31 posts tagged “family”
If you recall earlier in my summer activities post, my family is having a little family gathering out at the family's favorite state park this weekend. A bunch of them are going to be camping out overnight and everything, but my particular branch of the family was just going to go out on Saturday for the day.
For a brief moment though, that plan had changed. I went out to lunch with my Mom yesterday and she asked if I would be interested in actually camping out. It'd been a while since I had gone camping (a loooong while) and I agreed. There were some holes in this plan though. First of all, we didn't have any camping equipment. She was going to try to borrow a tent from somewhere and some supplies...we were going to be borrowing the cooking implements of other family members, etc.
Then we started discussing it. Thinking about food storage and lack of showers. Then we thought about sleeping on the hard ground and not getting enough rest. It'd be annoying to have to borrow everything from everyone and it's pretty short notice. We had realized that we thoroughly talked ourselves out of the idea.
Not
closing the door to camping out in the future, but for now...it's not
really a good option
I swung by the local college that I'm going to be attending in the fall to see if there were any books to buy for my course (there wasn't) and if there was anything else I needed to do in order to make sure I could attend classes without trouble (nope).
The book thing, knowing the book store, is probably a result of somebody not ordering a book. And the second reply is probably somebody who didn't know what they were doing, knowing college administration.
But they say everything's set and I've got all my supplies (aside from a potential software purchase for the Digital Typography course that I'm taking) so I'll just have to see what happens. I'm really excited to be going back to school, which still amazes me because I didn't think that I would ever be excited after I graduated with my Computer Science degree. Hopefully this helps me find the path that I've been searching for.
Unfortunately, it's not all rosy on the design front. I've been trying to work up a design for my mom's craft business website but I'm having a very hard time with it. I have a bunch of ideas, but nothing seems to be working right. It started with fiddling with the color scheme but then that devolved into the entire idea I had for the look and I'm not sure that I can salvage the idea at this point. I'm getting the feeling that I'm just trying to force something that is destined not to work at all. Might have to switch back to a more conventional website design.
Well, as I mentioned yesterday, I went out to the Sterling Renaissance Festival with my sister on Sunday despite the threat of rain we were under.
I must say though, that it ended up being a fairly nice (although pretty humid) day. And what’s better, the threat of rain kept the crowd size down so we could actually move around easily and didn’t have to wait in line for very long which was good.
On the drive out there I had a bit of a “man, I’m getting old…” moment. My sister just got a new job and we spent a decent amount of time talking about health insurance coverage and, from her perspective as somebody who’s working in the health care industry, the differences between the various companies and how good they are about authorizing care.
The festival was a lot of fun this year. We did a little more wandering around and browsing shops than we usually do because a lot of the shows we had seen a number of times in the past and they don’t really change all that much over the years. But we hit a couple of newer shows which were quite good.
The first show we went to after the opening ceremony was Zilch the Torrysteller which is a guy who tells classic fairy tales but with letters reversed in certain words (see “Torrysteller”) which can create some unintended words and add whole new shades of meaning to the story. It sounds a little stupid, but first of all, it’s impressive how he can keep everything straight in his head and he pulls it off really well and keeps the audience involved. Especially funny were the tangents he got on.
After that we headed over to one of my favorite shows, the DaVinci Brothers. The premise of this one is the DaVinci Brothers had another brother (Bob) and he stages comedy operas. The twist is that audience members get pulled out to be the actors in the opera. It can be hit or miss, but if you get a good group of people, it’s simply awesome. And this time out we got the best group of people I had ever seen. These folks had no shame and they even had the guy running the show doubled over laughing at certain points.
After this we had a couple hours of downtime before the next show we wanted to see so we did some wandering. I went out and did the whole wine tasting thing and found an apple wine that I really liked (I bought a bottle on the way out so I think I will enjoy a glass of that this evening). I almost bought a bottle of cranberry mead too, but I ended up passing because I was trying to be a little frugal with my money spending.
We also did some wandering and I found a gigantic dragon statue/fountain that I always said I wanted to own…and this year we found a price on it. $14,000. I think that’s reasonable. Should be able to fit in the living room… Now I just need to take out a loan. There’s a picture of it, but it’s currently on my phone and I can’t get it off here…so if I remember to do it I’ll throw it up here.
This is where the rain hit us though. After threatening all day, it started to sprinkle while we were browsing some shops early afternoon and quickly turned into an all out downpour. Thankfully we brought umbrellas just in case (I finally got to use the $25 umbrella I purchased on one of my trips down to Washington DC) and it stopped pretty quickly. We heard a couple rumbles of thunder, but nothing too severe.
Every year that my sister and I go, we have a little competition at the archery game they have there. We assign point values to the various rings on the target and keep score. This year we were both kinda crap archers but I ended up winning two of the times we went and losing the third one horribly. In my defense though, the third one was after I had some mead and did the wine tasting…
Before we wandered back up the hill for the final shows I grabbed a couple of items that my friends had requested I bring back. Got a couple of bags of the roasted nuts that they sell which are awesome. The other item was a bit more difficult to grab and required some prior planning. Wassy wanted me to bring her back a turkey leg, slathered in BBQ sauce. Of course, this isn’t exactly portable, but I ended up bringing a big piece of aluminum foil and wrapping it up to go. Got a few strange looks when I was doing that…
After that we made our way up hill to see Danny, Lord of Mischief which is basically a silent comedy show. Kinda like a mime on steroids with various props and a lot of audience participation. It was kinda hit or miss and the best parts of the show were usually when he was accosting various audience members who either arrived late or were getting up to leave for various reasons. It was a solid 40 minute show though.
After that we got our viewing of Don Juan and Miguel which are pretty much the marquee performers at the festival. This year we went to one of their actual shows instead of the weird show at the end since we wanted something a little different. They didn’t disappoint and a couple of times were having so much fun they broke down laughing too.
Good festival this year, and looking forward to going back again next year to see what new stuff they add in the meantime. Getting sold to a new owner has been one of the best things to ever happened to the festival, I think. It really saved them from fading out of existence. The mood is revitalized and all the performers are having so much fun. If you ever get a chance to check it out, you really should.
Well, I'm going to probably regret this later, but, even though the weather says 70% chance of showers and thunderstorms tomorrow, my sister and I are still going to the Rennisance Festival.
It's supposed to be concentrated in the morning, and then more scattered in the afternoon, and since we'll be out there mostly in the afternoon...it works out. We just might need to duck under cover at points. And I'm going to be bringing my umbrellas so that means it definitely won't rain at all!
Of course we'll make the final call tomorrow morning in case it looks rainy all day...but as of right now, we're prepping to go. Hope we can, since next weekend is going to be so busy, it would be a little too much to do the ren fest plus the family gathering all in one weekend. And we'd still be left wondering about the weather for another week.
I think I've mentioned before that my Mom does crafty type stuff. Quilts, wall hangings, that sort of thing. She asked me if I would help her make a website to show her stuff off on and I said I'd see what I could do. As part of that, I went out to dinner with my parents last night to discuss a little bit more about what she wanted.
We went to a local place, The Soda Fountain. It's a 1950s themed establishment...oldies playing, checkered floor and poodle skirts. It was interesting...
The food was good, but as I found out my parents seem to enjoy going there because you never quite know what's going to happen regarding the service. And this time it was my turn it seems. I got a milkshake which was tasty, except for the bug that got caught up in it during production. Which happens sometimes, so no big deal, but it was another new thing to add to the list of stuff that happened.
Then, while we were eating, the manager/owner guy wandered over and just randomly said "So where do you think our next location in north utica should be??" We all just sorta stared at him until the woman at the next table spoke up and said she was the one who had a suggestion. Seems the waitress sent him over to the wrong table. Then the lady decided she wanted to engage us in conversation about how more of these places will get the young people to recognize that the old music was really good and start listening to it instead of what they listen to now. I told her I wouldn't count on that happening...
Anyway...strange dinner. Very strange.
Well, it seems like August is shaping up to be an extremely busy month for me. He's a rundown of what's going on (so far) this month:
-
August 4th - Progressive Nation 09
First up on the list of August events is a concert. Specifically Progressive Nation 09, featuring Dream Theater, Zappa Plays Zappa, Bigelf and Scale The Summit
I'm pretty excited about this show. It's been a while since I've gone to a concert first off and second the new DT album is extremely good which always makes me even more excited. Finally, I've been listening to some Bigelf and Scale the Summit and I've been pretty impressed with what I've heard. There was a change in the openers, but I can't say I'm terribly dissapointed with the end result.
- August 9th - Sterling Renaissance Festival
I had originally not planned to go to the Sterling Renaissance Festival this year, but my sister contacted me recently and she really wanted to go. So plans were made for us to go either August 9th or August 16th depending on if it's going to rain either day.
Hopefully we get good weather as I'm really looking forward to going. The two weekends are themed as Gypsy weekend which is new this year so it'd be neat to go see it and Wine Lovers weekend which will work out as well. -
August 15th - Family Gathering
Instead of doing a christmas eve party on my mom's side of the family this year, it was decided to instead move the traditional family gathering over to the summer and head out to the official family campground, Whetsone Gulf State Park.
This is another "I hope we get good weather" event, but I'm hopeful it'll work out. It'll be nice to get together with everybody and hang out. With the option of getting away and wandering the park for a bit if necessary too. Should be a fun time had by all, assuming of course that the weather cooperates nicely for us.
- August 28th - The State Fair
Yet again my friends and I are planning to hit the state fair. This year though we're going out in the afternoon (after lunch) hitting all the building stuff, just eating dinner there and then exploring the wine tasting stuff in the evening. Last year we discovered we really liked it when it was getting dark out and the crowd was thinning out so we're planning the trip to avoid some of the crowd. Yet again, I hope we get good weather this year.
This also helps mitigate a bit of the costs of going considering we're there for less time and eating less of the overpriced (but tasty) foodstuffs.
Getting the Wassyart.com redesign done this weekend was tempered a bit by an unplanned fairly major purchase involving my laptop.
My MacBook Pro is roughly 3 years old at this point, and while it's still holding up as far as my computing needs are concerned, the battery was not. Not that I should be surprised since batteries typically last only a year or two before they die and mine was at least 2 years old (I got a battery replacement back when they were doing the recalls). So a couple months ago, I noticed my laptop was starting to shut off randomly after a few minutes of not being plugged in. Not to mention the fact that it was charging really weirdly (when it decided to charge at all). I had been putting off getting a new one since they're so freaking expensive ( $130ish dollars) and I had other things on my mind.
Unfortunately, my MacBook made the decision for me. While I was working on Wassy's website on Friday, I noticed that the bottom of the laptop was feeling a bit funny. So I turned it over to look and sure enough, the battery had started bulging. Sigh. Turning off quickly I can ignore. A battery that starts bulging...not so much.
I made an emergency trip out to the Apple Store in Syracuse that afternoon to grab a new one. On the plus side, I now have at least 3 hours of battery life again which is very nice. Haven't had that in a long time. Of course, my wallet is now $130 and change lighter. It's always something.
Sunday was notable in that I went to spend some time with my family. One of my nephews was having a birthday party and because of my grandmother situation, my aunt invited the entire family to the party so we could all get together. It was quite cool hanging out with the family, as I hadn't seen many of them in quite a while since we didn't do the traditional Christmas Eve party. We left pretty quickly after the kids got the squirt guns out though. There was a lot of splash damage going around after that.
The post is late, I know, but I was a bit busy yesterday with a lot of running around. So you're getting it today.
I went over to my parents for a little Easter get together, as I had mentioned previously.
One of the purposes of the visit was to go through a bunch of old stuff that my parents had stored from when I was a kid, including all of my saved stuff from grade school. That was a pretty cool, to see that old stuff again. I seemed to have an issue with spelling (well, a continuing issue with spelling...they just hadn't invented the spell checker yet). I wrote that NASA launched a satellite that weighed 300 ponds...
I brought my XBox 360 over and played some Madden with my dad in the afternoon because we haven't figured out what to do with our weekly football playing since I moved 25-30 minutes away. I ended up winning 2 games and losing 2 games, but it was fun.
By the time we were done with that my sister and her husband had arrived and we ate followed by a game of Apples to Apples which was as fun as always. They brought the expansion pack for the game this time which added more cards.
All in all a fun little family gathering. However, considering the amount of tasty treats that I came away with (cookies and a chocolate bunny. You know, standard easter stuff) I'm going to have to hit the gym soon...
I seem to be in demand for Easter this year. I've been invited to 3 places this sunday...my grandparents, my parents and also to one of my new roommate's parents. Traditionally my grandparents have an Easter dinner thing but this year, due to circumstances that are too long to explain really, I won't be attending that one. I will be going to my parents, but if they hadn't asked I would have gone with my friends over to their dinner.
Whew, that was confusing...
Anyway, not much else to report at the current point in time. Things are still proceeding smoothly on the new apartment front. All I'm waiting for is my nightstand to arrive and I need to get a couple of shelves for game consoles and my bedroom will be complete. And we need it to not rain/snow for a day or two so we can work on cleaning off our balcony and making it a usable space.
I'll try to provide some pictures shortly.
Oh, and last night my roommate's cat actually curled up next to me and went to sleep. This is a big development as she is normally very skittish and won't even get up on the same piece of furniture as me most times. I think it was mostly because I was sitting down next to her favorite blanket.
Phew. Finally have time to sit down and catch my breath after all the christmas related activities over the past few days. So far things have been good. There's one more holiday related gathering coming up on Saturday so there's still some more holiday left for me to go through.
Things started off on Christmas Eve for my family. Because my sister does stuff Christmas morning with her in-laws, we've started doing our main Christmas celebrations the day before to make scheduling a lot easier. I went over to my parents house early to help with the food preparation. Lots of vegetable slicing for salads and stuff like that. That caused the 3 hours before the rest of the family arrived to go pretty quickly.
Once my sister and her husband arrived, we did the gift exchange. I received a bunch of new penguin-y stuff from my parents including a set of penguin mugs that will be excellent for tea, as well as an embroidered penguin towel that my mom made (and was given to me by the dog...because she thought that I would need a towel to clean up with after she licks my hands whenever I come over). Other highlights include a swiffer wet jet (You seriously don't realize how much you appreciate these things until you move out), a hand mixer (because I borrowed one from them a while back) and a bunch of stuff for my 360 (extra controller, some battery packs, and Guitar Hero: World Tour guitar pack).
My parents dog enjoys stealing my dad's socks and shoe laces so my mom wrapped up a bunch of socks individually and included inside each package a pair of shoe laces to give to my dad, labeled as coming from the dog. So he was having fun matching individual socks to each other and pulling out shoe laces. Also, one of his gifts hadn't arrived yet, so my mom took an empty bag closed it up with as many clips as she could stick on there (so the air wouldn't escape) and gave that to him. Hopefully that one gets here today, but the way she did it was funny.
After the present opening, we played a little Wii. Specifically a Mini Golf game that my sister opened earlier that day. The best part of the game is going to be totally impossible to reproduce through text. But it had the most over exagurated announcer guy ( "PLLLLLLLLLLLAAAAAAAEEEERRRRR OOOOOOONNNNNNEEEE... CHOOSE YOUR GOOOOOOLLLLLFFFFFEEEEERRRRR!!!!!") and the courses were very strange, but it was fun playing through them. After that the family sat down and watched a couple episodes of a TV series that my sister also opened earlier.
Meanwhile I headed to the kitchen to start making the macaroni and cheese for later. It was the first time I made it for other people, so I was a little nervous as to how it would end up turning out. But, as it happens, it seemed to have gone over great, and my mom appreciated having some time to sit down after running around all day. So that's a good thing too.
Once that was all done, some of the members of the extended family arrived for dinner and cards. Because my grandma is getting a little older and doubly because she just had some minor surgery, we didn't have the traditional gathering at her house on Christmas Eve this year. Instead the family kinda broke up into smaller groups at various houses and we're planning on doing a family reunion sort of deal sometime in the summer. So Mike, Stacy and Elizbeth (uncle, aunt and cousin respectively) ended up coming over to our place. That was a fun evening.
Christmas Day was a bit lower key in comparison. Like last year, my grandparents were going to come out to my parent's house for an early dinner and talking. I arrived early again to learn how my mom makes her lasagna for future usage myself. It seemed like after all the activity the day before, their dog was totally tired out and very sleepy. So I ended up carrying the dog around for a while and letting her sleep on me. My grandparents arrived on schedule and the afternoon went pretty well I thought. As is tradition, throughought the day we were watching bits and pieces of the A Christmas Story marathon on TBS.
Oh, another thing that should be mentioned. Thursday morning I was going to go play with my toys but, I ran into that eternal delima of Christmas day...Batteries not included!!! Of course the toy was my swiffer wet jet, but it's still the same general problem! The more things change, the more they stay the same and all that. I just thought it was kinda funny.
So, so far, so good as far as holiday stuff goes. Today is a little breather between family activites. I'll be home most of the day (although I might go out shopping just a little bit later as there's some stuff I need) but later I'll be headed over to my friends place for some Guitar Hero-ing, pizza and general hanging out.
