It’s the middle of the night. Everyone’s in bed but me. I’m reading a William Gibson book and listening to the waves crash on the shore and the wind flex the windows. The forecasts predict 50mph+ winds here over the next couple of days. They may close the ferry if it gets too powerful. There may be ocean overwash and coastal flooding. My face and chest are burned from the sun. We visited Blackbeard’s Ghost yesterday. The pirate theme is recurring, even in the Gibson book. We’re burning through a significant amount of wine. The pool is nice, it’s a dark one that retains heat a bit better than the light-colored pools. THe hot tub is quirky and sometimes doesn’t want to run. In the basement is a small pool table that has been placed into a room which is smaller than that which will support even the small table, so for shots from the sides, you find yourself using the micro-cue, which is suboptimal. The house has several large TVs, none of which we generally use, except when all of the children decide to watch something downstairs. We have a Wii with us, but nobody has played it yet.
The house has wireless ‘net that actually works. This causes a comfort level with the occasional looking up of words, concepts and locations which come up in conversation or in reading materials, and a more frequent checking of email than is generally practices in situations such as this.
On my Finnegans Wake site, I had one response to my query that went out, requesting user to fill me in on the background of their usage of the site. This one user is in the midst of a truly ambitious project: translating the Wake to Spanish.
It’s interesting to try and pigeonhole the owner of a vacation rental home based on the contents of the home. With books and videos, it can sometimes be easier. One house, remote and off the gulf coast of Florida, had several books about serial killers, though the home was owned by the parents of former Olympian Rowdy Gaines. Often there are telltale clues, such as a religious book or two, an abundance of a certain genre. This house has one spy book — usually beach houses have more — but this particular spy book was almost an insider’s book, leading me to wonder if the owner is retired from FBI or another agency. It’s the book by Lawrence Schiller and Norman Mailer about the life of Robert Hanssen, the man who worked his way pretty far up the FBI totem poll while selling secrets to the Russians.
Another interesting facet of their media collection is that everything has a number on it, and laminated lists of the books and their corresponding numbers are on the shelf. One wonders if this is an eccentricity of the owner or of the management company.
The children gasped in excitement when they opened the cabinet which contained the games, twenty or more of them. They’ve been keeping themselves busy and behaving wonderfully so far, with very little conflict.
As for me, I’m having a good time, but I’m looking forward to getting back to work. I left just when things got a bit more exciting.
0 Responses to “Getting away from it all”