Staying with Grandmother

My family and I are staying with my Grandmother for Christmas this year. It’s going to be a great vacation because we’ve got most of the family in one place for the first time in a long time.

My sister has been either at Dartmouth or in England since last June, so it’s good to see her again, too.

I’m staying in what I dubbed “the outhouse” on my last visit. I called it the outhouse because a year ago, it had no bathroom. It’s an old “guest room” type setup that’s disconnected from the main house. Apparently it had the plumbing for a bathroom, but nobody had bothered to install it. So I called it the outhouse.

Just about three days ago, they finally finished putting in a bathroom.

The room is furnished with a bed, an old writing desk, and a Sony trinitron that’s seen about as many years as I have. It is, in it’s own way, very charming.

As much as I’m hooked in to technology, movies, and the internet, it’s kind of nice to stay in a room that doesn’t have (and doesn’t really need) a wall-mounted swivel HDTV with a media center extender and some crazy satellite uplink to the pentagon. It’s refreshing.

I suppose it’s sad that this is probably my modern Thoreau-ean experience in the woods. But I look forward to having a house where my bedroom isn’t also my office. Or even just my computer room. I want a bedroom that’s got a bed, a nice reading chair, and maybe a TV. No desk. No computer.

Just a bedroom. I think that’s very cool.