Time flies quickly!

I always get upset when people don't update their blogs as quickly as I think they should. Then I realize that I haven't updated mine in a while, either. Oops.

July has flown by very quickly so far – there are only three weeks left until school starts, but only two weeks left until orientation, which I need to attend to help keep everything running smoothly. I got home late Monday night – Tuesday morning, really – after having left on the 6^th. Eric and I drove out to the East coast for a long weekend at the Shore (that’s Jersey Shore for you ignorant folk; don’t worry, I think capitalizing “Shore” is silly also, but I noticed the Inquirer does it), and then I stayed on for an extra week. Here are some bulleted points regarding our trip:

-We discovered that our kittens like car rides. They just don’t like their cat carriers. So we let them loose and they stay mostly in the back seat, asleep, making brief forays into the litter box or up front to have a drink of water, or to sleep on someone’s lap. It’s a breeze traveling with them, actually!

-Playing horseshoes on the beach is very fun, but I’m not very good at it. I can be counted on to make a decent number of one-pointers, and a few two-pointers here and there, but I didn’t get a ringer a single time that weekend. Boo.

-Digging a hole at the beach is VERY fun, especially when a bizarre emotion comes over not only you, but the entire group, causing everyone to just keep digging. The hole ended up being over four feet deep and probably about four feet wide. We hit water. To widen the hole, we occasionally collapsed a section of wall into the hole then had to dig all that sand back out, leading two of us to independently make analogies to FDR’s New Deal – I believe one of us referenced “make work” and the other referenced the CCC. OK, it was Eric and me. We’re huge dorks.

In the beginning, when the hole was small.

Finished product! We didn't hit China, but we did hit water.

-After spending a few days in OCNJ, Eric flew back home and I continued on to St. Mary’s County, Md., where the air conditioning broke as soon as I got there and the repairman didn’t come until the day I left. The weather was in the high-90s the entire time with equal humidity. Yuck.

-The kittens don’t like dogs, but by the end of the week, there was an uneasy peace in the house among the animals. Hassle, our rescue cat, didn’t like the kittens at all, so there was no mingling there. Duchess, our beagle, is scared of cats because of Hassle and our old cat, Marble (even though neither of them had claws; I guess their constant hissing and batting scarred Duchess enough for life), so she stayed away from the kittens as much as she could. Dozer, my brother’s dinosaur of a “puppy” (actually the largest dog I’ve ever seen, especially since he’s fat), was fascinated by the kittens and just wanted to play. Unfortunately, a 100-pound puppy cannot safely play with two seven-pound kittens, so the kittens kept hissing and swiping at him. He learned to keep just enough distance between them, but wouldn’t stop following them around the house like – that’s right – a lovesick puppy. Actually, Mojo was pretty interested in Dozer, also, but wouldn’t get too close – just stayed near him at all times. Moxie dazzled everyone with her affection and cuteness.

-I got no work done at home, even though I really didn’t expect to.

-My 11-hour drive back to KY was lengthened to 11.5 hours by some traffic on the Beltway (of course!) and a 15-minute nap in a medical office parking lot off of Georgia Ave when I got drowsy (I had just eaten lunch). I wasn’t worried, though, because I was still making great time, until I reached Morehead, KY, about 140 miles east of Louisville. I stopped to get gas, then pulled into a parking space to feed and water the kittens with the car on and idling. When I went to hit the road again, I noticed my temperature light was blinking and my engine temperature was through the roof, so I pulled back into the gas station to let it cool off. After meeting three very nice people (Zack, John, and Ross) who stopped to help me (two other drivers stopped to ask if I needed any help; I never get over the chivalry in Kentucky!) by opening my coolant reservoir and watching it all boil away, then adding water to cool the engine off, I got on my merry way, but the light kept blinking, so I kept pulling over to let it rest. After realizing that the actual temperature of the engine was fine, I set off, figuring the light was just blinking because there HAD been a problem and the engine codes needed to be reset. Nevertheless, I didn’t make it home until midnight, 13 hours after I had set out. Talk about a long day.

-I don’t get any cell service in eastern Kentucky, so the entire time I was having car trouble, I couldn’t contact anyone. I made a pay phone call to Eric, but his phone was off, and then at another pay phone, I had to make a collect call home to talk to my brother (my personal car advisor), because the pay phone could not accept credit card charges! I was nervous about pulling over and calling AAA without cell service, and I was an emotional wreck until I got back into a service area, about 20 miles east of Lexington. All my lifelines were cut off, and I didn’t like it!

-I got a haircut while I was at home, and my hair is now shorter than it has been in five years. My mom cut it, and it’s a great cut, but we’re both not quite sure if it’s the best cut for my face, so I’m trying it out for a few days before I get a second opinion and possibly a trim. It’s really short and cute, kind of fluffy and feathery, and I really like it a lot. My shower time has been cut in half (my hair was over a foot long from root to tip before), and even though I now am forced to blow dry my hair into submission afterwards, it’s still nice. So far, the reaction has been positive.

-We played softball again yesterday, and I sustained more injuries than I ever thought possible. I was back at third base, and I misjudged a ball thrown in from left center, catching it mostly with my right hand rather than my glove – OUCH! An inning later, I went to catch a grounder headed straight for me and COMPLETELY misjudged it, so it slammed into my right shin at about 100 miles an hour. Everyone came rushing over, and it hurt like hell for the first minute, but then it miraculously felt fine afterward. Today it’s tight and sore, but not swollen – I guess the ball luckily hit just to the right of my tibia, but not so far right that there was a lot of soft tissue damage and swelling. Because of all my “misjudging,” I had a pretty terrible game fielding, but I blame it on the fact that we couldn’t get there until game time, so we didn’t get to warm up. Next week, I’m going to warm up a lot and get my hand-eye coordination back in check!

Well, it feels like I was gone for months, not days, but it’s good to be back home again.