Day 448

Hello everyone!

The new house survived our first full day here!  This morning I got up to wait for the water company.  I got some breakfast, studied, and cleaned up a bit.  We had to go two blocks down the street to use a bathroom.  It was bad.  But thankfully they came right after 11 and got our water hooked up.  Yay!

After a quick lunch we went to Starbucks with Tim.  He was doing some work for his internship, I studied for MLC, and Kimmy did some job searching.  We were there for a couple hours, then went to run some errands.

After some successful errands, we returned home and worked on straightening the kitchen.  We have our kitchens and dining room pretty well set, now we're working on the living room and office.

We started to get dinner ready when we discovered that our oven is not working.  So Kimmy worked some magic and made spaghetti in the microwave! She's pretty awesome like that.  Our landlord is coming tomorrow morning to fix the oven.

After dinner we cleaned the kitchen up some more, then started on the office.  I think we should be pretty well done by the end of the week?  We'll see!

We had planned on watching a movie... But Kimmy's TV stole the DVD and won't give it back.  So we just ate ice cream.

It's been pretty exciting to live in a new place that actually feels like it's ours.  I know it's not... But this is so different from the typical feeling of just occupying some dorm or apartment owned by the University or whatever.  I have a feeling of ownership.  And it's strange, but pretty neat.

That's it for now.  We're hoping to give you all a video tour soon, but I'll keep you posted on how that's going.

Good night!

Day 447

Well.  We're in our new house!  Yesterday morning we packed up and left for Muncie. 

It feels so weird to be renting a house with Kimmy. It's awesome, but it's still sinking in that we're married and living together... And that we don't have to go our separate ways on a couple weeks or months.  But I'm sure it will all become normal soon.

So we spent the afternoon unpacking.  Mon and dad made a trip to Walmart to get some food, then Jessie and Richard came over for lunch. Kimmy's parents stopped by for a little bit on their way to Springfield.

Mom and dad went over to Jessie's apartment to get a couple loads of things, then they went home. So Kimmy just did some more unpacking.  Later on we made a trip to Macy's to try to get things off of our registry with gift cards.

After dinner we made one last trip to Jessie's apartment and got the last bit of our belongings.  After we'd unpacked back at our house, our landlord came by to go through all the paperwork and get some money from me.

We also made a Walmart run.  We'd narrowed our registry down to the most important things (like silverware) and got those.  So now we begin the massive unpacking!

And hopefully someone comes to turn our water on this morning.  That would be great!

Day 446

Well, this was the last day of packing and things.  Because after today... I'll be gone!  There are still some wall decorations and things like that, but everything else got packed up today.

So I packed this morning, then I went to dad's soccer game at 11.  I don't know who they were playing, but it was a good game.  It was much colder than I had anticipated, so I only stayed for the first half.  But his team did a good job.

After soccer I came home and got some lunch.  Then Kimmy and I went to run some errands.  First we went to Wal-mart to get a binder for my study manual.  My MLC study manual came in the mail today... it's kind of ridiculous.

This is going to be so much fun!

Anyhow, after Wal-mart we picked up my car from the Kia dealership, then went to go see the grandfolks for a bit.  We talked about Kimmy and my trip to New York and about their trips together.  I was glad that we could go see them, since we hadn't really gotten much of a chance to talk with them at the wedding and last week was so crazy.  But we visited with them for a while and had fun!

When we got home there was more packing.  Woo.  But it all got done, so that's good.

Mom and dad brought a frozen pizza home for dinner.  And it was really good! It was almost as good as the pizza in New York :)

Let's see. After dinner we... you guessed it: packed some more.  I was able to get rid of a decent number of things, but there's always that box or three that you have a hard time getting rid of.  But there is room for now, so I can deal with those later.

Well, this is my last update in Findlay for a while.  And possibly my last update from a computer for a week or so (but hopefully less).  We're going to wait until we move in to find an Internet Service Provider, since there are usually really good deals at the start of the semester.  So... here's hoping for good deals!

So long, Findlay.  We'll hang out again soon, I'm sure.

Day 445

Yesterday was a packing day.  I have most everything in my room out of the drawers and out from under my bed, but I just need to get it into boxes.  That will be today.  So I spent most of the morning packing.  I also believe that I have all of the utilities figured out?  The only issue is that we won't have water until Monday morning.  Oh well!  We'll figure it out.

I also took my car to the Kia dealership to have them look at a couple things. Driving to New York and back made me aware of a couple issues.

And!  Jeremy posted some of the pictures from the wedding!  You can see them here: http://kesterimagery.passgallery.com/event/6pjps119171

I approve.

Let's see.... I did some more packing.... then Kimmy and I made chicken and rice for dinner.  I just used cinnamon to spice the chicken.  It was really good, but it didn't have enough flavor.  Next time I might try letting it sit in a cinnamon/brown sugar marinade of some sort.  We also made yellow rice and Kimmy ate way too much.  As in... she had a hard time moving afterwards.  She is funny.

Then more packing.  It was neat.

After all of the packing, I played Team Fortress with Jared for a little bit.  But I was pretty tired and I still have a lot of work today, so then I went to bed.  The end!

Day 444

Well.  We made it to Findlay!

We left the hotel in New Jersey around 10:30.  Then commenced driving back to Ohio.  I tell you what... New Jersey is an awful place to drive.  It seems that there are nice areas to live, but driving there is atrocious.  You can't turn left, the toll roads make the highways undrivable, and the drivers assume that they're the only ones on the road.  I came to the realization that there are two types of drivers in New Jersey: those who disrupt the flow of traffic and those who are visiting New Jersey.  The worst part was when our 4 lane highway split into about 10 toll booths... then merged back into two lanes of highway.  One of which went north while the other went south.  It was a nightmare.  I was able to get into the toll booth that was directly in front of the lane I needed to end up in, as we figured that I had the best chance of getting into the proper lane.  Things were going fine... slowly but fine.  Then the two lanes next to me started getting closer and closer until they merged right in front of me and cut me off.  It was a mess.  I was eventually able to nose my way into the line of traffic, but it was all just awful.

We finally got out of New Jersey (praise God) and got into Pennsylvania.  Pennsylvania isn't bad, there's just a lot of it.  And it's boring.  And there aren't a lot of stops on the turnpike.  But we made it.

Around the time we got into Ohio I was starting to get jittery.  I'd had a large coffee, a 5 hour energy, and Mountain Dew.  And it was storming.  But we survived.  When we got to Findlay we dropped Jasmine off at her hotel and came home.  We talked with mom and dad for a bit, then just went to bed.  It had been a long day.

Day 443

Yesterday started off with a little less adventure than usual.  We had breakfast with our hostess, then got all packed up.  We'd planned on going to the Financial District, but then decided not to because we got a little bit of a late start.  So instead we went to Coney Island for some pizza.  We got there around 11:30, but the pizza place didn't open til noon.  So we just walked around a little bit until it was open.

Pizza!  I think it was my favorite thus far.  Most of the people there had some pretty significant Italian culture.  It was great.

After pizza we walked along the boardwalk for a little bit, but we didn't have much time left before we needed to get going.  We did see Nathan's hot dogs!

But we didn't get to stop.  Hurumph.

The plan was to pick up Jasmine (the daughter of Kimmy's mom's friend) and bring her back to Findlay with us.  The daughter's parents are in need of some medical assistance, so they thought it would be really helpful if they could all be together for a while.  So we offered to take her as far as we could.

We'd been making pretty good time... until traffic.  There was a car wreck and we got stuck in traffic for about an hour and a half.  Gross.  But we made it a little later than we'd anticipated and got her all packed up.  Then it was off to stay with Nick!

Oh, and apparently the shoulder is a completely usable lane for traffic in New Jersey.  Driving here is awesome.

More traffic.  Our hour and 45 minute trip to Nick turned into 3 hours.  Blarg.

But we made it.  And we went to dinner at Chili's when we arrived.  We all got hamburgers, then Nick wanted to hear all of the details about our trip.  So dinner was good and fun and all of that.

We got Jasmine checked into her room.  Then we just sat around and talked about all of the awesome and silly things we could conjure up.  Yeah, that's about it.  Back on the road in a little bit today!

Day 442

I feel that everyday has been all "It was sooooooo busy" and everything.  But yesterday.... yesterday was in a league of its own.

Our main plan for yesterday was to go Geocaching in Central Park.  So after another wonderful breakfast (perogies, sausage, fruit smoothies, and peach cake), we made a plan and got on our way.  We'd had a big breakfast and left around 11:30, so we figured we'd just get some lunch from a street vendor or something.

We found an old friend!

Oh!  Also.  When we got on the subway, we found this awesome guy.

The guy in the middle (with the black hat) just wandered onto the subway, looking for a nice place to sit.  So he picked that seat, said something to the guy next to him, and started drawing.  In less than a minute he'd drawn a portrait of the guy in the blue shirt.  It was incredible.  But he just kept adding detail to the picture.  The guy in the blue shirt missed his stop... but he just laughed it off and sat back down, waiting for the next stop.  The end picture was really really good.  He gave the artist some money ($20, I think) for the picture, then went about his business.  I just thought it was so interesting how it all worked.  The artist had an eye for who would be a willing client, and the man in blue was clearly on his way to something, but he was so laid back about it that he was able to take some time to enjoy the little things.

When we got off the subway we made our way to Central Park and began Geocaching.  It was sort of a bust.  We tried 5 different caches... and didn't find any of them.  Hurumph.  But we say some parts of Central Park we would not have seen otherwise.  One of the caches was supposed to be in the Conservatory, but when it wasn't there we just walked around and looked at things for a while.  We ended up walking the entire length of Central Park, which is about 3 miles in a straight line.  But since it's a park with many non-vertical paths, it was closer to 4 or 4.5 miles.  It was fun.

We went to another pizza place for dinner.  This one was much fancier than the others and I think it was my favorite thin crust.

After dinner we went back to Time Square... and that's when things got interesting.  Keep in mind that after about 2 or 3 hours of trying to Geocache, my phone was nearly dead.  I turned it off in case we really needed it for directions.  So we're walking through Time Square and this guys comes up to me and says "Hey.  Do you like funny white guys?"  So he starts telling us about how Time Square isn't the "real New York" and everything.  He then tells us about this comedy club "where the real New Yorkers hang out."  After a quick 15 second conference, we decided to give it a shot.  We'd been looking for something to do anyways.  He gave us some directions and we were on our way.

We arrived at the club about 30 minutes early and just stood outside waiting with 4 other people.  Well..... at 8:25 some guy opens the door and informs us that they had to cancel the show for tonight.  Sweet.  We didn't really need that $20 anyways.  Oh well, it was an adventure.  We'd picked up a map from the last subway stop, so we figured out how to get back to the ferry.  It looked like it was just a few blocks away, so we started to walk.

It turns out that the map was pretty poor at proportions.  Usually Kimmy and I are both really good with maps.  But when all of the streets are numbers (or the roads aren't on the map) and we aren't sure which direction we're traveling, it's difficult.  After taking two wrong turns, walking for about an hour and a half, and walking through some areas that were clearly not where tourists generally travel, we ended up right in the middle of China Town.  I've heard it said before that people get lost in China Town.  They're silly.  We were so lost that we wound up IN China Town.  With the last bit of life in my phone we tried to find our way to the nearest subway.  And we went the wrong way again.  I have no idea how I've been able to make so many wrong turns this trip.  Apparently I'm really great at navigating in a car, but for some reason walking is so much more difficult.  So we walked towards where we thought the subway was, but ended up just finding this park that seemed way to full of kids for 9:30 at night.  And there were about 30 adults playing this card game with the main point (I assume) of being angry and slapping cards on the table.

After a while we saw a vacant taxi and hailed it.  I told the driver to take us to South Ferry.  I guess that translated into "just wherever you feel like dropping us off."  Actually I think he just got his directions mixed up because he took us to East Ferry.  Which was not at all where we wanted to go.  But we didn't know that until we'd gotten out of the car and walked a bit.  We assumed that it was just a different side of the building.  But... it was actually the wrong place entirely!  So we hailed another cab and I tried "Staten Island Ferry" this time.  It worked.  He got us to the front entrance of the terminal and we were excited.

From the time when we'd first purchased the tickets until that point (just after 9:30), we'd racked up the following statistics: Time taken - 2 hours; Dollars spent - $43 ($20 for tickets, $5 for subway fare to the club, $5 for ice cream in China Town, $13 for two taxis); Miles walked - 3+; Rage Level - over 9000.  But we made it.  My goodness...we made it.  I was so happy to stumble back into our bed and breakfast last night.  We'd had quite the day.