3 years

Here's to 3 fabulous years. I love you Zack. Happy anniversary.

Wildwood days

Wow, it's been a few weeks since I've written. We've been having a good time.

2 weekends ago, we decided to go to the shore again, since it is still summer after all. We packed up and headed out to Wildwood, NJ.

We sat on the beach for a while on Friday, but decided it was a little too windy, so we hit up the boardwalk instead. We had a great time looking in the shops, munching on boardwalk food, and people watching. We also played glow-in-the-dark, 3D, pirate-themed mini golf, which was really fun. This picture isn't too awesome, but it gives you an idea of what it looked like.

That evening, we watched some fireworks on the beach while eating a funnel cake. Yum! We stayed in a tacky little motel that night. Frankly, most of Wildwood is pretty darn tacky. I guess that's part of its charm. On Saturday, we were able to actually get some beach time in. Then we packed up and headed home. Even though we had fun, I think I have decided that I don't need to go to Wildwood again. It's farther away than some of the other beaches; the beach is really long, meaning that it's quite to walk to get out to the ocean, especially when you're carrying all your beach gear; and it's pretty tacky. I just prefer other beaches.

Some updates on our trip to Utah are forthcoming.

The Cove

Have you seen The Cove yet? It's a documentary. I heard about it on NPR soon after it came out and knew I wanted to see it, but it took me this long to get around to it because I knew it would be sad. And it was. But very good. Go check it out.

A VISITOR!

I never mentioned that Zack's mom got to come spend a quick weekend with us a couple of weeks ago. I don't think we really took any pictures. I guess we were too busy having a blast! We just had a low key sort of time and really just enjoyed the company. We took an architecture walking tour downtown, which was pretty great-- just our kind of thing. We got some delicious food at Reading Terminal Market, we golfed at our favorite mini golf course (I didn't take this pic),

we went out to eat and to a play (if you were curious, it was Avenue Q,

which was released the same year as Wicked and beat it out to win best musical that year. My review: very funny, definitely relevant. Unfortunately quite raunchy, especially in one particular scene, with some language and innuendo thrown in at other times. For that reason, I can't recommend it. Really a shame. Also, I love Wicked. It should've won. ) We also went to church, and enjoyed a Sunday evening picnic on the Belmont plateau with a wonderful view of the city (I'm sure I have a picture of this somewhere, but I'm on a roll with using pictures I didn't take-- so that's why there are no leaves on the trees. There were leaves when we were on our picnic).

Thanks to Momma Noyce for coming to visit us. It's been too long since we've seen family. If only more of them would get out here to visit us (hint hint). I guess it's a good thing that we are going to visit them in just a couple of weeks here.

Fahrenheit

Well, a weekend work marathon is forthcoming. With 2 double shifts in the mix and a couple of days for recovery after that, I figured I'd better get some blogging in while I can.

It has been hot Hot HOT here. We hit 103 twice this week, which is quite rare for Philly. In fact, I think we set heat records on both those days. Plus we have humidity here. That makes it feel even hotter. It was crazy. Luckily I got to be at my air conditioned work for both of those afternoons, so it worked out for me. Zack also stayed at work late and did homework those days to avoid running the air conditioner at home so much. I think we fared pretty well all things considered. Please note that I would take a 103 degree humid Philadelphia day over a mildly cold one any day, so this is not complaining in the least. I hope we have an extra long summer here.

Despite that we are both working full time (and opposite schedules) and Zack is carrying a full time load of classes, we are finding some time to squeeze in some summer fun. Last weekend, we decided to make a trip up to Hersheypark, which is about 2 hours from here. We went in the winter of 2008 for the Christmas thing that they do, but none of the roller coasters were open at that time of year, so we knew we'd have to go back. They do this excellent thing where you can enter that park after a certain time on the day before you bought your ticket for and preview the park. In this case, we bought tickets for Saturday, so we drove up there Friday and went into the park at 7:30. We stayed until the park closed at 10 and in that time, we rode all the major roller coasters. It was also nice because it was evening so it was cooler than being there midday, plus it was less crowded than it was on Saturday, so the lines were shorter. On Saturday, we went back for some more fun, and we ended up being really glad that we went on Friday night. We rode some coasters but decided to spend a while in the water park in the heat of the day and by 4 PM, we were both just pooped so we decided to head home. If we hadn't gotten to go to the park on Friday night, we wouldn't have gotten to ride everything probably, so it was really nice. Our (my?) favorite ride was Fahrenheit, which starts out like this:

except this isn't the kind of ride where they shoot you over that hill suddenly. Nope- they drag you straight up that hill slowly. You have to just sit there basically flat on your back in the seat, staring at the sky, waiting to finally make it to the top, and then you go flying straight down toward the ground, like THIS. Thrilling. It was also very smooth-- doesn't jerk your head around too much or scramble your brains out. That's important to me, the girl who spends her amusement park days in a dramamine drowsy haze just to be able to bear going on any of the rides without puking my guts out. Here's a video about a minute long of the whole ride from the point of view of the rider if you're interested. Fun fun. There were other great rides too, but I know I've already bored you with my overly long description of this one. Anyway, we had a good time and were glad that we had the chance to make it up there for that.

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Reader question #3

Natalie said, "I want you to blog about politics. About Obama. And Arizona. And the oil spill. We don't have cable, so I need to keep informed SOMEhow. Help me, ShaNae!"

Well Natalie, you know as well as anyone that I am not the person to ask about all this. But I will say a few brief things.

I still love Obama. I will be voting for him when he's up for reelection. No president is perfect (except Abraham Lincoln of course :P), but I can imagine much worse things.

I hate Arizona and am glad I do not live there. Imagine what it would be like if there were black people in Arizona too. Maybe if they change their ways, I would go live there for the nice climate. There's a right way and a wrong way to do immigration reform. I gotta admit that I don't really know what the right way is, but I sure as heck know what a wrong way is and Arizona hit it right on the head.

The oil spill--- oh boy. I feel depressed about how apathetic I feel about the oil spill. I've been thinking this since it started-- it's kinda crazy how when it feels like something doesn't really affect me directly, it feels kind of insignificant. Okay, before you all go commenting about how it does actually affect me, I know that. But it feels far away. Also, I feel helpless about it. And since there's nothing I can do, it's easier to just not stress about it. All that being said, I think this is a fabulous time for all of us to be pushing for and thinking about alternative energy sources. I understand that we are going to be reliant on oil and such for some time, but we can use this incident as an opportunity to move away from those energy sources toward more sustainable ones. I feel like we haven't heard enough about that from the president. That being said, I feel bad for Obama in this whole thing. I guess I kind of relate. I am the charge nurse at work most of the time (which means I am in charge). That means that when something goes wrong, even if I wasn't directly involved, it's partially my fault. And I hate that. It sucks to have to take a lot of crap when someone under you didn't do what they were supposed to be doing. I guess that comes with the turf when you're president, but I relate to it in a new way now that I've really been there.

And that is my ever-so-brief and hopefully not too explosive political post.