Placerville Wedding (III)
Sep. 21st, 2014 09:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aOur two-and-a-quarter-day vacation ended today amidst the smell of smoke and falling rain.
It began at Hill House, where Kimberly & I slept on a futon in the spare bedroom last night and found it much more sleepable than the super squeaky beds in the other room. It was a very thin futon mattress, and so we both had a few issues with lying on slats, but overall it was a perfectly OK experience. We'd also learned our lesson and opened the window before the night.
(For whatever reason, the house really got hot and warm in the evening.)
It continued at the Smith Flat House, which was the same place that we had the "rehearsal" dinner on Friday night. (There was no actual rehearsing.) This time we had their brunch buffet, and it was tasty, particularly the potatoes and bacon.
Because of the light rain (and the smell of smoke) we sat inside this time, in their Cellar. This was apparently an entrance to a gold mine in Ye Olde Times. Now, it's just a basement room with beautiful, old walls and a well in the main room (now filled with cement a ways down to keep it from flooding the cellar), and a back room that was once used to store dynamite and has cool explosive marks on the walls as a result. Or so it came to me from our waitress, and to her through who knows how many levels of the telephone game. But some of that is surely true.
We had 10 for the brunch, including all of the Appels. It was good to see Don, Judy, Bob, and Peg one more time before we left. Even after the brunch we all talked outside in the (drying, now less smoky) parking lot for a while before we headed our separate ways. It was so terrific to talk to family that I hadn't seen in quite a while (and to learn that a few of them keep current on me through my FB posts, like when I link this LJ post). There was some talk of having a family reunion in a couple of years for Grandma's 100th birthday. If it happens, I'll definitely try my best to attend.
The whole weekend made me think about how family evolves.
Janet and Jim, Jared's parents, were so very welcoming — much the same experience that we had with the Martinezes when Jason and Lisa got married. I could almost feel the community knitting together as two more families joined.
Meanwhile, I saw how the Appel family continues to define itself around Grandma. It made me think of her siblings, who probably created similar family definitions around themselves, and how Judy must be a matriarch to her own family of children and grandchildren now. And Bob & Peg too; it's weird to think of them all as the grandparents for different families. And those family units spread out as the family tree widens into leaves.
So balanced with that joining together, we had a slow falling apart, as the community of people ebbs and flows.
Or maybe I just didn't get enough sleep due to squeaky beds.
The trip home was a slow rewind as we sadly left the Sierra-Nevada foothills behind. Dad commented that it'd been a long, long time since he'd been that route, driving 50 west, and it's the same for me. We used to all go into the mountains for snow skiing and camping and water skiing when I was growing up, but I haven't done any of that since I think one trip shortly after I moved to Berkeley.
I miss the snow.
We got home and found very affectionate cats who were also somewhat crazy. It was clear they'd been playing with each other while we were gone, as they were both in aggressive and playful moods, but I expect that'll quickly fade to Lucy's usual intolerance.
But one of the reasons we got Callisto was so that Lucy wouldn't be so pitifully lonely while we took trips.
When I was in Placerville, I mostly put my work things away. I did polish the index for one letter of Designers & Dragons: The '00s ("C"), but then I got to a complicated letter ("D", which includes Dungeons & Dragons) and I decided to leave that for my return.
Then I was sitting on the patio behind the Mills' house last night, listening to the conversations about me, looking out into the woods, and for a moment I couldn't even conceive of being back home tonight for work tomorrow.
But back I am.
I'm polishing "D" up right now. The whole index is due on the 28th, and that'll be my last major element for the print Designers & Dragons books.
And tomorrow it'll be back to Skotos. Fortunately, Chris has asked me to immediately dive into some writing I'm working with him on, which will give me something interesting (& creative) to work on for my first day back.
It began at Hill House, where Kimberly & I slept on a futon in the spare bedroom last night and found it much more sleepable than the super squeaky beds in the other room. It was a very thin futon mattress, and so we both had a few issues with lying on slats, but overall it was a perfectly OK experience. We'd also learned our lesson and opened the window before the night.
(For whatever reason, the house really got hot and warm in the evening.)
It continued at the Smith Flat House, which was the same place that we had the "rehearsal" dinner on Friday night. (There was no actual rehearsing.) This time we had their brunch buffet, and it was tasty, particularly the potatoes and bacon.
Because of the light rain (and the smell of smoke) we sat inside this time, in their Cellar. This was apparently an entrance to a gold mine in Ye Olde Times. Now, it's just a basement room with beautiful, old walls and a well in the main room (now filled with cement a ways down to keep it from flooding the cellar), and a back room that was once used to store dynamite and has cool explosive marks on the walls as a result. Or so it came to me from our waitress, and to her through who knows how many levels of the telephone game. But some of that is surely true.
We had 10 for the brunch, including all of the Appels. It was good to see Don, Judy, Bob, and Peg one more time before we left. Even after the brunch we all talked outside in the (drying, now less smoky) parking lot for a while before we headed our separate ways. It was so terrific to talk to family that I hadn't seen in quite a while (and to learn that a few of them keep current on me through my FB posts, like when I link this LJ post). There was some talk of having a family reunion in a couple of years for Grandma's 100th birthday. If it happens, I'll definitely try my best to attend.
The whole weekend made me think about how family evolves.
Janet and Jim, Jared's parents, were so very welcoming — much the same experience that we had with the Martinezes when Jason and Lisa got married. I could almost feel the community knitting together as two more families joined.
Meanwhile, I saw how the Appel family continues to define itself around Grandma. It made me think of her siblings, who probably created similar family definitions around themselves, and how Judy must be a matriarch to her own family of children and grandchildren now. And Bob & Peg too; it's weird to think of them all as the grandparents for different families. And those family units spread out as the family tree widens into leaves.
So balanced with that joining together, we had a slow falling apart, as the community of people ebbs and flows.
Or maybe I just didn't get enough sleep due to squeaky beds.
The trip home was a slow rewind as we sadly left the Sierra-Nevada foothills behind. Dad commented that it'd been a long, long time since he'd been that route, driving 50 west, and it's the same for me. We used to all go into the mountains for snow skiing and camping and water skiing when I was growing up, but I haven't done any of that since I think one trip shortly after I moved to Berkeley.
I miss the snow.
We got home and found very affectionate cats who were also somewhat crazy. It was clear they'd been playing with each other while we were gone, as they were both in aggressive and playful moods, but I expect that'll quickly fade to Lucy's usual intolerance.
But one of the reasons we got Callisto was so that Lucy wouldn't be so pitifully lonely while we took trips.
When I was in Placerville, I mostly put my work things away. I did polish the index for one letter of Designers & Dragons: The '00s ("C"), but then I got to a complicated letter ("D", which includes Dungeons & Dragons) and I decided to leave that for my return.
Then I was sitting on the patio behind the Mills' house last night, listening to the conversations about me, looking out into the woods, and for a moment I couldn't even conceive of being back home tonight for work tomorrow.
But back I am.
I'm polishing "D" up right now. The whole index is due on the 28th, and that'll be my last major element for the print Designers & Dragons books.
And tomorrow it'll be back to Skotos. Fortunately, Chris has asked me to immediately dive into some writing I'm working with him on, which will give me something interesting (& creative) to work on for my first day back.
