8 posts tagged “vacation”

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!

It's hard to believe it, but the trip down to Washington DC with Wassy is now less than a week away. It really did sneak up on me with all the goings on of the other concert and the meet and greet thing concealing it's approach. But now it's less than a week away which officially makes this the slowest week ever.

It doesn't help that I've already done most of the trip prep that I was going to do for the DC show last week for the trip out to Albany. So right now I'm just waiting for the end of the week when I can start packing. I'm making lists of stuff I need to take (I'm the resident holder of all items electronical pretty much on this trip. We're sharing my laptop, I'm taking my iPod for the drive down, phone, PSP, camera, and the gps...all of which require charger cables/cradles/storage space. And I have to make sure I don't forget to take the tickets. That would be...bad.

Our basic plan at this point is to drive down on Saturday, get settled into the hotel room and then head out to the national zoo I think for a little wandering around before heading back to the hotel to eat at their restaurant there (which was quite good from the last time we were out there). Sunday we plan on wandering around the national gallery of art for a while, maybe doing something else in there potentially...hard to say right now though. We're going to go eat at The Dancing Crab that night which was really cool last time we were out, so hopefully it'll be just as cool this time around too. Concert on Monday, so we'll probably be wandering around the mall area a bit taking in the sights and grabbing some food. Then we head home on Tuesday. Should be a really fun time.

The one last preparation item that I have to do that doesn't have to wait until Friday to take care of is getting my car's first scheduled maintenance done. And I dropped it off at the shop last night so hopefully by noon or so everything will be all...maintained.

The slowest week ever continues!

...is the day before a 5 day weekend. I was figuring out how much vacation I had left to take and as it turns out, it's enough to take Christmas Eve and the day after Christmas off, so now I've got a 5 day weekend for myself. Handy.

Today is crawliing along like the day before a vacation normally does. I'm just looking forward to all of the festivities of this weekend. Tomorrow is my dad's side of the family, Sunday I'm going over to my friends to operate on people, Monday is the small family gathering and then my mom's side of the family in the evening. Then a day to recover.

I'm finally starting to get into the realization that it's really Christmas time and the year is ending very soon. Good riddance to 2007 I say. Since 2007 is the first full year that I've been blogging, I decided to do a summary post towards the end of the year. I've been going through all of my blog posts from the last year, picking out the big things that happened and I'll be constructing a 2007 in review post which should be up sometime before 2008 rolls in.

I have to go to work today. Blah! And then I have to work a whole TWO DAYS this week! I'm not sure I can manage...

Long weekends have spoiled me. I honestly can't remember what I was last working on when I left on Thursday, so...today should be pretty interesting.

I need to have people over to my apartment more often I think.

Aside from the socializing and having parts, it also forces me to clean up. That's my project for tonight since I'm having a friend over Friday, and as I had mentioned previously, I'm having my family over on Sunday (and possibly some on Monday as well)

My arms feel like they're about to fall off though, from playing with the new Wii so much, so this weekend is going to be interesting considering the main purpose for having people over is to have some fun with the new system. I'm using muscles that I didn't even know existed.

1.5 hours to go until my 5 day vacation starts.

Time slows down when you're waiting for a 4 day vacation to kick off. 3.116 hours to go.

I'm going over to my parents tonight to have a pre-Thanksgiving dinner (homemade pizza, mmm), and to discuss what we're actually doing for Thanksgiving tomorrow. We obviously love to plan things in advance around here. I think it's just going to be figuring out when I'm supposed to be coming over, but I can't turn down pizza, so over I go.

3.066 hours to go now.

I've taken to calculating the number of days left until my vacation begins. As I'm writing this, there's... 1.398611 days left. I started doing it by hand, but then being the crafty person I am, I whipped up a little excel spreadsheet to calculate it for me.

I'm pretty sure this isn't a healthy behavior, but I don't care...it's a 4 day weekend coming up. A very welcome 4 day weekend.

Guitar Hero 2 co-operative play is fun. Really fun. It's cool being able to play the same song, but have different parts. Some of the bass parts are even harder than the lead guitar sections. I spent a couple hours last night over at my friends playing co-op and regular modes.

I've also determined the I hate Buckethead. Because the unlockable song he made for GH2 is hard. I'm not sure if I'm going to get much Guitar Hero in tonight since my arm is sore from playing the bass track on the Rage Against the Machine song "Killing In The Name Of". Most of it was easy. Then there's this section where it's a lot of really, really fast notes for like 30 seconds, all on the same fret. It hurt. A lot. Be warned!

Even without the guitar hero, I'm looking forward to 5 today since I'm taking off tomorrow. It's like it's Friday! But...one day earlier.