This just in: I’m terrible at blog up-keep. Though I said that I would keep regular entries over the course of my Thanksgiving Break travels, I’m afraid that things got simply too hectic to keep up after the second (airport) post. However, I now find the time to update on the happenings of the past three days (has it already been three days?). Since it has been, after all, three packed days, I’m going to break this down into paragraphs. Late Tuesday (technically, early Wednesday), 20th/21st November: My flight finally left, with a wheels-up time of 11:05pm PST, to say the least, much later than anticipated, clearly a far cry from the scheduled time of 7:10pm PST. Thus, I made it into San Francisco International Airport at around 12:50am; of course, I made it down to the passenger pick-up area at around 1:15am, due to the typical bottle-necking involved in deboarding a plane. Add on the hour-long drive from the airport to my final destination for the night, and I arrived at at a most inopportune 2:33am. This is more of a mini-paragraph, as I got in bed almost immediately after. Wednesday, 21st November: On Wednesday, having had optimal time to sleep, I woke up feeling more refreshed than I have at school in a long while. Despite that, I didn’t actually do that much on Wednesday: I went to lunch at an old favorite restaurant in town, and I visited the only bookstore left in the area, a Barnes & Noble at a shopping center about a 15 minute drive from where I used to live. I found what I was looking for, but I also noticed some strange things about the store: their stock was in worse condition than I remember it being (for example, they were missing usually-stocked stables, such as a complete edition of Sherlock Holmes), it lacked the normal lounging area that it used to be known for, and there was a notable number of sales. So, it turns out that this particular Barnes & Noble intends to close on the 5th of December, of this year 2012. Now, I know, bookstore closings are, regrettably to say, old & common news in this day and age, but this particular one represents the “end of an era” of sorts: once it’s gone, there will be no more bookstores in the town I grew up in, or in the next one over. Now, I fully understand the times, what with the continuing digital “revolution” and all that, but when there remains not one bookstore in one’s hometown, it gives pause. Are e-books truly a wave of the future, or are they a fad? It would certainly seem that they are indeed the future, but it still remains to be seen whether or not we, as a nation (and, undoubtedly, a world), will end up regretting our collective decision to trade off storefront shopping for easy, fast, instant-gratification e-books and downloads. Thursday, 22nd November: On Thursday (from the time of writing, the proper way to begin this post would be “yesterday,” but I digress), I headed further down California’s coast, to the town of Carmel, Monterey County, to visit my grandparents. Unfortunately, the circumstances are less than the nearly-idyllic times that I associate with the Carmel from my childhood and adolescence. My Grandfather, 82, has very recently died, and so this Thanksgiving turns out to be less of a happy family gathering, and more of a tense convergence of support for my Grandmother, who has gone far and beyond the call of duty in taking care of my Grandfather for a little over a year now, despite her own age. Despite being the literal Thanksgiving, Thursday was not the proper Thanksgiving dinner, as the rest of the family arrived too late for some of the essential preparations. So, it ended up being a more typical, laid-back family dinner, marred, of course, by the abnormal and less-than-optimal circumstances, though, thankfully, this did not ruin the evening.
Friday, 24th November:
Today, I start the process of moving back in a Northerly direction. In several hours, I'll be departing Carmel and making my way back to Santa Clara County to stay another night, and then on Saturday morning, I'll depart for San Francisco airport once again to return to Washington. Hopefully, I'll get there early enough to make an entry of it. I'll certainly try.
