Friday, May 27, 2005

TRIP TO THE HILLS...

Well this trip was an "adventure"! That's to say the least, it all was basically to see a good friend of mine get married. She has been a good friend for many years. It has been a long time since I've seen her, around a year, and she invited me to come. We had planned this out, pretty well we thought.  All in all it didn't go that bad.  Just not the best either. We decided instead of leaving on friday night that we would leave early in the morning on saturday.  5 in the morning is too early for me but I did it, and we got everything in the car and we were on the road by around 7:30 or so.  I ran by dunkin' donuts to get my large coffee (who knows when I would get to enjoy my dunkin' donuts again, as a lot of places do not have them).  The trip there was not all that bad. We were crusing right a long. Mapquest is where we got our directions and we learned from last time to make sure that we mapped out all the details of where we were going. We hit a little construction on the way out but it only lasted around 15 minutes or so.  Other than that it was smooth sailing.  At least until I made a wrong turn, though I realised it quickly and stop to look at how to get back.  It took us about 20 minutes to get going back again.  It is very annoying to see where you need to be, but not knowing how to get there, much like most teen years!  Anyway, we got there, McMechan, WV sucks. Well, I was only there briefly, but in that time I felt it sucked. Most of the streets had no street signs.  It's hard to tell which street to turn onto if they aren't labeled. Anyway the directions were great up till this point, and then we may as well not have had them.  We finally arrived!  Or had we..?  We had been driving now for something around 6-7 hours.  Of course we didn't want to be uncomfortable while we were in the car so we didn't wear the clothes we were gonna were into the wedding.  We had to change really quick, since now it's around 3:20 (20 minutes late) we got changed in the parking lot of the church.  Wasn't too bad for me, I just had to throw a shirt on. But the chicks had a little more to keep covered, and they did!  We walked around the corner to the front of the church and we started to see people slowly coming out of the church.  Well it was surely a wedding, but was it the right one...?  That was the only thought I could focus on, was this the right wedding, I didn't recognize anyone.  For what seemed like an eternity I stood there watching, hoping to see someone I recognized to validate we were in the right place.  Well, finally after about 10 minutes or so of people steadily but slowly pouring out of the church doors I saw my friend.  A big sigh of relief.  Now I'm sure at this point Tanya was really feeling out of place, as was I, but she didn't even know Amanda.  Amanda, was the only one I recognized, later I found that I also had met one of her friends but didn't recognized her right away.  So now they announce that the reception is ready to start and everyone needed to drive there.  Wow, so I saw the outside of the church where the wedding took place, but do to construction, wrong turn, and a lack of street signs we were late.  Now the reception is in Ohio, no big deal though, it shows it's less than 15 minutes away, right across the border.  The sign on the place said Belmont Eagles Club, the invitation said Bridgeport Eagles Club, so we naturally ASSUMED that there must be another club a littl further up the street.  We ASSUMED wrong.  As we have learned if your not sure, you can always turn around but the map showed it wasn't that far so we decided we had traveled far enough and we would go check out the other place.  We had originally tried to follow someone from the wedding but since we didn't know any of them it was hard to follow them in comfort.  They could have been going somewhere else, or we might have started following someone we thought was in the wedding when we were wrong.  Well We were shafted again about the name of the club, but that's ok, we've arrived now, and even though I have a splitting headache from this trip already I am ready to sit and relax.  We sat at one of the tables on the right side, but in the middle of that group of tables.  Every other table was full or close to it, these tables seat 12 people.  We had 4 at ours.  Once again feeling out of place.  We sat there for a while trying not to create any reason to look at us weird, as if all the people weren't already looking at us like we were out of place. Like maybe we were uninvited guests that just wanted a free meal and beer.  Not the case though.  To shorten this story a little cause there is still quite a bit left.  I finally saw Amanda and had a chance to talk to her, she looked very pretty and I like her dress.  We had a bite to eat, a little champagne, and a beer for me.  I got to dance with Amanda, and Lili but not a chance for me to dance with Tanya.  It was time to get moving again.  Before it got too dark, didn't really want to be driving on major hills on roads I didn't know at all in the dark.  Well it was supposed to be about an hour and a half.  And once again the drive wasn't bad, until we got to the town we were supposed to be in.  Then the directions lost us again.  After driving around for a while mostly on the same roads, we got off the roads the map listed and couldn't find a way back onto them.  So we found a mcdonalds and pulled in, by this time it was close to 10pm.  I called Bob, and told him to come and get us.  We weren't far away, and what luck, we pulled into the place that he worked at.  We crashed at his house and met his chick, it was good to see him.  The kids were wired but quickly wired down.  We crashed and woke up early to get moving.  In the light of the morning we could see that we had drove past his place something like 4 times.  Without seeing it.  We had a little bit of trouble getting back to the interstate but we managed pretty quickly.  We didn't wake bob or ashely.  We never did find one of the roads we were supposed to drive on and I think that's why we had so much trouble there.  We got back on the interstate and got moving.  Decided we would grab a bite to eat soon Tanya wanted to eat a cracker barrel.  We drove for three hours, with no coffee, to finally break down and find another place to eat.  We hadn't seen any signs for cracker barrell at all.  We fianlly saw a sign for shoney's , that sounded good.  On the way to shoney's we saw bob evans and decided to eat there instead .  We were hungry and I really wanted my coffee.  I gulped down quite a bit of coffee and ate a good brunch.  When we got back on the interstate we saw a sign for Cracker Barrell at the next exit.  I was upset but we ate some good food so I didn't want to complain.  Then there was a lot more driving, we finally made it home.  It was good to be home.  The trip kinda sucked but it was an adventure.  And it was really nice to see my friends, it's a shame we didn't plan it better cause my other friend lived around 1.5 hours from the wedding and it would've been cool to visit him while we were around.  For our next trip I just purchased the Microsoft Streets and Trips with GPS Unit.  Just got it yesterday so I haven't had a lot of time to play with it, but my initial thoughts are good.  One of the better things M$ has put out there and not too bad at around $100, compared to other "real" GPS units that is.  Well, it has taken me five days to finally finish writing this so I am done, and ready to get home.  Later :)

Sunday, May 08, 2005

Mother's Day

08-08-05 Mother's Day

Well Mother's Day was good got some good food. The weekend flew by once again with too much to do and not enough time. I did however have a chance to update my pictures site (Check it out)now with around 1200 pictures up. If you have any pictures for me to post then please contact me. Lots of computers to work on lately! It's gonna be another busy month for me I think.

Movie Review: Cube Zero 2004

Not a bad movie, 3 stars. The original was still the best and Hypercube still had some really cool effects. Cube Zero is a prequel to CUBE. The portion I really liked about this movie is the fact that you see more about the people behind the cube. You get to see some of the "employees" and a good deal of time is spent in the observatory room. The special effects were good because they weren't over done. Still fairly gory in parts. Overall if you like the other cubes then you should really watch this one too, as it adds to the whole story. If you haven't seen any of them, this is a good one to start with. It still leaves a lot of untold story though. I'm not sure if they are planning another movie but IMO it would be nice to continue seeing more. The movies are very simple but so captivating because you want to see more of the rooms, the people behind the cube, you also want to see more of the traps.

Saturday, May 07, 2005

New Blog!

I don't really have time for this but I figure what the hell maybe I'll give it a shot. Anyway, it's hard to say what may be up here. I guess whatever I feel like posting when I post it. Don't hold your breathe or anything.