see ya in 6 weeks

Well, we're on the road. We left just a bit later than expected. We had a lot of stops to make. Anyway, we should be in New Orleans a little after 11 tonight. I sort of need to get working on finding a place to stay tonight. Man, having a computer in the car is awesome!

I just wanted to officially state that I will probably not be posting much here during our trip. First because it's going to take a lot of time to keep the other blog updated, and I'd probably just be writing the same thing in both places anyway. So, I may post here once in awhile, but for the most part it will be at the other one. So come visit us there!

It's official

My signed vacation request was on my desk this morning - guess we get to go on our trip after all!

Story involving pus

So about a year ago (probably more, because I'm pretty sure Katie was still living down here) we we're having a bonfire one night and drinking. Somehow I managed to get a splinter in my knee. Now, I am rather splinter prone, but the knee was an impressive location even for me. I was able to pull most of it out, but it broke and some was left under the skin. I wanted to use a razor blade to just make a little cut and get the rest out, but Alfred wouldn't let me. He said it would come out on its own. So I left it. It healed over, leaving a little dark bump under the skin as evidence.

Fast forward about a year, to maybe 6 or 8 weeks ago. I noticed the bump was a little swollen. So I squeezed it. Cause that's what I do. All sorts of pus came oozing out, it was great. I cleaned it up and left it alone for awhile. A few weeks later, I did it again. This time I used a needle to poke around and see if I could get the rest of the splinter out. No dice. About three days ago, I squeezed it again. Then last night I was looking at it and poking at it a bit and noticed a bit of a scab. So I picked at it, which is actually very unusual for me. I'm a squeezer, not a scab picker. Well, the scab didn't move. So I used my nails to get a better grip and pulled. And kept pulling. Out came an almost inch long, skinny dark thing. It was the freaking splinter! It had been all coiled up or something, and had finally worked its way to the surface! And now it's out! Turns out Alfred was right all along. And now I have 1 less bit of foreign matter in my body.

packing

Holy cow, do we have a lot of stuff. We have to fit a tent, a tarp, a sleeping bag, pillows, a sheet and blanket, a sleeping pad, a camping grill, and our bags into my little Hyundai Elantra. And not only does it need to fit, but we need to have space left over to pick up Doug in Washington DC (that's the plan, anyway). Uh, sure. Luckily we're starting on it today so we have a couple of days to get it all to work. I pack the bags, Alfred packs the car. We stick with what we're good at.


In other news, I finished the last of the Twilight series today. Thank God, now I can get on with my life.

Oh, and the fourth of July! We were supposed to be hosting a party with Phil and Lucy at our house, but it ended up getting moved to their neighbors' house, so we spent the day there instead. We met some new people, got to know other people better, ate some good food, drank a bunch, played some flip cup. It was a lot of fun. Waking up the next morning to go to work was not as fun, but that's ok. Here's Alfred in the midst of a round of flip cup. His team won that round. I played a little, my team won 2 of the 3 rounds I played. And we ate watermelon spiked with vodka. Awesome.

Happy birthday Cathy and America

Cathy's birthday was on Wednesday, and America's birthday is today. I hear some places are even having fireworks to celebrate. Cathy's pretty well known, I guess.

The satellite guy came out today to try to fix our dish, since we haven't had satellite in a week. He says it will never work again. Awesome!

I can't believe I haven't mentioned this yet!

We're going on a road trip! I know I've told most of you this already, but we're going on a 5 or 6 week long road trip this summer. We have a new blog going for the trip, it's at www.getawaygolocal.com. I don't want to make that a link, because we have that thing that shows where people came to the site from, and I don't want people to be able to find this blog from there. The tentative plan is to leave next Saturday. If I ever get my vacation approved from work. Yeah, minor detail. So go check out the new blog! There's only one post so far, I need to get on that this weekend.

Also, Alfred has apparently fallen in love with a woman who writes a blog about food and photography.

I'm a big dork

Like anyone had any doubt. But still. Here's more proof.

So I've been resisting reading the Twilight series. I did the same thing with Harry Potter. They're not adult books, I'll be bored by them, not worth my time, things like that. With Harry Potter, I even saw one of the movies before I read any of the books. I fell asleep in the movie, which only made me less inclined to read the series. But I did. And loved them all. Totally want to own them so I can read them again. I read them before the last book had come out, and was too embarrassed to get it out of the library. Luckily I was able to borrow it, I think from Robyn, and probably read it in like 2 days. Cause I just got so involved in the story.

Mercedes owns all 4 of the Twilight books. And we've been cat/house sitting for them while they're in Spain. And so, the other night while Alfred was busy on his laptop and I was bored, I started reading the first book. And have been sucked into the story ever since. I finished the third book a couple of hours ago (oh yeah, and I took today off of work since I had to work Sunday). I told Alfred it was a good thing I hadn't brought the fourth book home with me, because I'd totally still be curled up on the couch reading it. Luckily I'm going back up there tomorrow and can start on it.

So why the big dork revelation? Well, I'm getting to it. See, I've been reading a bit about the author and how she got the idea for the books. Apparently it all started from a dream she had. And that is something I would totally do, have a dream and get all obsessed by it and come up with some elaborate back story and imagine all sorts of ridiculous things based on that one dream. I was thinking that I should do that, come up with a crazy popular book and get rich off of my dreams. And then I realized that I sort of already do that (the overactive imagination part, not the rich author part). I do it with my characters from the Sims. (This is the very embarrassing, dorky part). I totally come up with back stories for each character, imagine how they respond in situations, imagine conversations between different characters... anyway, you get the point. See? Told you I was a dork. I just need to write a book (or books) and become rich and famous, then it won't seem so pathetic.