For the past week Jess and I have been on vacation. We’ve had a nice long week of doing whatever we please, staying up late, sleeping in, going out and doing things we usually dont have the time for.
It all started on Saturday, with our anniversary. That’s right! Another anniversary! That makes 5 years! We’re hoping for many more. We slept in a little, and then went to the Texas RoadHouse down by Allentown. Took us about an hour longer than it should have to find the place, because of some bad directions, but it was a nice drive to Kutztown none the less! 
After lunch we shot over to allentown, and spent some money. Picked up an anime we’ve been waiting to buy, some tools at Sears, and some essential gear for our halloween costumes!
Then on Monday we took a ride up to the Crossings. Got some great deals on a few things for around the house, a new tea kettle, a crock for holding our kitchen utensils in, a nice blanket for in the living room, a christmas gift or two. Stopped at Friendly’s just to get ignored by the host. So we got back on the highway to go home. Jess fell asleep, so i surprised her by not actually getting off at our exit, and driving all the way to Hazleton so we could eat at Applebee’s. They didnt ignore us. In fact, we had a nice meal there.
Tuesday was a bit lazy, we didnt make any plans, so we did a few things around the house, and relaxed. During the week i’d been flopping between World of Warcraft, and Lort of the Rings Online. It’s a long story, but I’d been working with Blizzard to get my WoW account re-activated. They’d turned it off due to some sort of account dispute. See, i’d stopped playing back in… 2005 or so, maybe even earlier than that. Apparently sometime between then, and now, someone got into my account, built a level 60 hunter, and then Sold (or tried to?) my account. Blizzard found out, and of course suspended the account. After 2 weeks of getting a run around from them, I’d bought LotRO. Hey, i wanted to play, not bicker over account terms. Then a few days later, they saw it my way, and re-activated the account. Well i didn’t want to pay for two games, so I set out to decide which to keep. Tuesday i spent a lot of the day playing WoW.
Wednesday we took a trip up to the Hometown Farmers Market. We were dissappointed… Not many decent shops, and too many rude people. We got our french fries (one of the biggest reasons we go there!) and left. We stopped at Wal Mart to visit Jess’s mom, spent longer at Wal Mart than we did at the Farmers Market. We looked at MP3 players, looked to see if they had a Wii Fit (yea right!) looked for Shoes for Jess’s costume (yea right again), looked for goggles and gloves for my costume (are you getting the picture yet?). Jess really wants an MP3 player, to replace her old Dell Pocket DJ. I cant blame her. We got them years ago, and theyre just not holding up. The batteries dont hold the charge they once did, and they have firmware issues. They sometimes just lock up. And Dell doesn’t support them anymore.
Wednesday night we had plans with a friend we used to work with. So we went up to her place for dinner, and a nice evening. We had fun talking about old time’s and new opportunities. She’s started up her own home-based business, and she may have work for Jess. So that may work out nicely.
Thursday was another lazy day. Hey, it’s vacation! I spent most of the day playing WoW, and Jess spent most of the day working on one of her afgan’s, and watching movies. We watched The Nightmare Before Christmas together over lunch. Then she watched another movie, which i cant remember the name of right now, and then The Two Towers. I played WoW most of the day, after spending two hours looking for a group that would like to play with a 28 rogue, and subsequently looking for a guild to join after i found that looking for a group was impossible, and coming up empty…. I logged out, and started playing lotro. I’d started a Human Burglar in lotro. He was level 9 and i was having trouble getting to 10. Today when i logged back in, i started looking for quests, and not only got to 10, but right on to 11 in a few hours. I’m really starting to like this game. I ordered some MP3 players from NewEgg.
Friday we were planning on driving alllllll the way to lancaster to go to the Green Dragon Farmers Market. We’ve been doing this for a few years, going down there over our anniversary vacation. Well we decided against it. We didnt have a lot of money to spend, and with how dissappointed we were with the Hometown market, we were afraid of driving all that way, just to get disssappointed again. So we stayed home. We relaxed a bit in the morning, and then went out for a nice bike ride. I finally got to try out the new mountain bike that Jess’s Parents had so kindly bought me. We had a good afternoon. Jess also found out today that the ovulation treatment’s she’s been taking are working! She called for her blood test, and it came back showing that she’d ovulating. So that was a nice piece of news! Then Jess’s mom joined us for dinner. Then after dinner, my Dad and I worked on getting ready to paint the slats from the awning that we’d taken off the house months ago when we started painting. We cleaned up the basement a little, and wiped down and primed the bare spots on the aliminum slats. The primer stunk up the house. Man did that stuff have an odor.
Saturday morning my Dad and I were going to head out hunting. Spend the morning taking the muzzle-loader’s for a walk in the woods, but we decided it was more important to get some more work on the awning done. So instead we painted the slats up. Only took us a few hours in the morning. Now my entire garage is coated in a dusting of paint. The floor has a pretty thick coat of overspray on it, and the slats are all painted. Unfortunately during cleanup, one slat got bumped, and it fell off of the nail we had it hanging on to dry. As it fell, it took about 6 others with it….. So now i need to touch up a few slats before we can actually put them up. Not that big a deal really, since we’re not actually putting them up intil next weekend anyway. We worked until about 11. My Dad had to get home and get cleaned up. His church had a pig roast that afternoon, so he had to be down there by noon. Jess and I went down there at around 1:00, fought our way though the sea’s of tourists and picked up a nice meal of roast pig, mashed potato’s, saurkraut, apple sauce, and a nice crumb cake dessert. MMMMM! Then we spent a little time relaxing while we waited for Jess’s Brother, and his wife to get off of work and come over. Tonight is Randy and Dave’s scavenger hunt! We’d been looking forward to this for weeks! So i played a little lotro, Jess did some cleaning, and watched some tv. I cancelled my WoW account.
Saturday Night, SCAVENGER HUNT! We all met at Randy and Dave’s place. We’d missed the first half of the hunt because of our time constraints. But that’s ok, they weren’t linked, the first and second half that is. They were different events. The hunt started at about 5:40. Our first stop was alll the way out in Hickory Run, we had to meet at the old cemetary, where we got our first clue. From there we were sent down to Lehighton’s bear memorial, then to flagstaff road, then to to ball field by our place, then down to Kemmer park, where I twisted my ankle pretty bad looking for clue’s in the dark. Then up to the bottom of bugsie’s hill in Summit Hill. Then down to the board walk in the woods at the lake. It was a fun time, full of riddles, hunting for clues in the dark, and a few spooks. We should have Won, we were way ahead of the second team, but on the last riddle we got tied up and delayed. Then at the last location, there were no clues, and that was the riddle, we had to tell Randy that there were no clues. Well we were all scattered about looking for clues (that didnt exist) and Amy, Tara, and Steph’s team were the first to actually say to randy that there were no clues there….. So they won. I feel cheated.
Sunday at Midnight my first reminder that i have to go back to work this week hit me. My oncall started… Got worken up twice by pages, one of which i had to crawl out of bed to react to. Nothing major, but still, something i’d happily been without for the past week. Today we dont have much planned. Grocery shopping, and probably another lazy day, to prepare for work. I need to stay off of my foot anyway, my ankle’s pretty sore. Nothing major, just enough that i should probably stay off of it and let it heal. It’s back to work tomorrow, I’m almost dreading what i’ll be coming back to.
-War