Oohhhhklahoma!

This past week was spent in Oklahoma, visiting with family and spending time with my mom who flew down from Michigan. I picked her up in Kansas City last Tuesday, and on Wednesday we headed to McAlester, OK to see the maternal side of my family. It was alot of driving but it was so worth it! Oklahoma is beautiful. I'm in a small majority who believes this, but I don't care. I loved OK when I lived there and I miss it. This trip strengthened my desire to move back there someday. 

We stayed at my grandma's house, which is incidentally the house she grew up in, so it always feels so old fashioned to me, but in a good way. We visited with her the first day. On the second day, we took a drive to Shawnee to visit my Aunt Doris and do lunch at Cracker Barrel, where I tried catfish for the first time. It was actually pretty good, though I was warned that catfish that's not farm raised is a bit fishier. Grandma drove, which was nice, and I got some actual road trip knitting done. 

On Friday we hung out at my Aunt Sue's house, visiting her, my Uncle Sonny, and his wife Shirley. More knitting time for me. As much as I like being around my family, I very rarely have anything to add to the conversation, so I'm pretty quiet. Knitting kept me from feeling awkward. That night we went and visited with my mom's brother and his wife. Lauren is such a sweetheart and an amazing cook. She made our meals all week, and I know feel the need to find a way to duplicate her breakfast quiche, her banana pudding, and her manicotti. In exchange, I helped her with some knitting. 

We visited another aunt, did dinner at Sue's again, got lost in McAlester, and spent some more time with Monte and Lauren. I bonded with family and finished a pair of socks for Mom. I even got a little tipsy on German beer on Saturday night. It was good to get away and see people, and it was great for my mom who hasn't seen her family in several years. 

Unfortunately, I had to take her to the airport today and end our time together. I've been pretty sad today, but all good things come to an end. Like most quality times with family, there was alot of laughing, a few tears, and some great home cooked foods. 

Now, I have to look forward to the next few months and the holidays. My goals for the next couple of months are to get our finances in order and caught up on a few straggler bills. Nanowrimo starts Monday, and I'm ready to get the concept in my head down in story form. I have three parties to plan or help plan, a bunch of knitting to do, and some cleaning and organizing. I'm also going to give online writing a chance over at Triond. It feels a little more laid back than AC, so I'm going to try to get some chain of thought words on specific topics written over there for some page hit goodness. 

Good to be back!

ALF

GenCon Day -1: On the Road

Our plan had been to start on the road by 6 am. Since J doesn't drive, he came to bed at about 3:30, effectively waking me up. I was psyched for the trip, so we ended up on the road by 4:09 am. Yeah, it was early. J hadn't slept, so a little ways down the road he conked out. Normally I hate having to drive with nothing to do. Our iPod connector wouldn't work right, we hadn't checked out any audiobooks, and after awhile, I just get sick of the radio. However, this time was okay, especially when I realized I could one-ear my iPod directly and kick out some podcasts on the long drives. This trip meant I got several episodes of the KnitPicks podcast under my belt.

We managed to miss all major traffic jams, even driving right through St. Louis. I remember when I was young, anytime we were driving through St. Louis between Michigan and Oklahoma, my dad would point out the arch. This drive took us right under it.

I love driving in big cities. I love how the roads overlap and how the skyline looks with the big buildings.

We only made three pit stops for the bathroom and gas. The second one was at a rest area in Illinois. The most depressing thing was the lack of attendant and the sign on the TV that said due to budget cuts, there was no one available to work.

We got to the hotel around 3, which was perfect timing since that was check in time for our room. The hotel we picked was the Super 8, about 6 miles away from the convention center. You couldn't beat the price, and when we were booking, our main goal was just to have somewhere to sleep and shower. The room itself wasn't bad. The beds were comfy, and the room was clean. They didn't give us any coffee until our last night there, though. And the TV guide was from June. But that wasn't really a big issue, and we were able to take advantage of the Continental breakfast all week, which really helped with our budget.

After a short rest, we headed out to see if we could find the convention center. We found it, but got fairly lost along the way. Still, when you're not on a timetable, getting lost can be amusing in a new city. The only really irritating thing was all the road work. Before heading back to the hotel, we stopped at Wal-Mart to get sandwich fixings so we wouldn't have to spend more money than needed on dinner. We'd munched on our snacks all day, so our budget didn't suffer from expensive fast food.

All the driving and the early morning had us crashing out pretty early, which was convenient considering how early we'd be getting up the rest of the week. I ended the night with some tea, knitting, and "The Dark Knight."

ALF

Michigan Trip Day 1

Technically, I suppose this could be considered day 2, but since all of yesterday was spent on the road, I kind of consider this to be the first real day of vacation. The drive was extremely long and a little boring. We left town at about 3:30 am, but that turned out not to be such a great idea because I didn't get enough sleep. Finally, somewhere in Missouri, I pulled over to a road side stop and took about a 40 minute nap. I was going to take some pictures, but when I woke up I was feeling refreshed and ready to get back to driving.

Jon is a heavy duty car sleeper and he ended up crashing out on me early. I listened to alot of music and managed to get through my new Lacuna Coil CD twice (awesome music so listening to it twice wasn't bad at all). We made several pit stops for bathroom breaks, a few for gas, and one for food. It was lovely to find that Taco Bells in Michigan are a little more competent than the ones in Manhattan. Once he woke up, we put on an audio book called "The Amazing Adventures of Fan Boy and Goth Girl." It's geared for teens but we were really enjoying it. Tomorrow we head up north and will get to listen to some more of it.

We got in a little after 8 eastern time last night. Mom and I went to Wal-Mart to get dinner stuff and we stayed up until Dad got home at around 11:30. Then we crashed hardcore. I had every intention of sleeping in, but I only made it to 8:00 this morning beforeI was up. Mom and I watched Repo!, which she liked (I knew she would) and I chatted with the parents for a little bit until Jon got up. The rest of the morning was just kind of mellow. We walked to the post office to drop off our change of address forms, and Dad introduced us to one of the elderly neighbor ladies he visits. She's kind of feisty. She wanted to tell the manager of the park to shove a turkey up her butt...how many elderly ladies do you hear say stuff like that??

This afternoon, I got to do something I've been waiting all year to do. We went thrifting (garage sales are next weekend). We hit the Salvation Army and the Goodwill store, and I scored a bunch of stuff. I got these two skeins of yarn which will look really good together for some project.

I also scored another big bag of yarn with more pastels, one of them a pretty pink that I'm using to make my a scarf for my friend's new baby. (Can't get the pics to load for those this time arond though).

I also found this pretty pillow with the cool oriental pattern on it. I think we bought one like it from our neighbors when we got our sofa and chair, so I grabbed this one up. I almost left it, but my mom made a good point when she mentioned that even if it didn't work for our living room, for fifty cents we had an insert for another pillow.

Jon picked up the Mulan soundtrack and I found this adorable jar that has no real purpose other than it was cute and I liked it. I'm thinking it will be good for q-tips.

I don't think I've ever taken a trip where I haven't brought along something to read. This time around though, all my books were packed. Granted, I have enough knitting and crocheting stuff to keep me busy, but I enjoy Jennifer Crusie so I picked this up for some pre-bedtime reading. I couldn't resist these little tupperware containers, mainly because I want to try to make Bento boxes and these are the perfect size and shape for them. My only reservation was the pattern on top of the white lidded containers. However, I think Jon's going to help me paint them, so that can just be another crafty project. After thrifting we came home to relax. Come to find out, my parents do have internet, it's just not wireless so we're having to share one connection. Not really a big deal. We're heading to my grandma's tomorrow and I'm pretty sure there will be no internet to be had where she lives. Tonight we're just going to hang with the parents and leave fairly early tomorrow morning for Mio. So far, the trip has been nice...my parents even took the news of the engagement well and everyone is getting along. My sister can't bring my nephew over tonight, but I'll get to see him next Wednesday. Next week I'll also get to hang with some friends down here and do some more thrifting.