what you find.
Merry Christmas!
Blogging From The In-Laws, 2005 Edition (Days 10 & 11)
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a Good, errrm, Morning!
Good morning, and a merry Christmas to you all. Christmas Day dawned bright and warm here in Dallas and, from the looks of things, it’s unseasonably warm back up north of the Mason-Dixon, as well. Alas, no White Christmas. If only we had signed the Kyoto Protocol! *wink*
Christmas Props
- Thanks go out to my brother-in-law for the Relient K CD, as well as the superlative Batman: Year One. Frank Miller’s dark take on Batman’s origins makes for very compelling reading and provided obvious inspiration for Batman Begins.
- Speaking of Batman Begins, thanks go out to my mother- and father-in-law for the DVD of such, as well as the DVD of Serenity. It don’t get much better’n that.
- Thanks go out to my sister-in-law for the kickin’ new “do” and all the styling products that accompany it. Now I can look like something other than an utter schlub at work and at play. *grin*
Christmas Admissions
A couple guilty Christmastime confessions:
- I tear up at the end of It’s A Wonderful Life every year. You know the scene: The entire town turns out to donate money to George Bailey in order to keep him out of the pokey. I get a little choked up even thinking about it.
- I don’t care what anyone says, the first two Home Alone movies are works of near Three Stooges level comedic genius.
Christmas Tip
To Brad, and any other recipients of Video iPods this year: take a look at No-Frills DVD2iPod. You may enjoy what you find.
Merry Christmas!