fine whine

I'm writing this, sitting in the bathroom of a cheap hotel in High point, North Carolina. At this time last night I was behind the wheel of my car, cursing the modern hotel industry's apparent utter disdain for what I had thought to be three of the defining characteristics of hotels, namely friendly service, the "NO VACANCY" sign, and having enough rooms to meet the demand.

I'm getting ahead of myself, however. Jessica and I are not in NC for some sort of vacation. We did not pack our swimsuits. You see, Jessica's grandparents live here, and grandma hasn't been doing too well. She's been in and out of the hospital for some time and apparently during this last visit the doctors did not give a very favorable prognosis. Yesterday night after dinnertime Jessica got The Call from her dad and it was soon apparent that our plans to hit the ribs festival were going to need to wait for next year's. We were on the road by around nine, having needed to get some cash and return the next several days' worth of library materials.

We might not have planned everything too well, but at least we're clear on library fines for the next several days.

What we did not plan well was our eventual accomodations. While I was aware that even with a full day's work under my belt I'd still be more than capable of a seven-hour drive through the mountains, but around midnight we decided that sleeping might not be a bad thing. Big mistake.

We'd listened to a story on NPR about the President's first visit to Beckley, West Virginia. In fact, as the reporter revealed, he was the first sitting President ever to visit Beckley, W. Va. This might explain why every single hotel room in Beckley was apparently rented. Frustrated slightly, we continued on to the next stop, and found the same lack of vacancies. So on and so forth, and before we knew it we'd run out of exits and were in High Point at five-thirty in the morning. We managed to find a hotel and check in around six. What could be easier?

Well, not quite that simple. We can probably only blame Bush for one or two crowded exits. Elsewhere we saw evidence of some district championship, NASCAR fans and a Jehovah's Witnesses convention. Everywhere we found handwritten or inkjet-printed signs in the windows saying "Sorry, no vacancy" or something to that effect.

Whatever happened to the good old neon NO VACANCY sign, anyway? Half of the time we needed to fight badly-parked cars and gravel driveways to read said letter-sized sign. This was, to understate completely, completely annoying.

But we made it. I got to meet Jessica's grandparents and also to visit a bit with one of her aunt and uncle's family who we haven't seen since the wedding. Nice folks.

As for her grandma, I've never been around a dead person except after the embalming stage. I realize that she's still breathing and talking at this point, but she's not going to last much longer. I'd like to have met her sometime before, but we cannot change the past but home to make the most of the time we have in front of us.

As for me, I should probably get some sleep.