The stars at night are big and bright

That's right y'all. A few weeks ago, we got to spend some days in the great state of Texas. Zack's mom had a nursing conference in Dallas. His dad went along too, just for fun, and they invited us along to mooch off their hotel room also. And we had a mighty fine time.

We flew in on a Saturday evening (we ate Texas cheese fries at the Chilis in the airport while we waited for Zack's mom's flight to come in). Since we flew Southwest, we all flew into Love Field, which is the airport close to downtown. But our hotel was out by the other airport, about a half and hour away. Figures.

So Sunday, we basically just drove around to see various areas where Zack served his mission. Sadly, we only took a couple of pictures. In Oak Cliff, we saw the the Texas Theater, where Lee Harvey Oswald was apprehended.

And this is a picture of a gorgeous park that Zack used to ride his bike through often. (He also got in a terrible bike wreck there once).

We saw 3 of Zack's areas. We didn't make it out to Athens, TX because it was a bit far out in the boondocks. I kinda adored Oak Cliff, and I decided that if we ever have occasion to move to Dallas, that would be a good place to be. They even have Aldi, our favorite grocery store. I didn't see a Rite Aid though, so I'd have to think about that. For lunch we went to Texas Roadhouse. Hee hee. Sunday evening is when Zack's dad flew in.

On Monday, Zack's mom began conferencing it up, so it was just us and Z's dad. We decided to do some sightseeing around downtown Dallas. We started out (after paying only $3 for all day parking!) at the Texas Schoolbook Depository.

The museum there was not open yet so we walked around Dealey Plaza and saw the place where JFK was shot. Then we walked to Pioneer Plaza and saw these babies.....

LONGHORNS.

Here's Zack getting impaled by one.

Cute. Very Texas-ish. We saw the ugly monstrosity that is City Hall

(we much prefer our lovely Philly monstrosity).

We went inside this strange church (basically just a small chapel inside.)

Here's what the ceiling looks like.

Pretty. After that, we got the chance to go back to the Schoolbook Depository to see the very well done Sixth Floor Museum. It highlights the presidency and, of course, assassination of JFK. It walks you through the events of the day he was killed through written words, an audio tour, movies, and pictures. It was seriously just riveting. After some barbeque for lunch, we made our way over the one of the tallest buildings on the Dallas skyline, which we kept calling the keyhole building because it looks like this.

We were able to go up in it (for free!) and catch some great views of the city below.

Then we headed back to pick Z's mom up from her conference and grab some dinner. While we were out, we swung by the Dallas Temple.

Tuesday was our last day in Dallas and we spent it checking out the Texas State Fair, the biggest state fair in the country. We actually had a really nice time. The weather was basically to die for. We found a deal online that helped us get a whole lot off admission price, which also helped. We saw a bird show, including a singing bird that was pretty amazing. We went into a butterfly house.

I admit that I am actually pretty scared of butterflies. Weird, I know. I think they are pretty but when it comes down to it, they are still nasty bugs and I don't want them to land on me.

It was still fun to walk through and look at the different pretty varieties.

We also ate some fried food (Zack's dad did not join us in that), watched some BMX bike stunts, rode the skyride, and looked at various fair type things.

And if you needed proof that everything's bigger in Texas, here's Big Tex, some huge random scary thing at the fair. Our Texas food for the day besides the fried fair food was steak at a steakhouse.

The next day, we got up, hopped on a plane, and came home.

Our many thanks to Zack's parents for inviting us along on their trip and making it all possible for us.

Go Phillies!

Last night's game was ultra exciting. We saw history making in process. Roy Halladay pitched a no hitter, the 2nd one ever in the history of the postseason in baseball. Loved it.

October

I love the month of October. I am excited that it is here (although I love September too, so kinda sad to leave that one behind).

Here are some reasons why I love October:

-Fall weather. Yes, you are all very aware that I am a summer girl all the way. But I do like fall weather, particularly the warmer kind, and have had stages of my life where I thought fall might be my favorite season. And, in conjunction with that...

-Colorful leaves. So pretty.

-Haunted houses. I talked Zack into going to one with me yesterday but then it fell through. Maybe another night...

-Halloween scrubs at work. I can wear them all month.

-Halloween earrings. I have many. And they are cute. Which should I wear today?

-Haunted mini golf at Franklin Square. I hope they're doing that again this year.

-Franken Berry and Count Chocula cold cereal. Yum

-The produce at farmers markets. Mmmmm. Apples are the best at this time of year.

-Stuff that glows in the dark. Ooo and black lights.

-Halloween. I mean the movie. The first one. I try to record it off TV and watch it every year now since I first saw it because I really like it. And I think it has the creepiest theme song of all time.

-Other Halloween movies- Hocus Pocus, The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, Nightmare on Elm Street, the Nightmare Before Christmas, etc

-Halloween parties. Except I am upset because our ward scheduled their Halloween party on the 30th, which was going to be my Halloween party. Grrrrrr.

And, probably most of all

HALLOWEEN DECORATIONS! This time of year can be very bad for our bottom line because I absolutely adore Halloween decorations. I have a shower curtain and soap pump in my bathroom, glow in the dark pillowcases on my bed, multiple stings of fun lights (eyeballs, skulls, some that play music) in my living room, ghosts hanging from my ceiling, a fog machine, and more. What we usually try to do is wait until after Halloween to buy decorations on clearance, then we pack them all away. The next year, when we pull them out, it's like we just got a whole new batch of decorations. This usually happens around the time that Halloween decorations go on display at stores so it helps me be more in control of my desire to buy everything in sight.

And just for fun, here's a link to last year's post on this same topic.

FREE

I still love bargain shopping/coupon clipping. Is it dorky that if that's kinda my biggest hobby right now? I adore walking into a store and walking out with $60 worth of stuff that I paid just pennies for... or that I made money off of. I have had a rockin' couple of weeks at Rite Aid (probably the best store ever). Here are some of my spoils from the past 3 weeks... all at least free. I think overall, I made a modest profit off these transactions.

Yes, I know there are those of you with a sharp eye who think they may have figured some things out about me. I mean, why else would there be pregnancy tests, baby shampoo, and diapers pictured among these transactions? Let me just put all that to rest right now. Sometimes I just buy stuff because it's a good deal (aka FREE-- yes, even the diapers. In fact, I made a little bit off the diapers). And let me tell you that I give away an enormous amount of what I buy because there is no way in the world that we could ever use it all. Our new friends upstairs have a little boy in diapers. I asked his size before I went shopping. A woman in our ward has a baby shower coming up. Looks like the baby shampoo may have a new home as part of the shower gift. I still need to make a friend who has heartburn and a friend who is constipated because it seems like medications for those 2 conditions are frequently free. I have a bunch of those right now. So sorry to burst anyone's bubble who might've gotten excited for a small moment.

But do be excited about bargain shopping with me. Because it's fun. And I like it.

A quarter century

This day was not like the others that I have experienced. Each one has been different. Some were on weekends. Some were on school days. Some involved parties. Others involved breakfast in bed. Another involved a load of friends waking me up ultra early in the morning, taking me to breakfast, and making me wear a pirate shirt and bright orange and green pants to school. Occasionally it's been rainy. Mostly it's been sunny and gorgeous.

I always set my alarm for 5:06 AM, the time I was born. Not this year. I had to get up for the day only about a half hour after that and I figured the last half hour of sleep was more important.

I always have work off. Not this year. I got up at the same time I always do and got ready for work like I always do, and drove to work the same way I always do.

No one at work knew. So it wasn't a big deal. Then they called and asked me to stay for a double shift. And I don't really have to tell them why I don't want to. In fact, I don't have to have a particular reason. But this time, I decided to tell them so they wouldn't keep calling and begging me to stay (fyi, it didn't work. They called back a begged even after they knew). And someone overheard. And then everyone knew. Blah. So then I had to field a million questions about why I was at work and what I was going to do to celebrate (not much) and which club I was going to after work (I don't drink, remember?).

I usually want to celebrate... get together with people, laugh, and do something really fun. Not this year. I had a stressful day at work. Our state inspection started and I was absolutely pooped. I just wanted to do something low key.

So it was different than usual. But it sure wasn't bad. I am blessed to have a job. I am excited to use some vacation days in a couple of weeks to travel to Dallas, and use the one I saved by not taking my birthday off (and others) to go visit Utah next year. We really celebrated when we went to Baltimore, so I enjoyed a low key evening of dinner and walking around the mall adoring Halloween decorations in various stores with my husband. I was simply spoiled with gifts.

I got some gorgeous roses.

And 4 pairs of shoes.

Does my husband know me, or what? He also got me some clothes, perfume, lip gloss, and a new pillow. Plus he made me a cake.

Yup, I'm a spoiled brat.

So no complaints. Except for that I'm old. I'm having a quarter life crisis. But other than that, I had a fabulous day. Thanks babe!

Charm City

We had driven past Baltimore many times on the way to other places (mostly Washington DC) but had never stopped for some exploration, so a couple of weekends ago, we decided to take advantage of a hotel deal Zack found and go for it.

We stayed at the Hotel Monaco, right downtown by the Inner Harbor. It was a beautiful historic building.

Our room was nice.

Unfortunately, we realized that the air conditioner in our room wasn't working at about midnight. They moved us to a new room and gave us free breakfast, and when we checked out in the morning, they ended up not charging us anything because of the inconvenience. So that was kinda awesome, and was totally worth changing rooms in the middle of the night.

Anyway, so we drove down there on Friday afternoon/evening after work, and got there just in time for the Orioles game. One of the streets bordering the stadium is called Eutaw street. :)

There are some perks to having a crappy baseball team. We showed up at game time and bought tickets at the gate for $6 each. Then, since the park was so empty, we moved down from our cheap seats to some really great seats in the bottom section on the first base line.

Phillies games always sell out in advance, so you can't buy tickets at the gate, and the cheap tickets are more than twice what they were in Baltimore. We love that our team is doing so well, don't get me wrong. But the fact that the Orioles suck made that game more fun for us. The Orioles lost, which was fine with us. I think they played the Dodgers. Zack can correct me if I'm wrong about that. There were a ton of Mormon missionaries at the game. Apparently the whole Baltimore mission got to go, so that was pretty fun to see so many of them there. All in all, a great time.

We intended to stay in Baltimore and explore on Saturday, but I woke up feeling pretty darn yucky. We tried to go out exploring, but I just couldn't do it so we headed home and vowed to head back soon to do all the stuff we didn't get to do the first time around. I did snap this picture before we left.

So 2 weeks later (on my next weekend off), we headed back. It happened to be Labor Day weekend. I had to work on Labor Day, but my holiday was the Friday before, so I still had a 3 day weekend. So we headed down on Thursday evening and stayed in a hotel pretty much next door to the other hotel we stayed in before. It wasn't as nice but was even cheaper than the other. The room had a sleep number bed, which we learned is basically just a glorified air mattress, and my side deflated during the night. We really have good luck with hotels, eh? So we changed rooms after the first night and the bed stayed inflated for the whole second night so that was good. But I definitely never want a sleep number bed.

Anyway, so on the Friday, we started our day by hitting up the National Aquarium, which was fabulous.

They had a big pool with mostly stingrays that you could look down on as you were going throughout the aquarium.

They had lots of pretty fish of course.

There were turtles.

And sharks.

And birds.

There was even a dolphin show.

We're pretty opposed to dolphin shows since we saw The Cove, but I guess I soothed my conscience a little by reminding myself that their dolphins were reared in captivity. And dolphins are really cute. All in all, a really nice aquarium. I think we like the one close to us in Camden a little better overall, but both are really nice. Next we got crab cake sandwiches at Phillips, which is famous for its crab cakes. They were delicious. After doing some shopping and riding the free bus around just to see the city a little, we took a 90 minute evening boat tour through the harbor. That was very fun-- probably the highlight of our trip. We saw battleships

and Fort McHenry (the battle there inspired the writing of our national anthem).

There is a buoy marking the spot where Francis Scott Key is believed to have been anchored while he was penning the Star Spangled Banner.

A bit beyond that is an old fort, built before the Civil War, partially under the direction of Robert E. Lee (now abandoned).

We got some good views of the famous Domino Sugar sign.

And some nice views looking back toward the city.

What a blast! We wrapped up our day with dinner at PF Changs (yum), which we polished off by sharing dessert.

On Saturday, we started out the day by visiting Baltimore's world trade center, which has an observation deck. Those are always fun, and this was no exception. We got some great views of the harbor.

Here is the aquarium from above.

And here is one of the USS Constellation (also pictured earlier in this post), which is what we toured next.

The Constellation was one of the last sails-only ships built by the US navy.

It is best known for capturing slave ships around the time of the Civil War.

It was fun to tour, although I am glad I did not have to live on a ship like that. After grabbing a quick lunch, we went on a walking tour. The guide talked a lot about the revitalization of Baltimore, and the architecture and such. One random thing we saw on our tour-- we passed a hotel that was once a Masonic lodge. Our tour guide informed us that there was a very nice women's restroom in that hotel. Just at the moment, the doorman of the hotel waved us over and ushered us all in the door, and then we took us all into the restroom. In 2009, it was in the Hall of Fame for the America's Best Restroom award. Funny, huh? Well it was very nice, with several different kinds of marble and crushed pearl on the walls.

And it was spotless of course. That was a fun little detour. Here's Zack with a library that we saw on our tour.

Here's me with the original Washington Monument.

This was a cool looking church.

We were sad because the library at the Peabody Institute was closed on the day of our tour, but someone happened to be in there and let us in to have a look. It was very pretty. I did not take any pictures, but here's what it looks like.

After our walking tour, we decided to head home. On the way out of town, we made one more stop. Here's me looking somber at Edgar Allen Poe's grave.

All in all, we found Baltimore to be a beautiful city. It reminded us of Philly in some ways, which is definitely a good thing. Maybe we'll get the chance to go back and explore even more some time.

Ho Hum

An update is coming on our recent trip(s) to Baltimore, but lest you think all we do is travel, I thought I'd take a minute and write an update about some of the more normal stuff we've been doing.

I think I've mentioned it in passing but I never really just flat out said that I switched to the day shift at work. I put in my request to be switched to days as soon as I was done with my internship at work and then I started waiting patiently for a day shift slot to open. It was probably only 4 or 5 months later when I was informed that a slot had opened up for me. They would move me there as soon as they hired an RN to replace me. Since I was working on a skilled unit, they wanted an RN instead of an LPN. So I waited.... and waited... and waited. A couple of weeks later, they told me they had someone in the pipelines. A few days after that, they informed me that the person they were going to hire had decided not to accept the position. So I waited... and waited. A couple weeks later, they told me they had hired someone and she was supposed to start orientation. Then she had child care issues and her orientation was pushed back for another 2 weeks. So by the time all of this happened, it had been about 3 months since they told me I was going to switch to the day shift. I had to stay on afternoons for 2 more weeks to orient the new girl and then, at long last, I switched to days at the beginning on August. I am thrilled to be on this schedule. Okay, I absolutely hate getting up at 5:45 every morning. But it makes it all worth it when I get home before 4 in the afternoon. I do miss some things about the afternoon shift-- I used to get all my shopping done during the day. The stores were a lot less crowded at that time. And I learned yesterday that it's a lot easier to work a double shift when the second 8 hours is the night shift, which has a lighter work load. But I love actually getting to see/hang out with my husband every day, and being able to attend things that happen in the evening. So woo hoo!

Zack just finished his latest school term last week. Drexel is on a quarterly schedule instead of semesters. He is now enjoying a couple of weeks off before diving into the next term. I don't think he has registered yet so no word on what classes he will be taking. He has 3 terms remaining. He will finish next June. Beyond that, we have no particular plans.

We have now been in this apartment for a couple months and we still adore it. We are also thrilled that a new couple that just moved into our ward has moved into our building. They contacted us before moving out here to have us look at some apartments for them, which we did. We decided to also look at a unit in our building for them even though they didn't ask us to. We have seen literally dozens and dozens of apartments in this area and we know that this building is pretty great so we thought it couldn't hurt. Well, I guess they liked it because they moved in. They have a darling little 1 and a half year old boy. And we are thrilled to not be the only couple in this part of the city again. We were getting lonely.

And some current events I am interested in (perhaps for posterity):

The Phillies just pulled into 1st place in the division last night. C'mon boys!

A minister in Florida is threatening to burn the Qur'an on September 11. I guess he has the right to do so, but I still think it's wrong. Lots of terrible things have been done in the name of lots of religions throughout history. It's sad to define an entire religion and everyone who is a part of it by the actions of some extremists. I personally know several Muslims, and I am tired of all the bigotry against Islam.

The investigation into the BP oil spill that happened in April is ongoing. Now seems like the time when everyone blames everyone else for what happened. Or maybe that's what has been happening all along.

Did you hear about those miners in Chile? 33 of them have been trapped underground since a mine collapse on August 5. They are able to get supplies through a hole drilled down to them, but they will probably not be rescued until December. Can you even imagine?

Are you bored yet? That's okay because that's about all I have to say for now. Pictures coming.