We actually arrived in Maine at around 6:00, got all checked into the hotel, and by that time we were all _starving_. So, after settling in a bit, we went back out to find some food. On the way we had passed a local brewery/pub called Gritty's, and we ultimately decided to go there.
Well, I could not have had a better first meal in Maine. I got their lobster mac and cheese topped with pan fried cornbread and fried jalapeños (which completely rival fried pickles). They had Ménage à Trois Red (my current favorite red wine) of which I had a glass, I sampled two beers, and got a Green Monkey for dessert (Midori, Malibu Banana Run, and pineapple juice - yum!) It was completely satisfying.
After dinner we decided to bump our L. L. Bean trip up early since we wanted to walk around a bit, but the center of Freeport apparently mostly shuts down by 8:00 (at least before tourist season). Well, two hours later we'd walked off the fullness from food, all done some shopping, and I walked away with a cute new shirt, two pairs of socks, an awesome new bathing suit (on sale!), and a souvenir from Michael (picture will follow).
Now we're back at the hotel, showered, and about to call it a night. It's been a long but completely awesome day. We're hoping to catch breakfast early in the morning and then walk around in Freeport before heading for Bar Harbor so getting to sleep now will give us plenty of time. If we get up early, I may try out my new bathing suit or catch a quick workout (they have a really nice fitness center in the hotel).
Unfortunately, as tired as I am, I'm also completely wired. It's not exactly like a second wind, but I just don't feel like I could fall asleep yet. So I'll probably catch up on reading my blogs, poke around online a bit, and then read before falling asleep.
More to come...
Showing posts with label michael. Show all posts
Showing posts with label michael. Show all posts
Friday, June 25, 2010
Maine Trip, Volume 01
It is now 3:27pm on Friday, June 25th. (Or it was when I wrote this.)
I'm writing this in the back of the RAV in the middle of our trip to Maine. We changed our leave time this morning to 8:30 instead of 6:30. This was due in great part to the ridiculous times Genevieve and I got out of work. Both for good reasons, though.
Last night Pauline held a party for some of her friends, doing something for herself for one of the first times since I've known her. So she asked me to help her run it (of course). The event was supposed to be 7:00-10:00 (we normally close at 9:00), but it was relatively casual, all with very chatty and friendly women, and so once the painting began after mingling, it was pretty late. It was actually very fun, just tiring. I left close to 11:30, but was satisfying and Pauline was very appreciative.
Anyway, when Michael and I got home, we packed up some last minute things, I prepared the rest of the snacks for today, and I took a shower and relaxed a bit with Michael waiting for Genevieve to get home. She was detained even longer than I; she left work around 1:00am after helping to finish up a bunch of video editing. Michael and I stayed up long enough to kiss her goodnight, and then at some point I fell into bed, waking up 15 minutes before my reset 8:00 alarm.
We actually left the apartment at around 8:50, only 20 minutes later than our leave time (this is why I _always_ want to plan for seriously early leaving; we notoriously take longer to do everything, generally make a lot of stops on a trip, and therefore always get places massively later than any of us want to). After doing all the errands we needed to (banks, post office, breakfast), we finally got onto the road at about 10:00. And we've been driving pretty much ever since. We kit a horrible wall of traffic in Connecticut that spanned about ¾ of a mile and lasted for almost an hour. It was essentially a parking lot.
I think the best part was when the woman in flowy robes walked past our car (in the middle lane of a major highway) and got ahead enough that I lost track of her. Other people were getting our of their cars, a motorcyclist and meat delivery man had a lively and friendly looking conversation across three lanes of traffic, several assholes in vans (including an on-the-clock Comcast employee) rode the shoulder shoving their way past the rest of us, and we played with Michael's new Flip cam and listened to horrible new Meatloaf music in an attempt to make the time go faster.
Other than that the ride's been pretty clear. That is to say until about ten minutes ago when we hit yet another nit of traffic. But now we're in Massachusetts, and it's more expected. And at least we're _moving_. We're just not going as quickly as we'd like.
Still our projected arrival time is before 5:30. We're hoping to stop very little before then, get all checked into the hotel, and then find some interesting spots in Freeport. So far we plan to visit the desert in the middle of Maine, L. L. Bean at midnight, and at some point (either today or tomorrow) have McLobster (at least Genevieve and I). We will also likely have some real food (hopefully local) at some point for dinner. My snacks are awesome but not a meal.
So, that's our trip thus far. Michael's making short video updates as well so this is looking to be our best-documented trip yet! I am especially fond of the gift I bought myself for the trip; the AC adapter that's allowing me to use/charge my laptop right now. It's _awesome_. With it I can have plugged in my laptop with an AC cord, my DS with the USB cord, and Genevieve's GPS with the car port, all built into the same adapter. I think it's brilliant and wonderful.
That's all for now; I'll post this when I get to an internet connection and add more when we've made more headway.
I'm writing this in the back of the RAV in the middle of our trip to Maine. We changed our leave time this morning to 8:30 instead of 6:30. This was due in great part to the ridiculous times Genevieve and I got out of work. Both for good reasons, though.
Last night Pauline held a party for some of her friends, doing something for herself for one of the first times since I've known her. So she asked me to help her run it (of course). The event was supposed to be 7:00-10:00 (we normally close at 9:00), but it was relatively casual, all with very chatty and friendly women, and so once the painting began after mingling, it was pretty late. It was actually very fun, just tiring. I left close to 11:30, but was satisfying and Pauline was very appreciative.
Anyway, when Michael and I got home, we packed up some last minute things, I prepared the rest of the snacks for today, and I took a shower and relaxed a bit with Michael waiting for Genevieve to get home. She was detained even longer than I; she left work around 1:00am after helping to finish up a bunch of video editing. Michael and I stayed up long enough to kiss her goodnight, and then at some point I fell into bed, waking up 15 minutes before my reset 8:00 alarm.
We actually left the apartment at around 8:50, only 20 minutes later than our leave time (this is why I _always_ want to plan for seriously early leaving; we notoriously take longer to do everything, generally make a lot of stops on a trip, and therefore always get places massively later than any of us want to). After doing all the errands we needed to (banks, post office, breakfast), we finally got onto the road at about 10:00. And we've been driving pretty much ever since. We kit a horrible wall of traffic in Connecticut that spanned about ¾ of a mile and lasted for almost an hour. It was essentially a parking lot.
I think the best part was when the woman in flowy robes walked past our car (in the middle lane of a major highway) and got ahead enough that I lost track of her. Other people were getting our of their cars, a motorcyclist and meat delivery man had a lively and friendly looking conversation across three lanes of traffic, several assholes in vans (including an on-the-clock Comcast employee) rode the shoulder shoving their way past the rest of us, and we played with Michael's new Flip cam and listened to horrible new Meatloaf music in an attempt to make the time go faster.
Other than that the ride's been pretty clear. That is to say until about ten minutes ago when we hit yet another nit of traffic. But now we're in Massachusetts, and it's more expected. And at least we're _moving_. We're just not going as quickly as we'd like.
Still our projected arrival time is before 5:30. We're hoping to stop very little before then, get all checked into the hotel, and then find some interesting spots in Freeport. So far we plan to visit the desert in the middle of Maine, L. L. Bean at midnight, and at some point (either today or tomorrow) have McLobster (at least Genevieve and I). We will also likely have some real food (hopefully local) at some point for dinner. My snacks are awesome but not a meal.
So, that's our trip thus far. Michael's making short video updates as well so this is looking to be our best-documented trip yet! I am especially fond of the gift I bought myself for the trip; the AC adapter that's allowing me to use/charge my laptop right now. It's _awesome_. With it I can have plugged in my laptop with an AC cord, my DS with the USB cord, and Genevieve's GPS with the car port, all built into the same adapter. I think it's brilliant and wonderful.
That's all for now; I'll post this when I get to an internet connection and add more when we've made more headway.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Why, they're alternate-dimension, post-apocalyptic Nazis, of course.
I am fascinated by dreams. My dreams, other peoples dreams, TV shows that do episodes including or made up of dreams, other "planets" where the entire existence is a dream and possibly all in the mind of a horror-god-like entity who lives to drive species insane... Sometimes my favorite part of going to sleep is dreaming.
So I very often bore everyone I know telling them what my dreams were, which no one cares about nearly as much as I do (understandably), and once I get through explaining them, they sound stupider and have many more holes in them than I originally thought. This is frustrating. So I'm trying to write down my dreams (or type them if I can since I type _much_ faster) and I thought I should keep an account here.
This is a dream I had this morning before leaving for work. When I woke up I immediately got up to type it up and I sent it to Michael:
Michael and I (and two companions I didn't know) were trying to get away from Nazi's from an alternate dimension where the apocalypse had happened. They were trying to recreate said apocalypse starting with a huge building that was very labyrinth-like. We got out just in time by working with the previous villain (who looked like Eric from True Blood). Apparently in an early episode of my dream-world, he was working against us for...something...but when the Nazis showed up he turned good (sort of) to help us defeat the Nazis (all self interested, I'm sure). To defeat them we had to, obviously, distract them with my collar. While they were inexplicably distracted and mesmerized, Michael and Eric shot the head Nazis down.
We retrieved the collar and ran out barely escaping before and same anomaly that brought the Nazis here rearranged all the rooms inside turning the place into a creepy purgatory/haunted house that could suck people in if they either got lost among the rooms causing them to never want to leave thinking it was the last vestige of civilization left in a post-apocalyptic society. We had successfully averted the apocalypse except for this isolated location and were unable to save anyone who'd been trapped inside now living their half-lives convinced the world was over.
Michael and I soon noticed that the collar we brought back wasn't the right one. Michael got upset and I started sobbing. Thinking rationally, though, I explained logically that we could get another made. Michael insisted on going back in. We knew the weight room it was in (that's where we shot down the Nazis, keep up!) would be findable if we just traveled in a straight course on the ground floor. Michael told me to wait so I could help you out when you returned.
But I worried there'd be a trick or puzzle and had notice that Michael was visibly tired and weak. So I went in running. Each room opened to the next (and they were mostly all small), until one who's wall was closed. Sandy was there (all of a sudden) and explained I could just push them open because they weren't real anyway. So that's what I did and it worked. Each wall or fake door would swing open from the center when I shoved them. Then I came to a staircase and went down.
After going through five or six rooms I came upon another down-staircase in a similar room; I realized I'd made a mistake and surveyed the room, realizing that if I went around I could crawl up on a platform that would bring me to the next room on this floor. So I backtracked to the first staircase and found that room was the
same.
I went several more rooms before coming to the weight room. I found my collar, stepped on a Nazi's head (he was trying to shoot me; I pulled out my gun afterward just in case). I ran back through the halls and rooms I'd opened up and caught up with Michael in the cafeteria (which is right near the exit). Michael looked sad and explained he'd gotten lost one floor below before realizing we weren't supposed to go downstairs in the first place. He'd found his way back and made his way to the cafeteria, but hadn't been able to find the weight room. I wrapped my arms around him and showed him the collar and explained the "trick" of the "maze".
(Now, granted, I saw the setup of the place, because this is a dream and that can happen, and it was actually quite a maze. We just happened to be following one direct route that conveniently got us what we wanted (as long as we figured out the one trick that was along the way) and would be easy to return from. People apparently got lost from veering off the main path, and there were many attractive things encouraging you to do so.)
The whole building was built in a Gothic Victorian style. Very old looking, very well decorated with lots of beautiful wooden furniture, tapestries, warm, comforting lightly, and various rooms with different themes. Some of them were shops, some were bedrooms, some were game rooms. The cafeteria was exactly as warm and old except for the high school cafeteria style tables and chairs set up. While in the cafeteria we got distracted.
Families were eating loads of food, all different kinds, and hoarding it like it was really the end of the world. Mom's were rationing what children had left, some adults were drinking multiple bottles of liquor at a time. The staff was made up of zombies (some of which were the zombies we'd killed before, but they were nice. _Very_ nice. We were offered multiple drinks and were about to have one when a little boy ran up to us (he was apparently part of our party) and knocked them out of our hands.
We remembered that eating or drinking anything while in the building would get us caught here so we started following him out. On the way out he stopped, intrigued by a corn dog one mom offered him to try. He ate it and was immediately mesmerized.
This is the part of the story where the maternal/paternal instincts we have would kick in and we'd grab him anyway to leave. Then it would trip some horrible thing happening because we tried to take something that the house or whatever rightfully earned. Hijinks would ensure, likely death for one of us would follow, and we would have either caused more destruction or had to save the day again or both. Probably both.
But no, not in my dream; we both essentially said "fuck the kid" to each other with a glance, grabbed hands and ran out the door. I think we were being pursued. We got back to the van, rushed in to get going, and when we turned back to look, the place dissolved, being replaced by a gorgeous graveyard.
I turned to Michael, handed him my collar, and as he went to put it back on me, I woke up.
... ... ...
I don't know either, but I completely want to write a schlocky science fiction story about alternate universe Nazis from a post-apocalyptic society crossing over and trying to destroy the world. Santa or the Easter Bunny or William Shatner will have to save the day.
So I very often bore everyone I know telling them what my dreams were, which no one cares about nearly as much as I do (understandably), and once I get through explaining them, they sound stupider and have many more holes in them than I originally thought. This is frustrating. So I'm trying to write down my dreams (or type them if I can since I type _much_ faster) and I thought I should keep an account here.
This is a dream I had this morning before leaving for work. When I woke up I immediately got up to type it up and I sent it to Michael:
Michael and I (and two companions I didn't know) were trying to get away from Nazi's from an alternate dimension where the apocalypse had happened. They were trying to recreate said apocalypse starting with a huge building that was very labyrinth-like. We got out just in time by working with the previous villain (who looked like Eric from True Blood). Apparently in an early episode of my dream-world, he was working against us for...something...but when the Nazis showed up he turned good (sort of) to help us defeat the Nazis (all self interested, I'm sure). To defeat them we had to, obviously, distract them with my collar. While they were inexplicably distracted and mesmerized, Michael and Eric shot the head Nazis down.
We retrieved the collar and ran out barely escaping before and same anomaly that brought the Nazis here rearranged all the rooms inside turning the place into a creepy purgatory/haunted house that could suck people in if they either got lost among the rooms causing them to never want to leave thinking it was the last vestige of civilization left in a post-apocalyptic society. We had successfully averted the apocalypse except for this isolated location and were unable to save anyone who'd been trapped inside now living their half-lives convinced the world was over.
Michael and I soon noticed that the collar we brought back wasn't the right one. Michael got upset and I started sobbing. Thinking rationally, though, I explained logically that we could get another made. Michael insisted on going back in. We knew the weight room it was in (that's where we shot down the Nazis, keep up!) would be findable if we just traveled in a straight course on the ground floor. Michael told me to wait so I could help you out when you returned.
But I worried there'd be a trick or puzzle and had notice that Michael was visibly tired and weak. So I went in running. Each room opened to the next (and they were mostly all small), until one who's wall was closed. Sandy was there (all of a sudden) and explained I could just push them open because they weren't real anyway. So that's what I did and it worked. Each wall or fake door would swing open from the center when I shoved them. Then I came to a staircase and went down.
After going through five or six rooms I came upon another down-staircase in a similar room; I realized I'd made a mistake and surveyed the room, realizing that if I went around I could crawl up on a platform that would bring me to the next room on this floor. So I backtracked to the first staircase and found that room was the
same.
I went several more rooms before coming to the weight room. I found my collar, stepped on a Nazi's head (he was trying to shoot me; I pulled out my gun afterward just in case). I ran back through the halls and rooms I'd opened up and caught up with Michael in the cafeteria (which is right near the exit). Michael looked sad and explained he'd gotten lost one floor below before realizing we weren't supposed to go downstairs in the first place. He'd found his way back and made his way to the cafeteria, but hadn't been able to find the weight room. I wrapped my arms around him and showed him the collar and explained the "trick" of the "maze".
(Now, granted, I saw the setup of the place, because this is a dream and that can happen, and it was actually quite a maze. We just happened to be following one direct route that conveniently got us what we wanted (as long as we figured out the one trick that was along the way) and would be easy to return from. People apparently got lost from veering off the main path, and there were many attractive things encouraging you to do so.)
The whole building was built in a Gothic Victorian style. Very old looking, very well decorated with lots of beautiful wooden furniture, tapestries, warm, comforting lightly, and various rooms with different themes. Some of them were shops, some were bedrooms, some were game rooms. The cafeteria was exactly as warm and old except for the high school cafeteria style tables and chairs set up. While in the cafeteria we got distracted.
Families were eating loads of food, all different kinds, and hoarding it like it was really the end of the world. Mom's were rationing what children had left, some adults were drinking multiple bottles of liquor at a time. The staff was made up of zombies (some of which were the zombies we'd killed before, but they were nice. _Very_ nice. We were offered multiple drinks and were about to have one when a little boy ran up to us (he was apparently part of our party) and knocked them out of our hands.
We remembered that eating or drinking anything while in the building would get us caught here so we started following him out. On the way out he stopped, intrigued by a corn dog one mom offered him to try. He ate it and was immediately mesmerized.
This is the part of the story where the maternal/paternal instincts we have would kick in and we'd grab him anyway to leave. Then it would trip some horrible thing happening because we tried to take something that the house or whatever rightfully earned. Hijinks would ensure, likely death for one of us would follow, and we would have either caused more destruction or had to save the day again or both. Probably both.
But no, not in my dream; we both essentially said "fuck the kid" to each other with a glance, grabbed hands and ran out the door. I think we were being pursued. We got back to the van, rushed in to get going, and when we turned back to look, the place dissolved, being replaced by a gorgeous graveyard.
I turned to Michael, handed him my collar, and as he went to put it back on me, I woke up.
... ... ...
I don't know either, but I completely want to write a schlocky science fiction story about alternate universe Nazis from a post-apocalyptic society crossing over and trying to destroy the world. Santa or the Easter Bunny or William Shatner will have to save the day.
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