A time capsule and the Hotel California

My family is really a little odd, but that's what I love about it.

Take last night for instance. I rang in the New Year quietly at home with my parents - after being away so long I wasn't too eager to be away from home again (along with the fact that I just didn't get my crap together soon enough to make plans with anyone else).

Mom and Dad, as usual, are renovating something around the house (Mom calls our house the "Renovation Station"). Currently they are working on painting and tiling their bathroom. In the 7.5 months I'd been gone, they'd redone the bathroom my brother and I share as well as my bedroom (thanks again guys). So New Year's Eve found Dad ripping out the old shower stall in hunks and putting it out on the front lawn while Mom was peeling wall paper.

As Dad was dismantling the shower and we were looking at the large gaping hole it left, Mom had the idea of putting a time capsule into the wall before they drywall and tile over it. I don't know about you, but as a kid (and still today to be honest) I always dreamed of finding something old and cool that someone hid in some cranny somewhere. I did actually leave some kind of time capsule buried in (what used to be) a field behind our old house when I was little - once in a while I wonder if it is still there, and what it contains (I don't remember). So when Mom brought up the idea, I knew I would bring it to fruition. It wasn't a big deal, I just printed off some of the current news from the internet, copied a photo of our family, and found a few photos of some of the other things we've done to the house since we got here in 2000, writing captions on the back. I left my email address in case anyone ever finds it - it's Gmail so hopefully I'll still be using it!

As I was doing this I told Mom I'd always dreamed of finding something like this and she offhandedly said, "Me too - well now you're making someone else's dream come true." Then she added, "You're always doing that." I don't know about that but it was nice to hear :)

I folded the sheets up and wrote on the outside "Hello! You've found a TIME CAPSULE!" on the outside, packaged it up in a couple of Ziplocs, and it's now stapled to a beam in the shower :)

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Well that's the time capsule story but what about the Hotel California?

I'm cooking a New Year's Morning pancake breakfast for the three of us and Mom says to my Dad, as he takes a big bite of pancake, "Nick told me he moved the Hotel California last week and when he looked the other day..." here she paused, making sure she had our attention while continuing delicately, "and the awning was down." I flipped a pancake and said, "do we really need to discuss the Hotel California right now?"

What the hell is the Hotel California, you may ask?

Well, we came across some type of mousetrap that is tubular in shape, but when you set it on the floor, the back of it is slightly bent up into the air. How it works is that when the mouse goes in and to the back to get the cheese, the back falls down against the floor because of its weight, the front tilts up, and the door that was propped open closes due to gravity, trapping the mouse. When my Mom saw this contraption, she thought the door, propped up, looked like an awning (she used to sell them, along with RVs, you know), possibly of a little hotel. And then the lyrics of that legendary Eagle's song sprung to mind: "You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave!" Thus we christened the mouse trap the Hotel California.

So, Dad's on his way upstairs now to see if anyone's "checked out".

Happy New Year, everyone!