The light was so strange when I woke up this morning—a kind of yellowish gray that was both lovely and alarming. Ever since my tornado, oddly-colored skies make me a bit nervous, even while they enthrall me.

I ended up taking bereavement leave yesterday to go to my great-aunt Mag’s funeral. But here’s the thing: we missed the freaking funeral. Initially my sister and I were making great time, and we even stopped at a Giant en route to Lebanon to pick up flowers for Mag’s coffin. But on the Turnpike, halfway between Harrisburg and Lebanon, we saw a sign saying that there was an accident ahead and we had to prepare to stop. We ground to a halt at 8:50am, and we initially thought we’d still have time to make it to the funeral, which was scheduled to begin at 10am.

However, the accident involved a gigantic truck that hit the concrete median and burst into flames. In other words, this was no tiny thing. Around 9:15, after being unable to find any sort of traffic report on the radio, Kristen called Mom and had her hop on the Turnpike’s website. It revealed that there was a truck fire and the Turnpike wasn’t expected to reopen until 11am. Oy. So Kristen called Dad and Jill’s cell phones and left messages for both of them, as well as calling her husband to give him the scoop, in case Dad didn’t check his cell phone and instead called Kristen’s house to see where we were.

The Turnpike reopened around 11:10am, meaning that we’d been sitting there, with the car idling to keep the a/c running, for two hours and twenty minutes. Meanwhile, poor Kristen desperately had to pee during our wait, so she finally had to resort to peeing in her McDonald’s orange juice cup. Desperate times call for desperate measures!

After the Turnpike reopened, we hit construction, which closed one lane of traffic for several miles, leaving us to shuffle along at 5 mph. When we passed the scene of the wreck, Kristen said that the smell was awful and it was one of those rare times when I was actually glad to be an anosmic. The road was charred and the truck was a vast, burnt-out shell, with burned debris scattered everywhere. I don’t know how anybody could have survived the crash, or if anybody did.

So we missed the funeral altogether, but we still got to catch up with a small contingent of relatives at my uncle’s house in Lebanon, where we arrived at noon. That was cool, especially since I haven’t seen my cousins in years. We just missed seeing my cousin Suzanne’s 20-year-old son, Ian, which is unfortunate, because he recently did some Marine training in the highlands of Scotland, including Glen Coe, which was my favorite place during my ’03 trip; I would’ve loved to have discussed it with him! As it was, we spent a lot of time talking about how much we used to hate getting dragged to CCD and mass, and how brain tumors and other head disorders run rampant in our family. Hot.

We stayed for two hours and then Kristen and I stopped for lunch at Friendly’s (where, shocker!, I ate until I was borderline-sick). Afterwards we headed back to her place, which gave me a chance to spend some more time with Olivia before I hit the road.

This past weekend was my first weekend of not working in months. How refreshing! I slept, read, watched DVDs (more Six Feet Under episodes, and East/West, one of my all-time favorite movies), and dawdled as a lady of leisure. It was superb. I also made long-overdue updates to my website.

On Saturday evening, I went to these...uh...ruins...in DC that I spotted a few weeks ago while driving to the Fringe Festival. I don’t know what they were, but I suspect, based on the fact that they’re across the street from a water treatment plant, that they are part of an older, abandoned water treatment plant—one that was used before the city upgraded. The ruins are a series of crumbling, vine-covered towers and doorways that lead underground. I have a real explorer streak when it comes to shit like this, so I was itching to investigate the ruins up close, but their perimeter was completely surrounded by a tall chainlink fence topped with barbed wire. Yeah, I can take a hint. So, I just poked my camera through the fence and took lots of pictures, some of which are now on Flickr.

This weekend also brought a delightfully unexpected surprise: I received a phone call from my old friend Laura, who I haven’t spoken to since early 1998! I was really excited to hear from her again. I filled her in various friends’ lives and we reminisced about all the wonderfully ridiculous experiences we once shared. As I will be in Lancaster during Labor Day weekend, visiting David and Angela, who will be in town for a wedding, I decided to visit Laura as well. She knew David and Angela during the year they studied in Germany, so she’ll probably join all of us for dinner.

Tonight I will swing by Ritz to pick up the humongous order I placed on Friday. My order is honestly going to cost over $200—a fact which sickens and horrifies me. See, this is what you get when you’re too lazy to develop your digital photos on a regular basis. I haven’t developed any photos since last November...and on top of that, I need to re-develop like 80% of the zillion photos I took in Europe last year (since their original developer, Ofoto, did a shitty job), as well as a few rolls of my Lomo film. Why go to Ritz, then, instead of a cheaper venue? Well, because I know Ritz will do a great job with the digital shots (unlike Ofoto, who I no longer trust), and they won’t (*knock on wood*) mess up my Lomo photos (unlike Wal-Mart, who destroyed several rolls of them a few months ago). I’m just too exhausted to deal with taking all these photos somewhere else and risking subpar quality. And that’s one of the reasons why I’m working 900 hours a week: so I can afford to splurge on top-of-the-line photo development.

But still...$200+? Again: oy.


song heard most recently before posting: Jamaica Inn—Tori Amos