It must be my extended age, but after arriving in America 4and a half days earlier, I am still feeling weird and tired. Veronica is the same, but since I am now so much older than her, I don’t think we can chalk her jetlag up to age.
The flight from Sydney to LA felt so much longer this go round. It’s no mystery why though as we flew United rather than Qantas. United’s plane was old, thus it was devoid of the awesome in-flight personal entertainment system that Qantas has. Instead of having a personal screen with your choice of 60 different movies, we were relegated to watching a screen halfway down the plane. So we ended up reading, a lot. Veronica read all of ‘The Road’ by Cormac McCarthy and I read over half of Michael Chabon’s ‘The Yiddish Policeman’s Union’. Not a bad thing of course, but it made the flight drag on like a cricket match.
Since we had a 4-hour layover in LA, our friends James and Maria picked us up from LAX and took us down to Manhattan Beach for lunch. It was a beautiful, warm day in LA and we had a nice lunch. Afterwards we went over to see James and Maria’s place. Made it back to the airport in enough time, boarded our flight to Dallas, and after a woman was booted off the flight for not being able to fully zip up her dog in her bag, we finally took off. Veronica and I slept the entire way to Dallas.
That night we hung with my family and had some chips and salsa from Chili’s. Go overseas for a couple of months, your appreciation for the small things like good chips and salsa will grow exponentially, trust me. Also got my birthday presents from my family. His and her Patagonia rain jackets and two books, stoked! Woke up early the next morning to fly an hour to Tulsa (I love short flights like that now!), where Veronica’s Mom came to pick us up. We drove back to Fayetteville in enough time to make it to a Church service graduation for the Seniors of Farmington High School. I feel I should mention one thing that stood out in my exhausted mind. As the Senior’s were entering the Church the pianist was playing a song that I instantly recognized yet couldn’t quite place. Luckily it came to me in a flash, ‘Freebird’ by Lynyrd Skynyrd. I nearly wet myself chuckling as the Redneck Rock Anthem was played in a manner befitting ‘Amazing Grace’. Maybe you had to be there, but I thought it was hilarious.
We had dinner that night at Penguin Ed’s, a great local BBQ joint. We then went to the school to watch Amanda play in her school’s Powder Puff Game. Thank goodness she didn’t play too much as one of the girls suffered a broken wrist. Some of those girls were vicious I tell you! One of Amanda’s senior teammates was playing 3 months pregnant, which Veronica found a tad strange.
It’s been nice here in Arkansas. The weather is sunny and warm, but not too hot, and Veronica and I have been catching up on sleep and eating a lot of good food. Oh, and it feels nice not to be at work. Go figure. The night before graduation we had a party for Amanda out in the backyard. Good times. And the other big news is that we gave Amanda her graduation/birthday present the day before. Amanda is now styling around Farmington with an iPhone. Lucky.
The day of Amanda’s graduation went and had an early graduation meal. Unfortunately the name of the place now eludes me, but it was just like Benihanas, so it was quite tasty. Jill had driven in the previous night from Dallas, and after lunch we went and saw ‘Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls’. I was so excited for this movie as Indy is my favorite, and the film was quite entertaining, but nonetheless disappointing. There were about 4 scenes that were so over the top even I was scoffing out loud. Bummer.
That night the family headed over to the University of Arkansas to attend the festivities. Found out that the class song was actually ‘Free Bird’, the church scene now makes complete sense. Additionally, found out that there were 2 other girls in Amanda’s class of 120 that were pregnant as well. Outstanding stuff, and I think proof positive that Dubya’s sex education plan of abstinence is working like gangbusters. We then had a very late dinner at Friday’s with the Garcia extended family. Woke up early on Friday morning to drive back to Dallas for our eye appointments.
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