I haven’t had too much to blog about lately. I seem to have become summer baby-sitter for the BF’s nieces and nephews. They always want to come over and play with the animals or the Wii. I also took them to the pool for swim lessons this week, fun! I actually got to sit around and read school work without too much distraction, so it worked out. I am trying convince them to go back more often, just so I can get out of the house and away from the internet . . . . But I can’t get in without them as they are part of the club and I can get in with them. However they are on the swim team, so it seems by time their practice is over, they are over the pool. I was never on swim team, but I remember we would stay at the pool all day long.

After being away last week, I finally started the PodRunner thing this week . . . after buying some decent shoes to run in as well. On Friday I’ll be officially done with week one. I could move on to week two at this point, as I did it once before leaving for vacation, but I am just going to wait and stay on a regular weekly schedule. I’ve also been finally giving the Wii Fit some decent attention, using it on the days I don’t run. I want to see what happens if you ever get to the weight loss goal you set for yourself. Hopefully it throws you a party or something. It will probably just say “Great, your no longer fat!”

The fourth is coming up, and living in the Philly area there are fireworks everywhere. We actually have two days of fireworks over in Philly, on the fourth and the fifth. Some of the townships in Jersey have already set theirs off, probably because everyone in Jersey is fleeing to the shore this week/end. I’m supposed to go to a party at Jen’s for the ones on the fifth of July. Should be fun!

Anyway, I didn’t take any photos of me last week while on vacation, except for one. It was hot and sticky and I wasn’t feeling much like being photographed. Plus I didn’t bring my tripod, so it wasn’t easy. I’m probably going back in August and my friend Keith wants to go this time, after seeing the youtube video of The Griffon I plan to take the tripod to get some good night photos in Williamsburg this time.

Because I didn’t take any photos, here are some of me rolling around on the bed. Yeah I know, I didn’t smile. Sorry. I had to adjust the color because for most of them the flash was used, and did my best to match the natural light of the first one. You can see how the hair is coming along.

The above is the only photo I have of me, and it’s not the best. It was at the end of the day, I was hot and tired . . . and really hungry!

Below is a slideshow of the photos, with a link to the photo album below.

Zan and I hit Busch Gardens today, again no lines. Well not true, we waited the longest for the movie ride and Loch Ness of all things, their first and oldest coaster. I did take my camera, but early this morning I realized “Why didn’t I just look that coaster from yesterday up on YouTube?” Of course there were tons of vids, so I didn’t bother making my own. This one sums up the first drop of The Griffon the best. Note the hang time for the front seats. I did it 4 times, all in the front.

Sadly I really didn’t stop to take too many photos in the park honestly. I tried to get some good ones of the coasters, but I was too impatient to stand there waiting for them to come into shot to get the “action shots.” I didn’t think much to take photos of the other parts of the park, which are very pretty. It’s probably the most green amusment park I’ve ever been to, which you can see in a few shots.

1) The streets of “Italy” 2) Gardens in Italy
3) Alpengiest (hanging coaster) 4) The Big Bad Wolf (first ever hanging/inverted coaster)
5) Loch Ness (the yellow), Alpengiest and Griffon (the tallest) 6) The interlocking loops of Loch Ness (which they didn’t have the coasters time on today)
7) and 8 ) The Griffon!

I realized I didn’t get a shot of Apollo’s Chariot, their fifth coaster. Oops! Also, I promise I will do better tomorrow, as we will be in Jamestown and Williamsburg and I will be a snapaholic there. Plus we’ll be in nicer clothes so I’ll take some of us.

The final coaster/ride tally for this trip is as follows . . . .

The Griffon 4 (all in front)
Loch Ness 4 (2 front and 2 back)
Big Bad Wolf 3 (1 front and 2 back)
Alpengeist 2 (1 front and 1 middle)
Apollo’s Chariot 2 (both in back)
Curse of Dark Castle 2 (4D movie ride)
Corkscrew Hill 2 (4D movie ride)
Escape from Pompei 2 (shoot the chute water ride)
Roman Rapids 1 (super soaker round raft ride)
Log Flume 1 (flume ride)

Oh on a final note, the above are the metallic gnomes. I bought two small ones, red and silver, for displaying at Christmas. I took this on my cell phone, so the photo isn’t top quality. They wrapped the gnomes in bubble wrap, so I don’t want to unwrap them till I get them home.

Shocking I know! Not what you probably expected to see when you opened up the blog Yes, not having learned my lesson from the last attempt to go bleach blond, I tried it again! Fortunately it wasn’t the total disaster my last try was (I think there might be photos in this blog somewhere, unless I removed them).

This took two fricken kits to achieve, the main problem was the old blue-black dye. I got my hair cut yesterday and the sides and back got cut out, but half the top still had that old dye in it. When I used the first kit the old dye was stubborn and was a very brassy dark yellow, compared to the sides and back which took great. So I had to do a second kit.

I had planned to put a poll up in this post on what to do with my hair. The choices were going to be A) Keep it and rock the blond B) Buzz cut the top, it might look a bit better or C) Break out the brown dye!

Of course a problem has risen. Double-processing my hair has left my scalp, shall we say, a bit tender. I am afraid what another dye job at this point will do to it! It would have to be a temporary dye for sure. I’ve also been warned that in a few days when my hair begins to grow back in, I could end up with all this falling out. Just great! Pray for me

So before I actually went on real vacations with the BF (which is debatable since I’ve basically taken work on every vacation with him), I used to go to Williamsburg, Virginia almost every summer during undergrad for my vacation. I went once when I first started grad school too. I would always take a day to do Busch Gardens, which was my favorite theme park at the time (I guess in a way it still is because it’s so pretty). Then I’d take a day to do Jamestown and Williamsburg.

It’s probably been 8 years since I’ve been to either. I’m not sure how much the area has changed, ie been developed. It used to be such a beautiful area and I used to always think I’d love to move down there and work some day.

I now have a friend living in the Virginia Beach area, so I’m planning to go down to Williamsburg the last week in June. We are going to meet up and do Busch Gardens one day, then Jamestown and Williamsburg the next. I’ll probably do a ghost walk in Williamsburg on my own later one night.

The following are photos from the last time I was down in the area . . . (I apologize for the quality, this was the pre-digital camera days)

I had gotten a hair cut this weekend, and of course the back and sides were my old dirty brown/grey mix while the top was the reddish-brown I had previously used to dye my hair. I decided it was time to dye it again, but wanted to do something different. I had considered doing a bleach blonde kit, but last time I tried to do that it ended horrifically with my hair an orange color (I just tried to use a regular blonde kit, big mistake!). Instead I opted for something a little darker . . . . I went blue-black! Here are some photos of me on my porch with the new hair.

I took these photos of Princess and Lance yesterday, engaged in Princess favorite thing to do to him . . . lick his ears! As you can see, Princess enjoys pinning him down and going to town. He’s the only cat that will sit still and let her do it to him.

So last night was supposed to be our infomercial movie night. However we got such a late start that we didn’t make all that much. Plus because my old house is devoid of any overhead lighting, it makes a not very optimal setting for filming with my digital camera. We did end up making lava cake though and took pictures.

The GT Xpress 101! The best and last cooking device you’ll ever need! (Unless you don’t like half-moon shaped food)

We decided to use it to make dessert, chocolate lava cake! I had made this before in cupcake form, so I knew it was good. However I had always used the Duncan Hines version, which is a very large package. If we used it we probably would have ended up with 6-8 half moon chocolate cakes, and I didn’t want that much chocolate cake sitting around because I would feel the need to eat it. So I found some unknown brand (Dr. Oeteker) at the supermarket that I knew was the right size for 2 half-moon cakes. So we used it.

Emily makes and pours the batter

The problem of course turned out to be that I had NOT tried out this brand of lava cake. It turned out okay bake-wise. It had the gooey center, but only in the middle. I think the half moon shaped wells cooked it too well near the ends. The real problem though was the taste. It wasn’t that good at all. It wasn’t a very rich chocolate, it was very sweet and dare I say they may have even used chocolate flavoring rather than real chocolate? I haven’t looked at the box, but that is how it tasted.

Emily shows off the baked cakes on my brand new Tar-Jay plates

Today on my own I decided to make some cornbread with the thing. This time I went with name brand!

Jiffy brand! It kinda looked like someone vomited in the GT Xpress 101

They came out okay, aside from the fact that I let them cook a little too long and the tops burned a tad. Also one it seems got an air bubble in it and this made the inside hollow and a little moist . . . ie it didn’t seem to cook all the way. Other than that, they were good.

Cornbread goodness!

So does the GT Xpress 101 work? Yes it seems to. But the quality of food you put into it matters, and I think there is a bit of a learning curve with it. It makes great omelets, that much I can attest to. I’ll probably use it for breakfast mostly

I learned a new saying recently, CRE which stands for “Church Ruins Everything.” This morning Emily and I went out to IHOP for breakfast. Down the road from where we live is a baptist church as well as an affiliated school, K-12. Like many churches they put “witty” sayings out on their little whiteboard signs. However today’s saying really pissed me off. I sat there stewing over it, but by time we got to IHOP and had breakfast, I was more focused on the absolutely disgusting looking “Horton Hears A Who” pancakes the kids at the table next to us were eating.

From IHOP.com

Now they could be really yummy, but I wasn’t about to try them. Furthermore the kids at the table next to use were playing with them as much as they were eating them. I’m getting off track though. On the way back home we passed the church again and I got angry all over again. So much so that I walked down to take a photo and blog about it. Here is the photo, with the offending church’s name spray-painted out. If I wasn’t such a good person I would have actually spray-painted the sign then taken the photo.

Normally if someone said this to me, I would take it as a joke and that they literally meant it’s easier to walk downhill than up. But given it’s on this church’s sign, I don’t think that’s what they mean at all. I read this as saying “Life sucks and is hard, if yours is going good than you are probably going to hell.”

I should point out while there are many types of baptist churches, this is the kind from the movie “Footloose.” No, I’m serious. They don’t have proms because dancing is wicked or what not. Instead they have senior banquets where they bring their dates to eat food and do who knows what else. I think when you are dancing it means you are in good spirits and happy, therefore that makes God and Jesus happy. Maybe if these people danced a little more their life wouldn’t be so hard and suck so much?

To quote Men Without Hats “We can dance if we want to, we can leave your friends behind. Cause your friends don’t dance and if they don’t dance, well they’re no friends of mine!”

Even though mother nature still can’t decide if she wants it to be rainy, cold or spring-like; one thing is for sure, it’s allergy season! The flowers are blooming, the crops are coming in and I’ve been really stuffed up. I vacuumed the house today to try and get up all the dust, changed all my air filters and bought me some Zyrtec-D! I think the later will do me the most good

Of course the fact that certain little cats attempt to, and sometimes are successful at, breaking into the bedroom doesn’t help. The door is kept closed because they like to sleep on the bed and their dander just kills me at night. One little stinker sits outside the door in the morning howling his little head off to get in.

That would be the culprit right there, Grim! He’s not about 6 months old and it’s time for him to go to the vet for the chop-chop!