Thanksgiving Break

It’s Tuesday afternoon of Thanksgiving break and as busy as I have been since my last class on Thursday, I had better get my weekly blog completed or it may not get done. My mom came down last Friday morning to get me and my roommate. She wanted to eat lunch in D2, and after we were done and my roommate got out of his class at 12:30pm, we loaded the car and headed for home. Would you believe we did not arrive home until about 7pm? There was an accident on Route 81 near Harrisonburg and we were in standstill traffic, so we took rural Route 33 into the mountains and across Skyline Drive and picked up Route 29 just north of Charlottesville. No one got car sick, but it was a crazy route. After dropping my roommate off at his house, we arrived home for a late dinner. (My mom left a roast cooking in the crock pot.) My brother and I stayed up real late talking and playing Modern Warfare II on Xbox.

Saturday morning, my mom got us all up early for swine flu shots. I did not want to get one and pretty much insisted that I would not go because I do not trust the H1N1 vaccine since it was manufactured quickly outside the US where they did not have to follow normal safety standards. But my mom then told me and my brother that my grandfather just found out that he had cancer and that we would needed to stay healthy so that we could go around him during his treatment this winter and early spring. There were hundreds of people at the county government center for the shots, but the lines moved pretty quickly. After that, we went in search for a Donnie Darko DVD for my brother’s Design MultiMedia class project, and for a LAN hub so I can get Internet on my PC in my dorm room. After lunch, I went to see the Costco manager about employment during Winter Break, but he did not want to talk to me or see my resume and said I had to apply online. (I thought making personal contact first would be good, but I guessed wrong.) The Costco application required my social security number, which I felt funny about, and had a long series of scenarios and questions of what I would most and least likely do in a given situation if working in the store. Our Internet connection was not good that afternoon and this took a long time. Saturday night we had a nice steak dinner and then watch Donnie Darko. When everyone else had gone to bed, I talked on Skype with some of my college friends who were also still up. (My local friends have still not returned home from college.)

I slept in some on Sunday and then went to the Nutcracker with my grandmother. She was real glad that my brother and I would still go to a ballet with her, but we knew it meant a lot to her, so we went. It was something we did when we were very young and she said she would like to go again when I was home on break. One of the dancers was the daughter of my former Sunday school teacher, “Mr. Bob,” who had died on 9-11 at the Pentagon. My mom made another good dinner and I started studying for my Calculus finals that evening.

Monday was a packed day. I had a 9am dental appointment and at 10:30am optometrist appointment, which meant that because of traffic, we had to leave the house just after 8am. After that, we searched for a pharmacy with seasonal flu vaccines in stock. The third place had some and after a wait, the pharmacist gave me a shot. (I made a mistake of letting her give me the shot in the same arm as Saturday’s vaccine, which made my arm really sore.) After that, we went to four or five stores in search of pants. (I thought my dirty pants from school were in my laundry basket, but it turned out that I only had the pair that I wore home for the week, except for church clothes I left at home in my closet.) That was frustrating shopping for clothes, something I do not like to do. We had a late pizza lunch with my grandparents, and then went home around 2:30pm. It was a cold, rainy day, and I was feeling exhausted by then, so I went to sleep around 3pm. My mom woke me up for dinner, and then I went back to bed. I pretty much slept until morning, ate breakfast at 6am, and went back to bed until 11am today! I could not believe how much I slept. My mom thinks it’s a result of having two flu shots so close together. Basically today, I have only gotten a little studying done, so I feel a little behind now from where I wanted to be at this point. Since my best friend will be home from the US Air Force Academy later tonight and we will spend tomorrow together, and other people will be around this weekend, I had hoped to get a lot done by now, especially since my Chem Lab final will be Tuesday right after I return to school. Soon, I will run over to the high school to visit some of my old teachers, and then I will try to get more studying done.

Basically, Thanksgiving Day will be pretty quiet. My mom will be making a huge dinner here and my grandparents will be coming over. We have also invited some neighbors whose son died of a brain aneurysm in October, but I am not sure if they will be coming. (The father has had high blood pressure and heart problems since the death and may not be well enough to travel to visit their married daughter.) It’s sad that we are entering a holiday season and there are people who are dealing with grief because I know it’s going to be a difficult time for them.