Round Lake, NY back to Round Lake, NY
Total Distance: 10.00 Miles (Don't ask me how that happened)
Ride Time: 43 min
Avg. Speed: 13.8 mph
Max Speed: 38 mph
I went on a short little ride today, down the bike trail up and around back to the house. It was mainly to get out and about on such a beautiful day. Nothing too exciting happened. It was the first time I didn't bring my camel back, I just stuffed a spare tire in my seat bag. I strapped my pump to the bike and threw my phone and a credit card in a ziplock bag. Keeps they dry in the back pocket of my shirt. Why did I have time to go for a ride today? I'm glad you asked, I'm officially done at Curtis Lumber. Thank god. I was starting to go crazy. There was just no mental stimulation at all! The story of how I got my new job and left my old job is long and interesting. Ask me sometime you see me I love telling it. Anyway, I handed in my two weeks notice because I got a job where Sara works. CGI of Albany. My title will be Management Assessment Specialist or M.A.S. where Sara is a Contract Specialist or C.S. I am basically an auditor that travels once a week to different section 8 housing offices. Where ever the owners of the buildings or units keep there paper work. I meet with the owner or the company the owner hires to do the paperwork. I am basically in charge of making sure that no one is getting screwed over, mostly the government, HUD. Anyway after my two weeks notice was handed in Curtis decided to let me go home for both weeks, sweet! And even sweeter is that they are going to pay me one of the weeks, no clue why. So pretty much Curtis lumber is paying me $10/hr to write my blog, go biking and watch movies. Awesome!
In other news, we finally decked out our porches with as many $4.88 chairs as Eckerd had. And on Memorial day we threw a last minute BBQ/party. More people showed up then I thought would come and it was great hanging out with everyone.
I've seen a bunch of movies recently so here are my takes on them all:
X-Men: Awesome if you have seen the other two and know anything about comics. Other then that you might not like it.
Da Vinci Code: Great but not super great. Much, much better if you've already read the book. Everyone that hadn't read the book didn't understand anything. It's a good adaptation though.
MI:III: Not bad, great action movie. It was a little hard to watch because Tom Cruise is such a huge tool! But once you ignored that it was good.
Aeon Flux: Pretty sweet action sequences but not amazing, I liked it but I only paid for a rental.
Milwaukee, Minnesota: Amazing! It's a independent film that we just by chance picked up and it turned out to be very deep and have many levels. Some people didn't like it because I think they didn't get all the different levels it played on.
The Edukators: Thats really how they spell it. I thought this was great too, I actually didn't get to watch the whole thing but it had huge potential and made you think about life and all the ridiculous stuff we end up collecting as time goes on.
Brick: I actually haven't seen this yet but it looks like it's going to be amazing, I'll let you know.
Ride on!
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Sara's Away Message
Apparently Todd caught on that although I leave him elaborate "to do" lists on his days off from work, I inevitably sit on my ass during mine. This morning he left me a little list for when I crawled out of bed at 12:30 pm:
DeCot:
1. dishes (4 days old...fuck.)
2. vacuum (where is it?)
3. bathroom (what's wrong with our bathroom??)
4. tune bikes (damn bikes take up too much room in the bathroom. that's what's wrong.)
5. clean grill (i'm not going out in that rain.)
6. hang screen door (todd's 3-week old "project" still propped against the wall in the kitchen.)
7. get mail (i'm afraid of the mailroom lady. She's too friendly. Creeps me out.)
8. buy wine (he must have forgotten to leave me the money.)
9. fix dvd player (under certain circumstances it still plays...)
10. love me (this one is easy, and--if i play my cards right--#10 voids all others listed above.)
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Vacation!
After working hard, Sara and I thought we were due for a little vacation. My Aunt contacted me awhile back to invite both Sara and I to South Carolina for my Grandmothers 90th birthday/Mothers day. What friends we had left in Ithaca were also pressuring us to come up for graduation. Unfortunately, they coincided. We took that as a perfect time to take a week off. We were going up to Ithaca Friday to Tuesday. And Wednesday to Sunday go to South Carolina.
Charlie and Quinnen drove up on Friday night visited with us at the house a little and then we left for Ithaca.
We had an amazing time there seeing everyone we wanted and even getting into the senior week spirt by playing beer golf. I even went on a side adventure with Garrett and Trinity to Six Flags Darien Lake. After finally getting there we only had to pay $10 to get in and there were no lines on the rides. We did every big coaster once and the best one three times. It ended up being well worth the drive. We also ended up having a sweet BBQ after beer golf. During which our good friend Pete fell off a fence that happened to be only held in with one screw. He gave everyone quite a scare but ended up being okay. I'm sure he was a little sore in the morning though. Click the picture to see it better.
We had a great time in Ithaca and I hope the actual graduation went well.
It was off to South Carolina early Wed morning. Our plane left at 6:30 am, or at least I thought, once we got there an hour early for security, I realized the plane didn't actually leave until 7:30 :-) Oops! After two short flights we were there and my Aunt picked us up. The main reason for this trip was because I wanted Sara to meet my grandmother. As well as seeing family I hadn't seen in awhile, including my grandmother. We arrived and Sara and I went in to see her. She had been doing fairly well until about a week before we got there. She had just turned 90 and had been doing fairly well. It was hard to see her at first because I was expecting the grandmother I remember, minus a little mental abilities. She was down to about 80 lbs. and could barely talk. The first thing I said to her was "How you doing grandma?" And her reply was "Better then you," as a smile cracked across her face. I introduced Sara to her and she seemed to understand we were going to be getting married. She said "There is so much I want to tell you that I won't be able to" And after that she got really sad and mellow, I think realizing the state she was in. We sat with her for awhile just holding her hand. We would go in occasionally during our visit to check on her and be with her, she mostly slept. Sara even went in to just sit and talk to her alone, which I was glad she could do. She became less and less aware. And in my mind I hoped she wouldn't have to live much longer like she was. Friday morning we all got up and went to the beach. On the way hope we got a call letting us know something was wrong. We arrived and found out that Grandma had passed away. It was sad, and hard to hear. But I was happy that she had gone peacefully and both Sara and I were able to say goodbye.
While visiting we were also able to enjoy the beauty of South Carolina. My Aunt and Uncle had a beautiful place on the lake, here is a picture of the moon rising right in front of there house.
The lake is very shallow with crystal clear water. One beautiful afternoon I convinced Sara to come out in the Kayak with me to a nearby cyprus cove. All weekend, and even before we left I had told her about the gators in the lake. So as we paddled around every turtle that jumped in the water I would claim was a gator. As you can see we were having a grand ol' time.
In the back corner of the cove I think I see something that looks like a gator and point to it. Not realizing that off to our left there is a real alligator about 10 feet out. It swims towards us until its about 3 feet from the boat then dives and swims under the boat. It was probably about 6 to 7 feet long. I was amazed and Sara was less then amused. I wanted to get a good picture of it up close but at that point I think Sara was questioning wether she should still marry a man who was putting pictures before her safety. This is the best one I could get. (Click to see it larger)
We left the cove at a fairly fast pace. Once back on shore everyone found it very amusing that Sara had seen a gator so much talk about it. She even got the nickname Gator Bait from my family. My cuz in law, Ben, and I thought it would be a good idea to go back out and find it. Equipped with a camera and some ham we left again. After paddling around the whole lake to no avail we gave up. We didn't have Gator Bait with us and knew it was a worthless endeavor.
The whole vacation was amazing and I was really happy to see and spend time with my Ithaca friends, family and most of all glad I was able to say goodbye to my grandmother.
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