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May. 27th, 2008 09:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
badstarSo the visit to PA went well, with the exception of two things which I will probably talk about in a separate post because they inspire some ranting. (Well, the one does, the second one...some annoyed commentary but probably not full-on ranting on my part)
So in the interest of keeping the trip relatively low-cost, not having to leave the house at 6am to catch the one bus that would get us to Lancaster, and stopping in Philly to get cheese steaks on Powellton ave, we took a bus to Philadelphia and then a train to Lancaster. Got into Philly an hour and a half later than anticipated, and were unable to go get cheesesteaks (Reading Market had closed literally two minutes before we got to the door and there was nowhere else on Kennedy boulevard between Filbert Street and 30th Street Station that we could get cheesesteaks...so we just grabbed sandwiches at Au Bon Pain instead.
Got to Lancaster just before 930. The parents picked us up at the train station and we went to my brother's place. I forgot until we pulled in the driveway that Mike has German Shepherds. Gavin and dogs...especially the big ones...really not so much. Minor calamity ensued and at one point I had to tell my mom to back off about the dogs and leave the issue alone, see additional post for more. Then Mike brought out the snake. Can't remember what it was, but it looked like a coral snake (no, not a king snake, it was something else). The snake was cool, except it kept trying to slither into my shirt, and kept tickling me.
After Mike's we stopped at a diner for some food. We were both still less than starving from the earlier sandwiches, but hungry enough to have some food. Mom seemed thoroughly confused when we split an order of strawberry french toast but other than that, it went well and the parents seemed to have plenty of fun ganging up on me with Gavin.
After that, we went back to Grandma Jane's, had some coffee and had to fend off the myriad offers of food (Grandma Jane is one of those stereotypical grandmas in that way....everyone is a Christmas goose to her or something "Oh, you must be hungry let me fix you some soup. Oh, how about a sandwich? I'm sorry I wasn't thinking, I only have white, wheat, potato and onion bread I should have gotten some pumpernickel or rye so you could pick between the different kids. Here are some pickels. Hold on a minute I have some homemade chilli in the freezer I'll heat it up. Would you like some more cookies? I have peppermint and sugar cookies, or here's some biscotti..."
This is not an exaggeration.
Saturday we got up and wandered around downtown a bit ("Downtown" Lancaster, for anyone not familiar is um....maybe seven or eight square blocks? Ok, perhaps a little bigger than that, but truly not much.) went to the market and poked around some random shops until Chelle picked us up and then we headed for Hershey so we could go to Chocolate World, making a stop along the way to say hi to my grandmother who wasn't home (Oh, too bad, we tried. Honest we did. So sad.).
In Chocolate World, we were able to purchase the cherry cream Hershey Kisses that are only available elsewhere around Valentine's day.
Samantha it seems, took a quick shine to Gavin. It amuses me greatly that my seven-year-old niece thought that my child-loathing girlfriend was just the greatest thing since Hannah Montana. When she was told to hold hands with someone (it was really quite crowded though not quite as bad as one might expect on Memorial day), she kept grabbing Gavin's and then on the way back to Lancaster, she informed me that I should sit in the front seat and that Gavin was going to sit in the back with her. She then announced that she wanted to give Gavin half her chocolate bar (not share, or let her have a bite, but give her half of a king-sized dark chocolate bar.) And she kept saying that Gavin could have as much bubblegum as she wanted, as long as she didn't take the entire package. (Me? I was offered a piece of bubblegum.)
For anyone who doesn't believe this, I don't blame you. However, I have photos (yay for recent camera phone purchase!)
Chelle dropped us off in the city afterwards and we went wandering around for a few hours. Saint James cemetery was open (yay!) so we got to wander around there and then we just went wandering aimlessly for a while, made it out to the prison which is almost on the edge of the city proper and then walked back to Grandma Jane's to find out that she had made stuffed shells for dinner, with great apologies for not putting any meat in them and offerings to make something else (no! it's okay, I promise!!! Uncle! Mercy! Whatever! The shells were so good, we didn't need meat)
She tried to foist desert on us, but stuffed from the shells we decided to wait til a bit later and went upstairs to discuss some writing projects for a while, honestly intending to come down a bit later for dessert (several kinds of cookies, kahlua balls, maple-walnut balls, spiced nuts, ice cream, you name it...) This was probably around 10 or 1030. We got so involved in conversation that it was after midnight we went back downstairs for dessert, and after that we were down a couple of times for coffee until around 4am when I very suddenly started to feel nauseous and within a few minutes got sick. Whatever it was, it seems that something jut didn't like me because I felt mostly okay once it was over though it took a while for me to be absolutely sure that I wasn't going to be sick again.
I was woken sometime after noon on Sunday by a phone call from my mom informing me that Grandma Jane had lost a LOT of sleep the night before practically having panic attacks at the appearance of impropriety of Gavin and I being in a bedroom alone together with the door closed. I was rather annoyed with the whole thing- most especially the manner in which the message was delivered. (This is the other issue to be given a separate post, so if anyone is thinking of leaving any "her house, her rules" commentary, please refrain from doing so until I've made that post and you've read it). I informed my mother on no uncertain terms that I was very irritated, that we had the door closed in effort to not disturb anyone (Mumsie was extremely tired from all their weekend stuff, asleep in the next room having threatened death upon anyone who might wake her), that we were fully clothed and doing nothing but talking the entire time, we were upstairs and downstairs several times to get dessert and coffee, oh and roundabout four a.m. I evacuated the contents of my stomach, thanks.
Sunday afternoon, we went hiking for a few hours in the county park after a bit of issue over the fact that a vast majority of the bus routed in the county don't run at all on Sundays (a lot of them used to have limited Sunday runs, but don't at all anymore) and the only places we could get to by bus were the mall and the Route 30 tourist strip. After we got back to Grandma Jane's, Samantha called and begged for me and Gavin to go and visit at Grammy's house. We didn't have a way out there and by that time in the evening, after hiking for several hours, just didn't feel like doing anything else.
Sunday post-dinner we had further discussions, largely of the absurdity of the impropriety thing (this time we made a point of leaving the door open and coming downstairs even more often)
Monday we slept til noon, bummed around for a while and then came back to Baltimore where we proceeded to stay up all night, eat some of the myriad treats sent with us by Grandma Jane, had a bit of an incident with some blackberry cabernet sorbet on off-white carpet, conversed lots more before finally deciding to go to sleep (and sleeping til 4pm)
Yay for a short workweek.
So in the interest of keeping the trip relatively low-cost, not having to leave the house at 6am to catch the one bus that would get us to Lancaster, and stopping in Philly to get cheese steaks on Powellton ave, we took a bus to Philadelphia and then a train to Lancaster. Got into Philly an hour and a half later than anticipated, and were unable to go get cheesesteaks (Reading Market had closed literally two minutes before we got to the door and there was nowhere else on Kennedy boulevard between Filbert Street and 30th Street Station that we could get cheesesteaks...so we just grabbed sandwiches at Au Bon Pain instead.
Got to Lancaster just before 930. The parents picked us up at the train station and we went to my brother's place. I forgot until we pulled in the driveway that Mike has German Shepherds. Gavin and dogs...especially the big ones...really not so much. Minor calamity ensued and at one point I had to tell my mom to back off about the dogs and leave the issue alone, see additional post for more. Then Mike brought out the snake. Can't remember what it was, but it looked like a coral snake (no, not a king snake, it was something else). The snake was cool, except it kept trying to slither into my shirt, and kept tickling me.
After Mike's we stopped at a diner for some food. We were both still less than starving from the earlier sandwiches, but hungry enough to have some food. Mom seemed thoroughly confused when we split an order of strawberry french toast but other than that, it went well and the parents seemed to have plenty of fun ganging up on me with Gavin.
After that, we went back to Grandma Jane's, had some coffee and had to fend off the myriad offers of food (Grandma Jane is one of those stereotypical grandmas in that way....everyone is a Christmas goose to her or something "Oh, you must be hungry let me fix you some soup. Oh, how about a sandwich? I'm sorry I wasn't thinking, I only have white, wheat, potato and onion bread I should have gotten some pumpernickel or rye so you could pick between the different kids. Here are some pickels. Hold on a minute I have some homemade chilli in the freezer I'll heat it up. Would you like some more cookies? I have peppermint and sugar cookies, or here's some biscotti..."
This is not an exaggeration.
Saturday we got up and wandered around downtown a bit ("Downtown" Lancaster, for anyone not familiar is um....maybe seven or eight square blocks? Ok, perhaps a little bigger than that, but truly not much.) went to the market and poked around some random shops until Chelle picked us up and then we headed for Hershey so we could go to Chocolate World, making a stop along the way to say hi to my grandmother who wasn't home (Oh, too bad, we tried. Honest we did. So sad.).
In Chocolate World, we were able to purchase the cherry cream Hershey Kisses that are only available elsewhere around Valentine's day.
Samantha it seems, took a quick shine to Gavin. It amuses me greatly that my seven-year-old niece thought that my child-loathing girlfriend was just the greatest thing since Hannah Montana. When she was told to hold hands with someone (it was really quite crowded though not quite as bad as one might expect on Memorial day), she kept grabbing Gavin's and then on the way back to Lancaster, she informed me that I should sit in the front seat and that Gavin was going to sit in the back with her. She then announced that she wanted to give Gavin half her chocolate bar (not share, or let her have a bite, but give her half of a king-sized dark chocolate bar.) And she kept saying that Gavin could have as much bubblegum as she wanted, as long as she didn't take the entire package. (Me? I was offered a piece of bubblegum.)
For anyone who doesn't believe this, I don't blame you. However, I have photos (yay for recent camera phone purchase!)
Chelle dropped us off in the city afterwards and we went wandering around for a few hours. Saint James cemetery was open (yay!) so we got to wander around there and then we just went wandering aimlessly for a while, made it out to the prison which is almost on the edge of the city proper and then walked back to Grandma Jane's to find out that she had made stuffed shells for dinner, with great apologies for not putting any meat in them and offerings to make something else (no! it's okay, I promise!!! Uncle! Mercy! Whatever! The shells were so good, we didn't need meat)
She tried to foist desert on us, but stuffed from the shells we decided to wait til a bit later and went upstairs to discuss some writing projects for a while, honestly intending to come down a bit later for dessert (several kinds of cookies, kahlua balls, maple-walnut balls, spiced nuts, ice cream, you name it...) This was probably around 10 or 1030. We got so involved in conversation that it was after midnight we went back downstairs for dessert, and after that we were down a couple of times for coffee until around 4am when I very suddenly started to feel nauseous and within a few minutes got sick. Whatever it was, it seems that something jut didn't like me because I felt mostly okay once it was over though it took a while for me to be absolutely sure that I wasn't going to be sick again.
I was woken sometime after noon on Sunday by a phone call from my mom informing me that Grandma Jane had lost a LOT of sleep the night before practically having panic attacks at the appearance of impropriety of Gavin and I being in a bedroom alone together with the door closed. I was rather annoyed with the whole thing- most especially the manner in which the message was delivered. (This is the other issue to be given a separate post, so if anyone is thinking of leaving any "her house, her rules" commentary, please refrain from doing so until I've made that post and you've read it). I informed my mother on no uncertain terms that I was very irritated, that we had the door closed in effort to not disturb anyone (Mumsie was extremely tired from all their weekend stuff, asleep in the next room having threatened death upon anyone who might wake her), that we were fully clothed and doing nothing but talking the entire time, we were upstairs and downstairs several times to get dessert and coffee, oh and roundabout four a.m. I evacuated the contents of my stomach, thanks.
Sunday afternoon, we went hiking for a few hours in the county park after a bit of issue over the fact that a vast majority of the bus routed in the county don't run at all on Sundays (a lot of them used to have limited Sunday runs, but don't at all anymore) and the only places we could get to by bus were the mall and the Route 30 tourist strip. After we got back to Grandma Jane's, Samantha called and begged for me and Gavin to go and visit at Grammy's house. We didn't have a way out there and by that time in the evening, after hiking for several hours, just didn't feel like doing anything else.
Sunday post-dinner we had further discussions, largely of the absurdity of the impropriety thing (this time we made a point of leaving the door open and coming downstairs even more often)
Monday we slept til noon, bummed around for a while and then came back to Baltimore where we proceeded to stay up all night, eat some of the myriad treats sent with us by Grandma Jane, had a bit of an incident with some blackberry cabernet sorbet on off-white carpet, conversed lots more before finally deciding to go to sleep (and sleeping til 4pm)
Yay for a short workweek.
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no subject
Date: 2008-05-28 04:36 am (UTC)You know, when you put it like that, it kind of makes me want to set myself on fire in disgust. :-P
Ooh, are you going to show the before and after photos you took and ramble on about how totally awesome your soap is and everyone should buy some, just look at the result....
regarding the snake...
Date: 2008-05-28 09:29 am (UTC)Re: regarding the snake...
Date: 2008-05-28 09:32 am (UTC)He told us what it was...I just don't remember.
Re: regarding the snake...
Date: 2008-05-28 09:33 am (UTC)i didn't mean to focus on the snake bit, but since i just woke up about 20 minutes ago, that's what nabbed my attention. :)
Re: regarding the snake...
Date: 2008-05-28 09:41 am (UTC)