My Trip to the Carolinas

So the wife and I planned to leave last Tuesday night after work. Well. Turns out, I had a board meeting that night and the wife had choir rehearsal. OK. So we'll be done by 9:00 p.m. No biggee, we wanted to travel overnight (less traffic) and get there by midmorning. Hmmmph. The board meeting took much longer than expected and I wasn't done till 9:30. Fine, half an hour, not too far off schedule. Then I find out, we have to go back home (half an our from synagogue) and do some last minute stuff. So we finally get money and gas and get going by 10:50 p.m. Yeah. I take the first shift and drive from 10:50 to 2:00 a.m. Everything was fine except for NY. Who knew that there'd be construction on the TappanZee bridge at midnight?! Five lanes suddenly became 2. We were actually stopped. Not moving. Stopped. For what felt like half an hour. Good thing the wife was sleeping. She hates being stopped in traffic. The wife took the second shift, from 2-7:30. I woke up sometime around 5:30. Couldn't tell you why. But I got to see the sun come up over the Blue Ridge Mountains, which is a sight to see. And I drove the rest of the way and we got to our destination by 12:45.

Me mum and dad have a house on the same street as me brother, about 5 houses away. And to think they had moved down to SC to be away from the rents, not right next door, which was the case when they were living up here. "Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony."

So me mum and bro and sister in law are doing landscaping in the front and side yard of me parents' house. Greetings and salutations and hugs all around. And we get unpacked. And we bought a ton of stuff, including an air mattress and futon mattress, since the rents don't actually live in this house year round and consequently have no furniture to speak of in it. So what shall we do first, help with the landscaping? Ha and ha. The wife, having the self proclaimed, "black thumb of death" was not about to get her hands dirty. Me? I'm allergic to gardening ;) So, we assumed the role of supervisors. Hey, somebody's got to watch the workers :)

We spent some time with me nephew and niece. They're very energetic and loud and happy and of course, cute. The bro and his wife prepared dinner for us, which was nice. After spending 15 hours in the car, you don't want to go back out (at least for a little while).

My sister in law wanted to watch the Democratic Presidential debate that was being aired on ABC. I think we were able to withstand about 15 minutes of it. Media driven questions about OLD issues (Jeremiah Wright, Hillary lying about being under attack in Iraq) and political answers. Who CARES about this stuff, really? Nothing about health care reform or the Iraq War or the recession. At least, not in the first fifteen minutes. If you've seen it, you know what I'm talking about. If you haven't seen it, count yourself lucky (or blessed).

To be continued....