62 posts tagged “friends”
Sorry for the lack of updates over the past couple days. Been a little busy and I was feeling a little out of it for a while there, which isn't really conducive to blogging.
But the main thing that happened is I'm dumping Progressive Direct for my car insurance because they decided they were going to charge me $50 more per 6 months than they had been charging me for what seems like absolutely no reason at all. So I scouted around and ended up setting on Geico as being the cheapest ($167 per 6 months cheaper, to be specific about it). So I switched last week and all I need now is to take care of the photo inspection part and send back one form and I'm all set.
And I'm going to specifically mention that this saturday was a very nice day. My friends and I went out to Green Lakes State Park and walked the trail around one of the lakes before settling in for a picnic lunch (mmm...deviled eggs) which was awful nice and relaxing. It's beautiful out there and the trail was very nice. Not very crowded either. I really hope to go back there sometime and hang out some more.
I've been noticing a curious trend where I've been wanting to just hang around outside more often than I normally would. I'm not an outdoors person at all realy, so the fact that I'm drawn to just hang around outside is a bit of a surprise to me. I've started taking a book outside to read during my lunch break, for example. It's just something about the fresh air that relaxes me a bit more than just hanging around inside would.
It's been hot all weekend and it's supposed to be even hotter out today and tomorrow. So it's with a thankful tone that I can report that I finally have air conditioning in my apartment. Last year my friends donated their old AC unit to me because their new place had one built in. I finally got around to asking them if it was all right for me to run something (since utilities are included in my rent, I figured I should ask with something that uses up electricity like that) and their reply "You don't have AC already?" was enough for me. Another reason I wanted to run AC was due to my fish. My betta's tank heats up dangerously (was 84-85F on saturday) without it, so I need something to keep the temperature in the apartment down below 80 degrees if I can.
So my parents came over yesterday to help me install the thing (that sucker's heavy) and I turned it on and it works. Glorious cold air, streaming into my living room! I don't know how I lived without one of these things before! I think the dehumidifier aspects make it even better. Humidity sucks.
Anyway, rounding out my home improvements for the weekend was the installation of a Pur water filter on my sink. I had been using a brita pitcher for a while and liked it, but it was annoying having to fill it up all the time, so I figured a faucet filter would be a better way to go. I ran into a little snag when I tried to put one of the included adapters on my faucet and found out it wasn't the right size. I got halfway to the hardware store before I realized that the size my faucet was and the size it needed to be adapted to where actually the same size. Oops. After that little hangup everything proceeded nicely.
Oh, I also saw a couple of movies over the weekend. First up was Indiana Jones 4, which I thought was pretty good right up until the last 15 minutes or so. But it had everything I'm looking for in an Indiana Jones movie. Some of the witty dialog seemed forced at times, but overall, it was a fun ride and I don't regret seeing it. After that I went back to my friends place (we saw Indy together) and we ended up watching Enchanted which was very good. Disney making fun of itself and taking the whole animated movie thing to ridiculous levels of absurdity was awesome. And the scene where the prince leaps off a bridge and begins singing only to get run over by a bunch of bikers is funny every single time.
Wassy and I have arrived in Washington DC. I'm typing this up this morning while she's getting ready for us to head down for breakfast and the other associated activities of today since I didn't have much time to do so last night. Or the energy for that matter. So...here we go. Well, actually, before we go, I just want to point out that all of the pictures I took (that were deemed acceptable for internet consumption) are located here at flickr.
I left from my place at 5:30am and arrived at her place by 6, as per the scheduled plan. A quick pit stop to gas up the car and we were off driving. Wassy had the wheel first, so I hesitantly turned over the control of the Rogue to her. Not that she's a bad driver or anything...but I'm just a little nervous when other people drive my car. The trip started out pretty foggy. I mean...very foggy. We basically were driving into a cloud as we drove down route 12. Eventually we ended up at around 7:00am stopping at a McDonalds in Norwich, NY for breakfast. At this point in the trip we still didn't really realize that vacation was here at last after weeks of waiting. We were also worried about zombie attack in the fog, considering Norwich had a large pharmaceutical corporation, a hospital and a fairly scary looking cemetary all right next to each other.
I should also mention that I had my first Egg McMuffin as well. We should have taken a picture but alas, I forgot. The trip was proceeding very nicely up to this point, with the only snag being that it seemed like one of Wassy's debit cards wasn't working right. But we pressed onwards anyway, leaving the fog behind us.
We entered pennsylvania ahead of schedule as it seems my time estimates were a bit too large. No problem as it gave us some time along the route to relax a little bit and not have to worry about getting there in time to do anything.
The first thing we noticed in Pennsylvania was that they were offering free coffee 24/7 at rest stops on I81. This seemed...kinda strange as there were actual people manning the free coffee stations. I'd imagine this would get pretty darn borning when nobody needed coffee. Additionally, we questioned the effectiveness of this safety campaign as if you're tired enough to need coffee in order to keep driving, you probably shouldn't be driving in the first place.
The other interesting thing was I81 South through Scranton. We came upon a road sign that told us that to stay on I81 we needed to go to the left when the road split, but the GPS lady was telling us to go to the right. So Wassy decided to follow the GPS lady and we hung a right. And on the right there was another sign saying I81 south, exit right. So we took that exit and ended up on I-81 south...the road that went off to the left. We have no idea how this was physically possible and looking at the intersection in google maps only helps slightly. I think it's a dimensional warp or a wrinke in space-time.
We had planned a stop in Hazleton, PA which was pretty much the midpoint of the journey to get gas and switch drivers. However, at a rest stop earlier I had noted that the vending machine had 3 types of skittles, so that caused Wassy to want something sweet and fruity. Which ended up being Tropical Skittles at the gas station in Hazleton. I got myself a white chocolate big cup peanut butter cup. Mmm... And after Wassy's debit card didn't work at the pump, we determined the problem...she was using the wrong card. Oops. At least it wasn't a big problem.
With me at the wheel, we continued down the road to Washington DC, heading south again on I81. It should be mentioned we passed the fateful exit for Tremont, PA, the run down mining town that we had stopped at for gas on the trip down last year. Thankfully, we were able to bypass that this time around with a little more solid planning.
As we passed through harrisburg though, we began to notice curious signs. Signs that advised us that "Motorcycles are EVERYWHERE". We looked around and saw no motorcycles which eventually led us to believe that we were walking into a motorcycle ambush and they were going to jump out of the trees at us. For the rest of the trip every time we saw a motorcycle, we repeated the phrase "Motorcycles are EVERYWHERE!". Another interesting road sign we passed was for a roadside stop. It advertisded "Snacks. Soda. BEER". With "BEER" being about 4x the size of the snacks and soda part. Other interesting road signs included a billboard for an "Ultima Massage II" with "Tractor Trailer Parking". Uh huh...so that's what they're calling it now.
The most interesting series of road signs though was just outside of Gettysburg. As we were traveling down 15 there was a little white sign on the side of the road advertising "Fresh Honey" or something. And every half mile or so there was another sign. It started off appetizing enough. Fresh honey, hand picked strawberries. But then it turned into things like raw goats milk and strange turkey parts. The two best signs had to be "Do you like pottery?" And then later down the line "We have pottery!", followed by "Meet the potters!".
We decided to skip the exit. We eventually ended up taking a break and eating lunch at a Ruby Tuesday's in Gettysburg which was nice. We had planned at stopping at Arby's but we had enough time to do something a little more healthy and relaxing.
After lunch we took the short drive down and entered Maryland, with the obligitory state sign picture taken by Wassy. The traffic started to pick up here (which is why I had taken the second driving shift, since I was more comfortable with my car.)
Things really started picking up once we got past Frederick, MD. Sorry, I was unable to locate the giant stick they have there. And eventually we arrived at the beltway, which would be more aptly named as a parking lot. It seems that we had finally encountered the memorial day travelers coming into Washington DC.
Things were basically stop and go for about 20 minues, in which we covered about 4-5 miles. Of road. But eventually we got through it and ended up at the hotel, after driving through the scenic roundabout again. Fun.
We arrived a little early expecing not to have a room ready since they made such a big deal about being full up and all. But there was almost nobody in the lobby when I went down and we were able to get a room right away. So after taking our stuff up to the room and getting settled in (Wassy instantly took over the bathroom with her suitcase full of bathroom related items) we headed out for the metro and for a stroll around the national zoo.
The zoo was particularly busy, although I guess we should have been expecting that considering it was a really nice day as well as memorial day weekend. We tried to hit the buildings first because they were going to be closing before the grounds did. The ape house was a madhouse. People everywhere trying to look at the apes, so we wern't really able to see much of anything there.
Eventually though we made our way past the crowds of people to a less crowded part of the zoo where we saw some sea lions and seals. They also seemed to have a lot more fish than I was expecting they would have at the Amazon rainforest type exhibit. Really cool stuff as I had wanted to see some fish at the national aquarium before realizing that the one in DC kinda sucked and the good one was out on Baltimore. But anyway, we saw some really big fish which I took some pictures of which are located in my flickr feed since I don't have the space to stick them here.
I do want to mention though, that the theme of the zoo trip seemed to be animals having a little too much fun together. Well, except the ducks...
We were a little bit concerned at first when two seals looked like they started to go at it in the water. That probably wasn't what was going on of course...but it sure looked like it to us! Take the photographic evidence there as proof. And then we saw a bunch of rapist ducks. It was...strange. There was a bunch of male ducks who were pretty much tackling a female duck. She'd scurry away but then a male would leap on her back and pin her to the ground. Nature at it's finest!
After we got back from the zoo, we went down to the hotel's restaurant which was very nice, just as it was the last time we were here. We had the palce pretty much all to ourselves which was nice because the waiter was right on top of everything. The service is very very nice there. After dinner and desert (mmm, white chocolate cheesecake) we headed out in search of some drinks. We started out at a bar just next door to the hotel (where we discovered the wonders of enjoying a nice Bob Marley. Mmm, fruity goodness), and eventually ended up back at the hotel lounge and then up in the room watching Knocked Up on HBO for a bit before nodding off to sleep (as it turns out we both fell asleep before the end of the movie so nobody knows what happened exactly)
Plans for today are the National Gallery of Art, and then Crab Smashing at night. Vacation continues!
Didn't want to go with a cliched title like "I am...Iron man!" or something, so you can imagine it yourself. In any case though, I saw the new Iron Man movie last night with my friends.
In a word...awesome.
I would have to say that this is my favorite super hero movie of all time, my close second being Batman Begins. Pretty much everything about Iron Man was perfect.
In particular, I can't say enough good things about Robert Downey Jr who is Tony Stark. I made a comment as I was coming out of the theater that if Robert Downey Jr. dies, Tony Stark needs to die too because there's nobody in existance and probably won't be then that can play him as well as he was played in this movie. Robert might as well just change his name to Tony Stark.
I'd recommend this movie to anybody who's looking for a good action flick. Even if you don't like superhero movies, I think you might enjoy this one.
Other events last night involved me headed out to the bookstore to browse their selection of piano/keyboard instructional books (for learning how to play my keyboard that arrived Wednesday night). I picked up one that I think I'm going to try out to see if I can work through it on my own. As I mentioned previously, I don't really want to spring for lessons or anything at this point. We'll see how far I can get on my own. I'm more inclined to learn on my own anyway.
Stay tuned for a harrowing tale about a trip Wassy and I made across a crumbling bridge on our weekly walk this Wednesday. I'll probably type that up tomorrow as I need to swing by and take some pictures to illustrate the immense danger we were in.
Another weekend, another weekend summary post! This weekend was a long time coming after perhaps one of the slowest weeks ever.
Saturday I was a nice, relaxing day of hanging out with my friends. I went out to the local zoo with Wassy (Jay was supposed to come, however events earlier in the day ran long and he wasn't going to be able to make it so we went without him) and had a nice time wandering around, viewing animals and dodging annoying children. Well, viewing some animals...some of them didn't seem to want to have anything to do with me. Like the ducks.
The zoo has a duck pond. Well, more accurately it's an alligator pond that some ducks have moved in on and the zoo put up a sign saying it was a duck pond, with bonus alligators. They have this thing set up where you can feed the ducks. Pretty standard setup, put in your quarter, get some pellets, throw to ducks, they eat the pellets and everyone goes away happy and satisfied. Except for these ducks that is. They weren't having any of this feeding stuff. So it kinda made me look stupid, throwing pellets to ducks who were totally ignoring me. So I just threw the whole handful at them. Take that jerks!
I should also mention we found a free-range peacock just wandering around. I'm pretty sure it shouldn't have been wandering because we saw them get thrown in a cage immediately after. It seems slightly disjointed that I mentioned that fact here, but I wanted to get it out of the way before I mention the human based story.
As we were trying to escape from a gaggle of kids (of the annoying variety) we walked past the place where they sell all the drinks and food and stuff of that nature. There was a family consisting of a boy, probably around 6 or 7 years old and his parents. As they approached the building, his mom said "Ok honey, we're going to have to wait in line..." The kid responded reasonably with a very loud yelling of "F--k!!" that made my head turn. It seems his parents were fine with this as well as they didn't seem totally shocked. I couldn't believe it and it made me want to weep for humanity's future.
After the zoo trip we went back to their apartment to meet up with Jay and begin the general hanging out portion of the day, watching some anime (Full Metal Alchemist) and then Sweeny Todd, a movie which will forever prevent me from going to a barber shop to get a shave. It was good though. Very artfully done and Johnny Depp is incredibly awesome in it.
Sunday was the standard day of work. I had some housework to get done, and some programming type things that needed to be taken care of. Hopefully my weekends where I need to do school work are coming to an end relatively soon here as there's only a couple weeks left in this semester which is hopefully my last.
This weekend was a very relaxing one for me, with a side of getting lots of stuff accomplished. Kinda a rarity these days. It seems like everything is either one or the other.
This was supposed to be the weekend I was going to go out to a LAN Party thingy that was going on in the local area with some of the guys I play Team Fortress 2 with because there was a TF2 tournament happening and it would have been fun to play it there. Unfortunately, it's coming down to the end of the school semester so I didn't think that taking myself out of commission for an entire weekend was going to do very much to help me get my schoolwork done, so I skipped it and hung out with Wassy on saturday.
We went out to the gym in the morning and did a little working out and then out for some shopping just to get out because it was supposed to rain yesterday (which it never did). Then we hung out for a bit, listening to music while I did a little bit of my homework and while she was making dinner (roast chicken...mmm). Then we did some more general hanging out stuff, watching some anime and then the MST3K-ed Manos: The Hands Of Fate which is always good for a laugh. I left earlier than I had wanted to because I developed a headache, but overall it was a very, very relaxing day.
Sunday was split between playing Final Fantasy X and working on my various projects. I also spent some time over at my parents playing with their new puppy. I'm not really a dog person, but she's pretty cool as far as dogs go. I have included a picture to prove that I was indeed playing with the puppy and actually allowed it to sit on my lap.
She's a purebred Maltese named Beasley. She ended up falling asleep on my legs because we tired her out while playing around with her. She's very cute, with a lot of personality. Not that I'd ever get a dog of my own (without being forced to), but she's ok in my book. She was sleeping prior to this picture, by the way...but the flash kinda freaked her out a bit.
So, as you may have noticed if you checked yesterday or looked downward first, I have my betta now. Fish the betta (yes, I named my betta Fish) is, as of this morning, alive and well but we had a bit of an adventure getting him. We being myself and Wassy because she likes to come along on my fish getting excursions. The basic plan was that I was going to go over and pick her up sunday afternoon and we'd get the fish, go back to my place and then we'd head back over to her's and we'd hang out.
The first thing that should be mentioned is the weather. It was very windy and we were having some lake effect snow. Well, when I say "we" I mean "me" because as soon as I got about halfway to my friends apartment the snow stopped immediately. Sigh. I hate lake effect snow.
I picked her up and we went off searching, checking out a few different shops to see what they had. We also made a unscheduled stay at Wild Things (local pet store for those reading from outside the area) so that my friend could visit with possibly the coolest looking ferret around. After that we ended up going to petsmart to look at their bettas.
I was looking for a blue crown tail type because I think they look pretty cool and petsmart happens to have those so we tried to browse through all of their little cups to find a good one, Wassy was looking through the selection and picking out ones that would work, and we had a little lineup going on the shelf above where the bettas were kept. It was an agonizing process but eventually I settled on one betta, so we moved to the next stage which was the actual purchase. I turned to go down an asile heading to the cashier but then discovered that there was another cache of bettas that we hadn't seen the first time. So that started the process all over again.
In the end, I ended up with that guy right there. Not the blue I was looking for, but suitably interesting. He's actually a little more black than that now. I think the body color was mostly because he was stressed out.
We got him back to my place and I started to get him used to my tank water. I had a little problem though, because he was in a cup with a bunch of chemicals and other crap and I didn't want that in my tank, so I had to pour him out of his cup into a net over a bucket (in case I missed him with the net) and then plop him in my tank, which was quite the production. Everything went well though and there he sits.
I think, however, that the filter that came with the tank is a little too much for him, so I'm going to scout around tonight a bit to see if I can find him a sponge filter and get things going that way instead. I tried doing some more modifications to my power filter but without flow control it's hard to regulate it.
The rest of the day was spent relaxing over at Jay and Wassy's place, which was much needed. We watched Stardust, had a wonderful turkey dinner along with some wine and just hung out. Some much needed relaxation.
Better late than never! I totally forgot to write up a report of this weekends activities due to other things happening tonight (which I will detail probably tomorrow. In short, I got myself a new fish tank last night for my betta. Sooon!)
Anyway, Saturday was the day the tickets for the DC show of Progressive Nation 2008 went on tour. I managed to snag two sets, one on the floor, about halfway back on the center aisle. The other set is one of the boxed seats. Now we just need to decide which set we're going to use and which we're going to sell. Both aren't "great" seats but they fit squarely in the "decent" category.
But the real meat of this post is going to be Sunday. Because on sunday I went over to my friends house to hang out and watch some DVD type things. MST3K and some Anime, as well as some Girls Next Door which they somehow sucked me into even though I attempt to avoid most reality TV like the plague.
However, the fun didn't start until after dinner. Wassy had bought this really, really nice wine, a Bully Hill Banty Red. Now I'm not generally big on red wines but this one was right up my alley. Very, very nice. A little on the strong side though as we seem to have discovered. So we were drinking a glass of wine and watching Girls Next Door and they had two shows in a row that referenced cupcakes. Which was very mean because we're all trying to lose weight and the last thing we need is to be tempted by cupcakes.
However, it got to a point where it was simply necessary for us to have some cupcakes. So at 8:45PM on a Sunday night we went on a cupcake run. We quickly came to the realization that this was quite possibly the strangest thing we had ever done. Which brought upon another realization that we're pretty boring people if going on a cupcake run sunday night is up there on the strange meter. The title of this post references our realization that this is quite like something that somebody who was high might do. It was very strange.
We struck out at the first store since we were trying to find cupcakes with chocolate frosting but there was another grocery store nearby. Unfortunetly their cupcakes were only availible in packs of 12 or so...which was way too many cupcakes. So instead, we settled on a tiny cake.
Armed with our tiny cake, we returned to the apartment to enjoy a small slice of our hard earned treasure. The cupcake run will live on in epic legend. I should mention that when I took the above picture, there was another person coming towards us in the same aisle, which I didn't notice until after I had taken the picture. They must have thought we were crazy. They weren't too far off the mark.
Ok, I promised you a weekend update and you're getting a weekend update!
On Friday, I noticed that the government had been so kind as to deposit my income tax return into my savings account, so I had a little extra play money. And my friends had suggested going out to Syracuse to do some shopping so I was thinking I should finally buy myself the Sony PSP that I was trying to figure out how to fit into to my budget for several months now.
So I went out with them to Syracuse where we ended up (eventually) at the Carousel Mall where I purchased my PSP, as well as Final Fantasy Tactics and PaRappa The Rapper. After which we attempted to find a local indie music store, The Sound Garden. It ended up being in Armory Square in Syracuse which means the parking totally sucked. We found a spot eventually and walked over to the store and looked around. As far as music stores go, I thought it was pretty nice, but lacking a bit in the progressive selection. If the parking wasn't so horrible I'd go back there more often, but it's hard to justify a trip to that area just to visit that particular store. I should also mention, randomly, that on the way back to the car we were freaked out by some cops doing donughts in the somewhat snow covered parking lot we were parked in. It was an empty section, but still kinda freaky.
After that we went out to eat at Chili's, as I mentioned earlier, where I sorta stretched the limits of what was acceptable to eat according to my new healthy eating guidelines. But it turned out all right in the end. We went back to their apartment for a while and I played some PaRappa the Rapper (I don't think "played" is the correct word, considering I suck), under the false impression that I would be able to send it over to Wassy's PSP and we could try out multiplayer on the first level. Unfortunetly, all it sent over was a 1 level demo. Oh well.
I also received a call from my Mom in Pennsylvania while at the mall. I'm looking for a chest or cabinet thingy to take the place of my CD rack in my living room that a) looks nicer and b) I can stick a little 5 gallon fish tank on so I can get the betta I've been wanting since I started my whole fish adventure a little less than a year ago. So I sent her out looking for something that was acceptable as she was heading down to amish country and could probably get something of good quality pretty cheaply. She called to let me know she found something that would fit my specifications and it seemed reasonably priced, so I told her to grab it. So I'm one step closer to my betta now.
Sunday I spent a lot of quality time with my PSP because of me having to do laundry. I played Tactics quite a bit, very good game, as expected. I'm really enjoying the PSP except for the battery life, which pales in comparison to the DS Lite. However, that's not really a fair comparison and it gets enough to be useful anyway. I'm just going to have to charge it more often.
Sunday evening I watched the Oscars with my friends. Well...long distance anyway. It gets over with too late on a Sunday night for me to actually go over and watch it with them, so I watch it from my place and we discuss via IM. I've been doing this the past couple years and it's something I enjoy doing now. It's also good for getting ideas for movies I want to netflix. But I think I'll break out the Oscar section of the update into it's own post. More later!
For many in the US, they're just coming off of a long weekend due to president's day. I'm one of those people. I also didn't really feel like posting running updates, so you're going to get the whole thing right now.
Saturday
This weekend was another one of those weekends where I headed over to my friends house for a lot of general hanging out and doing stuff. I had placed an order for a Gamecube controller for in store pickup at Circuit City because I needed one to play Tales of Symphonia on my Wii (very nice RPG so far). It would also be useful there because we had planned on Smash Brothers Melee and they only had one Gamecube controller. I figured that going the in store pickup route would be faster and I'd just pick it up on my way to my friends.
Well, I was wrong. The guy in front of me in line at Circuit City was trying to return some car speakers. And they wanted to exchange them for a different model, but he wasn't having any of that. This argument took at least 10-15 minutes, so had I not already paid for the controller, I would have taken one off the shelf myself and tackled a salesman so they could ring me out and been out of there faster than if I did the in store pickup. Bah.
I arrived at my friends about a half hour later than I had planned because of the Circuit City incident. Most of the afternoon was spent just watching Slayers (An anime series. A very good anime series) and general hanging-out. After dinner (pizza) we were going to go bowling, but unfortunetly, all of the lanes were booked until 8pm which was a little late for us, so we headed back to their place for some margaritas (with an awful lot of tequila) and Super Smash Brothers Melee. Followed by the now traditional late night game of Trivial Persuit which lasted about..3 hours. But it was a fun 3 hours. After that, Robot Chicken and then I dropped off at about 1am. I really suck at staying up late these days. Must be getting old.
Sunday
The next morning I went off to the gym with Wassy because Jay sleeps in late and doesn't usually get up in time to hit the gym in the morning. I really wish I had a decent gym within a close driving distance to me because it was pretty nice having all that equipment right there. But unfortunetly the only close gym is nearly 20 minutes of driving time away and I'd never go regualrly so it wouldn't be worth it for the membership.
I hung out around their place for a while longer and watched some more Slayers, then headed home. Not too much to talk about Sunday really. Just a lot of relaxing and doing not much of anything.
Monday
Monday was the day where I was supposed to get stuff done. The plan was, do laundry, get the low tire pressure light on my car to go away finally and get some homework done. The first two worked out pretty well. As it turned out, my tires were just slightly low (all 4, so it wasn't a leak or anything) and adding a pound or two fixed the problem.
The homework didn't go so well though, since the site hosted by my school where I had stashed all the work was totally dead, so I didn't really have anything to work on. So that pretty much killed my productivity for the rest of the day. Hopefully I can make it up tonight (if I have the energy to do so that is)
