A Family Weekend + Recent Things

Happy Monday! It’s my last work-less Monday for a while, and as I write to you, my silly pup is digging in his food bowl looking for more than what I gave him for dinner. It’s fine. I used to try to stop him from playing with his bowl, but now I’ve embraced it as one of his favorite toys… that also happens to have another purpose. I have a post for next week about things I didn’t expect about having a dog (puppy), and the variety of things that become toys is absolutely one of them. But I digress.

The past week was, in many ways, a mess. Everything that happened was fairly little, but it all compounded to leave me in a pretty blah mood by Thursday. To recap:

• The cigarette lighter in my car stopped working, so I had to take my car in and get a new one. Despite being new-to-me, anything to do with fuses is apparently not covered under warranty because blown fuses can be as much your fault for putting something iffy into the cigarette lighter as it can be the car’s fault for having a bad lighter.
• My washer flooded my laundry room during the first load of laundry I did here because the maintenance man left the drainage hose on the floor instead of where it was supposed to be when he checked. He fixed it the next day and apologized profusely, yet I’m still a little afraid to do the next load of laundry (but I need to).
• My computer started crashing more frequently (it’s done it intermittently for the past few months), so I took it into Apple, and found out that my logic board was bad. Again. This happened my second (I think) year of college. It costs so much to send it to get the logic board replaced that this time I just decided to suck it up and get a new computer.
• In a dumb mistake, I tried to transfer money from my new bank to my old bank, rather than the other way around. This led to a series of bizarre balances in three different accounts and no record of it from my old bank.
• My credit cards only worked at about half the places I tried to buy stuff.
• Ben was (okay, still kind of is) particularly ornery and frustrating. I feel bad for putting him in his crate so often, but he passes out almost instantly every single time. He needs a whole lot of sleep to behave these days, which isn’t terrible news for when I start work.
• On our last evening walk, a dog that was trying to chase Ben rammed into my legs while I was distracted checking on my scared puppy. It was a fairly big dog and I was not very well-grounded, and I fell hard on the sidewalk, fortunately not on top of Ben. The owner chuckled and acted like this is just a thing that happens regularly, no big deal. To be fair, it wasn’t that big of a deal, but showing a little concern might’ve been nice. I somehow only have two visible scratches, but my left leg feels rather banged up.

So, that was fun. But it’s all good. I like my new computer. I like being able to actually charge my phone in the car. I assume the bank stuff will get worked out and my credit cards (or some credit card machines) were having an off week. And my apartment is all nice and settled and clean-ish.

I spent most of this weekend being social, and the rest of it trying to get some rest and study. I’ve been feeling suuuuper freaking tired, and I’m trying to make progress on studying for my personal training exam.

I haven’t done anything this science-y since AP biology junior year of high school. You could argue that cancer bio/natural hazards/global warming classes in college were science-y, but I don’t think I put nearly this amount of effort into any of those, and AP bio required work. I did take AP physics my senior year of high school, but I still really think that felt more like math/problem-solving than this sort of memorization-synthesis stuff. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. It’s been a really long time since I’ve taken a class like this, and I’m a touch overwhelmed, but also totally confident it’ll be fine after I figure out which muscles do what. And also what their names are.

On Friday, I had some of my friends over to see my apartment and Ben and get pizza. In typical random fashion, there was discussion of winning lotteries, fun niche careers, and what Kevin Jonas is doing these days.

On Saturday, after a morning of a little studying and a workout, my parents picked me up and took me to my cousin’s unicorn-themed birthday party.

I watched some of the PGA Championship, deleted about 2,000 pictures (of 17,500) from my iCloud, dozed off on the couch, and sat with my feet in the pool while talking to my mom and aunt, who said she didn’t realize how serious I was about that island thing… and that I totally should have done it. It was what I needed to hear about a month ago, but I’ve filed it away for when I need the support.

My evening included more studying, watching a part of live-action Cinderella, which is pretty bad, and an early bedtime.

On Sunday, I studied and cycled early, and my mom came up to shop with me before taking me downtown for Flavored Nation, which had 50 booths with a sample of a popular/famous dish from every state. We each had 10 food tickets, plus 6 alcohol ones, and ate well. 

To be honest, they were totally unprepared for the number of people, and a lot of booths closed early or closed temporarily to go get more food. However, what was there was generally delicious, and we all left feeling quite full, which none of us really expected.

See, lots of dishes were a bite or two, but some of the best ones were substantial. Some winners:

• Hawaii Kalua Pork – Suuuuper tender pork basically cooked with Chinese five spice and salt. Insanely tasty.
• New Jersey Pork Roll – This didn’t sound good, but it WORKS. It’s some sort of crispy pork + melty cheese + an egg. It is delicious.
• Tennessee Hot Chicken – Spicy, crispy drumstick with super juicy meat. And pickles.
• Vermont Apple Cheddar Pie – We all expected this to be apple pie with cheddar in it. Rather, it had chunks of cheddar with a slice of pie. Together in a bite, it was magic.
• New York Buffalo Chicken Wings – I used to be very anti-Buffalo sauce, but a good one has some flavor and is not just spicy. This was that.
• Connecticut Buttered Lobster – We were sad that the Maine booth ran out of their lobster, but Connecticut guy assured us his was sweeter and better, and it was pretty dang good.

We all had a (small) shot of whisky and a tiny cup of Mike’s Hard Lemonade (is there any alcohol in this??), and I tried this peach IPA, AKA the first beer I’ve ever liked in my life.

Then my mom brought me back to my place, played with Ben for a bit, and left me to chill and write and maybe study.

It was the kind of weekend that would’ve been lovely any time, but it felt really good after a meh week to just hang with my people and rest and recharge.

On the agenda for the week: studying to get a little ahead before work starts, manicures with my mom, one last afternoon Pippa walk, my weekly dinner + Game of Thrones date with my dad, and (holy crap) work.

Your turn:

What did you do this weekend?

What’s a food that your state is (or should be) famous for?