Wednesday
Happy US Thanksgiving. I'm sending this note along now because I will be out of town for the holidays. We're leaving extremely early Thursday morning and will be away until late evening this coming Sunday. I will post no new Update until the following day. Two Thanksgivings ago we ate Greek food with Sunshine's parents in a lovely little place at the edge of Monterrey's old quarter. Last year, Sunshine and I ate Vietnamese noodle soup in the Treasure Island Hotel casino before seeing the Blue Man Group. This is starting to sound like bragging to me. So here: one of the things about this lifestyle is the Trade. If you look at the globe, you will probably notice that the most distant point from where my family and friends live is the room where I'm sitting posting this.* This sort of thing--a heavenly body of spinning molten iron nestled between me and my loved ones--can have disadvantages never more apparent that when celebrating a holiday. Guilt, isolation, homesickness, all these are compiled by the annoying fact that I never really appreciated Thanksgiving as much as I should've, so why should this feel any worse today than normal? Now this post is starting to sound like complaining, so here's the Trade. If we were in DC today, I'd be driving home to Mount Holly, NC, to celebrate a holiday I don't really love with people I really do. Since I'm driving the family car in this scenario, Sunshine would be having to fly to Lexington, KY. For roughly half the time it would take to do those things, and about the same price, we're going to be spending our weekend in Hong Kong, adding Chinese food to the listed irreverent meals now become our Thanksgiving tradition. [Cavin]
this had happened to Mr. Cavin by 12:49:00 PM
Then, a 2 sided conversation ensued...
* Okay, you caught me. The actual opposite point on the globe from, say, my mother's North Carolina home is a lonely point in the south Indian Ocean. It's approximately two hundred and sixty-six miles due northeast from a fifty-five square-kilometer jut of inactive volcanic vents called Ile Amsterdam * * by the French, who probably claimed it in nineteen and twenty-four. While there are no permanent residents on this island--besides elephant seals--there is a research facility called La Roche Godon on the northern shore, and much fascinating mineralogy has been known to happen there.* When I truly start to feel down about being at the opposite end of the globe, this is the place I think about. La Roche Godon, the very literal end of the Earth (for my mother).
Thank you. I feel sooo much better now.
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