well i'm back from the visit with the fam. to answer brian's hope that i enjoyed myself, i'll just have to say that my soul enjoyed the trip, my brain was a bit impartial, and my body is really really pissed off at me.

i've come to realize over the years that i have very very little in common with the majority of my family except genetics. this thanksgiving didn't make that whole thing any easier, since the majority of the extended family that showed up were the ones who don't normally come for the yearly Christmas festivities, so it's been years since i've seen most of these people for any extended period of time. i didn't even recognize one of my cousins. to top it all off, of course, i'm generally an anti-social person, not good in situations where i'm surrounded by lots of people. so i pretty much just went down to the basement as soon as i got there, and stayed there for the majority of the visit. so, while i think it was good for my soul to be surrounded by family and people who love me even though they don't know me, and it was good for my soul to be able to see my grandmother again and to crack jokes with her, i think my brain was fairly impartial about the whole affair, just kind of doing what it knows needs to be done, but not seeing any rational inherent benefit in it. maybe i'm still stuck in kid mode within the family unit… no kids, no wife, not even a girlfriend has ever been brought for a visit with me. so i sit downstairs with my 14 year old brother playing computer games, reading the week's comic books, never hanging out with the "adults" except when they call us to dinner…

ok. well. that line of reasoning is going to lead somewhere i don't want to go right now, with you. i think i can successfully avoid the "gorge of eternal peril" for a while yet. though i'm sure you armchair psychologists can name the tune i was singing in three notes.

as far as my body being really really pissed at me after this trip, well, on Friday, my dad, my little brother, a 2nd cousin, and i all went for a hike up a mountain—a 10 mile hike up a mountain. we're talking about a mountain where you look down from the edge of the trail (that's just looped back around) and you see the part of the trail you just came from 50 feet directly below you, not at some angle away from you, but directly freakin below you. and you've maybe gone 100 steps. ok, so we're not talking scaling the face of some cliff or anything, but this mother was steep. when you consider the fact that for almost the past two years, i've been sitting in front of a computer for 8 hours a day, then coming home and sitting in front of the computer for a few more hours, basically never getting any form of exercising, and smoking until my lungs are ready to spontaneously combust… well, it was hellacious. luckily, i think my body adjusted after the first 30 mintues or so, and my breathing was heavy but steady. we made it to the top of the mountain and were treated with a wonderful view of the valley below, all the little farm-houses spread out, and the horizon as distant as any i've ever seen. we got some pictures of the view from the lookout point, hopefully they'll turn out decent and i'll throw 'em online here for you guys to check out.

our main purpose for the trek was a visit to hensley settlement where my dad told us they measured the corn harvest not in bushels per acre, but in gallons per acre. the settlement was peaceful and antiquated. my dad took great pleasure in pointing out where things were not quite as they should be "these fences would have been made from cherry" i believe was one comment he made. and my dad would know. when he grew up, things were still being done the old ways. he grew up in the mountains of virginia himself, away from most of the modern conveniences.

ah. well. i gotta run now, perhaps i'll finish this story later. needless to say, this was one time where my dad talked quite a bit. and by the time we got off the mountain, i was barely able to move well enough to drive us home. it was quite an experience, and one that i'm still paying for.