Sorry for the long silence here; I’ve just gotten back from Oregon. The weather was amazingly perfect: it rained a little on Friday afternoon, my last full day there (well after we rowed), but otherwise it was gloriously sunny and cloudless, warm in the day and cool at night as if someone was trying to define the perfect October by example.
As our outlook is still unsettled, we decided not to buy a truck this trip after all, though we did figure out exactly what we want. We’ll probably have to spend a little more if we buy it after we go home in January (because they won’t be getting rid of 2012 models by then) but at least we’ll know if we need it. So with that decision taken, the trip was really pretty useless, except for the purely recreational aspects of it. But it was blissful in the beginning and end, marred only by our having colds in the middle (well, Ted’s was more at the beginning, but he got over it quicker). Also, mostly through luck the timing allowed us to attend the wedding of a young (relatively) cousin of Ted’s; it was a beautiful and very personalized wedding, held at her new husband’s family’s house on the river there, and it was good to spend some time with that side of his family. I’d only met the actual bride once, which was also the only time Ted’s seen her in the last twenty years, but she seemed genuinely happy to have us there. We’ve seen her parents quite a few more times, so we’ve all sort of jkept up on each other. (Come to think of it, I’ve just figured out who she looks like: Queen Susan of Narnia, movie version, grown into adulthood at the end of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. Beautiful and gracious.)
We got to do lots of cooking and have plenty of quiet time at our place, sitting on the balcony and watching the sun set and turn the lake into an opal. I also did a fair bit of reading; as usual we had some unavailable-in-the Netherlands stuff sent to Ted’s parents. That included a one-volume edition of all ten of Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber; I got through about 7.5 of them. (We only got to his parents’ house several days into the trip.) I’d read the first five (Corwin) books before, but not the second five, the Merlin books. Those books definitely have dated, especially the Corwin books; there’s an odd combination of a he-manly hard-boiled feel with the dreamy trippy wanderings through Shadow. (Was it really that common to invite a total stranger to your home and sleep with him? Even in the late 80s, in college and before AIDS heated up I would have thought that was dangerous.) They’re still worth reading, despite all that, and despite the way bother heroes (but especially Corwin) keep being surprised when women turn out to have brains and skills and guts.Zelazny is doing some unique stuff there, while at the same time building in a lot of history (The Medicis come to mind.) and a few fun literary references.
In addition, I got about halfway through a Christmas stocking I’m making for my nephew (for which I’d had yarn and pattern delivered there). I’ve made a few changes – really, who knew Christmas stockings carried so much religious and political freight? I’ve made a bunch of white boys into multiracial boys and girls and replaced camels and drums with more secular holiday symbols. Before getting that yarn, I finished one sock and on the way home started a second one, because the stocking needs too many colors to be easily portable.
Getting home was an adventure. I found a shuttle service that goes from Eugene to the Portland airport, so Ted only had to drop me off in town instead of driving all the way to Portland. So that was easy. Then there was the 9+ hour flight, which was OK as those things go. But then I landed on a Sunday, the day that NS most often uses to work on their train lines. Instead of the usual direct train from Schiphol to Eindhoven, it took me two trains, a bus and another train to get home. The Eindhoven marathon is today, so I had to make my way through the blocked off course to get to my apartment from the train station. It hadn’t realy started yet, so that was easier than I was afraid it woud be. (I did break the barrier tape by accident though. Oops.)
Now all I have to do is stay awake until bedtime.