neurotwitch

we’re finally in oscoda

Carolyn sent this with the caption: “My piggy bank after I bought gas yesterday.” I think that says it all ...

On our trek ‘twixt Connecticut and Michigan, the cheapest we found gas was $2.57 in the middle of Pennsylvania somewhere. We passed people traveling via horse and buggy to get to this particular gas station, so that may explain why it was this low. Here (in Oscoda, MI), the price of gas is (or was on Sunday) $2.71 per gallon. Every summer about this time there is a major refinery fire or explosion somewhere in the Midwest which automatically, before the firemen can even respond, drives the price up about five cents. It’s happened every year since we started driving here (vs. flying) in 2001.

The trip was pleasant, except for the part where I misread the directions which took us 30 miles and two tolls past where we wanted to be. The hotel directions said Exit 223B. There was no Exit 223B. This, of course, was after Stanley had been driving for seven hours and, of course, we drove into a storm. And, of course, by the time we dragged out butts into the Comfort Inn in Austintown, OH, the storm had caught up, so getting to the room was, well, very wet. Which was all my fault. Of course.

But other than that, the trip was very pleasant. We listened to the first 7 of the 17 discs of Harry Potter’s latest tale. We completely avoided New Jersey—it’s amazing how much time going out of our way saves. We went up to Danbury and took 84 across the Hudson and down past Binghamton to Pennsylvania, taking 81 down past Scranton and Wilkes-Barre to get to 80, which we took all the way to Toledo. No traffic jams at all except for one seven-mile stretch on 23, in Michigan, north of Ann Arbor. Other than my screwup and the cat deciding using the brake pedal as a pillow would be a good thing, the trip was without incident.

We’re here. It’s so great to see Mom and Dad!

And for once, deciding on a good birthday present for Mom was a snap: she got a new mattress for her birthday, a queen-size, so needs new bedding. So, sheet sets and a quilt and sham set later, which she got to pick out, we FINALLY were able to get her a birthday present without the usual agony of trying to figure out what she might like. The quilt is so pretty that now I want one, but it would not match our bedroom at all (and I really don’t need any more quilts, alas).

Ginger dog has been able to run like crazy, and Twitch is happy to watch the hummingbirds from the screened-in porch. (That idiot cat just LOVED the hotel room. Don’t know why. Maybe it was all the carpeting. He was annoyed about leaving.)

Tonight we’re going to Bingo at the KofC near the now-defunct air force base (if you want to see the impact of a base closure on a local economy, visit Oscoda). The weather is too rainy to hit the beach—we’ll try to get there tomorrow.

So I guess it’s a good day to get a little work done. Or not. Just one task, and then ...

<< Back to main