Niagara Road Trip, Day Three: A Perfect Day

Today really was a perfect day. Despite the fact that most of it was spent driving and I am now completely exhausted, so many wonderful things happened. It started when Shane got an email on his Blackberry saying that the administration at work decided to give us all the day off on Friday so that we'd have a four-day Memorial Day weekend. Shane and I weren't originally planning to take the whole week off...but with Friday off now all we'd have to do is take Thursday. So we both got in touch with our bosses and were both given permission to take Thursday off too. YES. And since we didn't need to be back anymore we decided to add another night to our stay in Niagara Falls. Amazing...

And then, on top of that, we have this completely awesome room to stay in for the next few days. Here's a picture of Shane taking a picture of me through the sliding window things that open up to the whirlpool bath in the bathroom.


Here's a picture of me taking a picture of Shane from inside the bathroom.

Here's just a portion of the breathtaking view from our room...


Here is the other part of the view....


Here's Shane and I looking all fancy before we headed out to our "nice dinner"...

And then after dinner we spent a little time in the casino across the street from our hotel. Normally, I wouldn't be thrilled about this...I don't exactly love it when Shane gambles, though he can, of course, do as he pleases...but he won $155 Canadian tonight (about $145 in US currency)!

We ended the evening watching the Victoria Day fireworks over the falls from the comfort of our hotel room. It was a beautiful, beautiful thing and I don't think we could have possibly planned it any better. :)

Niagara Road Trip, Day Two: Take Me Out to the Ball Game

Despite a forecast for rain, today has turned out to be a beautiful day! The hotel advertised a daily free continental breakfast so we started our day at a time we considered relatively early (we were headed out the door by 9:30 a.m....here's us looking bright-eyed and bushy-tailed)...


but were apparently too late for said breakfast which ended promptly at...9:30 a.m. So we wound up having a very healthy breakfast from the McDonald's adjacent to the hotel. Mmmm...greasy...

We then headed out on our voyage to the glorious Baseball Hall of Fame. Here is where we parked (picture taken of Shane's Blackberry so that we'd remember the location)...


And here is the Baseball Hall of Fame (a lovely couple from out West somewhere took this picture for us...Angels fans, just in case anyone was curious)...


The Hall of Fame contained all sorts of wonderful baseball relics...here are just a few of the SEVERAL pictures that Shane took while we were there. This first one is of Babe Ruth's locker...


The is the most expensive and rare baseball card out there (it's worth about $3 million)...


This is a locker full of more recent Yankees stuff (Alex Rodriguez's batting helmet, CC Sabathia's shoes...which are gigantic, the batting gloves Derek Jeter was wearing when he broke the record for career hits as a Yankee, etc.)...


Here is a picture of Shane in Hank Aaron's locker...


And the piece de resistance...only appearing this very weekend at the Hall of Fame...the Yankees' 2009 World Series Trophy...


Ooooo...shiny. Here's a picture of Shane with the trophy...


Here's a picture of me with the trophy (the 3rd attempt...I blinked in the first two)...


Then, surprise of surprises, we ran into Don Mattingly and Derek Jeter! Right in the actual hall of fame where all of the plaques are hung!


Boy, did they look different in person. Shane also took several pictures of the plaques for different players...so I chose one to include in my blog. For your viewing pleasure, the Babe's Hall of Fame plaque.


After that we took a short spin around the gift shop...looked at all the overpriced merchandise ($100 sweatshirts and whatnot)...and then that was that. Doing all of this actually took a lot less time than we thought it would, so we went and grabbed a couple of hot dogs and pondered what we'd do next...

Here's me sipping my lunchtime root beer...


Here's Shane being Shane...


We couldn't really come up with anything else good to do (there's not really a whole lot going on in Cooperstown, NY) so we decided to take a leisurely walk down to Otsego Lake and sit on a bench for a while. Here's a picture of us at the lake...


It was really very nice and relaxing. We then decided we wanted to try to go feed some deer at a place where they said you could do so...but for the life of us, we couldn't find it. So after driving around for a little while, we decided to return to the hotel to relax a bit and then we'll head out to dinner before, you guessed it, watching the 2.5 hour series finale of LOST. Not an action-packed day by any means but it's been relaxing and the weather has been nice so I'm happy.

Tomorrow we embark on the second half of our trip to Niagara Falls! We're actually staying on the Canadian side of the Falls so a trip across the border is in order. I'm wondering if my GPS is actually going to work in Canada...hmmm...well, it'll be an adventure!

Niagara Road Trip, Day One: Going Underground

Vacation! Vacation, vacation, vacation...VACATION! I've been looking forward to this trip for a long time. I needed it. And my brain is pretty fried at the moment due to travel and the yucky headache I have at the moment, so bare with me...this entry may be all over the place.

Several months ago Shane and I decided we wanted to go on a little road trip again but this time we'd be heading North instead of South (like we did last year when we went to Washington D.C.). We planned to visit the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY and then head on up to Niagara Falls. It's been a long road between then and now but we made it and we're on the road once again! Enjoy the photos from the first leg of our trip below...which included a stop at Howe Caverns...these awesome underground caves in New York.

As you can see, we're clearly elated...


Halfway the drive to Howe Caverns, our friend Snoopy decided to ride up front with me.


Before long we reached Howe Caverns...


Even though it's warm out we had to come equipped with jackets because it's only about 52 degrees in the caverns. By the end of our spelunking my nose was actually running because of the cold. Here's a lovely picture Shane took of a wall with several different colors of calcite on it. We had one of those touristy picture-in-a-cardboard-frame pictures taken in front of this wall. They took the picture without an obligation to buy it...but I liked it so we did. I'm such a sucker.


Here's our very own version of a picture of us in the caverns...no cardboard frame necessary...


Here's me at "the bridal alter," which is an area where they actually perform wedding ceremonies underground. The slab in the floor that I'm standing on is a heart shape that was cut out of the rock. Legend says that if a single person stands on the heart, they'll be married within a year. I couldn't push the little kids out of the way fast enough. HA! ;)


(Those kids were quite annoying too...middle school aged boys from the looks of things. You can see one in the background of the picture above. There wasn't a moment that went by without them making ridiculous amounts of noise. And their chaperons were hardly doing anything about it. Sheesh...)

And here is the last part...I think it was called "the winding way" or something like that. It was a super narrow passage way through the rock. Very high...but very...very...narrow. Surprisingly, little old claustrophobic me did not have a complete mental breakdown. Shane was reassuring me almost the entire time though...


(Photos courtesy of Shane and his brand-spanking-new camera. Lovely.)

After leaving the caverns we drove about an hour through the upstate New York countryside (and believe me...that's all there is up here), saw several cows and horses, and are now resting up at the hotel before heading out to see Iron Man 2. :) Tomorrow we're on to the Baseball Hall of Fame...and who knows what else!

Our First Place!

So it's official...Shane and I now have our very first place together. :) This week we went and looked at an apartment in a historic house in Portland, unexpectedly fell in love with it (we were very skeptical about it going in...for some reason we thought there'd be a shared bathroom...which, thankfully, there isn't), met with the realtor handling applications for the landlord, and were selected as the new tenants by the end of the week. It all happened so fast but I couldn't be happier. I can't stop talking about it! There's a washer and dryer IN UNIT, an adorable fireplace in the bedroom (though I'm not sure if it works or not yet), those charming details that come with old houses, original hardwood floors in the kitchen and bedroom, a shared front porch and a back porch, it's pet friendly (can't wait to get a dog!)....AND DID I MENTION IT HAS A WASHER AND DRYER IN UNIT??? Who knew I'd ever be so excited about appliances? The only drawbacks are that it's somewhat small, so we'll need to be creative about storage, and there isn't a dishwasher. In my opinion, these are not big drawbacks. Now I just want to hurry up and move already so I can get settled again! Waiting until the end of June is going to be hard...but I'm hoping the time will fly by. SO EXCITED! I'll post pictures as soon as I can.

And I'm sure you'll all be excited to hear that Shane and I are going to be going on a little vacation next week so I'll be sure to do my daily travel postings as I do whenever I take a trip. Our destination? Howe Caverns, Cooperstown, NY to the Baseball Hall of Fame, and then on to Niagara Falls! I've never been to any of these places so I'm very excited. Not to mention I'm in serious need of a vacation after 3 very busy months at work. So much awesomeness going on I can hardly contain myself! EEEEEE!!!!!

My Life in Boxes

If there's one thing I've learned from the moving process it's this: I have WAY too much stuff. Boxes and bins of my things are slowly beginning to fill the spare room in Shane's apartment and I'm not even done yet. The pictured boxes do NOT include several of my kitchen items (at least two more full boxes), more than half of my wardrobe, or any of my furniture.

But why am I moving you ask? Shane and I have been talking about moving in together for some time now, so there's that piece of the pie. But why am I moving now...into Shane's current apartment with Shane's other two (male) roommates? That's a little more tricky. You see the people that own the house I was renting with MY roommates would like to move back into said house. And they'd like to start work on the house in May. BUT Shane and I can't get our own place yet because his lease isn't up until the end of June. Thus, I am moving into Shane's apartment (rented house, really) for two months...and then I have to move again. Damn.

So this is what brings me to the conclusion that I have too much stuff. Having to move all of one's belongings twice within a couple of months makes one seriously reconsider hanging on to the accumulated crap of an entire lifetime. I have a serious pack-rat problem but I'm usually pretty organized about it so I never saw a problem with it...until now.

Not all of this stuff will be coming with me to my future home. I'm am DETERMINED to get rid of some of it. I do not need to keep every single item that was ever given to me...I do NOT need to keep every single item that was ever given to me...

I Stink...Big Time

It has been several months since I've blogged and I don't have a good excuse as to why I've been so lazy about my writing. I do, however, have a very lame excuse. Way back when I started this blog a certain someone (::cough::SHANE::cough cough::) said that interesting blogs have pictures. And I certainly did NOT want to have a boring blog so I determined I would not blog unless I had some kind of pictures to go with it.

But the thing is...it is a big fat pain in the rear end to upload pictures for a blog. Or at least for me it is. Getting the pictures onto my computer isn't hard but actually getting them into the blog? That's a challenge. It's time consuming and, frankly, I don't have that kind of time.

So, if it's alright with you all (the small hand full of folks that at least USED to read my blog) I'm going to attempt to blog more often...but there may only occasionally be pictures. Who knows if that will actually encourage me to write more often...but it's worth a shot.

So enough with the excuses and on to what's new in life. The most interesting thing of late is probably that I've joined a gym. Yes, really. I've never really been particularly strong or had much in the way of endurance...but I've decided to work on it. Shane has joined up too (Planet Fitness...it's only 10-freaking-bucks a month!) so I'm hoping that will help me stay motivated. Although at this very moment I'm sitting here on my ass writing a blog fully decked out in my gym attire while Shane is sitting at his desk (most likely looking at Reddit...or however it's spelled) putting off going to the gym. And after a string of going almost every day...I haven't gone in the last three. Uh oh. I must go tonight...I MUST!

So with that...I'm going to try to get my butt in gear. I hope I still have some readers out there...I hope I hope I hope!

Quarter Century

So, pretty much I suck at blogging. It has been over a month since my last post. I am such a bum. The funny thing is that it's not because I don't have things to write about. It's actually more because I have too many things to write about...so many that I'm spending all my time out doing the things and no time writing about them. It's a happy sort of problem.

ANYWAY, now that my unforgivably long absence from blogger has been addressed, on to the wonderful and lovely things that I have to share! First of all, since my last post I have turned 25 years old. I never really thought of this as being a big deal until people started saying things like, "Wow! A milestone birthday! You're a quarter of a century old now!" It's not that I feel old. I just feel like I'm in limbo. Being in your mid-twenties is such a weird thing. You feel too old for some things and too young for others and it's all very confusing. Well, it is for me at least. I suppose I can't speak for 25-year-olds the world over. I still feel very much like the same old Audrey, but at the same time so much has changed. My friends are all getting married off and having babies. My health isn't what it used to be (this is one of the things I feel too young for). My "little" cousins are graduating high school...and college. When did life suddenly become so...real? I'm doing a terrible job of describing what I mean...but I still hope you get it.

But aside for the mind-bending soul-searching I've been doing, I did some really fun stuff to celebrate my birthday. I went to Watch Hill with my Dad, Lisa, Hillary and Shane the weekend before my birthday, Shane brought me out for a truly awesome dinner at Barcelona on my birthday, and I went to Block Island with my mom, aunts, Hillary, and Shane the weekend after my birthday. So much fun.

Here is a picture of Shane and I at Watch Hill (Shane at the beach?!??! WHAT?!?!?)...


Then a couple weeks later Shane and I went on a wondrous journey into the woods of Burlington, CT.


This was, far and away, the most challenging hike I have ever been on. There was lots of climbing up steep rocks and some trudging through undergrowth. And while I would love to say we navigated our way through the forest without the assistance of a trail, it would be a flat out lie. Though there were a few times where we couldn't seem to find the next tree with a blue paint square on it and we had to do some back tracking. Adventure! We even saw some frogs and...a SNAKE! GASP! Fortunately we both managed to not get eaten by bears and eventually made it back to the car safely. Here is a picture of Shane resting after we climbed up a bunch of rocks.


Here is a picture of me at the top of one of the rock...things we had to climb.


Here is Shane climbing up one of the many places where I stopped and said "Really? The trail can't possibly be leading straight up those rocks..."


Bravely standing at the edge of a "cliff"...




Another one of the places where I said something along the lines of "You're kidding...right?"


Here's a picture of the sign that was at the juncture of two paths.


Here's me in front of the "Tory Den"...the goal destination of our voyage. Some guy nicknamed "the leather man" lived in this little cave and lived off the land years and years ago. I'm sure there's much more to the story but that's all I can remember off the top of my head. He sounded kind of like a serial killer in hiding to me. Could make for a pretty scary horror movie, don't you think? Beware the leather man...


(I find it odd that I seem to have mysteriously lost my dramatic flare for posing for photographs in the pictures Shane took of me. It is very unlike me to just stand for a photo with my arms at my sides. It won't happen again.)

THEN last night we went to a Yankees game in the big city! Shane bought me my very first Yankees baseball cap and I was very happy (see picture below).


It was the first time I'd been to the new stadium so I was very excited. And the experience definitely lived up to my expectations. I can say, without exaggerating, that I had more fun than I've ever had at a sporting event. The game couldn't have been better. After a rough start the Yankees won the game and I got to witness baseball history! Derek Jeter made his 2,721 hit last night which ties Lou Gehrig's record!


The excitement that spread through the stadium was absolutely palpable. I hate crowds but for that moment I actually felt a real, human connection with the thousands of other people that were there. It was amazing. Here's a picture of Derek acknowledging the crowd, which was standing and cheering as loud as humanly possible for him.


The top three hit leaders...


Derek's mommy and daddy...


A self-explanatory picture...


But the funny thing is...I almost missed it completely. Right at the beginning of this inning I very stupidly got up to use the bathroom. Even more stupidly I then took my sweet time getting back to our seats. Only when I heard the crowd begin to get rowdy did I realize what I was potentially missing. I sprinted up the stairs to our seating section to see Derek at the plate. I looked up towards Shane trying to figure out what to do and saw him looking down at me with this "EEEE!!! GET UP HERE!!!" kind of look on his face. I wanted to be with him so badly when Derek made the hit. Call it silly, but I've actually been getting into watching the games lately and so this meant a lot. I looked down at the field. I looked at Shane. No sooner did I turn to make the ascent to our seats did I heard the crack of the bat, the crowd roar, and then turned around to see the ball bouncing it's way out to right field. Something like this could only happen to me. I laugh about it now but at the time I though my heart was absolutely going to break. I wouldn't say I really "missed" it...but I sort of only half saw it. Either way it was completely amazing and I had a wonderful time. What a great GREAT game. I feel so lucky to have been there. (Thank you, Shane. <3)

Here's a picture of me hoping Derek's next (and final) at bat will yield the record-breaking hit...


Here's Derek at bat...


Derek getting walked by the Tampa Bay pitcher is not pictured. Damn. I'll say it again though, what an awesome game overall. A year ago I never would've guessed I'd care so much about a baseball game. Who'd have thunk?

And after a solid hour of writing and uploading pictures, I'm going to go to bed. I now remember why I don't write these often...it freaking takes me FOREVER! I need to allow myself to write entries that aren't so...epic.