travel Bathroom view

Posted December 31, 2005 • Comments Off on Bathroom view

When you look out the skylight in Arwen and Peter’s bathroom, the entire view of the sky is blocked by their immense ham radio antenna. It’s really quite hilarious. I’ll post a picture when I get home.

Edited to add photo:
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There’s a thick, very wet snow falling. It turns to rain as soon as it hits a power line or a tree or anything. It was plain old snow this morning, but now it’s airborne slush. Gross and nasty.

I had a hell of a time getting here last night. I’ve become so spoiled by the way streets and houses are labeled in the Washington area–every light has “Next Signal” signs, and every house (it seems) has the number out by, or painted on, the curb. Not so in New Jersey! I had forgotten how the power and phone lines are strung across the streets (not the case in Virginia or in Florida, but the case in my youth), and I had forgotten how all the curbs are made of cobblestones. Back in the day, you used to hear about how the cobblestones were stolen. Like all the New Jersey developers had stolen up to Boston in the dead of night and ripped them out of historic streets. Anyway, they ain’t got no house numbers painted on them. I had a hell of a time finding this place. Plus it was roughly a six-hour drive. Big fun.

I did listen to the first half of Flush by Carl Hiaasen, and I did listen to all my saved-up NPR “Story of the Day” podcasts (nine of them! I love that podcast so dearly), and I listened to some music, and I listened to the entire Dane Cook album for the first time yet. Julie told me the other day that her copy was the best thing she got this Christmas, which was nice of her.

I’m typing on a Thinkpad on Arwen and Peter’s kitchen table. Have I ever mentioned how much I dislike the keyboards on Thinkpads? I accidentally just pushed some sort of hotkey placed really, really close to an arrow key, and went to a different webpage. What the hell, I said to myself, I better not have lost that whole entry. It turns out it’s a “forward” or “back” key or something, like the existing keyboard shortcuts for that aren’t good enough, and luckily the entry was still here when I got back. I would’ve been mightily pissed.