You were handsome / You were pretty / Queen of New York City So Chad and I spent Thursday through Sunday in New York City. I had a class to take for Work (Friday and Saturday), so Chad decided to come with me and see the city. We had a great time! And did a great deal of the touristy stuff available in Manhattan. Our hotel was at Lexington and 48th, which made everything really convenient (We were about five blocks form Grand Central Station).
We saw a play on Broadway - Macbeth, starring Patrick Stewart. Fan. Freaking. Tastic. Seriously. (Chad also saw Phantom of the Opera, while I was in class).
We saw Rockefeller Center, Times Square, Radio City Music Hall, 5th Ave, and Central Park.
While on 5th Ave, we went to FAO Schwartz, which is only the most awesomest toy store eVar. Toys-R-Us at Times square is a close second.
We ate New York style pizza, deli sammiches, and food form a pub, but skipped the hot dogs from the hot dog vendors (when we were ready to eat, we almost always wanted to sit down).
We road the subway from grand central station to the downtown area, saw the Statue of liberty (this took two tries, as it was foggy the first time), the World Trade Center (it's a big hole in the city, you can't miss it), and the American Stock Exchange.
We took the subway uptown a bit, and went to the Met. We only spent two hours or so there, but it was awesome. I could have easily spent weeks there. Easily.
All in all, the trip was a success. And we arrived home safely. Yay!
In other news, Music Choice on demand has a special this month: Snoop Dogg: Does Starkville. Seriously. I had to watch it, just because Starkville is NEVER the subject of this kind of thing. It's only six minutes long, an it manages to make Starkville look like a hell hole, full of poor people and run down houses, and two drunk frat boys. *sigh* I'm not sure what I was expecting. But that wasn't it.
Right and left it's all the same conspiracy / just cause you ask, doesn't make a difference to me Did my civic duty and voted yesterday. Not that it really mattered much... I always was one to go for the under dog :-) I had an unrelated excuse to work from home, so I was able to go to the polls at an off-peak time, and mostly avoid the lines. This also meant that I was the only person in my party at the polls who was under, like, 100 years old. (This probably holds true for the other party, as well, but I didn't sneak over to their side of the building to look)
I went to the first meeting of that Tuesday night women's bible study last night... it looks like it's going to be a good group, but (as of last night) there isn't really anyone my age. And I'm the only one without kids. But everyone seemed happy to have me there anyway. Interestingly enough, there was a woman there who had recently moved from Starkville. So we sat and talked about places we ate and shopped in Starkville, and where exactly we lived.
Somehow, the year has gotten away from me. I was pretty sure it was still the middle of January, and then people started asking me what I want for my birthday, and reminding us to nail down our summer travel plans (since we're looking at traveling in May)... How did it get to be March already?
So currently I am in Reno, NV. Paying $11 a day for internet, in a hotel that is more like a city unto itself (Reno Hilton). There is a shopping mall, a 50-lane bowling ally, a huge arcade, a casino, like, 10 resturants, and a bunch ofother stuff I can't think of at the moment. We were planning to leave on the 12th in the morning, but it turns out that Chad's actually supposed to present his paper after we would have left, so we had to move our plane tickets to the 13th, and since it takes all day to get back and we have to change two time zones... it will be like, 4pm on Friday before we get back. To memphis.
More crazyness... We have to go through Starkville on our way to Houston, as the movers left a bunch of crap that we need to transport. So... we're looking at 11 hours in the car, plus time to finish packing the car and stop and eat and stuff (Willer Lite: I'll call you and let you know when we will be in Starkville, and we can eat then so we'll have time to see you). And they are supposed to deliver our stuff in Houston on the 14th, Chad is on the phone right now for them to bargin for a deliver time of 10am instead of 8am (!), so we know we'll actually be in Houston by then. If the movers move the bed in first, I swear we'll both just go to sleep.
And I got a call from my mother early yesterday... at 6am, while opening the Governors drive McDonalds, my brother was robbed *at gunpoint*. Some guy in a mask came into the store with a gun, put it to my brothers head, and told him to open the safe. Robbie did what he was told, and the guy left. No one was hurt, but my bother was pretty shoken up. The police came, but they probably will never catch this guy. My bother is trying desparately to find a new job.
My car may still go to the wrong city... the car mover swear it's going to Friendswood, but hte tag they put on it says Markham, TX.
I have a job interview on the 16th, Chad's first day of work. Cross your fingers... I also still have to finish my app to Rice. Today, I guess, since we paid for internet today. (it's due the 15th).
Blah. If you don't hear from me in the next couple of days it becasue I stopped paying for internet.
Chad and I finally got our Thanksgiving planning done a couple weeks ago. Now we're trying to get the Christmas planning done... which is amazingly complicated. And made more amazingly complicated by the fact that we have to move at some point during the holidays. And we have to at least start looking for a place to live. And Chad has to be here for some finite amount of time to prepare a conference paper.
Crazy.
So the plans, thus far, look like this: For Christmas, we will be in Huntsville for a couple of days either before or after Christmas, no idea which. And we'll be in Memphis for a couple of days including Christmas day and Christmas Eve night. We'll be in Houston probably right after graduation, for like, two days. And we'll officially leave for Houston... sometime. Maybe before or after Chad's conference thingy, but I'm not (exactly) sure when that is.
We'l be in Starkville this coming weekend, and Memphis (for a ball game) the next weekend... Then Thankgiving, which I'm not even going to talk about.
So Chelsea and Dusty came to visit for all of last week (Sunday through Saturday), which was awesome (and kept me from getting any real work done for an entire week). We ate out (until the fridge was replaced by a not-new working one), we took a walking tour of campus in the pouring rain, we played Magic (Chelsea andDusty taught me), we went to wal-mart at 2am (twice, I think)... all kinds of awesome things that we do on a regular basis in Starkville, that are made much more awesomer when other (non-Starkville) people participate. And we might get Chelsea down here in a year or so... maybe.
David and Nichole dropped in for the afternoon and visited and ate yummy Bulldog Deli desserts with me (which is great, because I seldom manage to go there and only get dessert...).
There is a chance that Hillary might be coming down this week (we don't know yet...) Which would be great... no idea what we'll do when she gets here, but we'll think of something, I'm sure.
And Big Mike is coming down Sunday night and satying for a couple of days... then he'll be back in August for school. Yay!
So yeah. fun stuff. anyone else who wants to visit, feel free to call or drop in :-)
Internet is on in the new apaprtment... I guess that means we're officially moved in (although you wouldn't believe that if you saw the place at the moment... boxes and bags everywhere). Fun stuff.
School started today, but not really for me. I start tomorrow.
And that is all the interesting news. Starkville is incredibly dead during the summer.
ok. I'm probably going to cuss a lot in this entry. Get over it.
So we live in a town with a bunch of fucking savages. Specifically, we live in an apartment complex with a high concentration of said savages. And I hate Starkville cops, but only because they are the most ineffective, unhelpful, stupid waste of taxpayer resources ever.
So one of our neighbors (the savages) tried to beat the shit out of Chad when he came home Sunday morning. They didn't succeed in actually hurting him, but they broke his glasses (annoying and expensive), they tipped over our couch, knocked over the speaker stand and a dining room chair, and scared the crap out of me. We called 911. And the cops came. And did shit. Seriously. They took statements, and refused to arrest the guy because a) Chad was bigger than him, and b) the jail was full. Only in a godforsaken city would drunk people who attack neighbors be left free because there was not another bed in the jail.
That being said, dude should be arrested soon. Because Chad pressed charges. Ha.
The landlord refuses to do anything. So we're moving. Possibly closer to Marc and Richard, but no telling... I get a raise effective in August, so we might can affoard a better place.
I hate this fucking city... and all the stupid redneck people in it. An yet... I will be here for the rest of my life. Doesn't that just figure?
So I started this new diet thing this past Monday... eDiets, if anyone is interested. Basically, I'm on the "eat healthy and hope to lose the weight you gained since you got married so you can fit in your clothes again" plan.
So I'm what, 5 days into it? I have this constant awful urge to eat things that aren't on my meal plan, just because. It's weird. Can't explain it.
Other than that, I guess I'm doing ok. The dinner meal pans come with recipes, which has given me and Chad a chance to try out new food (yay!), most of which has turned out pretty good. I am eating a huge amount of vegetables, a great deal of fruit, and a whole lot of dairy stuff... in addition to the 2-liters of water I'm supposed to drink every day. Oh yeah, and eating breakfast... that's kinda a new thing for me.
Poor Chad's just kinda hanging with it... I filled the fridge up with salad and other rabbit food last weekend, and I'm going to have to do the same thing Sunday when I go shopping again. He's stuck eating the dinners with me, which hasn't proved to be too bad... We'll see how it goes, I guess.
But yeah... it's interesting. Richard and Chad and I are planning a trip to look at schools at some point, so we shall have an interesting time trying to pack food for my low-meat (3oz a day or less!) diet, and his Atkins diet.
In other news, looks like a weekend in Starkville this weekend. Might go see the Hitchhiker's Guide movie tonight... waiting on final plans. Oh yeah, and I still need to plan what I want to do with the rest of my life. Any ideas?
omg. I live in a void of technology. Kingdom Heats: Chain of Memories came out yesterday... And like any good groupie, I went to GameStop to get one. They didn't have it. Neither did Wal-Mart. Forget for a moment the fact that I can't actually open the box until tomorrow night... I want to have it, to hold in my hand, to giv eme the extra incentive to finish. *sigh*
And in unrelated news, it is now legal to drink and or posses hard alcohol on campus... but beer is still illegal on most of campus. Go figure. The dean said they changed the policy to "reflect the action on campus." Heh. If a bunch of people go around killing students at random, will they make that legal, too? I mean, since we're changing the standards to fit the lowest common denominator. We might as well.
Hell, why do we have rules anyway? People are just going to break them. If enough people break them, we'll have to change the rule, and that's just way to much trouble. We should abolish rules. And rulers. And protractors, dadgum it. I hate protractors.
Back in Starkville, for a day or two. Back for good Saturday, as Band Camp starts Sunday, and Chad needs to be here for that. I am so looking forward to classes this semester... I have an awesome schedule, I like all of my professors, and I have a class with William (and as of yesterday, he's in my lab, too). The fact that my schedule is the complete opposite of Chad's schedule is a little bit of a downer... but typical.
On a side note here... I hate spam. Not SPAM, the canned meat stuff, which I kind of like sometimes with egg on a sammich... but spam. The annoying e-mail crap you get constantly, that keeps you from paying attention to the real (like, important) e-mail you have gotten. Like this morning... 216 spam messages. 0 real messages. but I had to look at everything im my spam folder, as I am expecting a couple of e-mails from professors, that occasionally look like spam. Grrr.
Plans have changed, yet again. We will be extending our tour of Huntsville this week in order to replace / do repairs on parts of Chad's Intrepid's cooling system. Which failed today, though not spectacularly (like, nothing acutally blew up or melted, thank goodness). Car + repairs = -$$$. Sucks. But, it might not be too much, we hope, if the problem is what we think it is, which it might not be.
So. No spiffy cool setting up Linux boxes or rearranging the apartment for me tomorrow. Chillin in Huntsville. Not at the Holiday Inn, either. *sigh*. So, if you happen to be in Huntsville and are bored, call/e-mail and we might can hook something up. If you're in Starkville and you're bored... sorry? I'll be back in a few days :-)
On to local news: there are some cool new things apearing in Starkville this year... among them Lowes (where the old Wal-mart was... they leveled it... left Penny's and Kroger there, though)... and Zaxby's Chicken (which I might could convince Chad to try, although I'm sure it won't replace Abner's). And Mississippi has new driver's licenses. They are green. And I have one, with my new name and everything. And... um... that's about everything going on in the world of Starkville. School starts the 18th, which should be cool and all... I still need a job, but I might have something lined up the the ERC (engineering research center, not the teacher thing) :-) We'll see. I should know by the time school starts.
Chad's rejoining the band this year, which means a couple of cool things and a couple of "eh" things (but over all cool)... I get to go on the band trips and stuff, as it is mean to seperate married people and such... I've been offered some work down at the band hall if I really need it... I have an excuse to go to all the games (now if I have time....)... and we're spending Thanksgiving Day in Oxford. But... that doubles for a good excuse not to spend it with either family, and for me to cook a turkey and lots of other food on Wednesday. Yay!
Honeymoon. It was great. We spent a couple days in New Orleans, and ate lots of cool places... walked down Burbon Street a few times... hung out and enjoyed the creepyness of the town... and needed about another month to do everything we wanted to. I have pictures, and since I've got some down time, they may make it online pretty soon... we'll see. Then we got on a boat (read: ship), and had a great time there, too. We boarded at like, 1pm, and started eating, and finished eating about 9am the day we had to get off the boat. We ate a wonderful five course meal every night, shared a bottle of champange with our table the last night, ate breakfast and lunch at least twice every day, and drank so much diet coke and sprite it's a wonder we didn't float away. We spent a day in Cozumel, Mexico, which was awesome. We went snorkeling (cool), and scuba diving (really awesome!). Scuba diving pictures may be online, too, if I can get my new super spiffy scanner (bought with Best Buy gift cards from my Aunt Dorinne and the NASAexplores team) set up and scan them... then we went shopping, and brought home two bottle of Kahlua, a bottle of Bailey's Irish Cream, a huge block of Cadbury chocolate, various souvenier things for our siblings, color change nail polish (it really does change color in the sunlight, too!), shot glasses for Chad's collection, and a stone pig for mine. The alcohol was really the best deal, which is why Chad agreed to bring it home. :-) All in all, we had a wonderful time. And we were exhausted by the time we got back (because we weren't allowed to bring out LiveWire on the boat!), except we ended up driving up to Southaven, as they were still heming and hawing about painting the apartment. I think it's all done now, though...
And I have been drinking lots and lots of LiveWire, due to the four boxes of it in the office :-) Unfortunately, it's in the office in Starkville... and I'm not. No LiveWire for me. *sigh*
Anyway. I guess since I'm here for another day, I should go socialize with my family or something. ;-)
The good news: The blog shold be fixed soon, so you can read this.
The bad news: It's not fixed yet.
In other news: Went to a wedding this weekend (the last before mine...). It was fun. And interesting. And different. Basically, it was a big excuse for a bunch of people to get together and get drunk, all while making jokes at the expense of the bride and groom, and cursing everyone within thoring distance with engagement, marriage, and children, in turn. (I would like to point out that no one actually hit me with any of these, but as the first two are true anyway... we'll wait on the last one. Sorry, Mom). We all had a good time, but Chad and I left earlier than a lot of people... We left when the drunk Aunt of the groom stuffed lavender down our clothes and told us to go enjoy each other's lavenderness... it was then we realized that *everyone* at the reception was, in fact, mostly drunk (this would be due, in part at least, to the really good homemade sangria that was masquerading as punch).
So we went back to Chad's apartment, where everyone (there was a party there, too) was also mostly drunk... and all underage. And watching porn. Great combonation, let me tell you. Haj made it back at some odd hour of the morning, totally drunk. Left before 8am to go home, though... Chad nad I left Starkville between 11:30 and noon... now I'm back here in Huntsville, trying to find a day this week when it's not going to rain, so as to schedule my bridal pictures. Ha.
Another post on the broken blog... I am truely hopeless.
I'll be in Starkville this weekend... but as to whether I actually get to see anyone there... eh. We'll see. Going to a wedding. Again. This is the last one until mine, though. Which is nice.
Ho hum. Off to go do housework. And maybe get to visit the office later.
For those of you using IE, you may have been experianceing technical difficulties with my site... namely, it wouldn't load... if you still can't get to it (how will you read this?), I think the problem lies in your cookie settings... try accepting more cookies... or something like that.
Anyway... now that that frustration has been dealt with...
Life is still good. It rained all day yesterday, a cold dark rain... it was awesome. I went puddle jumping... which was even awesomer. And I cooked some of the best lamb chops ever... I love lamb. But it's so expensive.... I prolly won't be able to buy any more until Passover, at least. I suppose I should be happy they even sell it in Starkvegas... that's an imporvement over last year.
Tonight I'm cooking again, stroganoff, it looks like. For Me and William and whoever else shows up... Matt, Sbbn, Greg... dunno who's going to be able to make it. but it'll be good. :-)
Meanwhile, I need to shower and clean my room and stuff so I can have company over tonight. I may post later.... we'll see.
This is my brain..... in part, at least.
