(no subject)
Jul. 8th, 2004 11:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aslanti'm back in cambridge after our five-day vacation in new hartford/winstead, connecticut. we stayed in my grandparents' west hill lake cottage, which has no internet and no television and no cell phone service; it was a bit of a shock coming back to the apartment and all its messes & noises & lights. we had two nights of thunderous rain, one of which included some nearly-overhead lightning & a power outtage; we also had two days of perfect sun & swimming (and one rainy day, and one post-rain holy-crap-the-lake-got-cold day), which was a real treat.
we ended up coming home one day early, because it was too windy & cold to even read a book down at the dock on the last day, and because we missed the kittens. they missed us, too! so cute. they are one year old, as of this past weekend. we visited my grandmother at her house in west hartford before we left, and she fed us a nice little supper and we all chatted about houses and apartments and jobs and such.
she is talking to my aunt this week about whether to sell the big house this year or not. i will be sad to see it go, although i think it is inevitable. we walked around in the orchards and ate mulberries from the big tree, and we saw a rabbit in the field towards sunset. i can't walk more than two steps outside or inside without the sensation of bodily revisiting thousands of childhood memories.
she said the annual taxes amount to near $9,000, which is too much for her in addition to the cost of my grandfather's care facility and the cottage as well. i said we would rent it from her! but she says we could never afford it. i say pish posh, split monthly between kirk & i, the rent would be $100 cheaper than our current rent, which would leave room for other expenses. but then, i don't know if i would feel capable of taking the house over from her---i would want to preserve it as a near museum to my childhood, which is no way to keep house. and in any case, we'd both be forced to take jobs in the insurance industry, which is the only job market in hartford. poo.
my dad pointed out that her heart problems will only get drastically worse in the coming years, and that considering she may not live for more than five years (!), perhaps the ordeal of sorting through a lifetime's belongings is not something she needs to force upon herself right now. it's true, but i couldn't believe my dad said that about his own mother! there is so much mortality in my family lately. an uncle on the other side was just diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
also in childhood-farewell news: i visited my childhood home in avon while in connecticut, too. i met the nice albanian (?) family who lives there now, and they even gave me a tour of the inside! i was shaking the whole time. my childhood bedroom is gone, but i walked right up to where the doorway was and pretended i could open the wall and go in. the nursery was converted into a large bedroom for their only son, who was super friendly and had lots of tasteful abercrombie semi-nudes on his walls. also the skunk weed and general chaos of the backyard has been completely replaced by a quarter-acre of golf course-quality grass. so weird. um, yeah. this is all probably only of interest to my sister. katie, the greenhouse was gone! so was the pantry. i noted with some satisfaction that their perfect grass was growing poorly in one spot: that's what they get for not digging up those foot-deep concrete sinks dad put in for the swingset! ha.
in other news, i participated in a gallup survey on the phone last night. quick, what are the four most important issues facing our nation today? get your answers ready in case they call, because i was slightly embarrassed at my own. (unfair taxation of the middle class, the war in iraq, abortion rights, and, um, the economy? healthcare? i can't remember my last one. oh wait--the deficit.) also i did not know who dennis hastert is (speaker of the house!), and i was forced to articulate whether i did or did not believe in the following phenomena: angels, heaven or hell, elvis is alive, ghosts, ufos, present past or future life on other local solar system planets, or ESP. there were lots & lots of other things, i got the feeling there were eight or nine separate surveys crammed in there.
we ended up coming home one day early, because it was too windy & cold to even read a book down at the dock on the last day, and because we missed the kittens. they missed us, too! so cute. they are one year old, as of this past weekend. we visited my grandmother at her house in west hartford before we left, and she fed us a nice little supper and we all chatted about houses and apartments and jobs and such.
she is talking to my aunt this week about whether to sell the big house this year or not. i will be sad to see it go, although i think it is inevitable. we walked around in the orchards and ate mulberries from the big tree, and we saw a rabbit in the field towards sunset. i can't walk more than two steps outside or inside without the sensation of bodily revisiting thousands of childhood memories.
she said the annual taxes amount to near $9,000, which is too much for her in addition to the cost of my grandfather's care facility and the cottage as well. i said we would rent it from her! but she says we could never afford it. i say pish posh, split monthly between kirk & i, the rent would be $100 cheaper than our current rent, which would leave room for other expenses. but then, i don't know if i would feel capable of taking the house over from her---i would want to preserve it as a near museum to my childhood, which is no way to keep house. and in any case, we'd both be forced to take jobs in the insurance industry, which is the only job market in hartford. poo.
my dad pointed out that her heart problems will only get drastically worse in the coming years, and that considering she may not live for more than five years (!), perhaps the ordeal of sorting through a lifetime's belongings is not something she needs to force upon herself right now. it's true, but i couldn't believe my dad said that about his own mother! there is so much mortality in my family lately. an uncle on the other side was just diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
also in childhood-farewell news: i visited my childhood home in avon while in connecticut, too. i met the nice albanian (?) family who lives there now, and they even gave me a tour of the inside! i was shaking the whole time. my childhood bedroom is gone, but i walked right up to where the doorway was and pretended i could open the wall and go in. the nursery was converted into a large bedroom for their only son, who was super friendly and had lots of tasteful abercrombie semi-nudes on his walls. also the skunk weed and general chaos of the backyard has been completely replaced by a quarter-acre of golf course-quality grass. so weird. um, yeah. this is all probably only of interest to my sister. katie, the greenhouse was gone! so was the pantry. i noted with some satisfaction that their perfect grass was growing poorly in one spot: that's what they get for not digging up those foot-deep concrete sinks dad put in for the swingset! ha.
in other news, i participated in a gallup survey on the phone last night. quick, what are the four most important issues facing our nation today? get your answers ready in case they call, because i was slightly embarrassed at my own. (unfair taxation of the middle class, the war in iraq, abortion rights, and, um, the economy? healthcare? i can't remember my last one. oh wait--the deficit.) also i did not know who dennis hastert is (speaker of the house!), and i was forced to articulate whether i did or did not believe in the following phenomena: angels, heaven or hell, elvis is alive, ghosts, ufos, present past or future life on other local solar system planets, or ESP. there were lots & lots of other things, i got the feeling there were eight or nine separate surveys crammed in there.
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no subject
Date: 2004-07-08 08:26 am (UTC)i would totally not be able to think of four issues. abortion, war, and um. i would say separation of church and state just cause i'm bratty about it. i'm not even sure i would have thought of abortion off the top of my head, which is awful.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-08 08:32 am (UTC)the fun part was when she quizzed me on what sports i was a fan of. baseball? not a fan. basketball? not a fan. football? not a fan. i said 'not a fan' at least a dozen times in a row. i should have said 'not a fan' for dennis hastert, too.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-08 08:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-08 08:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-08 08:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-08 08:40 am (UTC)2) lack of funding for "pure research"
3) indiffrent imperial policy- which is to say, why do we leave countries after we invade them?
4) the prevelance of religion
angels? as successful metaphors. heaven or hell? yes to the former, as a successful metaphor, no to the second. elvis alive? only if hitler can be too. life in other solar systems? almost certainly. esp? no.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-08 08:50 am (UTC)it was about life in *our* solar system, though. specifically the moon, mars, or venus.
is there such a thing as pure research? i find the idea kind of absurd. i view the larger problem to be the presumed objectivity of science, both in research science and in applied (for instance) medicine (i.e., the general public being unaware of how imprecise medical science really is).
no subject
Date: 2004-07-08 08:59 am (UTC)as for "pure research," yeah, there is a reason i put it in quotes. sagan was the big proponant of it- by it, he meant research that wasn't specifically aimed at producing an industry product or anything like that. non-"practical" research.
besides, chill out with that sneering at science's lack of objectivity! what the hell! man, we're working on it! it ain't our fault there are all these unsolvable philosophic conundrums! crap! bayes even figured out a pretty okay way for us to pretend deductive logic works! so lay off, poet girl! i don't give you flak for post-modernism!
no subject
Date: 2004-07-08 09:10 am (UTC)i am all for the shades of gray, man. i really don't mean to sneer...i just dislike the unassailable-fortress quality of most scholarship in the sciences.
(single-celled: my thoughts exactly, although even that seems slim-to-none, to me. but part of me wanted to say 'yes' out of guilt for saying so many negative answers in that section already, even if it was a yes with a caveat.)
no subject
Date: 2004-07-08 12:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-08 12:38 pm (UTC)