Where I've been
Oct. 6th, 2014 08:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bironicJust back from 10 days in NY with family. Tired. Glad to be home.
The first weekend was fun. I started out at my dad's & his fiancée's, catching up, sharing gifts from my summer trip, packing a few boxes to take home with me. Books, class notes that might be helpful at my job, and also the journals I kept from ages 11 through 21. I'm really looking forward to revisiting those over time.
Also had a chance to pop by my childhood friend A.'s parents' garage sale. Talked for a while and then they foisted some stuff on me/let me take a few things, heh. They're moving out of state soon. That'll be the last remnants of my hometown friends gone afar.
Sunday it was time to go to my mom's. She was having eye surgery the next day, hence the reason for this trip, and wanted a distraction, so we spent the afternoon on a boat with—well, it's gotten complicated, but at the moment he's still her long-time live-in boyfriend, so let's keep calling him the bf. He took us all the way across the Sound, past La Guardia airport and Riker's Island prison, under the Throgs Neck and Whitestone bridges, through the eddies of Hell's Gate, down the East River between Manhattan and Roosevelt Island/Long Island City. I'd never seen the city from that vantage point. It was super cool. Er, even with the Coast Guard boats on alert in front of the UN building with manned machine guns.
59th Street Bridge with Roosevelt Island tram
In background: Empire State Building and Chrysler Building
United Nations
River view
Then the surgery, followed by shared caretaking with my sister. Everything went the way it was supposed to. That was good, and far outweighs the complaint that follows. It's just that the first week of recovery was more draining than expected. tl;dr we didn't get much sleep and had very little brain for stuff other than cooking/errands/chores/doctor's appointments/meds/entertaining the patient who was stuck with an eye patch in a special chair 24/7. Also I caught a cold and washed my hands fifty times an hour in the hope of preventing her from catching it. Still, my mom was extremely grateful to have us there—my sister's still there; she lives there now; I had to go back to work—and it was a fulfilling experience.
I brought podcasts and stuff to read out loud, but she couldn't concentrate on them. We watched/listened to/napped through a lot of TV. Mostly unengaging cooking and real estate shows, unless you count HGTV Bingo (stainless steel appliances! granite countertops! open concept kitchen! I can't buy this house, I don't like the interior paint color!) but by the end we did manage some good stuff IMO. Like Galaxy Quest, which we'd all seen enough times to know everything that was going on without needing to actually see it, and the second half of Jurassic Park and the first half of The Lost World. They hadn't seen The Lost World. I reminisced about reading the book back when I was a teenager mooning over Ian Malcolm and delighting in the suspense of the trailer scene in particular. I remember re-reading it on a day trip tour bus while on a family vacation in England. My dad probably kept elbowing me to put the book down and look out the window like he'd been doing on trips for years.
Also caught part of a Jesse Stone movie marathon. My mom likedMagnum PI Tom Selleck. My sister liked the golden retriever. My ears pricked up when commercials promised a new one at 9 p.m., but it turned out to be the "cable premiere" and I'd already seen it on Netflix. Alas.
And a Harry Potter DVD marathon from Prisoner of Azkaban to Deathly Hallows Part One. That was great. My mom got really into Deathly Hallows. I… thought I would have more to say here about HP, particularly regarding the experience of rewatching after so long away, and also about the Marauders generation on film, and also also how nifty it was to see the films for the first time since going to visit the sets in Watford, but either that was wrong or it's too close to collapsing-into-bed time to collect ruminations right now. TBD.
At some point I'll catch up on Doctor Who etc. Just have to get through four workdays, a networking event and an Atul Gawande book reading/signing first. Then a holiday weekend and a Vin Diesel movie night at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
thedeadparrot's. Woo.
The first weekend was fun. I started out at my dad's & his fiancée's, catching up, sharing gifts from my summer trip, packing a few boxes to take home with me. Books, class notes that might be helpful at my job, and also the journals I kept from ages 11 through 21. I'm really looking forward to revisiting those over time.
Also had a chance to pop by my childhood friend A.'s parents' garage sale. Talked for a while and then they foisted some stuff on me/let me take a few things, heh. They're moving out of state soon. That'll be the last remnants of my hometown friends gone afar.
Sunday it was time to go to my mom's. She was having eye surgery the next day, hence the reason for this trip, and wanted a distraction, so we spent the afternoon on a boat with—well, it's gotten complicated, but at the moment he's still her long-time live-in boyfriend, so let's keep calling him the bf. He took us all the way across the Sound, past La Guardia airport and Riker's Island prison, under the Throgs Neck and Whitestone bridges, through the eddies of Hell's Gate, down the East River between Manhattan and Roosevelt Island/Long Island City. I'd never seen the city from that vantage point. It was super cool. Er, even with the Coast Guard boats on alert in front of the UN building with manned machine guns.
59th Street Bridge with Roosevelt Island tram
In background: Empire State Building and Chrysler Building
United Nations
River view
Then the surgery, followed by shared caretaking with my sister. Everything went the way it was supposed to. That was good, and far outweighs the complaint that follows. It's just that the first week of recovery was more draining than expected. tl;dr we didn't get much sleep and had very little brain for stuff other than cooking/errands/chores/doctor's appointments/meds/entertaining the patient who was stuck with an eye patch in a special chair 24/7. Also I caught a cold and washed my hands fifty times an hour in the hope of preventing her from catching it. Still, my mom was extremely grateful to have us there—my sister's still there; she lives there now; I had to go back to work—and it was a fulfilling experience.
I brought podcasts and stuff to read out loud, but she couldn't concentrate on them. We watched/listened to/napped through a lot of TV. Mostly unengaging cooking and real estate shows, unless you count HGTV Bingo (stainless steel appliances! granite countertops! open concept kitchen! I can't buy this house, I don't like the interior paint color!) but by the end we did manage some good stuff IMO. Like Galaxy Quest, which we'd all seen enough times to know everything that was going on without needing to actually see it, and the second half of Jurassic Park and the first half of The Lost World. They hadn't seen The Lost World. I reminisced about reading the book back when I was a teenager mooning over Ian Malcolm and delighting in the suspense of the trailer scene in particular. I remember re-reading it on a day trip tour bus while on a family vacation in England. My dad probably kept elbowing me to put the book down and look out the window like he'd been doing on trips for years.
Also caught part of a Jesse Stone movie marathon. My mom liked
And a Harry Potter DVD marathon from Prisoner of Azkaban to Deathly Hallows Part One. That was great. My mom got really into Deathly Hallows. I… thought I would have more to say here about HP, particularly regarding the experience of rewatching after so long away, and also about the Marauders generation on film, and also also how nifty it was to see the films for the first time since going to visit the sets in Watford, but either that was wrong or it's too close to collapsing-into-bed time to collect ruminations right now. TBD.
At some point I'll catch up on Doctor Who etc. Just have to get through four workdays, a networking event and an Atul Gawande book reading/signing first. Then a holiday weekend and a Vin Diesel movie night at
thedeadparrot's. Woo.
