Under the circumstances it was a good trip up to New England.

While on the trip, the subject of this blog came up a few times. How several family members read it and talk about it when they get together. Before we left, someone said “I can’t wait to read what she writes about this trip!” Gosh, that’s a lot of pressure.

So I thought about what I’d write, thinking nothing would give it justice. Surely I would disappoint. I sat quietly for a bit and realized that I just have to do what I always do, write for myself. Don’t try to impress, just be natural. Here goes.

The drive up was nice. It drizzled a lot, but we didn’t encounter any of the killer New England flooding that the news people have been on about. We took the long way up, through PA and NY, avoiding all of New Jersey and NYC. We arrived in Salem, Mass, where my cousins Melissa and Corrine live in an apartment complex around 9pm. We spent the evening talking to Melissa. It is great that she keeps such close touch with my sisters, so we were able to catch up on what they were doing and our thoughts about them. And Melissa is just a cool person all-around, so she’s fun to talk to.

Thursday morning Heather and Annette drove down from Maine and met us at the apartment in Salem, and we drove up to Nashua, NH to meet up with the rest of the family for my grandfather’s memorial service. We met at my Aunt Meg’s condo, she had just been released from the hospital following some major emergency surgery, and I was surprised (and pleased!) to see her up and around. We arrived at the funeral home just before the service started at noon.

The service was small, just close family. It was presided over by the Lutheran family pastor and my Aunt Katy (), who is a Methodist minister. My grandfather was not a practicing Christian, in fact, his more earth-based beliefs and pagan/folk studies were a big part of my relationship with him since my father died last year. But the service was nice, touching upon universal truths that Christianity preaches. A few grandchildren spoke, all of whom had good things to say. It was all very emotional. I cried, and cried again when I walked up and saw the pictures of my grandfather that were arranged at the front of the room. My cousin Barbara () wrote an entry with more details of the service, you can see it here.

Leaving the service I had a lot to think about. No doubt there will be good entries in the near future dealing with my feelings about him and my father after seeing and learning what I did during this visit.

After the service we met up at the retirement community where my grandparents lived, and my grandmother still lives. They had a nice lunch buffet set up for the family, and we all split up and sat at the tables arranged for us to eat. It was great getting to talk to everyone. After eating some people left, most of us went back to my grandmother’s apartment. We were able to just sit around and talk. It was wonderful, I got to spend some time talking to my cousin Audrey () and we had a great conversation about spiritality and relgion. She’s so smart, precisely the kind of Christian I love to talk to, open-minded and asking all the tough questions. I got to spend a little time talking to my grandmother, that was nice, she’s such a wonderful woman. I also got to talk to my cousin Barbara at dinner, which was cool, I don’t know her very well besides what I read in her journal, and it’s nice to physically connect with people.

Dinner was attended by about a dozen of us, it was nice, further connecting with cousins, we were even more mixed up between tables than we were at lunch. It just happened that way. After dinner we went back to my grandmother’s apartment again to talk more. There was a lot of laughing, no tears. Stories of Granddad, we got to see the wedding pictures of him and my grandmother 58 years ago, they were absolutely beautiful. We also got to share stories about our own lives, jo
ked around a lot and in general had a wonderful time together.

When we finally managed to leave around 9pm I couldn’t help feeling that this is precisely what granddad would have wanted. We’re a family of very intelligent, successful people (not to mention good-looking!). He had a great influence on all of us, and we got together and had a fantastic time in remembrance of him. All but one of the grandchildren attended the service, a great feat for any family when plans are pulled together so quickly and considering all the important obligations we have.

My Aunt Katy took pictures, which I’m sure I’ll get eventually. My cousin Melissa took a few between lunch and dinner when just a few of us stayed with my grandmother at her place for a bit.

Annette, me, Grandmother, Heather

Heather, me, Michael, Annette

We drove back to Salem and arrived there a little after 10. The plan had been to walk around historic Salem for a bit to see all the people dressed up, but my feet were killing me from the dress shoes I’d worn all day, and the very emotional day in general left me tired. Heather, Annette, Michael, Melissa and I spent the evening talking, watched some TV and went to bed around midnight.

Friday morning I got up a little after 7, showered and dressed before anyone else was out of bed. I took the opportunity to leave the room where Michael and I were staying and wake up Annette to talk. Just talk. We don’t see each other often, and over the phone just isn’t the same. We had a nice talk about life, soon Heather woke up too and all three of us got to talk. Talking with sisters is good. I left the conversation feeling much better about Annette, she’s an intelligent person, even if she keeps getting into trouble and is doing poorly in school. During part of the conversation she successfully analyzed the relationships where she lives, and explained what was wrong and what she needed, I was impressed, she could have quite a future in some sociological field if she’s that good now. She just needs someone to encourage her and help her realize and nurture her talents.

A little before 9 my cousin Corinne came by, and we were all running around getting ready to leave. I got to talk to her for a bit, and after proclaiming that I was going to steal all her books (she’s got lots of great ones) she mentioned that she was moving away and trying to get rid of most of them so I could take some if I wanted. We sat in her room while I picked out a few, it was great, I hadn’t had much time to talk to Corinne during the visit.

We didn’t manage to leave until after 9. Stopped at Dunkin Donuts and then were on our way home. We further extended our long trip home by taking route 2 through northern Mass rather than the turnpike. It was a beautiful drive, the trees were all changing, and there is nothing like seeing the clouds hang around small mountain tops and down in the valleys while driving through them.

Around 4 we stopped at The Farmhouse Restaurant in Oneonta, New York for dinner. It was good, they had a salad bar with seafood! Yum! And by 8pm we were home with Caligula, who wouldn’t let us out of his sight all evening.

We got home this evening around 8pm. All is well, but Caligula missed us a lot (thanks again for checking on him while we were gone!).

But I’m exhausted and it’s time for bed. I will do a real update this weekend, I have a lot to think about.

I also want to get out of the house this weekend, so if anyone just wants to hang out feel free to email, hook up with me in IRC or call my cellphone, I’ll be around.

Trip plans are finalized (it’s about time!).

Tomorrow we’re leaving around 9AM for Salem, Mass. We’re taking the longer, scenic way to avoid New Jersey and NYC (it’s worth the extra ~$10 in gas). If all goes according to plan we should arrive there around 5 or 6 pm.

Salem is where my cousin lives. We’ll be staying with her, joined by my sisters on Thursday when we attend the memorial service.

Thursay the service is being held around noon. We’ll attend that and then we’re having a big family lunch, so many people I haven’t seen in years will be there. It should be nice.

We’ll be going home Friday morning.

I spoke with my supervisor and HR this morning, I’m entitled to 3 days bereavement time off, which I’ll be using Wednesday-Friday so we can drive up for the memorial service on Thursday. This has worked out well, with the weekend I’ll have a total of 5 days in a row for this so we’re not rushing around and exhausting ourselves. And I can handle being at work today and tomorrow, at least it keeps my mind busy.

We had our second Saturday shaman class on Saturday, we had a nice time. Jim spoke about some things that really hit home with me, so it was an interesting day. Unfortunately I had a slight sinus headache during most of it (Advil only helped a little), and I have a more difficult time journeying when I have a headache. Toward the end of the day we got to play with “dowsing rods” (I still think this is silly, but it was fun) and then the really fun part – facepaint! We painted our faces in a way to reflect something of the spirit of our spirit guides. Yeah, a whole room full of adults painting their faces as animals, there were many jokes about driving home/going to the mall/etc without washing it off first.

We got home from that around 6:30 in the evening and took a nap. I don’t usually take naps, but my headache had gotten bad and I needed to. We got up around 8, ordered a pizza and hung out the rest of the evening. Working on wallaceandgromit.net, catching up with a friend I hadn’t talked to in a while (we’ve been so busy). It wasn’t until after 1am that I went to bed.

Sunday morning I heard the news about my grandfather, my cousin Melissa called to tell me. It wasn’t easy news to handle, I cried, I went downstairs and woke up Michael for a hug. I called Annette (youngest sister) to see if she had heard, she hadn’t and didn’t even know Granddad had been in the hospital. Sometimes I think my family needs a mailing list, getting the news to everyone all over the country is so uncoordinated. I spoke with my mother later in the day, she was upset, she had known him for over 20 years. She didn’t ask to come to the service, but wanted to make sure Annette would have a ride down for it, and needed to work things out with Annette’s probation officer so she can leave the state.

Michael’s been great. We ran some errands Sunday afternoon, then came home and I was feeling mopey. He suggested a few places we could go out to and I wasn’t in the mood for any until he mentioned going to the Victory brewery for dinner. I was hungry and that sounded good. So that’s where we went. It’s in Downingtown, in a part of town that I’d call “scary” and it’s tucked in a warehouse area, you don’t even see the front door until you pass a few tractor trailer bays (used to pick up beer from the brewery). It’s in a real warehouse, and was chilly, not anything like the upscale little brewery restaurants I’ve been to in the past. The service was fine, our burgers were good and the beer was great (yay Hopdevil!).

The evening was spent relaxing, watched West Wing and went to bed before 10pm.

After work I need to start getting stuff together so we can make our trip up to New Hampshire for Thursday. We’re not entirely sure when we’ll be leaving, where we will be staying, or how long. A good friend of ours in Maine offered to have us visit if we had time, that would be nice, but we’ll see – going up for a day and coming home might be better, and the Maine bit adds about 3 hours each way to our trip.

A bowl of popcorn and a funny movie tonight would be good medicine.

“The graveyards are full of indispensable men.” -Charles de Gaulle

And now they gain another.

My grandfather passed away this morning, he had been ill for a few months. According to my cousin he was ready. He was happy that family was making plans to come up, even if they weren’t able to make it in time. He was at peace with everything and content that he had had an amazing life. This makes it easier to take, but it’s still very hard. I’m upset, I feel numb…

Rest in peace Granddad, you were loved.

I had such a great time last night.

It’s always hard to see a movie after you’ve built up these fantastic expectations for it over multiple years, but I have to say that Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit didn’t disappoint! I’ll get around to writing a more in-depth review tomorrow.

We met , , and at the theater for the 7:40 showing. We wanted to avoid kids, but also couldn’t stay out too late because we’re going to our shaman class today and had to be up early. Alas, we didn’t avoid the kids, but they weren’t that bad, and the movie was generally loud enough to drown out the occasional screams.

I’m happy.

And the traffic on WallaceAndGromit.net has now surpassed that of PrincessLeia.com, yowza!

In the past week the Total Hits (every page that was visited, not unique visitors):

PrincessLeia.com: 46,296

WallaceAndGromit.net: 48,876

Wow! I visited my sites from work, and they seem to be handling the load, not too slow, but I haven’t seen them at their peak (WallaceAndGromit.net had 984 hits in a single hour during it’s peak this week).

This is so cool.

I can’t begin to describe how excited I am. I’ve waited for this for years! Ever since I saw that first WnG movie back in 1995 and fell in love I’ve wanted them to grace the silver screen. And now I get my wish! Today! OMG! GLEE!!!!!! IT’S HERE!!

Screw Star Wars, this is the movie release of the decade.

Gosh, it’s going to be hard getting through work today.

Everything I’ve attempted writing since Monday hasn’t come out right.

Including this.

Sometimes I can’t stop writing and I’m constantly thinking about how I’ll word things, but this week is not like that. I hate these slumps. It takes me 10 minutes to form a sentence and it’s still not right.

Yup, just staring at the screen now.

It’s not like I don’t have stuff I want to write down, it just that my ideas aren’t making it from brain to computer. The words aren’t coming, and once they do they aren’t organized properly. I don’t want to post such unorganized junk online.

Can’t focus, playing with a staple remover now.

I’m going to take a walk.

I’m having a long day.

I want to go home and snuggle now!

I didn’t mention it when I wrote my journal entry yesterday, but we did end up going to Michael’s uncle’s gallery opening on Friday in Quakertown. It was great, he’s an amazing sculptor, even offering classes in his workshop now. There was a squirrel sculpture that I was quite fond of, with a price tag of $225, considering it if no one else buys it, but there really are other things we should be spending our money on right now %) I met a few more of Michael’s relatives, and we left after about 45 minutes.

On the way home we picked up a spinach pizza from Moccias, and for the first time they screwed it up. I ordered a “spinach pizza” and I was confident that they’d know that was a white pizza, since it lists “spinach pizza” as a white pizza on their menu. Alas, someone in the chain of ordering and making our pizza must have been new or clueless and made it with red sauce. Yuck! I was pretty disappointed when we got home and opened the box. Luckily it wasn’t as bad as I expected, not nearly as bad as when other pizzerias have screwed up the same order in the same way.

We both went to bed fairly early that night, had to get up early for drum making!

Saturday was detailed in the last entry.

Sunday was our no plans day, good thing since I didn’t sleep well Saturday night. I spent the morning getting caught up on website stuff and email, it was a good feeling to get that out of the way, I got so behind on everything this week. I still haven’t touched mailing lists, some of which I haven’t had a chance to catch up on in 2+ weeks, but that’s ok.

Around 2pm we were showered and ready to leave the house. We went up to Collegeville to pick up some Sake in case we did decided to make our own sushi.

We then headed to Skippack to drop by Dreamcatcher to pick up some white sage, but when we got there they were having “Skippack Day.” This would have been fun, lots of shops having sales, lots of tents on the road selling all sorts of neat things, but there were just too many people, it would have been difficult to get a parking space without paying for one (paying for parking in Skippack? madness!).

So we drove past that all and headed to the North Wales Whole Foods market. Mmm Whole Foods. We got a bunch of stuff we needed, they even had small bundles of white sage. And my carrot cake, yum!

And then it was off to Assi Plaza to check out fish for the sushi possibility. Unfortunately this didn’t quite work out. I think we need to do some more research before doing the sushi at home thing. We’re familiar with what sushi fishes are eaten cooked and what ones are raw, but nothing was coming together for us while we were at the store. I’d rather have things feel right and make sure we’re doing the right thing before we eat raw animals.

By the time we left Assi Plaza I was feeling tired. Michael suggested a few places we could go to eat out, but I just wanted to go home. This is very strange for me, I love eating out. When we got home Michael suggested getting a chicken cheesesteak stromboli. Yeah! So he went out and got one from Chiaros in Green Lane. It was a good dinner, we watched some MST3K while eating and spent the rest of the evening relaxing, and eating carrot cake.

Great weekend. Tonight we’re planning on going to the all genders sweat lodge, perhaps we’ll bring our new drums.