Why'd she have to go and eat my pie?

Christine has a habit of making off-the-cuff parodies of songs involving pies or cookies. Its cute, almost adorable. She's good at it, she shows off her quick mind, sometimes I join in on the fun, and it makes us both laugh. Plus we feed off each other (pun intended) and go back and forth until one of us face palms.

The Foo Fighters are a good bad. They have plenty of catchy good songs. Some of their new songs were playing last summer when she and I were on our road trip out west. During that trip, the radio was playing and a new song was playing - a Foo Fighters song she or I hadn't heard before. She did this normally cute thing to the song. But it went horribly horribly wrong (if I wanted to ever hear the damn song again without thinking about pies or cookies).

Why'd you have to go and let it die? Why'd you have to go and eat my pie? I ate it all and now its mine, why'd you have to go and eat my pie?

I still think the wrong lyrics when I hear it.

Rain rain go away

Thursday, its nice out, 60s. Friday is even better, pushing 70. But then the rain comes in. And it'll rain all weekend. And there might be 4"+ inches of snow come Monday.

I like winter and the cold and all, but lets get some consistency here. I would like to enjoy walking around a lake or park for two weeks in a row without having to wear shorts one week, and a jacket and snow boots the next.

I still haven't taken the canoe out since last summer, I don't even know the best way to put it on my car yet :( 

NYC from afar

I finally saw NYC while flying to Boston today. Its neat to see the two separate skylines of the business district (where WTC is) and further inland. And houses/buildings as far as the eye can see; and I'm 33000 feet up when I say that.

I always thought the Statue of Liberty was closer to the ocean, not as far in the harbor as it is. Not as welcoming to immigrants as I always believed...

OK, its more than just Boston's roads

Holy crap they suck.

I'm pretty good when it comes to the US Interstate system. Been on them in several of the largest cities in the US (Chicago, San Francisco, Denver, Boston, Miami, Dallas, ...), been on some of the most desolate stretches (historic US 66 in Arizona/Mexico, Nevada/Utah, Nebraska, ...), and places in between. I know the system:

- Odd #s run North/South

- Even #s run East/West

- Miles/Exits increment headed East/North

- Exits correlate with mile markers

- Rest areas near state lines usually have state official maps

OH WAIT. Not in New England apparently. I got on I-95 southbound and noticed it was exit 37. "Hey, that means I'm only 37 miles from Rhode Island, a state I haven't been to yet!". So I headed to RI, figuring it would be an hour or hour and a half round trip. I seems to be taking much longer than I figured it would, but don't really think about it; I'm behind the wheel. I see exit 13 but mile marker 31 but tell myself I'm just being dyslexic. I hit Rhode Island, see the first exit is 30. "Sweet, I can get to Connecticut in another half hour!".

Apparently, exit numbers don't correlate with miles in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut. They're just a incremental count of exits. That 1 or 2 hour trip turned into 4 and a half. And Rhode Island's rest stop closes and locks its doors at 6pm. Not even a map for my travels! 

At least I still got to drive and see some more of the US. Providence was surprisingly impressive. The "Big Dig" in Boston means you drive underneath the city for ~5 miles, not so great to take in downtown. From corner to corner, it takes 40 minutes to pass through the smallest state in the union. And I'm back to bitch about it after ~200 miles.

Boston roads suck!

They do. And its not for a lack of maintainence as the roads are in good condition given the climate. Its because of the markings and signs (or lack thereof).

I flew into Boston again today and picked up my rental car. Its an orange Toyota Matrix, almost identical to my red Vibe, so I'm excited to drive it. Despite the fun car, I hit the common frustrations on my drive from the rental car lot:

- Unmarked lanes at stoplights. Are they right turn lanes? Left turn lanes? Straight only? Go ahead and guess.

- Unmarked lanes. This lane is about twice as wide as a regular lane, and there are cars either driving in the middle, or cars passing other cars both being in the lane. Will it dissapear? Is it a 'real' lane? Nevermind this is at the intersection of two major interstates.

- Lanes just ending. So those stoplights that have 2 unmarked lanes? On the otherside of the intersection, is one lane. Hope you're faster than the car in the other lane.

- Lane markings being faded away. This is understandable because of the snow/ice/plowings/repeat, but its still annoying. Especially when lanes are all sorts of sizes.

- Old people driving slow. Seriously, 10 mph on an entrance ramp to an interstate? Really?

Despite all this, its still fun to drive here. I only wish I could drive around more, I tend to work-work-work when I'm here (gives me more time Thursday night/Fridays).

Valentines Day happenings

Christine is great. She's not the type of girl who wants to be taken to a nice ritzy place for dinner, or dress up and make a whole show of it. What did we do?

Didn't get out of bed until 1 cuddling ( :devil: ) and putzed around the house for awhile. Got dressed and went to the mall to people watch, pick up a pair of her hemmed pants, and get some food. The people watching was good, I was surprised how many people were dressed up though. Its just the Crabtree Mall, nevermind it was Valentines day late afternoon-early evening. There weren't as many teenagers as I was expecting too, but several couples or groups of women. I got dragged into some of the 'smelly goods' stores, we had some bad-for-you american chinese food, got an Icee, and went to the candy store. Everything was overpriced, but they had candy Lego bricks. CANDY LEGO BRICKS! I have a wall build with them on my desk now...

After the mall, we stopped by the closing Circuit City and then went to the RDU observation deck. There were quite a few people (mostly couples no surprise) there. Later we drove and parked under the flightpath for one of the runways (where there was a no parking sign which we ignored) and waited probably 20+ minutes for a plane to fly overhead. Waynes World style, except the plane was higher up.

While we were waiting, we just talked - about things we didn't know about each other. "What did you do bad as a kid?" was the main question. Shoplifting, petty theft, little things for the most part; it was nice to have that kind of "I still don't fully know you" conversation on Valentines day.

Afterwards we started home, but were still hungry. She's recently (after 4 years, finally) acquired a taste for Carolina BBQ, so we went to Smithfields and got food. Our conversation continued until we were home. It was a good night, a good way to remember why I proposed to her.

Iowa and Beyond!

The summer road trip is planned. Starting with a trip to Pocahontas IA for a cousin's wedding, Christine and I head west to see Mt. Rushmore, Yellowstone NP, Grand Tetons NP, and Glacier NP. The wedding is 7/10, and hopefully I'll have 2 weeks off of work after that.

It'll be 6k+ miles. Last trip was just around 7300 I think. I love BIG road trips - drive nonstop for a a day or two to get out there, then mosy around to see what you see. Putz around, see the sights, explore areas a majority of the people in this country haven't seen, and repeat. What could be better?

Hacky cough, begin!

I have allergies. They seem to always surface in fall and early spring. It starts with a mass of crap in my throat and it drains into my chest. After a few days, my head/nose/sinuses get stuffed up, and it too drains into my chest. Eventually, I'll feel better, but I'll have a cough. It lasts.

And lasts.

And lasts.

Last time, it was around for a month, only getting rid of it after 4 visits to doctors. I'm made fun of at work for this hacky cough that lasts forever.

We didn't go to Charleston this past weekend (long story). That at least meant I could watch all of the Superbowl, and maybe get some stuff done around the house. I noticed there was some water damage under a gutter by a motion sensor light that afternoon, and I started fixing it. That entailed getting up by the gutter to clean to seal where the source of the leak was. While I was up there, I should clean out the gutters right?

Well, if you haven't cleaned gutters before, if you don't clean them regularly they practically become soil on the bottom. And with soil and moisture comes mold/etc. Guess who is allergic to mold?

I'll have the cough by next Sunday. It'll be March by the time it's gone too.