Yawn...

Soooo tired… didn’t sleep much at the hotel last night, because I was having trouble finding the right temperature. I was constantly too hot, so I kept waking up after a short, fitful sleep and stumbling over to the thermostat to turn it down one more degree. I finally seemed to be comfortable when it hit 67. I didn’t have this problem the first night we arrived in Buffalo, which I can only assume was because I was so tired that night that I immediately fell asleep when my head hit the pillow. And when I DID wake up some time near dawn, I realized the air conditioner had never even been on during the night. The room temperature was still hovering near 75, and I hadn’t even noticed. So I turned it down to 70 and fell back asleep until morning…

Tomorrow we have to be up around 5:45, so we can make our way down to the airport for our morning flight out of town. Amazingly, even after our sudden trip to Buffalo and our afternoon arrival back in Austin, I am already finished packing. I believe this is because I “pre-packed” before leaving for Buffalo – I packed for Buffalo, but I also left piles of things I wanted to take to Hawaii lying around my bedroom. Which meant that I mostly just had to unpack my Buffalo things and replace them with the Hawaii things piled on my dresser. It’s a great system. I am a genius. (I am also very tired and possibly instilled with a false sense of my own greatness…)

Our trip to Buffalo was a strange mix of sadness and happiness – sadness at our reason for being there, yet happiness to see so many relatives we rarely see. There was lots of reminiscing about grandma and grandpa, lots of old pictures passed around, lots of memories in the house on Maple Street. I found a great old letter written by my dad to his parents, in his senior year of college, signed “Willie.” (And although it’s tempting, I suppose we should all promise to never call dad “Willie”… :))

We also had a chance to visit with our other grandma and grandpa – grandma is in the hospital recovering from a virus, and grandpa (who is still in amazing shape for a 92-year-old) is by her side as often as he can be. We could tell grandma was still weak, but she was also cracking jokes and smiling and is hopefully on the road to recovery.

Our visit was capped off by dinner at the Roycroft Inn last night – the very site of the “fletcherize” incident I mentioned in an earlier post. I think there were thirteen or fourteen of us at our table, and the end where Rick and I were sitting became “hot topic central.” I’m not sure how it started, but the entire dinner was overlapped with heated political discussion, mostly between my cousin Luke and my brother Robert. Rick and Eric would jump in every now and then, and eventually the discussion wended its way down the table, where my cousin Danny offered opinions when he saw fit. It was quite an interesting discussion, actually, because as the topics switched from tax codes to environmental issues to welfare to gun control to terrorism, the players in the drama would wax and wane between liberal and conservative and for and against and pro and con – it seemed that no one in our discussion was 100 percent “democrat” or 100 percent “republican.” There WAS common ground, even in the middle of the most controversial issues. (Our waitress told us this was the most interesting table she’d served in a long time… :))

But the highlight of the night had to be when Beth – who was grandpa’s caregiver – mistakenly called me Eric’s “baby sister.” She apparently just assumed that I was younger than he is. (And then I had to explain that there’s really no way to tell, because Eric was left on our doorstep by a band of traveling gypsies. So who knows HOW old he is…)

Well, I’m off to bed, even though it’s only 9:30… as I said, I’m tired (and 5:45 will be here way too soon) – so hopefully next time I post I’ll have some decent Hawaii pictures…