Friday, April 1, 2011

The Sound of (Kinda) Silence

It is an 8 hour drive from Davis to Santa Barbara and Walt and I spoke almost not a single word to each other during the drive.

We are here to celebrate Brianna's 3rd birthday (my word, I can't believeshe's 3 already!). My resolve to send at least one snail mail a day may be tested. But I believe I handled today just fine.

The stack of letters, post cards and cards today included my very first attempt to make an envelope. It wasn't good, but I did it. I'll get better.

I found a teenager who asked people to go through drawers and send her random things that you find there, which sounded like fun. This is what I sent:

This is a Mickey Mouse card I bought years ago, a photo of Michael Connelly from the book signing we attended, a little sheet of mini stickers (including one from the Jello museum), a tissue that Peggy sent me a package of years ago, and two Dora the Explorer bandaids. I think that qualifies as sufficiently eclectic!

We left the house at 11:45 and said almost nothing for many hours. The reason was that we were glued to my audio book, David Baldacci's first novel, "Absolute Power." What a gripper. I was several hours into it before we got on the road so Walt would have to stop me from time to time to ask what was going on, but he caught up quickly. (I do have to admit that neither one of us was particularly happy with the fact that one of the principal characters was an "old man" of 65...and that they kept referring to him as an old man, with failing faculties, and at the end of his life. Not an upper for a 68 and 71 year old!!!)

We were engrossed until we got to Gonzales and our usual hamburger joint

(Can you believe we look forward to hitting this joint going north or south whenever we travel to Santa Barbara?)

We got back in the car, plugged the iPod back in again and said almost nothing until we arrived at Alice Nan & Joe's house.

We were at a crucial point in the book, so were sad to arrive at our destination, but we talked with Alice Nan and she suggested that we drive into town to meet her and Joe for dinner (since they were both still at work). Yippee. 20 more minutes for the book!

We had a nice dinner at the Santa Barbara Brewing Company, where there was wall to wall TVs, each tuned to a different sporting event. We watched the Giants lose to the Dodgers before we finished dinner...then another 20 minute drive back home again.

We spent most of the day in silence, but we sure are enjoying the book!

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