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back at home

i'm back in virginia. overall, it's nice. my great-aunt and my uncle are visiting. they are both from upstate new york - nolan relatives. my uncle has done a whole bunch of nolan (my mother's maiden name) genealogy. it turns out that i'm 7/8 irish, or somewhere around there, and 1/16 dutch and 1/16 german. or maybe it's 1/32 dutch and 1/32 german. i can't remember. in any event, it was kind of neat to see the dutch side of the family, especially given that i was born in holland. it's just coincidence, but neat all the same.

my great-aunt is recently widowed, and i was worried about her, but she seems to be doing well. she talks about her husband a lot, though. she was talking about how he always treated her like a queen. she told us about their evening routine - he'd fix her a black velvet (some kind of drink) at 4 while she made dinner, and he'd set the table. they'd eat together, and then do the dishes together and sing. apparently, they liked to sing all the old songs from when they were young together. the way she was talking, it sounded like the way things should be.

i was up all last night and didn't eat much, so my body is feeling a bit under the weather. it wants to sleep all day and get up at night.

it's nice to be back in roanoke, though. it's so much greener than california, and i like all the mountains and the trees. it's really quite a nice little spot. i feel sorry for everyone who's lived their whole life in cities. i was reading something today that said as of 1996, for the first time, more than half the world's population resides in urban areas. reading barbara kingsolver annoys me sometimes, but it inspires me to be a better person and to care about the earth, and be conscious of the cost of my lifestyle. this statement may seem a bit random. she is the writer who cited the statistic about people residing in cities. she writes a lot about america preying on 3rd world countries and the threats to the environment.

6:43 p.m. - Jun. 15, 2003

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at the cross of spancil hill

i have a new favorite song - spancil hill, by christy moore. i've been listening to so much christy moore lately. he has such a voice. maybe i said this before, but my dad used to work with him in england eons ago. a different lifetime.

last night i played laser tag for the first time. i totally sucked. i played two games; int first i was third to last out of some thirty-some odd people, and in the second, i was second to last! i was really trying, too. i went with a bunch of people from breakers. despite my incompetency, it was a lot of fun. i'm getting a little bit more excited about the summer. jan will be living in cromem, and susan and i are going to hang out. anyway, after laser tag, nick and i hung out all evening. it was pretty late by the time it ended, but for some reason, we didn't really realize it. we decided to go for bubble tea, but the place was closed, as were coffee shops and fast food establishments (both of us were starving.) we went to safeway, and nick taught me to drive a stick. i'd tried before about two years ago, but i was better this time. then we went into safeway and got three of my favorite foods - french bread, brie, and smoke salmon. yum! i found some smoked salmon that's actually affordable; i think it's the scraps from the fillets, but it tastes just as good as the other stuff at half the price.

today i take a red-eye back to roanoke. it's going to be crazy. it's not quite the same as going to another country, but nearly. roanoke is a very, very different from san francisco. in undergrad, so many people i knew were from small towns in the south. now as a grad, most of my friends are from foreign countries or are first-generation, and they are all from big cities. being from a small town makes me unusual. hah. i am now laughing at myself for calling roanoke a small town! small city i guess is more accurate.

3:21 p.m. - Jun. 14, 2003