Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Hello from Oklahoma...

OKLAHOMA, where the waving wheat, it sure smells sweet...... and so on...

That song gets stuck in my head whenever I drive through Oklahoma. Which, okay, honestly this is only the third time I've ever driven through Oklahoma, but still, it's stuck there.

Yes folks, I'm in Oklahoma. Oklahoma City, OK to be exact. So, last time I updated was just before Nashville. Nashville turned out to be not particularly exciting, which may have had something to do with the fact that it was a Sunday in February. But, anyway, I got to Memphis Sunday night, stayed at a hotel there, then explored Memphis in the morning and early afternoon. I went to the National Civil Rights Museum, which was really interesting. Then I walked around on Beale Street listening to the song Walking in Memphis sung by Lonestar (also a famous country band). Yes, I'm a big giant dork. :) Then I went to Graceland. Continuing the dorkiness, I listened to Paul Simon's Graceland on my way out there. Graceland was fascinating. Very 70's and gaudy, but interesting.

From there I made my way to Hot Springs, Arkansas. I stayed at a campground, spending my first night in the back of the truck. It wasn't too bad. Slept comfortably and very safe. Today I checked out Hot Spring, AR. It's a very cute little town with a lot of history. Definately worth the trip if you ever have the chance. I got a hot springs bath at the one bathhouse that's still open on Bathhouse Row. There are others being renovated to be reopened, but none are completed yet. There are also other places to get hot springs baths, but there's only one that's on the original Bathhouse Row. It was interesting too. I explored more of the town until about 1:30pm and then I headed off to Oklahoma. That's all very summarized. I hope to expand on these past few days and the days to come later.

Saturday, February 25, 2006

Quick update to be expanded later....

Okay, very quickly I'm going to update. I am in Tennessee, just east of Knoxville. I'm about 3 hours from Nashville. Tomorrow morning I will be heading to Nashville to explore the city and then hopefully finding a place to sleep somewhere between Nashville and Memphis, unless some hotel in Nashville draws me in, or I end up staying there very late. However, since everything I want to see closes at 5pm, I doubt I'll get stuck there late. Thankfully time zones are on my side and I will gain an hour sometime between here and Nashville. Going east to west ROCKS!!! It's fun going back in time. :)

Anyway, let me sum up the past few days. Wednesday Jake, his former roommate Matt and I went to Bear Creek Mountain ski area. Jake snowboarded all day, Matt skiied (sp?) all day and I mixed the two. I finally tried snowboarding. It was fun for about 4 hours, then I got tired of falling on my butt, knees and chest and I was starting to get a headache, so I switched to skis for the remaining 2-3 hours that we were there. It was a really great day. I got a good feel for snowboarding and I will definately try it again.

Thursday I tried to pack up the truck, but didn't get all the way done. Friday I tried to finish up and get Jake's taxes done. Accomplished the taxes and most of the packing up, but didn't get it all accomplished fast enough to leave town on Friday. So, I left first thing this morning. That's all for now. Actually, I don't know if any of that needs elaboration. We'll see if I find something more to write about. The only interesting thing that really happened today was seeing a doppelganger of a friend of mine's son. I'm going to go try and sleep now.

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Roundtrip roadtrip, country stars and more

So, last week was a very exciting week. Tuesday morning I left early and drove to Lexington, KY. The point of the trip was to go to Paducah, KY (extreme western KY) to pick up a pie safe (large antique cabinet) for friends of mine that they had bought on eBay. I have a friend in Lexington from CMU, so it was a great opportunity to catch up with him. We hadn't seen each other in five years. We went out to dinner together, which proved more difficult than one would generally imagine. I happened to end up in Lexington on Valentine's Day, so every restaurant was totally packed. It was completely crazy. We drove around for a half hour trying to find a place to eat. We eventually found a place and sat down to catch up. It was fun. Then he let me crash at his place which was great. The next morning I got up very early and headed to Paducah. I got there around noon Paducah time (it is in Central time) and picked up the pie safe. Then I headed back to Lexington. I got there fairly late in the evening so I just went to a hotel.

It was a very nice hotel and not too terribly expensive. But, the amusing thing was that the first room they sent me to had someone's luggage in it and smelled really strongly of men's cologne, like he'd just left. That was a little freaky. So, they got me a new room and gave me a card for a free breakfast. That was pretty nice. I slept really well and headed out of Lexington around 9am the next morning. The drive was pretty boring for the most part. However, the one exciting part that I just determined the facts of was that I saw Brad Paisley's tour bus. Okay, so Adam is probably the only person who knows who he is, but honest, he's a REALLY big country star. I was driving along and saw this really huge dark fancy looking bus ahead of me. Eventually I caught up to it and it said "Corvette" on the back. I don't know what that was about, but it was fancy. It had a WVU license plate in a spare license plate holder and then the rim around the real license plate said Brad Paisley. I was all "that's so freakin' cool if that's Brad Paisley's bus". But, I wasn't sure. Then I went to his website and it seems he's from West Virginia and was in the area where I was at the right time. So, I'm pretty much positive it was Brad Paisley's bus. SO AWESOME!!!

Anyway, got back from KY and unloaded the pie safe at my friend's house. Then Friday I got to babysit the youngest baby I've ever babysat. That was a whole new world. I've never heated up a bottle or watched a baby who is not very easily distracted. It was fun though. I had a great time watching him and learning more about what babies that age are like. Friday night I met up with some people at The Drafting Room in Exton and also managed to randomly run into another friend. It's so funny to run into people like that. It was great. I know, lots of things were great this week. I'm terrible at coming up with new adjectives.

Saturday I drove all over creation looking for rollerblade wheels and a cot. That was really frustrating and I don't really want to talk about it. I found a cot, but haven't gotten rollerblade wheels yet.

Anyway, Sunday I did some running around helping people move things with my truck. In the afternoon I rented a Rug Doctor from Genaurdi's and cleaned my grandmother's carpet in her downstairs living room. My brother had spilled a bunch of coke on the carpet and it was bothering my grandmother. The Rug Doctor worked wonderfully. The carpet looks great now.

That's the end of the week really. Yesterday was a holiday though, so the Girl Scouts all had the day off. They had a bowling trip planned and that sounded like fun, so I went along. I didn't think I'd actually be bowling, I thought I'd just be watching the kids bowl and talking to the parents. But, a few kids hadn't shown up, so the girls asked me to take someone's place. I had a lot of fun. I really enjoy bowling. I did pretty well too. It was fun.

So, after all that fun, I can't wait to get the flip out of town. I'm packing up the truck today and hopefully doing a whole pile of other things so that I can get on my way tomorrow.

Sunday, February 12, 2006

Snow and MHS amusement

Okay, first off, all MHSers out there, you HAVE to check this out. It's too funny. There are reviews of a lot of the teachers we had and the teachers that were students with us.

Off that topic now, it SNOWED this weekend. I LOVE IT!!!! 18 inches of snow in King of Prussia and the world is lovely and white and pure. I love snow!! It started Saturday afternoon and went through Sunday midday. Saturday I went out in the snow and picked up some stuff from Trader Joe's. It was so packed, totally crazy. It was just as bad as Genaurdi's had been the day before. But, I got what I wanted and got out relatively smoothly. There were way more people out in the snow than I had expected. But, the roads weren't too bad. I spent the rest of the day and evening at home watching movies and Olympics and Law & Order with my grandmother. At one point Sarah and I were IMing each other and commenting on the pairs skating event that we were watchin and the commercials. That was fun. I've never done remote tv commentating.

This morning Jake kept waking me up. Around 7am he woke me up trying to dig his very lousy vehicle out of the snow. It's a decent enough vehicle when it's not snowing, but it is just not meant for the snow. He and Brandon couldn't get it unstuck so they managed to get it into a sorta parking space on the street. Then they came back inside and made random noises that kept waking me up. The final straw was about 10am he was SCREAMING over his Nextel phone to his boss giving him directions to get to the house. That was the end of all sleeping for me. I got up and made coffee and played on the computer for a while. Then I was really bored so I went outside and cleaned off the truck. There was A LOT of snow on top of it. Seeing as I wasn't cleaning it off for any particular reason I was having a lot of fun. I think if I'd been cleaning it off cause I was trying to get somewhere I'd have been annoyed about it. While I was cleaning off the truck the snow shoveling guy that Gram contracted with showed up. He was very hippy like and we talked about traveling and such. However, he was also very tired and ended up doing a rather pathetic job on the shoveling. When Brandon moved his SUV later I had to do a lot of shoveling around where it had been and then I had to move the truck to do the same. I had offered to move the vehicles for the shoveling guy, but he wasn't interested. But, it's okay, cause I got a great workout. :)

Friday, February 03, 2006

Stealing from Sarah.... again

Sarah finds all the best stuff. See following:

Total number of tracks: 2284

Sort by song title:
* First Song: --Untitled--, Autechre, Autechre
* Last Song: Zoot Suit Riot, Cherry Poppin' Daddies


Sort by time:
* Shortest Song: The End, Maceo Parker, Dial MACEO, 0:04
* Longest Song: drane2, Autechre, Autechre, 18:42

Sort by album:
* First Song: Send Me an Angel - Real Life, Various Artists, '80s Retro (Disc 1)
* Last Song: I have a lot of songs without album data at the end, but the last one with album data is: The Rockafeller Skank, Fatboy Slim, You've Come a Long Way Baby

Top 10 Most Played Songs:
1. 16 Military Wives, The Decemberists
2. All These Things That I've Done, The Killers
3. Narc, Interpol
4. Finding Out True Love Is Blind, Louis XIV
5. Blue Orchid, The White Stripes
6. Going Through the Motions, Aimee Mann
7. Sheep Go To Heaven, Cake
8. Son Et Lumiere, The Mars Volta
9. The Perfect Drug, Nine Inch Nails
10. Forever My Friend, Ray LaMontagne

First five songs that come up on Party Shuffle:
1. Give Me One Reason, Tracy Chapman
2. Mrs Robinson, Lemonheads
3. Pass In Time, Beth Orton
4. Such Great Heights, The Postal Service
5. Cross My Fingers, John Hiatt

Search for:
"sex", how many songs come up?: 3
"love", how many songs come up?: 77
"you", how many songs come up?: 222
"death", how many songs come up?: 7
"hate", how many songs come up?: 15
"wish" how many songs come up? 5

There we go. Anyway.... I'm in the Philly area, which leads to me not posting, cause I feel like nothing is going on. Saturday was the Robert Burns' Supper, which was a great party as always. I made Caledonian Oatmeal Ice Cream that was a huge hit. Not much other than that.