Friday, 26 November 2004 | Bad ideas

Buying a $5 umbrella off the street turned out to be a bad idea. Initially I'd ducked into a luggage store but turned around once I saw the $22 price tag. I laughed to myself knowingly, sure that I would find a much cheaper model just outside the door. I did! It all worked out as planned. That is, until I tried to use the umbrella. A gentle sigh of wind turned it inside out, and within the first three minutes, it broke in three places. I wish I were making that up, or at least exaggerating. By now it's surely on its way to the Staten Island landfill.

Using Hotwire to buy a plane ticket also turned out to be a bad idea. I am traveling for 16 hours (only 3-and-a-half of which are in the air), and am spending only 28 hours in my destination town. I actually missed Thanksgiving altogether (while America was busy eating mashed potatoes and large birds, I was sitting alone in the Cincinnati airport working away at a peanut butter and jelly sandwich). When I finally arrived at midnight, everyone was already in bed; tomorrow morning, when I leave at 4 a.m., the house will be very much the same as when I got here.

At night, the stillness of my grandparents' house is interrupted by the cranking, whirring, and chiming of a chorus of clocks. A bird-like noise is spit out of a machine in the kitchen, the heater in the basement cracks and bangs, a faint bass snore seeps out of the back room, and the floorboards creak under my feet when I (quietly) pad to bed.