i'm alive!

believe it or not, i survived my trip. at some point i hope to have up a more thorough account of it, along with pictures; but for now, here are the highlights:

sunday
arlington national cemetery
the white house (just the outside)
washington nationals baseball game (vs texas, lost 5-3)
smithsonian national museum of natural history

monday
supreme court (handed down three decisions [1, 2, 3])
library of congress
tour of the capitol building (including about 5 minutes of a house session)
navy memorial
washington monument

tuesday
jefferson memorial
wwII memorial
vietnam memorial
lincoln memorial
fdr memorial
korean war memorial
us department of the treasury - bureau of printing & engraving (the buck starts here!)
national archives (constitution, bill of rights, declaration of independence, among other things)

wednesday
gettysburg
harpers ferry

thursday
national zoo
smithsonian national air and space museum
marine corps memorial

friday
15 hours of travel
my birthday!

saturday
ft. drum centennial air show

sunday
walking tour of sackets harbor battlefield

monday
i'm home!
sleep

pat! update your friggin blog!

actually, i've been a bit lazy about that as well, so pat's not the only one. and i haven't really had an excuse... not yet, at least. in a few days though, i will, at least for awhile. friday after work i'm headed over to seattle, and saturday morning i fly to washington, dc. i'll be there until bright and early on the 27th, when i'll hop a train up to new york city, spend a few hours there, and then hop another train up to the syracuse area until the wee hours of the 30th, at which point it's onto another flight and back home. actually, come to think of it, i could probably extend the excuse for another week or so... it'll take me a few days to recover from the trip and readjust to my usual timezone, and then i'll have a friend from portland coming up for 4th of july weekend. monday after that i get to go back to work with my boss out on vacation, and hope things haven't gotten too crazy while i was gone, and then town council that night, where people will swear at us for either spraying or not spraying for mosquitoes. good times.

on which note, time for sleep.

fun: it does exist!

just spent a weekend in spokane, and it was definitely fun. even when the brits and americans (the russians died off early) were getting our asses handed to us in axis & allies. through a combination of a few bad moves and a lot of bad rolls on our part, the forces of fascism controlled the globe. oh well.

it was good getting to hang out with ben again after his semester in europe, drinking good beer and attending "classes" in brno. it was also good to see clayton again, even if he was playing as the japanese. i also discovered that most of my friends still there (ben and clayton, as well as paul, liz, and jess) have no souls, at least while playing apples to apples.

and, perhaps most importantly, i was able to pick up a few cases of bawls before leaving spokane, since i can't find it anywhere in my area.

finally!

my travel journal from my recent trip to oregon and california is finally available for your viewing pleasure.

coming soon to a blog near you

i should have my travel journal up for perusal by this weekend at the latest, and probably sooner than that. it's five pages long now, and i'm just getting started on the most eventful day. luckily, that day was also the second to the last, so there shouldn't be too much more to go.

delay of game

the "journal" post i'm working on for my vacation will probably be slightly delayed, since i'm going to crackima to pick up my car tomorrow. i do plan on doing some more work on it later tonight, and will hopefully have it up reasonably soon.

triumphal return

or at least a regular return. despite wearing my "whitworth college republicans [front] i think, therefore i am a conservative [back]" shirt on a drive through berkley and while walking through san francisco, i survived my travels. i've got a few pictures up over at flickr right now, and should be adding more later.

since a full writeup of the trip would be incredibly long in blog format, i'm planning on writing out the whole thing (probalby in word) and then posting a link to that for those of you who are interested.

tales from the road, part I

i'm writing now from beautiful (but ridiculously flat) davis, california, where the weather is still in the 70's. this is not a full post, just a brief update to let both of my readers know that i'm still alive.

portland was pretty dang awesome. it rained almost the entire time, but it was great to see geanna again, and to get to meet her family and some of her friends. i'm hoping to make it back sometime next year during a nicer season, to get a true taste of the city. more on that part of the trip later... probably this coming weekend, after i've gotten home and had some time to recover.

yesterday was interesting... i thought my flight left at 1:30, but it actually left around 1:05. which, unfortunately, was right about the time i was going through security. so that wasn't a whole lot of fun. but the folks from southwest were very helpful... i got on standby for the 2:55 flight, and luckily there ended up being an opening, otherwise i would have had to sit in the airport for another two hours till the next flight. although there was a margarita bar not far from where i was sitting, so it might not have been too boring.

anyways, rachel should be getting back from class pretty quick, and then we're off to dinner, so i'm off for now. i'll try to write again, but it probably won't happen until i'm home.

time to blow this popsicle stand

woohoo! time away from waterville! first it's off to portland for geanna's birthday dinner, and after a few days there i'm headed down to sacramento/davis to visit rachel; she decided that visiting her boyfriend/fiance down in honduras was more important than coming home to see me, so i guess i'll have to go to where she lives.

a quick word of warning to any others planning on traveling: according to the TSA, it's not ok to bring dynamite or hand grenades onto your flight. you know, just in case any of you were planning on taking either of those things with you. i'm not sure how i'll get by without my dynamite, but i'm sure i'll figure something out. seriously though, who the hell would try to bring that with them?

when life gives you lemons, kick it in the balls

the road trip that was supposed to be happening this week is quite obviously not happening. which is somewhat disappointing--i think it would have been a good experience--but at the same time, i really hate driving, so i think i'll get over it. also, at the beginning of next month, i'll be doing the next-best thing: an air trip. it won't be quite as cool, since i won't be flying my own plane (which i don't have, and which i would probably just crash when i tried to land it anyways), and there aren't quite as many stops (portland for a few days with geanna, hopefully getting to see alyssa as well, and possibly even a detour to visit BD at multnomah, time depending; and then down to sacramento/davis to visit rachel, who i haven't seen since march, and who hasn't updated her blog in almost as long); but in terms of cost it will be about the same or a bit cheaper than the road trip, and it doesn't require me to drive for an ungodly amount of hours. i've already got all the days cleared with my assistant manager, so unless the manager decides to veto those because he really needs to go golfing (unlikely, since it'll be november, but he does enjoy his golf) or southwest somehow screws up my tickets or the planes i'm supposed to be on, i'm looking forward to what should be a very enjoyable trip in a few weeks.

delay of game...

so, it looks like my planned road trip may have to be put off. like, maybe till next spring. i was counting on one of the local dealers having the car i wanted, so i didn't pre-order it or anything. but apparently the yaris is fairly popular, and most of the ones coming in are already sold. so, sometime in the next few weeks, i'll probably be taking care of that problem.

one advantage, though, is that i'll have saved up more money by the time the one i want comes in, so i'll have to borrow less.

also, i'm still hoping to be able to borrow my parents' car (yet again...) and make a weekend or extended weekend trip down to portland, since that area has the largest concentration of the people i was planning to see on the trip.