Up North

I headed up north to Reno this weekend to visit a friend of mine. Jeff is an old boyfriend of mine from high school. We have determined that we have now known each other for 20 years. It sounds so weird to be able to say that. Anyway, the last time I was up in that area was for his wedding about 4 years ago. It was the first time I met his wife, Jan. Needless to say, we didn’t have much of an opportunity to talk back then so this was also my first opportunity to get to know her.

I decided to drive. According to Map Quest, it was going to take about 8 hours. It seemed really strange to have it take so long since it was only about 450 miles. I decided to drive it for a couple of reasons. I wanted to have my car so I could come and go as I pleased and I thought it would be nice to see what was between here and there. Somebody please remind me to fly next time!

There isn’t much of a direct route to get there other than US-95 which becomes a 2 lane road outside of Vegas. Ugh. It really is amazing to me that outside of the city; Nevada becomes a whole lot of nothing. It’s pretty of course, and the drive was a series of mountain ranges and old mining towns that were left to ruin after the mines dried up. Just north of the city I found some of the areas I have only heard about at this point: the road to Mt. Charleston (the highest mountain in Clark County), Pahrump (where most of the famous brothels are located) and I think I saw Yucca Mountain (the site where the government wants to store the country’s nuclear waste which Nevada has vigorously tried to stop for more than 20 years). I looked around for Area 51, but it isn’t like they have signs posted for it.

Other than that, the most amazing thing I saw was the gas prices. Everything was over $4 which makes sense due to the fact that there were little to no other options. So my first stop on the way up was a tiny town called Beatty. This is a logical stop for people looking to load up on supplies before making the trek out to Death Valley. I stopped because they had a huge candy store. So much for sight seeing! The next big stop was a very X-files type of town called Hawthorne. This place creeped me out. There is a huge Army depot located there and the outside of town is covered with these really weird looking bunkers that have been camouflaged to look like small hills. I wondered what it looks like from the air. Anyway, I can’t put my finger on exactly why it creeped me out, but it wasn’t someplace I wanted to ever be stranded, so on I went. Hawthorne is also located next to a huge lake called Walker Lake. I think the military stationed there also use the lake for some sort of under water military training too. Creepy.

The rest of the trip up was relatively uneventful and sure enough it took me roughly 7 hours to get to Jeff’s house. One of the reasons I decided to come up and visit now was that Jeff was in a play. The play was titled “The Love Song of J. Robert Oppenheimer.” It was….complicated. Basically it was the story of Oppenheimer and his work on the Atom bomb. I think it was one of those plays that you need to see more than once to really understand everything. The theater itself was in a high school. It was incredibly hot and the ushers actually passed out seat cushions when they took your tickets since the seats were so uncomfortable. I thought I was going to pass out from heat stroke. It made it that much harder to concentrate on what was happening on stage.

So Friday night I get to the house and Jeff was already at the theater. I decided I was going to go to the Saturday night show which left me time to get acquainted with Jan and the twins. They have twin girls who just turned 4. Cosette and Catherine are super cute and incredibly well spoken for 4 year olds. No baby talk here. They sound like they have had lessons in diction. They also have a fascination with bugs as all children seem to have. In particular, they captured a beetle (which was actually a stink bug) and spent the weekend “playing” with the beetle which included putting it in a car, a boat, on a horse, and just generally grossing me out with letting it crawl all over them (probably desperately looking for an escape). During the course of the weekend I noticed it seemed to be missing a leg. I had to play along and pretend that it didn’t completely freak me out. I mean, who am I to scar them with my own creepy crawly phobia? Jeff and Jan didn’t care, so when in Rome, right?

So in addition to the beetle, they also have 2 dogs and 3 cats. A regular animal house. What was not readily apparent to me when we discussed my visit was the fact that my room was often the resting place of said cats. Ugh. The room next to mine stored their food and litter box, so I wasn’t able to close my door at night to keep them out since it would just have resulted in lots of scratching and meowing at odd hours in the night. Plus, one of the cats apparently lived under the bed which only served to remind me of the “monster under the bed” scenarios from childhood. They had covered the bed with a thick blanket to deal with the inevitable cat hair that manages to cover everything. So the routine quickly became one of scattering the cats off the blanket and then removing the blanket before I could go to sleep. Then I had to remember not to scream in terror if one of them decided to come for a visit during the night. By the second night, I was too exhausted to care.

So Friday night after the show, Jeff called the house to give me directions to the bar where the cast was meeting. I headed out and met the cast. They seem like a nice group of people. While we were there, we had an earthquake. We would find out later that it was a 4.7. Not bad. The rocking seemed to go on for several minutes. It was one of those moments where all conversation stops and everyone kind of looks at each other to verify that it is in fact happening and not a result of the latest drink that has suddenly caught up with you. Once it was over, all conversation resumed.

On Saturday, I hung out with Jan and the kids while Jeff went in to work for a couple of hours. We went to this fun little building in town that houses a children’s museum. The girls participate in a program called Kindermusik which combines art and music and dancing. Jan and I sat in another room while the girls were in class and we made out the grocery list for the following day since they had decided to host the cast party for Sunday night. Before the end of the class, the parents come back in to participate in the last 15 minutes. I attended as well and we learned about chimes. We listened to a couple of pieces of music and had to identify when we heard the chimes. Then there was a little song and dance which is something they do at the end of every class. It was cute. We then took the girls upstairs to the museum part of the building and hung out for a bit. This is essentially a big room with different interactive exhibits like a doctor’s office, a bank, a grocery store, an arts and crafts table, and so on. In the bank exhibit they have these various stacks of coins and apparently I am $247.50 tall in stacked quarters (5’6”). At one point, they dragged out a giant inflatable dome and then we all crawled in to see the “planetarium” which was a shade with cutouts of the constellations over a bulb. It was fun but a little hard on the knees to be crawling around on that floor. After that, it was home for lunch and then nap time. By then Jeff was home and everyone went down for a nap. I am a huge fan of nap time.

After that, we got ready for the show and I left with Jeff. Jeff apparently was dealing with a touch of food poisoning, so I don’t think Saturday was a good day for him. Needless to say, after the show we headed home again and went to bed. Sunday was grocery day. It was the last day of the show and it was a matinee. Everyone was coming over around 5, so we had a lot to do. It was fun to see the 5 of us split up in the grocery store with carts. We would randomly meet up in an aisle to make sure we had everything. Once we got back, Jan and the girls had lunch and went down for a nap while Jeff headed back to the theater. In the meantime, I was on food duty. I marinated meat for the grill, chopped vegetables, made potato salad and my favorite party food, pigs in a blanket. Everything was ready to go in plenty of time. (Thank you Food Network!)

It was a relatively small group, which was nice. Jeff and Jan have a hot tub, so I knew people would eventually migrate there. I settled in to enjoy the party and somehow managed to drink more than I thought I would. I really didn’t think I was in bad shape. I was drinking water, I had a meal, and I thought it was all under control. Apparently I was wrong. The next morning was when I was to drive home. I thought I was going to die. I was reminded of last weekend with Heidi and felt like perhaps I had jinxed myself when I stated that it had been a long time since I had found myself in that situation. In my mind I saw one of those accident signs posted in some businesses that say how many days they have been accident free. Apparently, it was time for me to erase the count and start over again.

Jan had to go to work, Jeff took the girls to Gymboree, and I was lying around trying to figure out how I was going to make it home. I finally decided to just get out on the road. After an hour, I felt like I was going to fall asleep behind the wheel so I stopped in a little town and found a grocery store parking lot and closed my eyes for about 10 minutes. After that, I made it back to creepy Hawthorne and thought that maybe I could eat food at that point. I stopped at the McDonald’s there and tried to eat something. It was more entertaining to see the people that wandered in while I was there. I finally started to feel better although I was totally exhausted. The rest of the drive home was uneventful. I finally made it home and just moved everything into the laundry room to try and keep the cat hair contamination as contained as possible. I crawled into bed and slipped into oblivion for a good 12 hours. Today is a million times better, but I still feel a bit off.