Vacations Are Funny

You get home more worn out than when you left.

We did a lot of walking yesterday, but the killer was going up the big observation tower late in the day.



The view was amazing, but the climb -- and the descent -- took a lot out of me. I'm starting to think that what I'm having is not issues with my heart, but with my breathing. By the time I got to the top, I was huffing and puffing a lot, but felt otherwise fine, and as soon as I caught my breath, I was perfectly okay. Oy, but then we started down, and every muscle in my legs screamed "What the HELL do you think you're doing?" My legs are very sore and achy today.

This morning, we did the battlefield again, but on our own and at our own pace. I'll post pictures somewhere within the week, but what makes the battlefield interesting to cruise around, other than the knowing what happened here, is all the monuments. There are monuments simply everywhere, often popping up in unexpected places. each one is dedicated to the memory of the troops who served on that spot, or in some cases to a particular officer who led them there. Some are small, and some are big enough to climb to the top of and walk around on (although few are that big.) For some reason, there are several New York monuments that look like castles. We found very, very few New Jersey monuments, until this one today:



This afternoon, I took a nap and the Hubs went back to hear a ranger give a lecture, for lack of a better word, on the part of the battle that took place on the hill called Little Round Top (which is what turned the tide of the battle decisively against the South). I mentioned this to K when I talked to her on the phone later, and she said it sounded like an activity for history geeks. (Which she proudly calls herself as well.) I said that everyone here is a history geek, but the Little Round Top walk was, as her father said, for the uber-history geeks.

So we're leaving in the morning, possible stopping on our way at what looked like and excellent outlet mall nearby. Or not, if we leave too early. We'll see. We had talked about driving through Lancaster on our way home, which is the heart of Amish country, but it looks complicated to get there, although it's only about an hour away, I think. We may otherwise stop in New Hope, which is a very cute little artsy village on the Pennsylvania-New Jersey border. The Hubs figures he can at least get a vegan meal there, given its local population. Again, we'll see.

I think I need a week at a spa.

WATCHING SVU :: ENTRY #1526

It Was 30 Years Ago Today ...

Yes, folks, I was married 30 years ago today, on a freakishly hot day. New York City was in its first day of recovering from a power blackout that left the Bronx (where my grandmother lived), among other places, in flames from the looting and lawlessness that came in the dark.

Well, that was cheerful, wasn't it?

So it was hot today, and I had some issues with that, but otherwise a nice day. My big surprise of the day was that I did not get a DVD as an anniversary gift (which is what I gave him, you may recall.) I got this:



You coulda knocked me ovah with a feathah. Now, because the Hubs is not a maven* when it comes to the jewels, I have no idea what this actually is. I can tell you this, though. It's the kind of thing that when I see it on a TV commercial, I think "Yeah, right, like I'm ever getting one of those." My guess is that the woman who works with him and who helped convince him to take me on this trip also told him that he had to buy me something and then she went with him and helped him pick it out. I can't imagine him doing this on his own. This is the guy, remember, who showed up in the hospital the morning after R was born -- 35 hours of labor, here -- carrying a shopping bag, so I thought he had a gift for me (how naive) but he had stopped on his way to the hospital and bought himself a very expensive fishing reel in honor of being a new father and he didn't want to leave it in the car. Nada for the new mommy. Yes, some things we always remember, don't we?

I don't know how I'm going to combine this with what I usually wear around my neck (which apparently he's never noticed me wearing for years and years), which is a gold chain that came from my grandmother with my father's wedding ring on it, but I guess I'll work that out somehow.

Okay, so I'm still working on all my pictures, but here's what we did today. We got to the visitor's center before 8, and when it opened, we got on line to get a guided tour. This means that a guide got in our car with us -- she drove, actually -- and for two hours, showed us all over the battlefield and relevant parts of the town, and gave us a tour, just the two of us. They have six guides available at a time, so if you don't get there early, you have to wait. This woman was FABULOUS. Not surprisingly, it turns out that she does this in the summer and is otherwise a history teacher at Gettysburg High School. She was just great.

After lunch, we went on the tour, so to speak, of Eisenhower's farm, which was very eh. He was not a great president, and his wife was a little peculiar, if you ask me. The house is not tremendously fancy or huge, but has some interesting features, things that Mamie apparently thought were just the best you could get. There were two curio cabinets that were basically filled with crap, the kinds of little things that we all gather over our lives and then dump at a garage sale, except she thought they were treasures. You know, little candy dishes and souvenir-y stuff. The house was very very fifties. One of the really very strange things was that one of the rooms was clearly the maid's quarters because on the easy chair in the room, which was facing the small TV, there was a copy of Ebony magazine from the fifties. Way to say "See? A Negro person lived here."

We went to TGI Friday's for dinner, and guess what? Just because they have a veggie burger on the menu in New Jersey, it doesn't mean they have it in Pennsylvania! They did ask us when we went in if we wanted to be in the smoking or non-smoking section, a question no longer relevant in New Jersey, so the Hubs got to smoke even though he didn't get to eat. (He ate the french-fried string beans, which are delish.)

Okay, so, on to tomorrow. A little more town browsing, a leisurely tour of the battlefield on our own, and a guided walking tour of the cemetery. You remember the cemetery, right? Lincoln came here to dedicate the cemetery; they just asked him to say a few words on the occasion.

* a maven is a person who knows a lot about a particular thing, seriously, and is a kind of connoisseur of it. An expert, sort of, but not in an official way. Not a know-it-all, but someone who just really knows.

WATCHING CSI :: ENTRY #1525

From Beautiful Downtown ...

Gettysburg. I packed.

Well, we're not exactly in downtown Gettysburg. Our hotel is a little odd, well off the beaten track but quite large and clean and up to date and ... empty. There are two buildings, and ours is the only car in the lot for our building; the other lot has a few. We are in room 1. This is the Eisenhower Convention Center, and I guess there are no conventions this week. The restaurant, which was recommended to us, does not appear to be open. Oh well, it's Sunday. Maybe the place comes alive during the business week (one can only hope.)

(Oh, no conventions, as such, but lots of bikers here and there, and a lot of places in town and on the outskirts have signs saying "Welcome Bikers!" Don't know what that's about yet.)

It took us about four hours to get here, which is what I expected based on a map search yesterday, and not a bad drive. It looked like it was going to pour from time to time, but there wasn't a drop. After we got here and settled in, we took a ride around to get our bearings. We're actually not far from the entrance to the battlefield/national park, but the visitor's center was closing just as we got there. We need to be back there by 8 tomorrow morning when it opens. So tomorrow looks like a battlefield tour, with a ranger, if we can reserve that, or otherwise we'll rent the audio tour and do it ourselves. Tomorrow or the next day, we'll go take the tour of the Eisenhower Farm, which is only by bus (as in, you can't drive your private car there), but that leaves from the same battlefield visitor's center.

The town itself looks very charming. It has lots of cute looking shops and its share of tacky gift shops. I need to find postcards for boxx! I'm considering asking the Hubs -- who is in remarkably good humor, but I expected him to be -- to get a picture taken in Civil War garb. I don't want one of me, just him in uniform. Now if only he hadn't shaved his beard, he could have done justice to a Robert E. Lee, but this current mustache just won't do. Anyone with just mustaches back then had a big sweeping one, not a neatly trimmed looks-like-his-Italian-grandfather one. We'll see how it goes.

No pictures to post yet, but I expect to have some tomorrow. I tried to take one from the car, but everything went by too fast. I wanted to show you how pretty New Jersey is once you get away from the oil tanks on the Turnpike and the suburban congestion where I live. Yes, folks, I passed lovely rolling hills and valleys, with little towns and farms nestled into the valleys. I saw actual silos and cows and everything, right here in New Jersey. I'll see if I can get a picture on the way home.

Okay, I finally got the air conditioner to work in the room and now I am freezing, but it's right next to the not-so-high-speed ethernet connection, so this is where I have to sit to type. I'm going to log off and see what's on the TV.


WATCHING NOTHING :: ENTRY #1524

I'm Still Here

Didn't write yesterday. No reason, just didn't.

So it's Friday. My back is still bothering me, which seems like too long. I'm actually motivated to start my summer cleaning, but I can't do it yet. Bummer.

K and I went out to lunch today with the Sibs and Wonderful Niece, which was delightful. Other than that, there is just not a whole lot going on. It's a beautiful day today, not too hot and not really humid at all, although there's a thunderstorm watch on for later.

I've been contemplating something along the lines of a political entry, but you know, all the news is just so horrific that I probably wouldn't know where to begin. And any little rant I post here is just a grain of sand on the beach. I'm finding something ironic about going to, of all places, Gettysburg next week. There are those who will say that the Battle of Gettysburg is the single most significant event in the history of the United States. The Civil War was our most important social/political development, and Gettysburg was the turning point in that war. Think about it. It was the occasion of the Battle of Gettysburg that led to these words:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

The great task still remains before us, more now than even it did then. Yet it is still true that we must resolve that those dead shall not have died in vain, and that our essential purpose -- our mission statement as Americans, as it were -- is to ensure that government of, by and for the people shall not perish from the earth. I would like to believe that those dying on behalf of our government every day are not dying in vain, but I cannot believe that. Australian officials -- and Australia is one of our strongest and most important allies, in general and certainly in Iraq -- have said that it's true that we are there to protect our oil interests. Didn't we know that all along? Did we -- did anyone -- ever believe that we were there because terrorists "hate our freedom", as that monkey in the White House has said repeatedly? They hate Americans, certainly, and they have good reason to, considering what we're doing to them. Hate our "freedom"? Who thinks that abstractly?

So I'm going to Gettysburg, commemorative of a lie of a different kind: it was a war fought "to free the slaves", but in fact, it was a war fought to maintain the union, to keep the United States intact as a country, and to prove that the federal government was stronger than the individual states', and was dominant. Hell, even the truth in that one sound noble.

Okay, so I ranted a bit. More to come, I'm sure, as I haven't even gotten started on Cheney and impeachment and all of that. If I could vote today, I probably would vote for Dennis Kucinich. I think he's a man with the courage of his convictions. The others are too busy trying to be elected for us to find out if they have it or not.


WATCHING DR. PHIL :: ENTRY #1516

Changed My Mind

Feeling a little better, released a little tension, which is always good for the back.

I'll start with yesterday. Or maybe a bit of Saturday night. Or ...

I've had trouble with my back since ... okay, 1974, but it's really been much better for the last few years. I get occasional backaches, like normal backaches, which is what I seemed to have Saturday night, a little cramp here, a little muscle strain there. No big deal, and it was the same Sunday morning, when I went for my pedicure with the Sibs. I came home and sat at my desk chair for a while, as I do, waiting for the toes to be nice and dry, and then when I got up ... I couldn't.

So my back just got worse as the day wore on, going into spasm. I used heat, I took advil, I stretched myself out flat on the floor for awhile. I'm a little better today, not spasming, as such, but uncomfortable.

Needless to say, I did not take a walk today, although I went briefly to the mall with K in the afternoon, and it was hard walking around there. But I felt that walking around anywhere would be better for my back than sitting in a chair all day, and it was. But I'm tired now.

I finally talked to the Colleague, who was away herself last week, and she gave me some very good input on our upcoming trip. I discussed it with the Hubs when he got home, who is being so pleasant and flexible and easy-going about this whole trip that honestly, I have no idea who he is. So now I have recommendations for two hotels, and although I'm going to call tomorrow, I doubt that we can get either one of them. Although this week is the actual anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, so all the big hoopla there is going on now, it's a place that people go when they're on vacation, and most people plan more than two weeks ahead of time. I have a third place as a back-up and I know they have rooms (I checked online), so I guess we'll have a place to go. (My first choice had nothing online and said to call the hotel; the second choice doesn't offer online reservations, so I have to call.)

Am I looking forward to the trip? Hmm. Yes and no. If I'm going anyplace (other than DisneyWorld), I'm glad we're going here; I did want to make this trip and see this stuff, and for a while. Am I looking forward to the disruption of being away from home, and packing, and finding suitable food for the Hubs away from home? Not so much. That part just sounds stressful to me. I really am a homebody. I like the places I go to, the rare times I go, but I'm not so good with change, or disruption.

When K and I were in England, for example, four years ago, I lived a dream: I saw the Globe Theatre. It was amazing to be there in every possible way; it could only have been better if we saw an actual play, but it was winter and not their season. It made me very happy. Yet back in the hotel one night, when K had gone out and met some friends who were studying in London, I got very freaked out about being in a hotel and not being home and how out-of-sync with everything I was, and felt. A little bit of an almost-panic attack. It's as if the only place I can go and feel at ease is DisneyWorld. Really, I belong there. I should live there, right on Main Street.

So tomorrow I try for reservations. R is getting out of work early -- her office is closing early for the holiday on Wednesday, nice of them -- so she'll be here sometime in the afternoon, and then for dinner, and then will sleep over on the couch so that her father can get her to the airport nice and early Wednesday morning.

I made an appointment for a consultation with the cardiologist for next week. It seems that I cannot take a standard stress-test, since I can't walk on an incline for more than a minute or two and that's what the test is, so it was decided that I should meet with him first and he'll decide what alternate test I need, and if in fact I need it. I don't have symptoms, really, just indicators, but if I'm getting blocked arteries now, I'd like to know it now and not find out in ten years in an emergency room.

Okay. Now I'm going to lie down.

WATCHING RAYMOND :: ENTRY #1513