I had an awesome week and weekend!! So yeah, I've been doing a lot with the apartment, but I think it's getting worse instead of better. It's good because I'm unpacking boxes and trying to find homes for everything, but I don't have a place to put everything, so stuff is starting to pile up. I've also been able to spend more time with Joe this past week than before, so that made me very happy too. I finished knitting my winter scarf and matching hat, and I'm now onto a baby blanket... must be finished by December. I can do it!! Oh yeah, I slipped and fell down the stairs in my apartment on Monday night, so I have this huge-ass bruise on my... well, ass. Yeah, it's a shiner but luckily I didn't break anything. Scared the heck out of Joe though, I think he was ready to call 911 because he was afraid I'd broken my back.
Work is going well as usual. Stuff happens all the time, we had to suspend someone from the TV station, I had to have a "talk" with the webmaster of the radion station, an XLR cable was lost out of one of the camera kits and we don't have any extras, more paperwork paperwork paperwork... but I LOVE it all! The ups and downs make life interesting. I'll try to take some pics of the people I work with, but most of them are very photo-phobic. Check out the Campus Media Center page and there are some pics on the WFNP & WNPC sites of some of the students I work with regularly.
So yeah, let me get to the good stuff... this weekend!! Though my weekend kinda started with Thursday night. I went to chess club with Joe and played a game... of course Joe kicked my butt! I think I was just so tired that I was having issues with making decisions. Though it was very amusing to watch Sherri and Greg play... and the ongoing dialog between them, they bicker like crazy. But before I went to chess, I stopped off at Starbucks and got the new pumpkin spice latte... yum yum yum! I highly recommend it. After chess, Joe and I went to Blockbuster and ... oh crap, my days are all mixed up. Grrr... Wed. night we rented Garfield? Ugh, I just don't remember... I think so. Ok, so Wed. I went over to Joe's and we hung out/watched a movie/had dinner. Thursday was chess and hanging out at Marist.
Friday was just plain crazy! I didn't go to bed Thursday night until 2am, then I was up @ 7am to get ready for work, get my costume together, and run some early morning errands. Work was pretty steady and I took some time to go over to the bank and open up a bank account. So it's official, I have a bank account to use up here... now I can pay my rent!! Mel gave me a lot of candy at the radio e-board meeting so I was buzzed. I left shortly after the meeting to head back to my apartment and finish sewing the buttons and latches on my skirt. Let me tell you, when you don't have a sewing machine, some of the simplest sewing tasks take forever. My neighbors came over to invite me out for drinks, but unfortunately I had to decline. I'll have to set aside some time this week to stop by, say hi, and bring some goodies. (goodies = whatever you want it to be) Anyways, I took everything with me and drove over to Marist to pick up Joe and then we met Sherri and Greg at Quiznos for dinner. I'd never been there before... they have great food! So after dinner, Joe, Sherri, and Greg went back to Joe's townhouse for poker while I went out shopping for knee-high socks to go with my costume. While I was out, I stumbled across a really awesome top that would go great with my costume, so I picked that up too. Then I went back to Joe's townhouse (there were 11 people there playing poker) and proceeded to finish sewing my skirt. Somehow (it's completely beyond me how I managed it) everything came together in the end and around 10:30 or so Joe and I went over to Greg's and a bunch of us walked over to Meaghan's for her party. Pictures are forthcoming, have patience. The party was ok, but after awhile it got a little boring. I was holding onto the promise of cake (cake, I like cake) but when I finally saw the cake, it looking kinda scary and I decided I didn't really want to eat any of it. So we left, but it was still a great night!
Saturday, the cable guy came and hooked up the cable and the internet. Unfortunately, my computer is being an idiot so I still don't have internet access. I was supposed to go hiking with this guy Mike from work, but the weather was kinda unpredictable, so we opted for the Dia in Beacon. It's a modern art museum, but all the pieces of art are very large. It was sooooo cool! A lot of the artists were German, and I could definitely see the Bauhaus/Avant Garde influences from the 1920's & 30's. There was this one huge room covered floor to ceiling with framed pictures of covers from the German magazine Der Spiegel. Very similar to the Simplissmus exhibit at the Goethe institute last fall. Anyways, I'm sure after spending 2 hours in an art museum with me, Mike is thoroughly convinced that I'm crazy. I'm sure my friends can attest to its validity. Then we went looking for apple cider donuts, which we finally found and they are soooo very good. The apple stand that had them is about half a mile away from SUNY, so I think that's going to be my new stop before, during and after work. ;) We hung out at my apt. for a little while, and I was so completely mortified because my apt. is a complete mess, but we had a good time nonetheless. Then I went to Marist to have dinner with Joe (who knew diner food could be so perfect a meal), we ran a few errands and went back to my apt. Yay!! I have 2 bar stool for my kitchen! Now I can eat at the bar counter instead of at the coffee table sitting on the couch or floor. I also got these coat hooks that mount on the wall, so I can actually hang up my coats instead of draping them across the back of my couch. Joe and I hung out at my place, and he hooked up the Super Nintendo and played Super Mario World while I continued to fight with my computer and also put clothes in my dresser drawers. Every once in a while I would stop to have a beer and watch Joe kick a koopa' s butt. We just kicked back and relaxed, and I tried to get Sherri to come over, but she decided to stay on the other side of the river at Marist.
Sunday I took Joe around to get some things taken care of with his car (his muffler and exhaust system is being very bad) and we also went lego and pez dispenser shopping. Guess what?!?! I found "The Incredibles" pez dispensers at Toys R Us!! I'm so excited that pez came out with new ones! So of course I got them. We also went over to the mall and there were all these cute little kids running around in their costumes trick or treating at the different stores. We did a lot of work on my apartment in the afternoon and Joe was so awesome because he carried all the boxes of books up to my bedroom, and then took all the empty boxes out to the dumpster, and then he brought in the heavy octagon end table from my car. So I made him dinner, it was the least I could do. Instead of hanging around my apt., we went back to Marist, went to evening mass, and then hung out at the townhouse. Joe got 2,000 new pieces of lego, so he was sorting through some of it to try to organize it. We did a lot this weekend, and yet it was a very relaxing, enjoyable, and peaceful weekend. I really had a great time!
I'm getting better and more comfortable about being up here. The truth is, I really like it here! I know people say that they think New Englanders are "rude", but honestly, it doesn't bother me at all. They aren't really rude, they just hurry at a different pace of life than I'm used to, and it's ok. They're just different. Mom says she could never live any farther north than MD, and when she came up here to help me move in, she couldn't stand the "service" at the different stores we went to. But it's all what you get used to. The weather is kinda crazy, it was up in the 60's this weekend and it was so beautiful (it's your Indian summer, Barbara) but it's starting to get colder again, and soon it will be freezing. Within a week or so, all the leaves will have fallen off the trees and soon it will be very gray around here. Not that I mind, in a strange way it's still just as beautiful. I wouldn't be surprised if it started snowing by Thanksgiving. Oh yeah, I have to get a shovel from MD or else I'll never survive. Anyways, it was really rough the first week I was here, and I kept crying and wondering why I came up here. But now I know that it was what I needed to do. I needed to break out of my comfort zone, and needed to start fresh, and I needed to be who I am now without all the extra baggage that comes with living in the same place for 20 years. Sometimes people see you so much for who you were before that they can't see you for who you are now. But here, people can get to know "the real rhea", the rhea I am today. This was a good choice, even if it's a very difficult, hard transition.
Ciao!