A quiet day at home, mostly finishing up a few chores and some cleaning, and watching more episodes of The Office. (I’m making good headway into Season 3.) I toyed with the idea of going to see The American, but didn’t, just hung around the house.
Nor did I go up the block to join the neighborhood block party. A few weeks ago, they sent around a somewhat passive-aggressive flier for the party, notifying us that because “some people” had disapproved, only the other end of the block would be closed off to traffic. I guess at this end, we’re just fun-hating spoilsports. Block parties around here have always been kind of an other-end-of-the-block thing anyway, and nowadays, with only a few exceptions, that’s where all the families with young children live.
I don’t know if they intentionally picked September 11 as the day of the party. It does seem a little weird. Though I also ran into a local “harvest festival” that had roads blocked today, and only one small gathering at the local flagpole commemorating the day. To be honest, aside from a few posts on Twitter, and the fact that they had some of the memorial services on TV at the deli when I went to buy lunch, I might not even have known today was September 11.
Actually, that’s not true. As Thud points out, those who most angrily declare that we’ve “forgotten 9/11” do so simply “because we don’t agree with them,” or because they’ve forgotten what actually happened that day, or learned the wrong lesson from it. (Like, oh, that all Islam is evil, or that burning Korans is a good idea.) I actually started this weblog a couple of days after the attacks. I have family and friends who were in Manhattan at the time, though thankfully no one who has hurt. Even as it’s become a day that, nine years later, I don’t dwell on for every moment, it’s also a day I’m not likely to forget.
Though it occurs to me now, a lot of the kids I saw up and down the block, headed to or from the block party? Plenty of them weren’t alive that day, or were too young to really remember it. That seems a little weird to me.
Anyway, after dinner this evening, I drove to the airport to pick up my parents. I may have mentioned, they were in London for the week. There was a little confusion about which terminal they were in — I was waiting around in Terminal 2 for about an hour, then I got a call saying they were waiting in Terminal 3 — but everybody’s home now safe. Our dog has already ripped up the stuffed Beefeater dog they bought him. Which is, of course, what he does to pretty much all his toys.
And that’s it. Tomorrow’s my last day off before heading back to work. On the one hand, I’m looking forward to it. On the other, I was just starting to get the hang of this “vacation” thing.
(Actually, I think the next time I take a vacation, I need to go somewhere.)
