Busy last couple of days

Since I last posted, we've been pretty busy catching up with friends and spending too many hours out at the bars until closing time. 

Wednesday started off with Mom driving me to Spearfish, and we had lunch with most of Aaron's family at the Chophouse in the Spearfish Canyon.  Mom headed home, and Aaron and I went with his family to Roughlock Falls, then to Savoy to the lodge, and we got ourselves settled in to his parents' house.  Then we had dinner, and went out to Flanagan's to see everyone.  We were out until 2am, and boy, was I pooped.  I am not made for the night life anymore.  I've gotten too used to getting up at 6am and being in bed by 10pm.


Thursday was pretty fun, as well.  I felt terrible after drinking too much the night before; my legs had this weird sensation that made me feel like I wanted to crawl out of my skin.  And that's why I never drink.  We had breakfast with Aaron's parents, and I don't really remember what we did for lunch.  Then we had the big barbecue at his folks' house in the evening, which had a really good turn out.  We had burgers, brats, and Aaron had brought a whole bunch of beer from the local breweries back home in Minnesota.  Then, another night at Flanagan's, but I left early because I am a weiner. 

Today has been very calm.  Aaron and I got up a little late, and were going to try to meet someone for breakfast, but it didn't happen, so we had some coffee and split a bagel, because we were supposed to be having lunch with Aaron's parents and some of their friends in Belle Fourche at Noon.  We made up some leftover burgers and brats from last night's party, and we are just chilling right now.  Pretty relaxing for the time being.

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The last few days

First off, a few pictures from the first day of vacation all bunched together at the beginning, then the rest will go in order with my post.
Odin, scared out of his mind for the first few hours of the journey. All he did was stare at us, then yowl any time we made eye contact.

Aaron, trucking along, during the first leg of our trip, before we made it out of Minnesota.

I'm a sucker for clouds.

Before leaving Aaron's parents' house, we headed to the car wash.



After breakfast, we drove to Gillette to meet up with my parents, my Aunt Sharon, and Grandma. The first night there, we had barbecue ribs, and Aaron showed my dad all kinds of beers from the Surly Brewing Company, a brewery across the street from where we live. We spent most of the day lounging on the back deck, as it was the perfect weather outside for doing so. I discovered a feature on my camera that lets me focus on one color of my choosing, and grays out the rest of the colors, so I spent a lot of time messing with that.





Sunday, Aaron and I went to lunch with Amy, who told us all about her summer job as a dirt truck driver in a coal mine. The tired on one of those trucks barely fits on a semi-truck flat bed. Pretty cool stuff, I would definitely like to do that some day. Then we saw Get Smart at the movies, and then went to Las Margaritas for dinner, a family favorite.

Aaron left for Spearfish Monday morning, and Mom, Grandma, Aunt Sharon, and I left for Laramie to visit Ashley, as she wasn't able to make it up for a visit with her school schedule. Mom and Grandma were in one car, and Aunt Sharon and I were in her rental car. It was pretty fancy, with push-button ignition, which was hard to get used to. It was nice to catch up with Aunt Sharon, as she always has lots to say about the family back down south, and new things that are going on with her. I hadn't seen her or Grandma since May of '05 when we went down to visit Grandma in Mississippi.

We had time to eat at The Library, a cool local place that has its own brewery. Aaron would have enjoyed that, but he had a lot of things to get done at his folks' house that would have bored me to tears. Then we visited Ashley's apartment, because I had never seen it before. Grandma and Aunt Sharon weren't going to have time to see it because they had to go down to Denver to get checked in to their hotel for the night, so I took plenty of pictures of that. Unfortunately, I don't have a way to get them from my camera to my computer right now, so that will have to wait.

Mom and I spent the night in Laramie, and will head back to Gillette this afternoon. Then Mom's going to drop me off in Spearfish, and I'll spend the rest of the week over there.

Until the next update!

Road Trip, part one

We left Minnesota around 3:30pm on Friday once I was done with work.  Made it to Spearfish, SD after about 9-10 hours in the car.  Cat monster was in his kitty carrier until about 10:30pm, he lasted 7 hours before he started yowling his head off.  We stopped at a gas station, and let him outside on his leash near some gravel and grass.  Mind you, the cat monster has not pottied the entire trip - I let him out once at a rest area, but some other family was by the pet area with a poodle dog, and they stood around for like, half an hour, so Odin was pretty scared.

Aaron's car is completely covered in bug guts.  You get used to driving around in the cities, where there really aren't too many bugs, and if there were, all the cars in front of you on the freeway would had killed them first.  We did go through a little hail storm that lasted all of a minute or two once we had passed Sioux Falls, which scoured off the first wave of bug guts, but it didn't take long to dity up the windshield again.

We spent the night at Aaron's parent's house, and Odin could smell their female cat, Jasmine, all over the basement.  He was mewing, and slinking around, and hissing at his own shadow for the first hour or so. I was so exhausted, after working 8 hours, then spending 9-10 hours in a car, so I zonked out pretty quick.  We woke up, and couldn't find Odin anywhere.  Searched all over the basement, under everything, in the bathroom, no kitty.  I was a little worried that he'd crawled in a corner to die or something, after such a traumatic day.  But we finally found him underneath the bed, and he was slinking around, scared of any sound that he heard from upstairs.  He hasn't met Jasmine yet, and we think they should wait at least a day before they do meet, to kinda get used to each others' smells.

We just finished breakfast, and are going to wash the car, pick up some coffee, and head to Gillette.

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I try to do something nice, and I get stabbed

So last week there was a poster in the women's bathroom promoting a blood drive in our office building.  I signed up for it, and it was today.  I go in, pass the interview, iron levels, etc.  I go to the lounge chair, and she hooks me up.  I've donated blood several times in the past, but it's been about five years since the last time I did.  They use my left arm, which I have had trouble with before, but the left arm's vein is crooked, and they were scared to pierce the vein wall. 

The girl sticks me with the needle, and it's not flowing very fast.  The first thing they do is take four small vials of blood before filling up the larger bag with blood for the actual donation.  The blood isn't flowing very quickly, so she moves the needle around, up and down my vein, trying to find the right position for it.  All of the sudden, the skin right above that vein starts to bulge.  It's getting bigger and taller.  I ask, "Is it supposed to do that?"  Normally, they cover the area with some gauze so you can't see the needle enter your skin.  They had not done this yet.  She starts closing off the tubes I am hooked up to, takes the needle out, and has me put pressure on the hole w/ some gauze over it. 

Then she says, "Well, you can try it again with the other arm, or you can come back next time."  I opt to try again later, as I am taking time out of work to do this.  If I hadn't had to go back to work and didn't need to get going, I would have let them try the other arm. 

I can't blame the girl who stuck me - she took blood from the guy who was sitting right next to me, no problems.  She pierced the wall of the vein, and blood started pooling up under my skin.  I am going to have a HUGE bruise, and I'm already quite sore.

I'll post pictures of the bruise when it shows up.  Gross.

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pulled muscles and colds

So Thursday night Aaron and I are driving to get something to eat for dinner, and I have this sudden feeling of a pulled muscle in my right armpit.  It hurts really bad, and I can barely use the gear shifter because of it.  Then we get inside, and my fingers are tingly.  And the inside of my upper arm feels kinda weird, too.  So I've either pulled a muscle or pinched a nerve.  I'm not sure which, and I'm not sure how, but I think I may have done it trying to open the garage door a couple months back when it was jammed shut because either A) some jackass backed into it, or B) it was iced over in the winter and wouldn't budge.  Either way, I think that's how I pulled the muscle, but the pinched nerve/tingling fingers thing is what's bothering me. 

But I don't want to go to the doctor to have it looked at, because even with my insurance card, I apparently still have to pay a buttload of money for an office visit.  I had a physical/checkup and some other stuff done at the end of March, and I got an office visit bill for like $45.  Not too bad, I paid it, thought that was it.  Then I get another bill in the mail for an obscene amount of money for all the different things they did while I was there.  Some discounts were taken off, but it seems really ridiculous.  Aaron suggested I call my insurance provider and ask them if everything was done correctly, and maybe re-submit my card and the bill to them, because that's what he did when he had his kidney stones problem in September, and he hardly had to pay anything in the end.  So we'll see.

I was super busy at work all week, and my phone never seemed to stop ringing.  I would leave my desk to go to lunch, and I would come back with four or five or six new voice messages on my phone.  As I was calling people back, listening to messages, or fielding other calls, I would get more calls that would go to voice mail and have more messages waiting for me.  I'm surprised I got caught up, frankly.

This weekend has started off very slowly.  I think I am getting a cold, because I have no energy, a slight sore throat, and my face hurts.  I was up around 7:30 this morning, and then back in bed by 10:00 because I just didn't have the energy to do ANYTHING, and let's face it, if you're not going to be doing anything, you should just be laying down in bed.  So I slept until about 1:30 (Aaron came in a couple times to check on me and Odin, as he was napping with me), and I feel much better now.  We have yet to leave the apartment today, but I think we will venture out for dinner, as we don't have any food in the apartment.  Which also means we have to go grocery shopping tomorrow.

Also, I need to buy quarters for laundry because they raised the prices from $1.25 on each machine to $1.50 on each.  Which means instead of four loads of laundry per roll of quarters, I'm going to get three and a half.  Lame.

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Weekend

I don't really remember what went on this weekend.  I bought some yarn to start on Jess' baby blanket.  She's not due until September, but the baby shower is at the end of June, so I have 2 weeks less to finish this blanket than I did for Anne's blanket.  I've been taking it to work to speed up the process. 

On Friday we had a birthday dinner to go to, and on Saturday, a birthday party for the same guy, a friend of Aaron's.  Sunday, we had Jamie and Karlie over, then we went out for Chinese food, then played Super Smash Brothers on the Wii.  Good times.

Aaron and I both took Tuesday off so we could get our Minnesota driver's licenses, as we've lived in the state longer than 90 days and never got around to updating our Wyoming and South Dakota ones.  You had to take a written test to do so, 40 questions, and you could only miss eight.  They were hard questions!  I haven't looked at a "rules of the road" book in 10 years since I got my driver's license in the first place!  I missed eight and barely passed.  Aaron missed nine, I think, and had an unusual number of questions dealing with CDLs, which he was not pursuing.   So that was very frustrating, as we'd both taken the day off, and he couldn't take the test again in the same day. 

Then we poked about most of the day and went to see the Twins play the Orioles that evening.  Good times, even though we lost, but we had good seats and a good view, and there were some really good plays.  Good, good, good, that's all I can say, apparently.

Man, there is nothing to watch on TV now that all my shows are over for the season!  So I've rented How I Met Your Mother and Freaks and Geeks on Netflix, so that should keep us occupied.

Alright, that's enough babbling.  Until next time!

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