Sunday, September 25, 2005
Argh
Looks like I've gone over my storage space limit over on photobucket. I have to decide what I want to do, so right now only part of the pictures are up.
New York
Here's an upfront warning: This is going to be one doozy of a post so you might want to go to the bathroom and get something to drink before you start reading :)
We left at around 5:45 on Sunday the 18th, stopped for gas at the Kwik Trip right off the highway and then headed south. Throughout the entire trip we had fabulous driving weather and fabulous weather all around. Sunday was pretty much just a driving day. A few missed exits in Chicago made things a little interesting, but all in all it was an uneventful drive. We got to Jamestown around 6:30. Set up camp there, had some dinner, and called it a night pretty early.
Monday morning Adam forgot to save the new alarm time so we were rudely awakened at 5:45 by the incredibly loud alarm on his cell phone. Since there was no way we were going to go back to sleep after that we got up, showered, and went for a walk around the neighborhood. My mom was downstairs when we returned so we headed off to Chatauqua for the morning, stopping at various little places along the way. We toured Chautauqua for awhile and I think my mom was pretty much oblivious to the fact that Adam and I were bored out of our minds. Good exercise though. We then headed out to Panama to check out the rock formations there. Adam had fun climbing all over the rocks and we all got a workout on the uneven rocks and tricky tree roots. We stopped at a cute restuarant place called "Julie's" in Panama. We headed back up toward Chautauqua to go to Webbs to get some goat milk fudge. Then we headed south of Jamestown to a cider place. I got a funky looking gourd, Adam got some New York maple syrup, and we all got to feed the goats they keep on site for goat milk fudge (if we had known they had that we could have saved some time and gotten it there instead of at Webbs. Oh well.) After all of this we headed back to my mom's house and spent the evening there.
Tuesday morning we headed into Canada to Niagara Falls. Adam was originally pumped to be able to say he was going 100 km/hr until he realized that this translated into just over 60 mph. Luckily it turns out that Canadians don't follow their speed limits any more than Americans do. We spent perhaps an hour at the Falls after we figured out the whole parking thing. It was a great day and the mist was really in full swing. But really, how long can you stand there and watch water go over a rock? We headed back to Marineland, a zoo/aquarium/amusement park we had passed on the way up to the Falls. We spent the rest of the morning and the better part of the afternoon there. Adam got a lot of really cool pictures so be sure to check out the photobucket album. It's a really cute park. It has a medieval theme so the buildings are castles and renaissance music is piped out from unknown sources throughout the park (think the singing rocks at Great America.) It's currently undergoing a whole bunch of construction and it was an awful lot of walking, but it was a fun time. We headed back to Jamestown and got back pretty much around the time my mom's students were done for the day.
Wednesday was the long day. We left Jamestown and headed up to Buffalo for the day. The first stop was the Original Kazoo Factory in Eden. We checked out the museum and factory and Adam even made his own kazoo. After arriving in Buffalo we headed to the zoo. Apparently Buffalo has this budget crisis thing going on and all the good animals got shipped off to parts unknown or something. I have to say I was pretty unimpressed with the whole thing. Parts of it were under construction and the rest of it was kind of shoddy. Once again Adam got some great pictures of the animals that WERE there so check them out. After standing in line for damn near 15 minutes to get lunch at Wendy's we headed to the Museum of Science. Once again, I was completely unimpressed. There was a pretty interesting exhibit about pulleys, but other than that it was not worth writing home about. Since we still had time before we had to meet Catherine we drove out to East Aurora to find Fowler's Chocolate. Picked up some good (but bad for you) stuff there and headed back to the SUNY campus to pick Catherine up for dinner. We ate at some Chinese restaurant (pretty good food), had a itsy bitsy birthday hurrah for my mom and then went back to Jamestown.
My sister wrote about this on her website and I think what she wrote merits a response. Since she doesn't blog, I can't link, so I'll paste the text here:
"My sister and her 6'7" "boy toy" Adam came out to NY to spend a few days with my mother. They managed to spend about an hour and a half with me, nearly all of which was at a restaurant eating dinner. Martha didn't speak to me, and though Adam tried, a Wisconsin native who works at Wal-Mart and whose main claim to fame is that he's shacking up with my apparently estranged sister is not likely to win me over in an hour and a half. Why is our family so pathetically ridiculous? Anyhow, it was weird. I did get some good Chinese leftovers out of it, though."
Now, let's go through this one issue at a time.
1. Adam is not my "boy toy." He is my "boyfriend", and if things go according to plan, will someday be my husband. I dislike the connotation that "boy toy" carries.
2. We only spent an hour and a half with her because of her busy schedule. If she had had the time we would have been willing to do other things with her, but as it happened, a birthday dinner for our mom seemed to be the only option.
3. She's right - I barely spoke to her. This is because she was generally pretty caught up in talking to our mother about things that I was not interested in. Why be rude an interrupt their conversation when I really have nothing to say to her anyway?
4. True, Adam works at Wal-Mart but this is not his real job. He works there part time in the photo lab to make some extra money. His real job is at Cisco Systems in sales. He recently won a whole ton of awards during their fiscal year-end banquet. While there is nothing wrong with working at Wal-Mart, I think it's unfair to mention it in a way that is obviously meant as a put-down. Saying he works at Wal-Mart would be like saying that (when I still worked there) I work at K-mart. Both my K-Mart and his Wal-Mart jobs were/are secondary and shouldn't be put ahead of our real careers.
5. We are not "shacking up." At the time of this dinner we weren't even living together.
6. He had no intention of trying to win her over. Why would he? I'm the one he should be concerned about getting to like him. And if he had no way to do it in the alloted time (as she states) why should he even try? I'm not quite sure what she was looking for here.
7. I don't know why our family is "pathetically ridiculous," but I sure enjoy being around Adam's family a whole lot more than around my family. At least they don't criticize my life choices and act incredibly pretentious when, in reality, their shit stinks just as much as mine does. Being around most members of my family just reminds me how much I like the fact that most of them live far, far away from me. I was so glad that he was there. That way I didn't feel so completely excluded when my mother and sister proceeded to have conversations that were of no interest to me. I think I fell more in love with him every day of this trip.
I was really ready to go ahead and give my sister a "not as bad as I'd expected" marking for this trip. This journal entry ruined that though. I can't wait until May!
Anywho, we left on Thursday morning to head to Canton and the Pro Footbal Hall of Fame. I was kind of bored, but Adam appeared to enjoy it and I got a Vikings shirt out of the deal. We headed back across Ohio and got about halfway through Indiana before calling it a night. After looking for some Notre Dame merchandise unsuccessfully, we had some dinner at the bar and restaurant attached to the hotel we were staying at. After dinner we had a few beers and played some darts. I think I won once. :) Our hotel room kind of reminded me of home: the toilet ran constantly because the stupid plunger thing was retarded. After fighting with the narrow shower in the morning, we had breakfast at Perkins and headed back to Wisconsin.
Since we returned so much earlier than we had anticipated (we got back to Oshkosh around 1:30), we decided to pick the keys up Friday afternoon and get the furniture moved into the new place Friday evening. I've spent all of yesterday and today packing up the rest of my apartment and I think I have about one more trip out to Neenah and I'll be done. Needless to say, my body is bruised and sore and I really, really, really hate moving. It doesn't help that Adam has been at work all day yesterday and today. Oh well. I'm almost done. Then I get to clean again before I get rid of this apartment. That should be a blast.
Well, that's all I've got for now.
We left at around 5:45 on Sunday the 18th, stopped for gas at the Kwik Trip right off the highway and then headed south. Throughout the entire trip we had fabulous driving weather and fabulous weather all around. Sunday was pretty much just a driving day. A few missed exits in Chicago made things a little interesting, but all in all it was an uneventful drive. We got to Jamestown around 6:30. Set up camp there, had some dinner, and called it a night pretty early.
Monday morning Adam forgot to save the new alarm time so we were rudely awakened at 5:45 by the incredibly loud alarm on his cell phone. Since there was no way we were going to go back to sleep after that we got up, showered, and went for a walk around the neighborhood. My mom was downstairs when we returned so we headed off to Chatauqua for the morning, stopping at various little places along the way. We toured Chautauqua for awhile and I think my mom was pretty much oblivious to the fact that Adam and I were bored out of our minds. Good exercise though. We then headed out to Panama to check out the rock formations there. Adam had fun climbing all over the rocks and we all got a workout on the uneven rocks and tricky tree roots. We stopped at a cute restuarant place called "Julie's" in Panama. We headed back up toward Chautauqua to go to Webbs to get some goat milk fudge. Then we headed south of Jamestown to a cider place. I got a funky looking gourd, Adam got some New York maple syrup, and we all got to feed the goats they keep on site for goat milk fudge (if we had known they had that we could have saved some time and gotten it there instead of at Webbs. Oh well.) After all of this we headed back to my mom's house and spent the evening there.
Tuesday morning we headed into Canada to Niagara Falls. Adam was originally pumped to be able to say he was going 100 km/hr until he realized that this translated into just over 60 mph. Luckily it turns out that Canadians don't follow their speed limits any more than Americans do. We spent perhaps an hour at the Falls after we figured out the whole parking thing. It was a great day and the mist was really in full swing. But really, how long can you stand there and watch water go over a rock? We headed back to Marineland, a zoo/aquarium/amusement park we had passed on the way up to the Falls. We spent the rest of the morning and the better part of the afternoon there. Adam got a lot of really cool pictures so be sure to check out the photobucket album. It's a really cute park. It has a medieval theme so the buildings are castles and renaissance music is piped out from unknown sources throughout the park (think the singing rocks at Great America.) It's currently undergoing a whole bunch of construction and it was an awful lot of walking, but it was a fun time. We headed back to Jamestown and got back pretty much around the time my mom's students were done for the day.
Wednesday was the long day. We left Jamestown and headed up to Buffalo for the day. The first stop was the Original Kazoo Factory in Eden. We checked out the museum and factory and Adam even made his own kazoo. After arriving in Buffalo we headed to the zoo. Apparently Buffalo has this budget crisis thing going on and all the good animals got shipped off to parts unknown or something. I have to say I was pretty unimpressed with the whole thing. Parts of it were under construction and the rest of it was kind of shoddy. Once again Adam got some great pictures of the animals that WERE there so check them out. After standing in line for damn near 15 minutes to get lunch at Wendy's we headed to the Museum of Science. Once again, I was completely unimpressed. There was a pretty interesting exhibit about pulleys, but other than that it was not worth writing home about. Since we still had time before we had to meet Catherine we drove out to East Aurora to find Fowler's Chocolate. Picked up some good (but bad for you) stuff there and headed back to the SUNY campus to pick Catherine up for dinner. We ate at some Chinese restaurant (pretty good food), had a itsy bitsy birthday hurrah for my mom and then went back to Jamestown.
My sister wrote about this on her website and I think what she wrote merits a response. Since she doesn't blog, I can't link, so I'll paste the text here:
"My sister and her 6'7" "boy toy" Adam came out to NY to spend a few days with my mother. They managed to spend about an hour and a half with me, nearly all of which was at a restaurant eating dinner. Martha didn't speak to me, and though Adam tried, a Wisconsin native who works at Wal-Mart and whose main claim to fame is that he's shacking up with my apparently estranged sister is not likely to win me over in an hour and a half. Why is our family so pathetically ridiculous? Anyhow, it was weird. I did get some good Chinese leftovers out of it, though."
Now, let's go through this one issue at a time.
1. Adam is not my "boy toy." He is my "boyfriend", and if things go according to plan, will someday be my husband. I dislike the connotation that "boy toy" carries.
2. We only spent an hour and a half with her because of her busy schedule. If she had had the time we would have been willing to do other things with her, but as it happened, a birthday dinner for our mom seemed to be the only option.
3. She's right - I barely spoke to her. This is because she was generally pretty caught up in talking to our mother about things that I was not interested in. Why be rude an interrupt their conversation when I really have nothing to say to her anyway?
4. True, Adam works at Wal-Mart but this is not his real job. He works there part time in the photo lab to make some extra money. His real job is at Cisco Systems in sales. He recently won a whole ton of awards during their fiscal year-end banquet. While there is nothing wrong with working at Wal-Mart, I think it's unfair to mention it in a way that is obviously meant as a put-down. Saying he works at Wal-Mart would be like saying that (when I still worked there) I work at K-mart. Both my K-Mart and his Wal-Mart jobs were/are secondary and shouldn't be put ahead of our real careers.
5. We are not "shacking up." At the time of this dinner we weren't even living together.
6. He had no intention of trying to win her over. Why would he? I'm the one he should be concerned about getting to like him. And if he had no way to do it in the alloted time (as she states) why should he even try? I'm not quite sure what she was looking for here.
7. I don't know why our family is "pathetically ridiculous," but I sure enjoy being around Adam's family a whole lot more than around my family. At least they don't criticize my life choices and act incredibly pretentious when, in reality, their shit stinks just as much as mine does. Being around most members of my family just reminds me how much I like the fact that most of them live far, far away from me. I was so glad that he was there. That way I didn't feel so completely excluded when my mother and sister proceeded to have conversations that were of no interest to me. I think I fell more in love with him every day of this trip.
I was really ready to go ahead and give my sister a "not as bad as I'd expected" marking for this trip. This journal entry ruined that though. I can't wait until May!
Anywho, we left on Thursday morning to head to Canton and the Pro Footbal Hall of Fame. I was kind of bored, but Adam appeared to enjoy it and I got a Vikings shirt out of the deal. We headed back across Ohio and got about halfway through Indiana before calling it a night. After looking for some Notre Dame merchandise unsuccessfully, we had some dinner at the bar and restaurant attached to the hotel we were staying at. After dinner we had a few beers and played some darts. I think I won once. :) Our hotel room kind of reminded me of home: the toilet ran constantly because the stupid plunger thing was retarded. After fighting with the narrow shower in the morning, we had breakfast at Perkins and headed back to Wisconsin.
Since we returned so much earlier than we had anticipated (we got back to Oshkosh around 1:30), we decided to pick the keys up Friday afternoon and get the furniture moved into the new place Friday evening. I've spent all of yesterday and today packing up the rest of my apartment and I think I have about one more trip out to Neenah and I'll be done. Needless to say, my body is bruised and sore and I really, really, really hate moving. It doesn't help that Adam has been at work all day yesterday and today. Oh well. I'm almost done. Then I get to clean again before I get rid of this apartment. That should be a blast.
Well, that's all I've got for now.
Friday, September 16, 2005
More
I completely forgot to post about the Cisco/Convergys banquet thingy that Adam brought me to on Wednesday. The end of their fiscal year was August or something so they had a big hoopla to celebrate a great year and hand out awards to their top performers. I think there were 10 or so categories and Adam won awards for probably 6 of them. He won practically everything he was eligible for. It was amazing. I’m very proud of him. It’s wonderful that he has a job that he’s obviously good at that he also seems to enjoy (most of the time.) It was an interesting evening. We sat at a table with his sister and her fiancé (who I already knew) and three other couples. They were all very nice people. Chris cracked everyone up of course. All in all it was an entertaining and enjoyable evening. The whole award thing went kind of long and by the end I was yawning and had a headache. Adam also got picked in the prize drawing and ended up getting an electric griddle and a single serve coffee maker (which he has since returned for cash so we can buy other things since we already have 3 coffee makers. Yes. 3.) It’s so annoying how he wins everything. I never win anything. Grrrr. Oh well. It’s for the common good this time at least. Muahahahaha.
I’m not sure what kind of opportunities there are for him to tag along to business type things with me. I know Milprint has a Christmas party but I’m not sure how that works. IMA has a “bring your SO” night in December, but I’m not sure he’ll be interested in coming to hang with a bunch of accountants. LoL. I just think it’s interesting to see another side of a person. I don’t usually see his “I’m at work” side or meet anyone from that part of his life, so it was neat.
I was thinking last night while boxing up most of the stuff in the living room. I’m going to have to get used to having a roommate again, although this time will be completely different in that I actually know the person and like them (double benefit!) I don’t think it will be too hard to accept the fact that it’s not going to be “my” apartment. It’s going to be “our” apartment and therefore I can’t just boss him around to do things the way I want them done. This might be kind of difficult given that I’m a control freak with a minor case of OCD… I’m sure there are going to be things he does that drive me nuts. In fact, I already know what a few of them are. I’m sure there are going to be things I do that drive him nuts too. And I hope he’ll tell me about them. I don’t want the fact that we’re roommates to cause problems because every roommate relationship I’ve had up to this point has gone to hell eventually. In fact I only keep in touch with one of them (Catherine) and we’re much better friends now that we don’t live together. I think a potential problem may be that both Adam and I have a touch of passive-aggressiveness in ourselves. We’re more likely to avoid talking about something that bothers us and just grumble about it inside. Eventually that causes bigger problems though. I know this from experience. This is why I’m going to try and attack any problems that arise as soon as possible. I really want this to work and I’m pretty sure he does too. He’s been spending more and more time over at my apartment and things have been pretty smooth sailing. I’m not sure how much is going to change once we’re living together all the time. I guess we’ll just have to see how it goes.
I’m not sure what kind of opportunities there are for him to tag along to business type things with me. I know Milprint has a Christmas party but I’m not sure how that works. IMA has a “bring your SO” night in December, but I’m not sure he’ll be interested in coming to hang with a bunch of accountants. LoL. I just think it’s interesting to see another side of a person. I don’t usually see his “I’m at work” side or meet anyone from that part of his life, so it was neat.
I was thinking last night while boxing up most of the stuff in the living room. I’m going to have to get used to having a roommate again, although this time will be completely different in that I actually know the person and like them (double benefit!) I don’t think it will be too hard to accept the fact that it’s not going to be “my” apartment. It’s going to be “our” apartment and therefore I can’t just boss him around to do things the way I want them done. This might be kind of difficult given that I’m a control freak with a minor case of OCD… I’m sure there are going to be things he does that drive me nuts. In fact, I already know what a few of them are. I’m sure there are going to be things I do that drive him nuts too. And I hope he’ll tell me about them. I don’t want the fact that we’re roommates to cause problems because every roommate relationship I’ve had up to this point has gone to hell eventually. In fact I only keep in touch with one of them (Catherine) and we’re much better friends now that we don’t live together. I think a potential problem may be that both Adam and I have a touch of passive-aggressiveness in ourselves. We’re more likely to avoid talking about something that bothers us and just grumble about it inside. Eventually that causes bigger problems though. I know this from experience. This is why I’m going to try and attack any problems that arise as soon as possible. I really want this to work and I’m pretty sure he does too. He’s been spending more and more time over at my apartment and things have been pretty smooth sailing. I’m not sure how much is going to change once we’re living together all the time. I guess we’ll just have to see how it goes.
Thursday, September 15, 2005
T-2(ish)
Well we leave for New York on Sunday morning. Early Sunday morning. I’ve got pretty much everything under control at work and I’m ready for a vacation. It should be an interesting experience. Hopefully fun as well, but it’s always nerve-wracking introducing someone to members of my family. We’ll see how it goes. The way I see it, we’re not going to see any of these people more than once a year anyway so if they really don’t like each other, it’s only a temporary inconvenience every once in a while. Heh. How’s that for a bad attitude? I’m sure it will be fine. Adam is a pretty likeable guy and he tends to get along with most people. I’m not asking him to be best friends with my mom or sister. That would be scary. Even I don’t get along the greatest with them. I just want him to know that they exist and be able to put a face and personality with the name. I’ve met many members of his family already. It’s easier to go that way because many of them live in the area. My family, on the other hand, is spread far and wide so it’s harder to get everyone together. Anywho, it will be a fun trip. That was the point of that whole rambling thing there. I’ve had an icky sinus thing going on for the last week so I’m hoping that will go away before we leave.
We have an appointment to pick up the keys to the new apartment on the 24th. This is the day after we return from New York. Given Adam’s work schedule, I’ll be moving a lot of the littler stuff throughout the day on Saturday, he’ll be moving most of his stuff early Sunday morning, and my bigger stuff will be moved Sunday evening. I should have no problem getting everything out of the apartment by Wednesday and perhaps I can get it all cleaned by Thursday so I can drop the keys off early. Depending on how things go during the weekend we’re also considering taking Tuesday afternoon off to finish moving big stuff. A lot of this is up in the air and we’ll just have to see how things go. I am excited though. I’m really looking forward to it. Well, not the moving part. The living in a better apartment with Adam part.
I’m heading to the DMV tonight after work to change my address and get a new driver’s license. I figure it’s worth the $4 to have an address that isn’t in Sheboygan. And to get rid of the horrible red box around my head that screams “UNDER 21 UNTIL 02-09-01.” I wonder if they’re going to make me take a new picture. I’m not looking forward to that, but if they tell me to I guess I don’t have a choice. Other than that all the address changes are taken care of. I went to the bank yesterday and all the others were already taken care of. Woo. I’m so organized.
That’s about all I’ve got. I’ll be taking lots o’ pictures and will be sure to post them when we get back.
We have an appointment to pick up the keys to the new apartment on the 24th. This is the day after we return from New York. Given Adam’s work schedule, I’ll be moving a lot of the littler stuff throughout the day on Saturday, he’ll be moving most of his stuff early Sunday morning, and my bigger stuff will be moved Sunday evening. I should have no problem getting everything out of the apartment by Wednesday and perhaps I can get it all cleaned by Thursday so I can drop the keys off early. Depending on how things go during the weekend we’re also considering taking Tuesday afternoon off to finish moving big stuff. A lot of this is up in the air and we’ll just have to see how things go. I am excited though. I’m really looking forward to it. Well, not the moving part. The living in a better apartment with Adam part.
I’m heading to the DMV tonight after work to change my address and get a new driver’s license. I figure it’s worth the $4 to have an address that isn’t in Sheboygan. And to get rid of the horrible red box around my head that screams “UNDER 21 UNTIL 02-09-01.” I wonder if they’re going to make me take a new picture. I’m not looking forward to that, but if they tell me to I guess I don’t have a choice. Other than that all the address changes are taken care of. I went to the bank yesterday and all the others were already taken care of. Woo. I’m so organized.
That’s about all I’ve got. I’ll be taking lots o’ pictures and will be sure to post them when we get back.
Monday, September 05, 2005
Posts from 2003-2004
I just wanted to let everyone know that I added my blog from my other website to this blogging site. I basically copy and pasted from the other webpage to this page so the formatting really kind of sucks. The other site went back to January of 2003 so I figured it made sense to put them all together in one place for some kind of continuity. It's strange to go back and read them and see all the crap that has happened in the last two and half-ish years. *sigh* It's so unfortunate that a great deal of it revolves around what was going on between John and I. I still can't figure out why he was such an important person in my life given the fact that the whole relationship was completely messed up. Oh well. I barely even speak to him at this point. He always tells me he'll call me but I know he won't. And that's ok. I don't get messed up about it at this point. I have Adam who actually calls when he tells me his will. And takes me out in public. And reciprocates feelings. Wow. Who knew a man like that existed?
On a completely different topic - it appears I have begun to get spam comments so I'm going to look into how I can stop them. Yeah, no one is interested in your insurance website. Geesh. For the love of. As I was typing this sentence two more of them showed up. That's just ridiculous. I'll see what I can do about that. That should keep me entertained until Adam gets home from work. *sigh*
On a completely different topic - it appears I have begun to get spam comments so I'm going to look into how I can stop them. Yeah, no one is interested in your insurance website. Geesh. For the love of. As I was typing this sentence two more of them showed up. That's just ridiculous. I'll see what I can do about that. That should keep me entertained until Adam gets home from work. *sigh*
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