Oof. Again, super-long silence here. Holiday season is always insanely busy for me, between baking the usual 20 dozen or so cookies, the crocheting everyone's gifts last minute/late, shopping with no money... good times.

But we did have a lovely holiday - I promise to eventually finish my post about Thanksgiving and Tom proposing. Really. Christmas morning, we chatted with his family via a Skype video call; Christmas afternoon/evening, we went up to Rochester to visit my family. New Year's Eve, we stayed in and ate cheese, the day after, we had a holiday party at Sam's, the day after THAT, we had the Paper Factory Christmas party, which was fun as always.

My birthday, I was off work and had a lovely lazy day, then went out to a less-special dinner, as yesterday, when we were both off work, we went out for a movie and a better dinner (all Tom's treat). We'd been looking forward to the new Tron movie for.. oh god, probably as long as it's been in development. Wanted to see it in 3D.. but we arrived at the theater (an hour's drive, to a theater we don't usually go to) only to find their projector broken. Buuut as the credits finished, there was a note that some scenes were 2D amidst the 3D, which means that despite the impression we'd had, the movie wasn't totally intended to be seen in 3D. This is very confusing for us, as we'd rather see it in whatever format it was originally meant to be seen in.

Either which way, I LOVED the movie. Tom was a little less than impressed, buuut.. The plot to the original is really pretty bad. I wasn't expecting much. What I was hoping-against-hope for, was atmosphere, and that, they totally nailed. The soundtrack is absolutely perfect and staggering. The visuals kept so true to the spirit of the original, that I couldn't be happier.

Dinner.. we wanted something different. Melting Pot is lovely, but, we've been so many times now. We were going to try out a pizza place, but, the location our gps took us to was closed. So, we went for sushi. Fuji Grill, up in Williamsville. The sushi? was deliiiiicious. The eel rolls we had for an appetizer were amazing. Tom failed to be impressed with the miso soup - "When I go out somewhere for miso soup, I expect something better than what I can get at home." "...maaaybe you should just accept that I'm a decent cook?" And, unfortunately, my suspicion about the sake was correct - we were brought the same bottle of (slightly cheaper) sake that we can pick up at our local small-town liquor store. I thought it was delicious anyway, though Tom was a little annoyed. He can be such a food snob. But the restaurant had a lovely, cozy atmosphere, and the sushi was delicious, and it was a really lovely time.


In wedding news.. Tom and I sat down and worked out some budgeting yesterday, and worked out what we'll be able to save, and thus be able to spend on it all. It's not a huge amount, but I think plenty enough to have a lovely day - so much of the pretty is going to be in the details, and those, I can handle. :) I have plots. And not only am I myself an artsy person, but holy crap have I built up local connections. ;)

We spent quite a bit of time yesterday looking at hotels in Kyoto - Tom's taking charge of the honeymoon plans. His parents.. I cannot even put into words how generous they're being with making that trip our gift. It's going to be amazing. I think I've convinced Tom to pick out a slightly more Japanese style hotel, and they all look really gorgeous. He's growing a lil terrified of taking a trip to a whole different country on our own, but I'm just excited. If I survived a trip to Italy as a 16-year old.. granted, it was largely super-supervised, but not every minute of it, and nobody in my group knew Italian (beyond "please", "thank you", "shut up", and eventually "exit"). We'll be just fine. :)

I have spent my morning up to my nose in planning again. Sifted through some more locations today, checked out a couple new ideas, revisited some previous ones. Sonnenberg Gardens, lovely as they are, the reception alone would devour my entire budget. Sooo that's a no-go. (Just as well - it was the farthest away of the places I was looking at.) The Buffalo Botanical Gardens are looking better and better though - Sunday afternoons are extra-cheap, and even the regular price is manageable. Also - I recently learned that Tom was originally planning to propose to me there. Which adds a little something, I think. :)

He likes my idea of maybe going as late as September with the wedding, and I'm liking it more as well. September is still gorgeous around here, it's still warm without being deadly, it's just off-season enough that costs might be a little less, aaaand it will maximize the amount of planning/saving time. ;p

Labels: family, friends, life in general, movies, storytime, wedding

 
Posts have been scarce, I know. I've been on Twitter a looot, since most things are just fleeting little thoughts. But in other news, there has been:
- A walk through town (where I bought an old book on the Johnstown flood! woo!).
- Lots of cooking (macaroni salad = awesome, potato salad still kind of a fail, no idea why).
- Paper Factory picnic, where everyone brought food, Tom kicked total ass at croquet, and a good time was had by all despite drizzy weather
- Lots of banners and invitations and things (some headaches, some awesome).
- Saw Iron Man 2 - though the highlight of that trip was probably DJ's usual insanity as we (Tom, me, DJ and his gf) had burgers at Red Robin afterwards.
- Mom's graduation from MCC up in Rochester - we made a day of it, tried out the Ethiopian place, finally made it to Niblack where I got spices, hung out with family. I worked on a pretty blue doily all through the usual ceremony speeches.
- Dad and Mel came down for a visit on the fourth, we wandered around town, I introduced them to Campi's pizza (which is amazing), hit up a farm stand, and ate whoopie pies in the town commons.

Finished a few crochet things - I have a new shirt, a new pull-over tank top, and several new doilies. Making a giant insane doily for Tom's grandma, who he'll visit soon. Worried about finishing a mobius wrap (in yummy bamboo yarn) because I'm not sure I have enough yarn left, aaand I was sent the wrong yarn twice before I got that one. Yarn! I won free yarn from Phat Fiber! I have no idea what I'm going to do with it yet, and since it's 99% wool I hardly want to even touch it right now, pretty as it is.

My coworkers are all having Tupperware parties - I was stuck working for the first two, but the third I get to go to, that'll be this Tuesday at Sam's. Sam's making food plans and I suspect it is going to be a very fun evening, despite Tom's comments. A coworker is also an Avon lady now, I just placed my first order through her last night. I love Avon's stuff, and I'm glad to help Ashley out while getting stuff I want. ;) (Plus, catalogs mean I can at least sort of trust color swatches, and better define exactly what shade of pale my skin is.)

I'm trying to do more art, because I feel twitchy when I don't, and depression sneaks up on me. (I had a very, very rough night earlier this week. Rationality never can overcome 1am insomniac insecurities.) I did some actual physical sketches last week while enjoying the summer sun... and wound up with a pretty little flower sketch I really like, as well as a ridiculous sunburn on my legs. ;p

It has been insaaaaanely hot this past week. 90s most days, and I live in a brick oven that does noooot cool down. Heat finally broke today, it's been raining and was supposed to only hit 77. (10am in the bedroom? still something like 88. blehhhh.) Humidity makes a cranky Melissa. And there have been far more migraines than I've had in awhile. Heat has also thrown a serious monkeywrench into my newly-attempted exercise routine.

My plants keep dying and I don't know why. (This was before the heat wave.) Some kind of little gnat-like bug got into them, and when I took my mint outside to attempt some resuscitation, I found there were little cobwebs all around the stem! booo. My passion flower and sugar plant are still doing amazing though, and what I assume is a forget-me-not (it's a very different flower from the one I'd expected, but still similar) is blooming away happily.

Tom has all kinds of vacation time he needs to take asap, so he'll be off for nearly two weeks starting... sometime next week. He's planning on some serious immersion-time in his 3D modeling... and I'm hoping he sticks with it, because if he paws at me for attention all morning every morning before I go in to work, I am never going to get anything done.

Counting down the days 'til our trip to Florida for the Star Wars convention! woo! (Though this also means Tom has been on my back for a week and a half about making ABSOLUTELY OH GOD CERTAIN that our hotel reservations are, in fact, reservations, even though they haven't charged me any money yet. They have my credit card number on hold as a deposit, if I cancel I will be charged $70-something. The actual bill is paid at the end of your hotel stay. I know this. Tom is not reassured because he's convinced that, because I'm a scatterbrain about a lot of things, I'm a scatterbrain about EVERYTHING. Sooo, I have sent emails to three places now, trying to get 100% confirmation that will satisfy even Mr. Travelling Paranoid.)

...I did not mean for that to be a mini-rant, but, really, it feels damn good to get that off my chest. ha.

Next post: new wallpaper!

Labels: being social, cooking, crochet, drawing, family, friends, griping, life in general, navelgaze, plants, travel, work

 
- Grandparents stopped by for awhile this afternoon, and it was a really nice little visit. They'd been visiting family in Cassadaga, and took Tom and I out for lunch. Grandpa seemed to be doing really well, which made me happy.

- Tom and I.. well, actually, mostly Tom, super-cleaned the apartment today. I picked up a few things, then started washing dishes. While I was doing that, and then cleaning the sink and table, Tom picked up the living room, swept, vacuumed the one carpet in the apartment, and even attempted mopping the kitchen floor (which he got annoyed with after about five minutes and quit). It looks so pretty. The re-arranging we did awhile ago really made a big difference down here, and we've been really trying to keep boxes and things from piling up in the living area. (Thus, the spare room.. well, hey, no-one needs to go in there anyway, right?) So within an hour everything looked awesome, and it makes me really happy.

- Heading over to coworker Samantha's place for a small (I think) party later tonight. I'm hoping to talk Tom into coming, but I don't think it's going to happen. Sam is one of my favorite people on the planet, so though I'm not usually a going-out-places person, she never has to twist my arm very far. I'm going to try out Heidi's artichoke dip to bring with me. I have yet to make a dip recipe that really works, but this seems fairly fool-proof. While I was getting ready to make a quick run to the store (QUALITY IS GOING TO CLOSE SOON! NOOOOOO!!!) to pick up the ingredients, Tom came downstairs. He was both bored (as noted in a previous post this afternoon) and hungry. But not hungry enough to make himself something. I took pity on him and flipped through some recipes, and realized I had most of the stuff on-hand for:

- Polish Style Lasagna. Which tastes exactly like pierogies - but without the serious hassle of having to make buttloads of little pierogies. And who doesn't have random extra lasagna noodles laying around? (At least I assume other people have this problem? that you always think you'll need a full box to make lasagna, and you only use half or two-thirds, and then you have some left, and then the next time you go to make lasagna, you still think you'll need a full box...) It is definitely important to add cheese to this - I grated some sharp cheddar onto each layer. I also threw a few green onions, garlic and paprika in with the potatoes, then threw smoked paprika and parsley on top when it came out of the oven. Tom pouted to find there was no sour cream to dump on top - which would have been a plus, but I think it's perfectly good without. (So does he, given the fact that the silly thing's about a third gone now.) Definitely a keeper recipe, pierogi-flavor is seriously addicting.

- And, as mentioned, my Quality Markets (the grocery store that is a three-minute walk from my apartment) is going to close, for real this time, and I am really, REALLY sad. Tops recently bought them out, and for awhile it looked like they were going to keep it open - just stocking the Tops store brand rather than the Quality store brand, that sort of thing. Buuuut, when I went in today, there were signs all over for an upcoming EVERYTHING ON SALE STORE CLOSING, and I overheard a cashier say they were going to be open maybe another month. I am heartbroken. Largely for the convenience-factor - it was so wonderful having something right there when I just needed one more onion for a recipe, or ran out of coriander unexpectedly, or whatever. Also, their bread was cheaper than Tops. Tops is still not far away - I think it takes barely ten minutes on my bike to get there. But it's far enough that I would not be able to get a jug of milk home without issues. sigh.

- Whittling is harder than I remember it being. I wanted to get a little twig to use as a fastener for my little mohair sweater-let (which I will post a pic of one of these days). I've been using an antique stick-pin (from the family hand-me-down stash of random jewelry bits from the shop my great-grandfather once owned), buuut, I get a bit nervous about having this three-inch long sharp thing on me. And I finally poked myself with it today. So, picture in pattern book showed a little twig holding the sweater together, which I thought looked cute. I thought, well, I can get a little twig, and then maybe carve a little spiral into it, that will be easy, right?

Yeah no. It probably doesn't help that my twig is from a shrub, not really a tree, so it was a bit weak. Also, it was small. And my random little jackknife has been floating around in my stuff for probably fifteen years without being sharpened ever. Got the bark off, smoothed out the knots, and tried tracing a little line.. and it just looked awful lmao. So, I am leaving it as a little bare twig. Pretty much anything will hold lacy mohair together, so I'll test it out tonight.

Labels: art, being social, cooking, crochet, family, friends, life in general

 
Because I do not trust facebook to not decimate the quality and sharpness etc. of my awesome, awesome birthday drawing for Mel:



Love you kiddo. ;) Happy birthday. Your REAL birthday present is currently stretched out on my blocking mats - are you visiting soon, or should I mail?

Labels: art, family, photoshop, silliness

 
This is what happens when I am asked to edit a story.



This is only two pages.

What you probably can't make out, is how many suggestions and explanations are in brackets after all the blue highlights (which are things to change; yellow are simple additions)...

...

...I had to make a KEY at the top of the file explaining the highlight colors. That's how much of a psycho-editor I am.

I am enjoying the power-rush far, far too much. XD

Mel, I apologize in advance for how soul-crushing this is going to look to you!!! (I promise, I am not lying or exaggerating when I say the story is still amazing. My changes are things like sentence structure. Awkward sentences happen when you're good enough at writing to understand that you *can* mess with sentence structure. Most people aren't. You're awesome. Really. If you were not, I would not spend two hours on my day off to deal with ten pages of story.)

Labels: family, silliness, writing

 
Superbowl food menu:
- Pepperoni pizza from Blasdell, because Tom was starving.
- Chicken Wings by Tom - started out with a recipe, but he decided to wing the ingredient amounts. Largely bbq sauce and honey, everything in the slow cooker. meat LITERALLY fell off the bones. absolutely delicious.
- Chicken and Peach Wontons - because I'm a sucker for wontons, and wanted something a little different. These were pretty delicious, a little heavier filling than I'm used to, but very good. Tom wasn't keen on, but that was okay. Frying in a giant pot instead of a giant pan = win.
- Sausage Jalapeno Poppers - Halved this one, and glad I did, since it ended up being just Tom and I for Superbowl-watching. These would have been better if I'd broiled or something for a few minutes, and gotten more of the grease off the bacon. Filling wasn't quite as awesome as anticipated, but these were still good. Wearing plastic gloves while hacking up pappers = win.
- Smoky Cheese Ball - It was an *insanely* close call for Tom, which food was best, the cheese or the wings. The wings won only because it was football food. This silly thing is DELICIOUS. And huge. Made it with smoked gouda, coated with pecans, and it's all so sweet and creamy, and was ridiculously simple to make. I don't know why I thought it would be difficult, but, holy cow, it's awesome. And despite the fact that Tom keeps eating chunks of it at a time, totally bypassing crackers, we'll still be eating it for a week.
- Drinks were some Smirnoff ice and Coke + vanilla rum and Coke + lemon vodka.

Unfortunately, I wound up with a migraine not far into the evening (I blame the bad light in the basement at work, where I'd spent six and a half hours that day), so I didn't get to enjoy everything a whole lot. It didn't get bad until a little ways into the game, so I still got to munch and things, and keeping a hot cornbag on my head and neck meant I got to stay around and enjoy somewhat at least.

~ ~

What else is new...

I made a giant batch of chili (based on the classic BHG cookbook's recipe, but with spices according to my own tastes - smoked paprika for the win!) a week or two ago, and Tom had to admit that good food CAN come out of a slow-cooker. (He was a little traumatized when his mom got obsessive with hers for awhile during his childhood.)

~ ~

We have been SUPER-cleaning. I had one of my totally arbitrary breakdowns a few weeks ago, and couldn't deal with the mess in the apartment. So Tom proposed the reasonable plan of tackling a different little section every day that we could. That worked wonders. We had a day off together, and went to freaking town around the couch. The result? I'll have a picture later because I'm obsessively happy - WE HAVE A BOOKSHELF!!!!! I had books sitting in crates and boxes alllll down the living room wall, and it was madness. WalMart is awesome for cheap furniture, so $45 got us a bookshelf that is taller than I am, *and* a littler one to hold movies. It's so exciting. Only trouble is...our books don't all fit lmao. Tom has ONE shelf. His mega-box of Star Wars books is a project for another time. There are like two shelves of all my antique books. One shelf has my giant U2 books and old textbooks and things. One has other random stuff. There's a smaller bookshelf (like three, four feet high.. the kind of thing that's all most people need) that holds a lot of my other random books, and a little freestanding thing that I discovered I can put things back-to-back, and hold both my manga and often-reread things like Madeline L'Engle, The Dark is Rising, etc. There is also a crate upstairs of Choose Your Own Adventure books and other things that I'm not sure count as real books.

We have a buttload of books. I cannot wait to own a house, so I can have a library. If we have this many when we're still semi-poor recently-college-kids...

Side note: Our movies didn't all fit either. One shelf for me, one shelf for Tom, one shelf for vhs. The vhs (almost all mine) are arranged two-deep. The other shelves have a bit of space, since I put the four seasons of Futurama and assorted amounts of seasons of Battlestar Galactica, Babylon 5, Monkees, Jem, etc., on top of the bookshelf. We actually physically own a lot more movies than I think either of us realized.. we honestly don't buy all that many right now. (And yet, we own Road Warrior on Bluray. sigh.)

On another media-note: Tom was unaware that my whole little rubbermaid cabinet is filled with cassette tapes. It's probably best that he's also unaware of just how many records I have stashed back home somewhere. The three-and-a-half towers of cds terrify him enough.

~ ~

Books! I finally got around to reading Mel's story, since she sent me a .txt which I could put on the Kindle. While that may have contributed to it feeling like a real book to me...it's also pretty amazing. You will say I am biased, and I might well be, but it honestly sucked me right in. Couldn't put the silly thing down whenever I picked it up. I'm going to help her super-edit and fix some random wording issues, but, I'm so freaking proud that my little sister wrote the thing. If I'd bought the thing at a bookstore (once an editor fixed the "its" issue!), and paid money for it, I would have been happy to have it on my bookshelf. :)

~ ~

Katie and Jane came down to visit.. a week ago? ish? It was really great to see them, it had been way longer than I'd realized. They both seem to be doing really well, which makes me happy. :)

In other social news, Tom and I went to a party at DJ's, and got to feel all special... because DJ wound up spending most of his time talking to the two of us. Like Tom's ego needs any more inflation lol. But it was interesting... since Tom only knew one or two other people, and I didn't know anyone, we people-watched, and it was amazing how well Tom could analyze peoples' relationships. For as much as he claims to dislike people in general, he's insanely good at understanding them. His and DJ's readings can be a liiiittle bit off when they're looking at the other gender, but, well, that's where I came in. It all reminded me so much of those days back in junior high, high school, where we'd sit around Elizabeth's basement and "psychoanalyze" every boy we even remotely had crushes on. <3

~ ~

Still crocheting. Made my first money from it!!! woo!!! My coworker Luke requested a giant rainbow scarf, which I was more than happy to make. :) Finally nearly done with the hat I'm making for Sue Mac - she saw mine and loved it, so we picked out some colors to match her coat, and it's looking awesome. I love having the knowledge to make things work for people - like, Luke just wanted bright colors. So I picked out some yarn that was cheap but also wool, and made sure he didn't mind not being able to throw it in the washing machine. Mac, meanwhile, knew she wanted machine-washable, and when I showed her some color swatches in my trusty Knit Picks catalog, she totally picked out the exact colors I'd been thinking for her. :)

I am also semi-working-on slippers for Tom, at long last. I have a much-worn copy of "The Happy Hooker", which was my very first crochet book, a gift from Shannon. In it, there is a pattern that she actually wrote, for adult-size fuzzy bunny slippers. They're adorable. More importantly, I actually totally understand their construction, and could figure out how to make them man-sized. I pestered Shannon about the yarn (the book calls for expensive yarn, which I was not going to waste on boy-feet; turns out, Shannon originally used cheap yarn, yay!). A trip to WalMart turned up Lion Brand's Hometown USA, which is actually a super-bulky yarn. It is HUGE. And very cushy. And acrylic, so I can wash them without having to handle things that have been on boy-feet. This yarn is SO much bigger than what the pattern uses, that I ended up not having to increase the size at all - I'm just working with a way bigger yarn, way bigger hook, and actually leaving off a row or two here and there, and voila! Big enough for Tom!

Also, super-bulky yarn? Works up SO. FREAKING. FAST. In like half an hour, an hour, I had the sole of a slipper done, and that's including time spent waiting for Tom to reach a stopping-point in his game so I could compare my giant oval of yarn to his foot.

~ ~

I need to shower. And probably do laundry. I'm so not motivated to go out into the cold. I got through most of my taxes today, and finished Mel's story, that's some accomplishment for the day... If I'm really ambitious, you may start seeing all the photos I have taken since I last plugged the camera into my computer. That appears to have been April or May.

Labels: apartment, being social, books, cooking, crochet, family, friends, life in general, movies, music, writing

 
This is going to be short, because I'm too lazy to plug in the laptop, and its battery life is... well, an hour and a half tops, when I'm only typing, with no wifi/networking enabled. ha.

I worked normal-people hours, while Tom's working his normal night shift, so after work I went over to Tim Horton's to write for a few hours, and finish catching up for the week. (Also, I will need to get a bit ahead, with Thanksgiving and some other things looming.) But I am SUPER happy with what I wrote today, I'm actually terribly amused by the banter among the historical society members.

Yes, historical society members. Sounds dull, I know, but who else is going to know all the hundred-year old gossip?? They're awesome. And I get to flesh out my backstory, huzzah!!!


While I was sapping Tim Horton's electricity (offset by the coffee, soup & bagel, then hot smoothie & donut I bought - it was dinner-ish time, and I need to munch when writing), I got a phone call. Actually, I should back up a bit. Did I mention that Tom and I went to Dave & Buster's again the day after I went with the Paper Factory crew? We did. I was talking to Tom about it, and he got all excited, and, discovering we both had the next day off, we decided to go. We also decided it would be more fun with more people, so in the end, he got his buddy DJ to come, and I got Mel to meet us up there.

Jokingly, Tom and I threw around the idea of trying to set the two of them up. We thought this was hilarious - really, Tom, a matchmaker? Terrifying. And funny as hell.

But then when we all got there... the two of them genuinely seemed interested in each other. It was really freaking cute. Cuter still, was later in the week, when Tom got obsessive texts from DJ about Mel, and I was getting texts from Mel about DJ, and Tom and I were sitting in the same room sharing notes on the whole situation.

(Finally, we got them to exchange phone numbers, so they could waste each others' minutes instead of just ours.)

So the two of them have been talking all week. They're both somewhat spazzy, but deep-down really good, kind people. Neither one has the attention span of a gnat. Tom and I are endlessly amused by all the shy little cautious repartee that the kids trade back and forth, instead of just being blunt like he and I are now. It's freaking adorable to watch.

So. DJ, wanting an excuse to visit Mel, sees on Facebook that she has a band concert today. He decides to go. Now, I had heard Mom mention that she might go to the concert, but that she wasn't sure she was going to make it. I decide this might well make the already-nervous DJ not go, and anyway I'm not sure, so I keep my mouth shut. (The kids need to handle their own relationships, Tom and I will be there for each of them and give advice, but we're making sure they run their own affairs here.)

Now, DJ is a pretty attractive kid. Even Tom is always going on about DJ's absurd powers of attraction over women. (For which Tom gets all kinds of gay jokes from me, ha.)

[plugging in the laptop because I'm enjoying this story too much to stop now.]

DJ, however, is a fan of anime, and must know a bunch of girls who are as well. He also lived in Japan for a handful of years, not sure if this has affected his viewpoint. As Tom has told me numerous times, DJ likes playing up the image of the cute anime boy. Sometimes this means good things like wearing tiny little clingy black t-shirts. (This happened one day at work, and the conversations Tom related to me when he came home were insanely entertaining, consisting in large part of Tom saying he could well be gay for DJ. Or at least that's the impression I insisted upon getting, because it makes Tom feel so awkward. ;)

Most of the time, however, it also means he spikes his hair. And not your normal little emo-kid mini-spike. We're talking all-out, electrocution-style spike, hair sticking out like four, five inches from his head all over. Sometimes with a long bang combed diagonally down.

This works in drawings, and it works in anime. It's a bit of a shock to walk into the Fredonia Applebee's, and see this skinny but muscular 21-year old boy leap out of a booth, literally bouncing in place, waving like a maniac, with electrocuted hair, "TOM! TOM! I'M RIGHT HERE! TOM!!!". At a distance of maybe six feet from you.

That is DJ.

He's an incredibly sweet kid, but he is also somewhat insane. Half puppy-dog, half hummingbird.


SO, to finish the story I actually meant to tell. While sitting at Tim Horton's, I get a phone call from my mom. She just got the shawl I made her for her birthday, and absolutely loves it, which makes me really, really happy. :) After talking for a few minutes, she tells me she and grandma went to Mel's concert today. "Oh, and I got to meet DJ."

Mom. AND GRANDMA. Met DJ.

Apparently, they saw him before they met up with Mel. (DJ is rather hard to miss.) Grandma spotted him, and said "What is that???"

This is where I started totally losing it in the middle of Tim Horton's.

Mom rather calmly explained that well, they were on a college campus, kids do all kinds of crazy things... And then Mel came over. And then DJ came over, and she introduced them.

Oh, that poor, poor boy... but I've been giggling to myself every five minutes for what, the last two, three hours now? just trying to picture Grandma seeing this kid. oh my dear lord. I called Mel after talking to Mom, and suggested that she call DJ and reassure him a bit, because I can only imagine how totally freaking panicky he'd get from meeting a girl's family like the second time he even saw her. She told me that she actually had left him some kind of message already, which eased my mind a bit.

On Tom's dinnerbreak, we traded the sides of the story we'd each heard. I freaking love stories. Between that and just a touch of facebook-stalking (I refuse to feel guilty if people have things posted right on their walls - there are options for private conversations, if people talk in public, and I happen to read things sometimes before I even realize what I'm reading...), it looks like all is well so far. And I may actually get to see my sister a little more often thanks to all of this. :)

Labels: being social, family, life in general, nanowrimo, silliness, storytime, writing

 
My brother was on the news! They show him designing parts and it's pretty awesome.

(...just look for the kid with the beard. ;)



link to the article

Labels: family

 
Mel told me to update:

I am piiiiissed as hell at dealing with high schooler co-workers who have NO work ethic, NO responsibility, and NO common sense.

I am also growing tired of freaking psychopath customers. PSYCHOPATHS. I am not even exaggerating. Poor Ann was actually flipping out to me about this one set of people.

On the other hand, last weekend I sketched out my first Paper Factory comic, and it is funny as hell. I've also been managing to stay on top of the banner thing, and pretty thoroughly rocked every assignment I've had this week. (Who can whip up some spiffy looking graduation invites in, oh, ten minutes? Oh me. Who can crank out a SEVENTEEN FOOT LONG sign, to replace the lighted sign a tractor trailer knocked off another Paper Factory's store, get it designed-printed-grommetted-gone, in like four, five hours? Oh me.)


I do not have to work tomorrow, and while I'm leaving my phone on in case of emergency, I am also playing on the Webkinz site, dealing only with non-thinking email, aaaand drinking a half-bottle of seriously froofy alcohol.

Alizé, Rose flavor. SO highly recommended. It is pink, and it is froofy, but absolutely delicious. Vodka base, with litchis, strawberries, and rose essence. I also have a little mini-bottle of vodka + herb flavors, which is also delicious.

Which reminds me. Mom and Grandma were down last weekend, we picked up...good god I can never remember how people are related to me. I think she's my great-aunt Marion? Anyway, the four of us had lunch at this tiny little local diner out in Brocton, where the food was quite good, and I got a vague tour of the town (which has exactly one stoplight). After that, I directed us to the Boardwalk down in Dunkirk, where last summer they opened up a little strip of a handful of local shops, down by the pier. It's such a nice little setup, I really love it, anytime someone visits me I try to drag them down there. There's a little shop that carries wine from ALLLLL the local wineries, and there are free samples, and a bit of everything which is wonderful. Mom bought me a bottle of wine, and it was *delicious*. A semi-sweet white that had a really great depth to it...and, as anticipated, Tom LOVED it. So much so that the bottle was *gone* before I'd had more than a glass. He has promised to buy me a replacement bottle. (But while I was quite sad it was gone, I was also quite happy I'd picked out such a good one. I usually do alright at picking out wines, though we're both still fairly noobs, while he's good with cheeses.) We nosed around some gift shops, I picked up a super-pretty multi-stranded necklace with scattered pearly stones, Mom got cornered by the rather sketchy owner of a rather sketchy half-open shop, and Mom and I both decided that I should start selling my crochet work, since someone was selling simple little knit towels for like $10. (And I knew at a glance that it was the cheap $1.50 cotton yarn they used...I've used it too. If I'm going to make something for someone else, I'm going to use nice special yarn, or at least put more effort into the colors and things!)

And, of course, we had to stop in at Yummy's and get ice cream. The owner still recognized me! I used to see him at the store every week, back when I worked day shifts and his shop was in town, but that was at least six months ago. But he remembered me! He's the friendliest guy ever, he's like on par with Ann and Bruce as a store owner, the kind of guy who knows allll of his customers by name, and makes conversation and is just so friendly and awesome.

Also, the ice cream is always AMAZING at Yummy's.


Other than that, I am on a crochet freaking BINGE. I need to post some pictures. I finished up Tom's glove and he is in SO much love. I whipped up a pair of gloves for me, because my hands freeze in air conditioning, and I had a ball of elasticy cotton yarn that I needed to test. Sushi is still not done, I get sooo booored of doing single crochet stitches in black in eeeendless rounds. But it's getting close. I poked around in my stash, and decided that I could make a nice simple little light scarf out of some yarn Mel bought me for Christmas and using part of a table runner pattern - that's nearly finished. I have the yarn picked out for my next two projects, but am not allowed to buy it until a) I finish the damn sushi, and b) next paycheck, which, OH LOOK, was today. First the skirt. Then a throw blanket in recycled cotton for Tom, to use on chilly days, and to use instead of a towel to prevent sticking to his plastic-leather computer chair on hot days, aaaand because making the blanket for Kate was so much fun and so relaxing. THEN, I'm scouting out yarns for two Christmas presents I have in mind, and since I'm binging anyway I figured I might as well actually get a head start for once in my life.

Still working on a necklace/scarf for myself, I'm in absolute freaking love with the yarn, and the end result, but, the pattern consists of doing like five feet worth of little bitty one-inch circles. So it's my dinner-break project.


I'm on the last book of the Tamir Trilogy, and I still can't put it down. I *hugely* recommend, especially to Mel. (If you want it in audiobook, I can probably do some illegal file-converting, but only because you're my sister. ;)

I have a huge stack of dishes, and am running low on clean underwear, and Tom polished off his weekly casserole. Somuch to do...but TOMORROW. Tonight, there are froofy drinks and Webkinz and crochet and SLEEEEEEEEEEEEEP. <333

Labels: books, crochet, family, printshop, product whoring, work

 
The grocery stores have had strawberries on sale almost every week for like a month and a half now, and by the time they're through I'll be able to get local ones. I have been seriously craving some strawberry shortcake.

The main version that sticks in my memory, is the kind my Grandma Antes made. Bisquick (or similar) biscuits, broken into several pieces and popped into a cereal bowl. Pile up some strawberries on top. Drench it all in cold milk. Smush together as desired while eating. It's pretty clearly a backwoods Pennsylvania version, but still delicious in its own right. Kind of like eating Cheerios with strawberries on it, it's a light kind of comfort food.

Tom looked rather bewildered by this description, so I tried describing the classic Better Homes and Gardens recipe, a biscuit-y cake with a few layers of strawberries and whipped cream. Still no-go. "Well what's *your* kind of strawberry shortcake?" "...oh, I don't know, but it's not that...ask my mother."

It slipped my mind for awhile, but I finally remembered - and called him on that, though I doubt he expected I would. The response I got:

"Here is the "official" strawberry shortcake recipe from bisquick...however, if the boy is being a pain in the butt...and wants his "mommy's" version (oh how I went through that too)...below the recipe is my changes (aka Doug's mom's changes...ps: also see if it's on the box)"

Ingredients are the Bisquick ones, but the presentation is totally different. Cook up the Bisquick portion in a square pan, and cut it into squares, which get sliced in half and berries put in the middle and on top. The strawberries get soaked in sugar + their own juices all day in the fridge, which makes a bit of a juice syrup to pour over things. Then scatter a few sliced-up strawberries around/over it all. I have a hunch it is going to be very pretty - I might tackle this sometime this weekend.

...but, I have to admit, I got a little flash of feeling a part of a tradition, and it made me really happy. I'm using the recipe that my boy's mother used, and she used the one *her* boy's mother used... it's very cool. It's making me all happy. :)


(which is good, because today was one of those days where I made every silly little mistake I pretty much possibly could. and that roll of 13oz vinyl is SERIOUSLY out to get me. grr.)

Labels: cooking, family, work

 
I've finally buckled down and started tackling my vacation pictures.

edit: I was GOING to upload the whole big lot of them somewhere, but 1) flickr's megabyte limit is way in hell too small, 2) photobucket is sucking royally and conks out, 3) picasa keeps crapping out too. I'll post another day with a link to the whole mega-gallery.

I've started keeping little text files in the folders with my photos, notes on what the pictures are of, where they were taken, that sort of thing. While doing this for the vacation pictures...I realized I was basically writing a full-blown journal entry for those days. So, I'm just going to copy over those, and then fill in for you all the time periods where I didn't take 4738290234 pictures. :)

///WARNING - I have written like the biggest post ever. It is mainly a memory-aid for myself. No-one should feel guilty for just skimming to find the pictures. ^^;; ///

Travel plan:
Saturday evening - drive to Tom's dad's on Long Island
Sunday - recuperate, hang out in Huntington
Monday - make an early drive to DC, hit up museums, and go eat fresh crabs in Maryland
Tuesday - finish up in DC, and drive to North Carolina
Wednesday and Thursday - spend in North Carolina with Tom's grandma
Friday - drive back to Long Island
Saturday - aquarium on Long Island with penguins
Sunday - drive back to Fredonia


After work Saturday evening, we made the eight(ish) hour drive to Long Island. (It was made a longer drive by the fact that we were both tired from a day of work already, and then driving in the dark, and then hitting some pretty bad fog somewhere around the Poconos I think.) Having a GPS made the whole New York City bit *much* less terrifying... and really, helped out a ton through the whole trip (when Tom's dad wasn't rebelling against it, already knowing a better way to get somewhere). We stayed at his father's in Huntington for a day recovering, mostly just hanging around the house. We did pick up gyros at a local Greek place for lunch - while Tom and his dad went in to order, I popped in to the small music store two doors down. At long last, I have a physical copy of "No Line on the Horizon". <333 I was happy to see the cat toys I'd made for Christmas laying around the house - and even happier to see the cats absolutely flip out playing with them. To the point where they'd start batting at the things even *without* a human to wiggle it at them. :) The guys played their usual games of pool, and we took turns playing some ping-pong (Tom is always amazed that I'm as not-awful at it as I am, hee). When I went to bed that night, there was a cat at the foot of my bed, and it made me rather happy.

We left Huntington at about five, five-thirty in the morning, so as to avoid the worst of the New York City traffic. (I slept through a lot of that one.) For breakfast, everyone had one of the granola bars I'd made for the trip (per a combination of two of Heidi Swanson's recipes, natch) - and everyone LOVED, they were AWESOME. Totally making those again, Tom was flipping out, yay.

Got in to DC around 9 I think, and found a parking spot miraculously near to where we wanted to be. We weren't entirely sure it was legal for us to be parked there, but, there was no ticket when we returned. ^^;

We had a general plan, but first order of business was to find a bathroom. We walked by the Capitol building - and decided the Library of Congress would be a good bet for an uncrowded bathroom, then we'd move on.

A few steps inside, and it was clear we were going to have to stay for a bit. The interior is one of the most stunning things I have ever seen (yes, taking Italy into account - this was totally on par). Every inch was painted or sculpted or arched or marble or...



(I realized my Phistos' surroundings have been seriously lacking, if things like this exist, especially in a young country like ours.)

I could not get over the Art Noveau frescoes. Absolutely gorgeous, and EVERYWHERE. I could've spent days in that main room alone.

A Gutenburg Bible was sitting in a case, and I stared at that a good long while. Nearby was a digital version of it - you could flip through any number of pages, and see it more closely, and get more information. All through the Library were small computer touchscreens, chock full of zoom-able images and information. Along with a map of the place, they had small paper "passports" with barcodes on the back - these could be popped into a slot on the touchscreens, and it looked like you could save information and images to an account (presumably to pull up at home later). It was all very sleek and intuitive, a fantastic setup for wandering around on your own.

We took in an exhibit of native culture as it was when Columbus turned up on the continent. I'm still not a fan of the meso-American style of art, but the stuff was still fascinating to look at. There were a few letters and scraps of diaries from important figures at the time, as well as a page from... was it Washington's diary? He'd used the margins and blank pages at the end of an almanac to keep his diary.

There were also maps of the world from around that time, and some books filled with drawings of the native flora and fauna. God I love detailed drawing like that.

When we made it back outside, probably like an hour later, the sun had come out - so I snagged a few more shots of the Capitol. We were all excited that the cherry trees were all in bloom, we weren't sure if they would be yet or not. (Caught the tail end of the magnolias, too.) There were groves of the cherry trees absolutely everywhere.



We walked down around the side of the Capitol, taking a curving path down a hill. We'd decided to tackle the National Arboretum (largely for me), the National Air and Space Museum (Tom and his dad's main thing), and the Museum of Natural History or maybe an art museum if we had time. The Arboretum was closest, so that was our next stop.

Orchids EVERYWHERE - they had a whole room filled with them, all in bloom, and the main entry area had quite a lot of them as well. The arrangements in the main entry and other places were absolutely fantastic, the mix of colors and forms was just perfect.

The orchid room was one of the first we were in - and unfortunately, there was a swarm of spazzy highschoolers there at the same time. The girls had pounced on this one cascade of white orchids (pretty, but, obvious), and were all having the exact picture of each of them taken next to it. I think I pissed them off, standing right behind them and leaning in to get a shot of another flower.



I kept an eye out for things I might want to have reference pictures of - flowers I knew turned up in my stories, that sort of thing, but I didn't have much luck. There was one type of amaranth, but not the kind I was after (though I took a picture anyway). Acanthus was an exception to this - I recognized the name, though I couldn't recall what it symbolized...and half the plants in the place were some variety of it.

One of these days, I need a camera that I can set the focus on myself. Mine's generally pretty good, and it's great to not have to worry about fiddling when I'm taking mass quantities of shots in a short period of time, but every now and again it's just a hair off and it drives me bonkers - it'll be just close enough that it looks perfect on the camera screen, and I don't see the blur until I get it up on the computer.

There were cacti blooming, which made me happy. There was a room designed as an approximation of the environment dinosaurs hung out in, which was pretty cool. We looped back around, and took another look around the main entryway - where I spotted the closest thing to an alien life form I have ever seen. Apparently the fruit of a Manila Hemp - it was HUGE, probably a good couple of feet long, and hung incredibly ominously like fifteen feet over our heads.



The center tropical area had two levels. Tom was nervous about the metal catwalk that ran twenty feet or so above the floor, pointing out that while the railing was at the right height to prevent normal people from falling, it really wouldn't catch him at the right spot relative to his center of gravity. And he would fall. Far.

It's a little hard to take especially good photos when you're surrounded by so much all at once. There's a few I really focused on though, and I'm quite happy with them.

We left and headed out toward the back of the building, where we found a whole outdoor garden section. Even though not much was up yet, somehow it was still really pretty, and we took our time walking through it.

It was something like lunchtime, and inside the Air and Space Museum, we found the biggest, most efficiently-designed McDonald's EVER. It seriously looked like a space station.

Recharged, we tackled the muesum. The main walkway had all sorts of huge interesting things scattered along it - missles and rockets standing on the floor, airplaces and satellites hanging from the ceiling... it took us a bit to settle down and focus on something.

The one thing I found odd, was that a good handful of the things in the museum hadn't actually been the things that, say, went to the moon. The moon lander, and a good bit of the other space things, were prototypes, or test models, or back-up models. Identical in most cases to what actually went out there, but not the exact one that was actually used. I was a little disappointed by this, and made a point of finding the things that had actually touched air that wasn't on this planet.

We all had kind of a mix of amusement and amazement at the fact that, say, the moon lander, looked like a third grader's science project, made of tin foil and construction paper. (What looks like tin foil turned out to be a type of insanely thin plastic, with some metal in it, to deal with extreme temperatures.)

There was actually a really good mix of both U.S. and U.S.S.R. things from the space race, and all kinds of information on the story of it all. The Russians have never actually landed on the moon - only the U.S. They had actually planned to try at one point, but they didn't have a strong enough rocket engine, apparently, and gave up once we beat them there.



What might well have been my favorite thing there, was the capsule from a U.S.S.R. rocket. Actual thing that went into space - it's covered in scorch marks from the atmosphere. Burn marks from *going through the atmosphere*, metal that has been in space. That is seriously awesome. That... and on the side that had been burned mostly black, the returning astronauts had written their names in chalk. The lighting and plexiglass kept me from getting the shots I really wanted, but... I did manage to get some closer shots of the metal on a U.S. capsule, though it too was all in plexiglass. Boo for reflections.

The actual Spirit of Saint Louis was hanging from the ceiling - and right next to it, the first successful commercial venture into space. (The X-1 contest? I forget the name, but it was partly sponsered by Google just a few years ago. Individuals, companies, privately-owned things, *not* giant governments, making things to go into space.)



I spent awhile looking at one of the early planes that handled Air Mail - something around 1910s, 1920s. Good God those people had guts. Flimsy wood and bits of metal and canvas wings. And open cockpits omfg.

The Wright Brothers' actual first plane was there - the canvas had been repaired, and the original propeller had been swapped out for another one that had been laying around in their shop... but it was still pretty cool.

We looked at a bunch of the planes, but it was the space stuff we were really there for. There was a whole exhibit for space flight - all the things the astronauts took with them into space (hunting knives - apparently the first flights had no idea if they'd land on land or in water on the trip back, or how long it would take to have someone come and get them), bits of space food, various tools, flight manuals. There was also a single GIANT engine from one of the rockets...so big that I couldn't possibly get it to fit in a shot. So I stuck with the texture of the scorched metal, which is what really interested me anyway.

By about three o'clock, we realized there was no freaking way we were going to see everything we wanted to see that day. All the museums closed at 5:30, and we were only three-quarters of the way through the space museum. We decided we could do the monuments the next morning, and skim through the Natural History museum then as well, then head for North Carolina around noon. We were already pretty darn exhausted, tired from getting up so early, and beat from walking and seeing so much. There was a show about black holes in the small planaterium - Tom loves black holes, and we were psyched about sitting down for a bit.

The seats were low, and leaned back, and insanely comfortable.

Ten minutes in, I was drifting in and out of sleep. I looked over at Tom toward the end, and he was totally conked out.

The show was pretty dumbed-down, lots of pretty graphics but not anything we didn't already know about black holes, so we didn't miss much. It was worth the ticket price for the rest-time anyway.

Price! That was the most awesome thing - all the museums were FREE to get into. I hadn't known that. It was freaking awesome.

We took a long, leisurely stroll along the parkway back toward the Capitol. It had warmed up quite a bit during the afternoon, and the sunlight was really pretty.



From there, we checked in to our hotel, dragging our suitcases in so we wouldn't have to worry about it later. Everyone else resisted the temptation to lay down for a bit, but I'd gotten a headache sometime in the museum, and I was worried it was turning into a migraine. Even though I wasn't planning on smashing and gutting crabs myself, I still wanted to go along for dinner, for the experience of it anyway.

I really should have taken a "before" picture of the crabs, but didn't think of it until it was far too late. I had a crabcake sandwich, which was delicious, and Tom and his dad split a dozen fresh Maryland crabs. It was a pretty impressive pile. The wooden mallets made me rather uneasy. But I did find that I could manage chomping on crab legs, and Tom and his dad both threw me bits of crab meat every now and again, and I will admit it was delicious. It really is an insane amount of work for a tiny bit of reward though, it must've taken Tom close on ten minutes to get all the way through a crab.

The one mistake I made, was wearing my favorite scarf when we went into the crab place. It is made of wool. Wool likes to hang on to smells. When we went back to our hotel, we actually dodged getting into an elevator with other people, because we smelled like FISH. Took a few days before I could wear the scarf again. ^^;;


Next morning, we let ourselves sleep in a tiny bit, since none of the museums opened until 9am or 10am anyway. It was a gorgeous, clear, sunny morning, and we started out with walking along The Mall.

The Washington monument itself, we didn't go right up to - we figured we'd gotten the general idea.

The WWII monument was up first - and I was really struck by the design, it was really beautiful, but in a very different style from everything else. Very open, very elegant, almost minimalistic but prettier than that. Tom's dad and I strolled around taking pictures, taking in the fountains and things...and Tom stood still, not leaving the large patch of gold stars over a pool, until he had calculated out exactly how many there were.



The long, shallow Reflecting Pool was a gorgeous thing to walk along in the quiet, early morning.

I fell pretty much in love with the Lincoln Memorial. Marble! There was so much marble, and it was so smooth and beautiful. The columns were huge - the whole construction was just massive, but elegant at the same time. Very elegant, that's probably why I like it so much, it's comparatively small, but each element was very carefully considered. I was rather surprised to see the paintings at the top of the walls, in the alcoves off to either side - I wasn't expecting frescoes, and certainly not angels! (Still need to look into the significance of those.)



All the area around the Mall was very, very pretty, well-kept grounds and lots of green. I was happily surprised by the amount of respect apparently every visitor shows - I didn't see any trace of litter, no muddy footprints off the side of the path, nothing.

The Vietnam Memorial was really very solemn (despite the somewhat airheaded girls walking behind us as we approached it). The wall starts out very small on the edges, and the names begin in a slow trickle - just a few names in each column at first, but the names grow more numerous and the wall grows and grows, until you reach the center...

I was sorely tempted to go scamper off into a particularly picturesque grove of cherry trees I spotted near the Washington Monument, but, we were pretty sure we hadn't parked the car legally (again), and I didn't want to put off our already-delayed return to it any further.



Amazingly enough, there was no ticket on the windshield - though the meter had expired like an hour before. (25 cents for TEN MINUTES, seriously??) It took us a bit to get to the Natural History Museum - DC's streets are pretty much the most confusing I've ever seen. All sorts of one-ways, and no left turn, and weird curves and merges and splits and roundabouts and omfg it was crazy. Our poor lil GPS got confused as hell. We wound up very nearly getting our car searched, as we took a wrong turn and found ourselves in front of a guard station, where uniformed men were making sure there were no bombs strapped to undercarriages. (They were very understanding and pointed us to a side exit.)

We weren't going to have a whole lot of time at the Museum of Natural History, and it was made worse by the fact that the layout was (to me anyway) a bit odd. The general layout was fine, but within each exhibit area, there was no clear set path to follow, but like ten different little side loops and things plunked all over the place. Fantastic for crowd-control I'm sure, but not so efficient for a quick viewing.

Here, too, were orchids! A whole room absolutely filled with blooming orchids - part of a thing on Darwin, an anniversary related to something of his is near.

Taxidermy everywhere. It stopped creeping me out *quite* so much after a little while, but, it's still creepy.

We looked at bunches of animals, and then realized we were nearly out of time. I'd kind of wanted to go look at the rocks - I like rocks - but general consensus went to dinosaurs. Here too was the same thing I'd run into at the Air and Space Museum - not all the bones were real. I mean obviously the bones aren't actual bones anymore anyway, but an awful lot of the dinos on display were casts and replicas - I tried to focus on the ones that weren't. I lucked out on one thing, at least - the... oh god, I don't even remember which dinosaur it was. In kindergarten I'd have said it was a brontosaurus, but that wouldn't be the right name anymore anyway, and this was something similar but not the same. There was a sign near it saying that the display was soon going to be replaced - partly to correct the critter's stance, which they now think is wrong, but also to replace the petrified bones with a cast, so the real ones can be kept in a more protective environment.

I looked at the actual dino bones for a good, long time. (I 100% understand the need for preservation, but... seeing a photo of Michaelangelo's David is *not* "seeing" the David.)

Around noon, we dragged ourselves away. We'd checked out of the hotel that morning, so we headed straight for North Carolina - which was another eight hours or so away. I think it was about here that we started listening to audiobooks. I'd brought along the first Discworld book (since Tom and his dad were both interested in the series), and Tom's dad had a sci-fi book, "Protector", which was really good. Plenty of real science for them, and interesting characters for me.

We actually managed to keep pretty well away from fast food on the trip, which was a happy surprise for me. Still not exactly healthy eating, but at least not 100% grease. My travel stash was greatly appreciated - I was told, I think complimentary, that I was "just like a mom", pulling out packets of tissues when Tom was desperate in the middle of a museum, that sort of thing. *g* I'd bought a word-based game to bring along, that we could play in the car, just reading the questions off the card. I had cookies and granola bars, every kind of medicine we could conceivably need on the trip (Tom had a cold most of the time) - I was so on top of things, it was awesome. XD

Got in to Tom's grandmother's around 9:30, and though we were all beat, we wound up staying up talking until about midnight. It was a nice couple of days down there, though it rained an awful lot. We did manage to get in a semi-soggy game or two of croquet (where I was slaughtered), but otherwise it was a looooot of card games. Which actually wasn't so bad, once I had the rules for basically everything explained to me. I won a lot, which was weird. Somehow, Tom's grandma had heard that I like playing Scrabble, and insisted we play. Tom's dad HATES Scrabble - I found out later that he hadn't played a game in literally 20 years...but agreed to play this once. I won, which is actually unusual, as Tom almost always beats me despite his inability to spell - but I had an awesome word with a Q that put me over.

I got soooo much crocheting done on the trip, it was great. When we weren't playing cards, I was crocheting. In the car, when I wasn't sleeping, I was crocheting. I had like five half-finished projects with me, and pretty much finished like three, and got a good chunk done of two others.

The night before we left, we were all sitting around the living room. Tom and his dad had been passing my laptop back and forth, since I had the original-original version of Tetris on it. Eventually, though, we wound up getting into this huge philosophical conversation, that I don't even remember where all it wandered. Tom's grandma is absolutely brilliant - she's currently listening to a lecture series on the genome project - and Tom is incredible at philosophical discussions. I broke in now and again (mainly to defend art as having a purpose, or pointing out that the troubles in Africa are more than just resentment over the old colonialism), but, I get out-logic'd pretty easily.

...it's funny though, Tom and I were talking about how she's so incredibly brilliant, but, after 2-3 hours of explanation, she still barely grasps how to work her VCR. "Best example of a generational gap I've ever seen," was Tom's conclusion. I pointed out that it might not be so much that, as "just the difference in the way minds work. Like, I could *totally* see myself completely unable to get something technical like that---" At which point Tom looked absolutely terror-striken by the life ahead of him, and walked away.

A twelve-hour drive back to Long Island pretty much killed Friday, I think we picked up a pizza for dinner and watched some tv and called it a night.

Saturday morning, we stopped at Tom's old breakfast haunt. Approximately 50% of his high school breakfasts consisted of a hot sandwich of two eggs ham cheese salt and pepper. Drove about an hour over to Riverhead, where we went to Atlantis Marine World. Tom's dad suggested this stop specifically for me, pretty much because of the penguins. :) It was actually a pretty amazing place - much bigger than it looked at first glance, and with the coolest interior design I've seen in a museum-type place *ever*. The amount of detailwork was insane - the stair railings were twisted as if from old age, there were Grecian-style frescoes around the wall, the walkway around the shark tank was made to look like a cave, with sculptures set into little nooks everywhere.

The penguins were African penguins, and they had actually been rescued from a smuggler who'd brought them to the States to sell as pets. It was a cloudy day, with strong gusts of very chilly wind - and the penguins were shivering! The poor things are used to a much warmer climate, they were hardly in the water at all, and some barely left their little cubbies in the wall. They were too adorable. We hung out and watched them for quite awhile, as they got fed, and waddled around, and shivered, and I wanted to hug one.



There was a huge coral reef setup. I kept trying (and failing) to get good shots - I think there was a hefty dose of ultraviolet light mixed in on the interior, given that the bright fish really looked like they were glowing, and it messed with my camera an awful lot. I'll have to see what I can do in Photoshop with a few. All along the window, there was a massive list of the fish inside, with a picture of each by its name. Tom and his dad spent ages trying to see how many they could spot and identify - I just looked for prettily-colored fish and tried to get a clear shot. (I was not helped by the other fish - there's one shot of a clown fish getting right in front of my camera, blocking the pretty little neon fish I was trying to get. It cracks me up, I had to keep it.) I've realized that I really, really like coral.



There was a freestanding tank of a whole slew of seahorses - but holy cow do the buggers never stop moving! Couldn't get a clear shot for the life of me. I had not expected pirahnas to be covered in what looked like gold glitter. They were so pretty! Only with evil red eyes. And they BARELY moved at all. A fin fluttered now and again, and that was basically it. They stayed almost entirely still, just, LOOMING. It was creepy. The lionfish (aka the kind Picard keeps in his ready room) were in a nifty little shipwreck tank, but they too didn't stay still very well for me.



Stepping into a short hallway of reptiles, we all backed away a bit when we turned to see a dinosaur standing up and STARING at us like six inches away. The glare didn't let me get a clear shot, but, it was just standing in the water, hardly moving, staring right ahead at us. It was a freaking dinosaur. It was a little creepy.



We went back to the coral tank several times, as well as the octopus. The light in its tank was far too low for a photo, but we stood and watched it for a good long while. Mostly, it sat still and just lurked, but at one point while we were watching, it began to unfurl its legs from under itself, and move across the tank. Its tentacles did not end. They were huge. And pretty terrifying.

We braved the chilly wind and saw the seal show, and while it was generally the standard, somewhat cheesy fare, we were cracking up as the seal danced to... I think it was "Footloose". It was pretty awesome.


By this point in the trip, Tom had cemented his decision to get a laptop. I had mine with me, his dad had his, and Tom - did not have a laptop. At all. It was driving him bonkers. So, he'd requested a trip to Best Buy - and I requested a trip to a craft store. What do you know, in one plaza, we had lunch, aaaand found a Michael's like two doors down from the Best Buy.

I'd really been after the supplies to finish a purse I was done crocheting - but Michael's had NO purse handles. At all. I was not happy. But! They did have yarn, and one touch of Bernat's bamboo yarn and I haaad to get. It's the softest stuff *ever*. I kept my browsing brief, as Tom got antsy after about five minutes.

He verynearly bought a netbook at Best Buy, but then thought better of it, knowing he could get something he liked better online. (Which he did. It is TINY! Smaller than a spiral notebook. Runs Linux. Solid state harddrive. I'm a lil jealous.)

Back in Huntington, we went out in the garage to play some pinball. (His dad has an old, 1970s pinball machine. He and a friend used to play it like every day at a local arcade - so much so, that when the owner went to get rid of the machine, he was able to get it. It's the coolest thing. It needs reprogrammed like every time it's turned on now, and he had to do some re-wiring to get the score displays working this time around, but it still works - and he's got a whole book of the assembly language for programming it that he worked out. Best toy ever for an engineer.) While we were taking turns playing, Tom poked around at some of the other boxes stacked around the garage.

He spotted the box for a TI-99.

His dad said yeah, the machine was still in there - should still work, even.

Tom pounced. The thing's similar to an Atari, except I think older, more of a computer anyway. Its number pad is a separate attachment. There were at least a dozen game cartridges (including Dig Dug!). Tom and I were drooling over the retro goodness, while his dad was telling us how he'd basically made it into a primitive laptop decades ago, by hooking it up to giant batteries he kept in a Tupperware container. No memory on the thing - once you turned off the power, you lost the information.

...we couldn't find the power cable. Tom and his dad looked all over, racking their brains for a way to rig up a substitute, but the only things they could come up with were too unsafe, even for them (which is saying something).

A day or so after Tom and I were back in Fredonia, he had an email from his dad. There were pictures. Of crazy old-school graphics. Up on a widescreen plasma screen. Freaking awesome.


That night, we went out for dinner. Deciding where to eat in Huntington is the complete opposite of deciding where to eat in Fredonia. Here, there are maybe four options, and Tom and I have their menus memorized. There, omfg, there are literally a dozen nationalities of food within a block. And they're all *great* restaurants. In the end, we went to this tiny Thai place, which was swamped when we got there but holy cow was the food *AMAZING*. I had a curry, which was really sweet, very subtle and sooo good. Tom and his dad had chicken with a peanut sauce - and it was a *light* peanut sauce, it was amazing. I had ginger ice cream over fried bananas for dessert, and I might very well have a new fav ice cream. <333 They also had sake! Tom ordered a bottle to share with his father...and we quickly ordered a second and third bottle. (They're very little bottles. Promise.) It was pretty much the most delicious sake Tom and I have had. And it complimented the food fantastically.

Our drive back was pretty uneventful, and felt much shorter than the drive out. We spent that evening and all the next day being as lazy as humanly possible.


...and if anyone made it through that whole post, I congratulate you with all my heart. I really don't summarize well - and anyway, I want to get things written down before they fall out of my sieve of a memory.

Labels: dc, family, long island, north carolina, photos, travel