This past weekend, my mom and grandparents came to Stanford for parents’ weekend. They reserved a time-share up in Napa Valley for the week before, and drove down on Friday, then took me to Napa to stay with them for two nights. It’s different, seeing them in a different life for me, but it confirmed some of what I know about my family.
My family has a weakness for two things: ice cream and cheap stuff. Before my mom arrived, I discovered that my candy stash from the day after Hallowe’en had lost much of its chocolate. I was going to make another candy run after Valentine’s, but my mom did the chore and brought some to me.
Naturally, there’s a direct relationship between percent discount and quantity bought. And Target was selling candy at 90% off. I now have enough candy for the state of California.
My family also doesn’t watch much TV at home. Instead, we binge on the holidays. During the two evenings I spent in Napa, we watched the news, movies, sports, cooking shows, whatever looked interesting. That Saturday night, we watched “Forrest Gump,” which was just a really cool experience. It’s generally a great movie, but there’s something about that bridge, about watching it with my mom and grandpa that made it extra-cool.
But past that, I enjoyed exposing them to what was going on with my life on campus. We walked around campus some, and I pointed out buildings, and tidbits of varying levels of interestingness (real word). I’ve been toying around with the idea of next year, time permitting, trying to become a tour guide for the campus. That sounds like a really fun job.
We ate at the wonderful Wilbur Dining, they saw my room, took them down to the Music Archives, and so on. I introduced them to several of my friends, though I’m certain they won’t really remember any of them. Seeing them shake hands was still weird. Like seeing Bugs Bunny at Disney World.
In another week, my sister will be coming to Stanford, which should be just as fun. Mayhaps I’ll get a chance to see all of campus that I’ve missed so far.
I’ve posted the write-up for “Overtoasted” in one post. Please excuse that some points may be unclear, as I glossed over facts that were understood by people in my class.
And I have the feeling that that blog is going to run silent for awhile. This blog will definitely link to the next update.
3 replies on “Intersections”
Hah yeah ice cream and cheap stuff.
It’s always interesting watching family dynamics as children grow up. There’s a bigger gap between my father’s generation and my generation, because they were immigrants, and we’re born in North America.
From a parent’s perspective, it’s interesting to see which traits and experiences get picked up by children and which ones get abandoned. One of the more prominent ways of observing this is across cousins, because that’s probably as close as you can get, genetically, and then the rest is environment.
I remember when we went to Cafe East and you made a point that the primary mission of buffets was to splurge on crab, shrimp, squid, etc and get your money’s worth. I did that the last time I went to a buffet, and laughed. Cheap stuff is good.