I have honestly not had time to post, and that is a promise. But this will be a good one, I assure you. It comes with many pictures.

So, the trip to Virginia.

We left on Wednesday as planned, with Daisy in tow. We took her to prevent her from being alone another week straight. She doesn't do well alone. Plus, if she really, really didn't get along with Jen, then it would be good to know. On the topic of Daisy, we took her to the vet today. She has, at best, another month. She has a respiratory cancer, half a dozen tumors, a lung infection, and fleas. You'll understand about the fleas in just a minute, though.

So, after an 8 hour drive, we get to Madeline's (that isn't spelled right) house. Only, it's not a house, it's a college student's house. That is to say, half a dozen college students live(d) there. The level of order and cleanliness was at a level I did not know existed in normal humans. As we walked in, we were promptly informed that the cat had fleas and that some measures had been taken to kill them. Queue Daisy's fleas.

We hung around there, Christopher and I spent most of our time driving around, he gave me a little driving lesson, and boredom was abound. We did not have much to do.

The anniversary party was on Saturday, which was completely uneventful. The food was really nasty, although the punch was quite good. I'll take that punch any day. The party was in a Presbyterian church. Therefore, rich. The youth room had 2 27" TVs, an air hockey table, a pool table, and 2 foosball tables. The cafe (a full cafe) had 3 27" TVs, and a piano. This, my friends, is what the churches of the South spend their money on. I am fairly sure that the money used on 5 27" TVs could almost feed an average man for a year. Anywho. The piano was manned by all 4 of my cousins and my aunt Lynn, who contributed their lovely cello, violin, dulcimer, and flute muzak. I spent most of the time drinking punch and playing pool, or nervously standing around looking at people I've never met, and still have not. The very nervewracking thing about family reunions is that you're looking at people you don't know, and if you glance at a girl and begin to think "Hmmm, she is mildly attractive." your blood curdles as you remind yourself as she is your (n)th cousin. This mind game wears down on you fast, and I retreated to playing pool and slurping punch for this reason as well.

Brooke is in the middle there, I have no clue who anyone else is.


There was cake. There's always cake.


Madeline is on the left, Eliza is on the right. I don't know why my dad found this moment special, but Eliza appears to be enjoying her camera.


They all look exactly the same. One of them is my grandma. Four of them are not.


The rest of the week was highly uneventful. We didn't do anything really. The most fun I had was playing putt-putt with Christopher and Dad, I spent most of my time at the condo watching the Discovery Channel, which was highly appealing to my tastes, but not exactly an exciting way to spend vacation. The phone in the condo was restricted from outside calls, and you had to pay a fee to unrestrict it. Apparantly the fee for talking was also quite high, so calls were out. That was my wonderfully spent 7 days.

The trip home was a very long 8 hours. Oy. Two dogs in the car made for a very hard time. As cute as Jen is, she is a puppy, and puppies are innately handfuls. I had practically no room, so sleep was not an option. Oh well.

These were taken at home, but hey, it works.






Tuesday night was also a rough night. I spent a lot of time setting things up for Jen and getting a strategy ready for how to train her. Along with the unpacking, I was also figuring out how to spend some time with the Ohio-ans (pronounced O-hwA-nzz). I also seccuesfully doles out 24 GB of Season 4 of 24 while I was gone, so I felt rather good about my contribution to the community. Season 4 has been good so far (I've watched 4 episodes), we'll see if it keeps things up.

On Wednesday, I had barely enough time to wake up and shower before Amanda, Daniel, Kylie, and Patrick showed up at my door to wisk me away to Benjamin's house, where Maria and Jessica did await. I daresay (i declare that to be one word) I have not had such a good time in many a month, I truly do love you Ohio-ans. We spent some time at Benjamin's house, playing cards, poking eachother, and just sitting around. We toddled off to Emma's house, and did more of the same; poking eachother, playing cards, and sitting around. We decided to camp out in the great wild that is Emma's property, so Emma's mom took us out with out stuff in the truck to their little camp site.

Things were grim at first. Very grim indeed. There were loads of bugs, the grass was long and pokey, so we couldn't sit in the tents, and we only had one match to make our camp fire. Things picked up once we got a lawn mower from the house and mowed everything down, and at the same time, Benjamin, Patrick and I got the fire going. The fire kept the bugs away, so tending the fire was a rather pleasant job. Somewhere in there Rachel and Robbie (they go to school with Emma) showed up, which added to the awesome. I don't remember what we did after that, because I spent the rest of the night talking with Amanda and Maria (and sort of Nolan, although he mostly provided comic relief for us), after which we played Mafia (i totally owned as both the narrator and the mafia). We sat around the fire for a few hours, and eventually wandered to bed. But not, of course, before doing the complete hokey-pokey. I can proudly say I put my butt in and shook it all about. Not many can do that. LEEROOOYY JENKINS!

We got to sleep about 4:00 AM, woke up about 7, and headed back to the house. After eating some delicious coffee cake, we marched off to the mall, which I did not choose to do. It was a little weird, as I was not there to buy anything, and everyone else was just kind of running off and...yeah, it was weird. I don't particularly enjoy traveling in groups of 8. We went to the theatre, only to find everything started at 6, except for Madagascar, so we went and watched that. I didn't think it was all that funny, but Jessica couldn't stop laughing, which made it marginally funnier. It had its moments.

After the movie, we went and ate at the CTB in Triphammer Mall, and said our goodbyes. We'll be seeing eachother again in two weeks (WoL), so it wasn't exactly emotional, but I can guarantee, whatever emotion that was lacking there will be made up for on the Saturday morning WoL ends. When I got home, I got a letter from Jonothan and Elizabeth, which was most excellent. Jonothan sounded pretty exhausted in general. It was good to hear from him, though. Showering was quite excellent, as I'd been wearing the same clothes for 2 days, after camping and stuff.

And here we are Today. I woke up at 11, (and at 8:30 too, Jen was yipping to go out) went to work from 12:30 to 4 PM. Work was basically what I expected. Minor work like testing equipment and calling stores about stock constituted my day. It's air conditioned, so it's not uncomfortable or anything. The people are nice. It's work.

I biked home (ugh, 2 miles uphill sapped all my energy), which took like 45 minutes. My dad got back from the vet with the news about Daisy, and also informed me that a baby bunny was outside. I took Jen out thinking she would just ignore it, but she kept jumping around it in circles, so I took her inside, got the camera, and came back outside. Jen managed to squeeze out the door as I went out, and continued jumping around the poor baby bunny, so I figured I'd get a picture of it. Jen then proceeded to bite the baby bunny, it squealed really loudly, and sprinted towards our grill, and stayed there for a good 4 hours. According to Benjamin, bunnies only squeal when they think they're going to die. Thus, I felt pretty bad about traumatizing this poor thing. The bunnies around our house are really tame - they'll stick around when we're outside. We don't give them anything, but they just kinda mope around. Bunnies are cool as long as I don't have to take care of them.

A classic battle.


The poor thing was hidden behind the grill after Jen bit it...


Kerry came over, and we walked with Zach downtown and got some subs. We went back to Zach's house and layed about as we tried out Battlefield 2. Looks pretty cool, but I don't have the money for it. Work only pays once a month, so I won't get any money until at least August. I got home, and here we are. I may have pictures of the Ohio-ans later, I don't have any since I didn't bring the camera.

You now have my post. I am allowed to pose one question to you.