We arrived at my grandma's house Monday while it was still light outside, which is rare; we took the thruway, which saved about an hour of driving time, thought it cost approximately $12 extra in tolls.
I'm not quite sure why - perhaps because I hadn't eaten at Taco Bell in a long time and had forgotten how good some of their food was - but ever since New Hampshire and the day Kun and I bought lunch at Taco Bell, I've been craving it, so we stopped there for dinner. Afterwards, we swung by White Castle so my dad could buy his annual fresh Castle burgers. (White Castle is a fast food restaurant that's famous for it's square, onion-filled hamburgers and cheeseburgers; however, most White Castle restaurants are in the mid-West US and the chain doesn't exist at all in New England.)
My grandma had been quite sick earlier in the summer, but she looked much better. As usual, the first night we were there was spent talking and catching up with each other until bedtime. My dad and I, being the two night owls, stayed up and watched Revenge of the Pink Panther.
Unlike last year, we didn't see any deer or turkey buzzards around the farm and we only caught a glimpse of two groundhogs once, but there were two brown-furred rabbits that came out by the lane in the late evening and several hawks that hunted the fields near the house around midday. There was also a screech owl at night that we heard but never saw, and I caught the sound of some of the coyotes howling the first night we were there. Without any cats living around the house or barn, the birds have flourished, especially the sparrows. I didn't see any Blue Jays, but Chip the Cardinal was there most evenings. There were also a number of insects around; my dad went out to the woods twice to check the spring water and came back with three ticks attached to him each time.
As per tradition, we spent most of our evenings playing cards. Unlike last year, my dad and I were behind my mum and grandma for almost a week and we ended the series tied at thirteen games a piece.
When we weren't playing cards, I spent my time swinging outside, reading Anne Rice's Cry To Heaven and Mary Renault's The King Must Die, listening to music, and playing Thief 2X: Shadows of the Metal Age or Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines. I also worked on a few icons, especially after quickly seeing Kun's comment on this Hunter x Hunter icon post from almost two years ago; I've learned quite a bit about icon-making since then, although I still only consider myself decent, and it amazes me that I've gotten more comments on that one post than on anything else I've ever put on LiveJournal. I was originally going to edit the Kurapika/Leorio musical icon, but I couldn't get it looking right and decided to make some new Leorio and Bloodlines icons instead; the results are behind the cut (mostly for![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hitokiri_quatre in case she wants the Leorio ones).
( Three icons -- two Leorio and one Bloodlines. )
My dad did some mowing outside, but my Uncle Jeff had already done most it. However, he found other projects to work on, including digitizing some of the old reel-to-reel tapes my dad and his brothers had made in the late 1960s/early '70s and trying to fix the washer fluid tank in my grandma's car.
On Friday, my Uncle Jeff took us to Pizza Cottage, a pizza restaurant that served BLT [bacon-lettuce-tomato] pizza; he took the back roads both ways so that we could drive past the numerous corn fields, showing that canning over 700 ears the week before had not made him tired of the vegetable.
Saturday, my mum and I went shopping. Clothes shopping is something I don't look forward too, especially since it's hard to find things that I like and that fit me, but it has to be done. I finally bought a new hoodie, among other things, which I was originally going to do at the Crüxshadows concert until I saw how big they were and how much they cost; as much as I love my silver dragon one, it's been falling apart over this past year and has gotten to the point where there's not much of a dragon left on it.
I kept half an eye out for anything that could be used for cosplay, but didn't find much. The one thing I was set on buying - a pair of overalls for Ritsuka - turned out to be much harder to find that I was expecting, though we did find a pair at Goodwill that could work with some alterations.
At Waldenbooks, I used a Borders rewards coupon to buy the first volume of Loveless. I also bought Nightwish's End of an Era DVD/CD set when I stumbled upon it while looking at Lacuna Coil and Tiamat albums. (And Sarah -- in our small country town, I saw a Tim Horton's!)
Monday, 13 August, was my mum's birthday, which we celebrated by going out to Bob Evans for lunch, which is a restaurant that served breakfast all day and was originally founded in Ohio. My mum had been talking about how good their sausage gravy was earlier in the week and what a pity it was that it couldn't be bought in New York, so that's what she ordered. Their sausage gravy really is good, and my dad and I also had some with our breakfasts.
Wednesday, the last day before we left, went went to the county fair. Aside from some miscommunication, it was fun; we visited the animal farms, saw part of the cattle and pig judging, tried out one of Ohio's computer-based voting machines, and ate out share of fair food before heading home to play our last card games of the year.
I'm not quite sure why - perhaps because I hadn't eaten at Taco Bell in a long time and had forgotten how good some of their food was - but ever since New Hampshire and the day Kun and I bought lunch at Taco Bell, I've been craving it, so we stopped there for dinner. Afterwards, we swung by White Castle so my dad could buy his annual fresh Castle burgers. (White Castle is a fast food restaurant that's famous for it's square, onion-filled hamburgers and cheeseburgers; however, most White Castle restaurants are in the mid-West US and the chain doesn't exist at all in New England.)
My grandma had been quite sick earlier in the summer, but she looked much better. As usual, the first night we were there was spent talking and catching up with each other until bedtime. My dad and I, being the two night owls, stayed up and watched Revenge of the Pink Panther.
Unlike last year, we didn't see any deer or turkey buzzards around the farm and we only caught a glimpse of two groundhogs once, but there were two brown-furred rabbits that came out by the lane in the late evening and several hawks that hunted the fields near the house around midday. There was also a screech owl at night that we heard but never saw, and I caught the sound of some of the coyotes howling the first night we were there. Without any cats living around the house or barn, the birds have flourished, especially the sparrows. I didn't see any Blue Jays, but Chip the Cardinal was there most evenings. There were also a number of insects around; my dad went out to the woods twice to check the spring water and came back with three ticks attached to him each time.
As per tradition, we spent most of our evenings playing cards. Unlike last year, my dad and I were behind my mum and grandma for almost a week and we ended the series tied at thirteen games a piece.
When we weren't playing cards, I spent my time swinging outside, reading Anne Rice's Cry To Heaven and Mary Renault's The King Must Die, listening to music, and playing Thief 2X: Shadows of the Metal Age or Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines. I also worked on a few icons, especially after quickly seeing Kun's comment on this Hunter x Hunter icon post from almost two years ago; I've learned quite a bit about icon-making since then, although I still only consider myself decent, and it amazes me that I've gotten more comments on that one post than on anything else I've ever put on LiveJournal. I was originally going to edit the Kurapika/Leorio musical icon, but I couldn't get it looking right and decided to make some new Leorio and Bloodlines icons instead; the results are behind the cut (mostly for
hitokiri_quatre in case she wants the Leorio ones).( Three icons -- two Leorio and one Bloodlines. )
My dad did some mowing outside, but my Uncle Jeff had already done most it. However, he found other projects to work on, including digitizing some of the old reel-to-reel tapes my dad and his brothers had made in the late 1960s/early '70s and trying to fix the washer fluid tank in my grandma's car.
On Friday, my Uncle Jeff took us to Pizza Cottage, a pizza restaurant that served BLT [bacon-lettuce-tomato] pizza; he took the back roads both ways so that we could drive past the numerous corn fields, showing that canning over 700 ears the week before had not made him tired of the vegetable.
Saturday, my mum and I went shopping. Clothes shopping is something I don't look forward too, especially since it's hard to find things that I like and that fit me, but it has to be done. I finally bought a new hoodie, among other things, which I was originally going to do at the Crüxshadows concert until I saw how big they were and how much they cost; as much as I love my silver dragon one, it's been falling apart over this past year and has gotten to the point where there's not much of a dragon left on it.
I kept half an eye out for anything that could be used for cosplay, but didn't find much. The one thing I was set on buying - a pair of overalls for Ritsuka - turned out to be much harder to find that I was expecting, though we did find a pair at Goodwill that could work with some alterations.
At Waldenbooks, I used a Borders rewards coupon to buy the first volume of Loveless. I also bought Nightwish's End of an Era DVD/CD set when I stumbled upon it while looking at Lacuna Coil and Tiamat albums. (And Sarah -- in our small country town, I saw a Tim Horton's!)
Monday, 13 August, was my mum's birthday, which we celebrated by going out to Bob Evans for lunch, which is a restaurant that served breakfast all day and was originally founded in Ohio. My mum had been talking about how good their sausage gravy was earlier in the week and what a pity it was that it couldn't be bought in New York, so that's what she ordered. Their sausage gravy really is good, and my dad and I also had some with our breakfasts.
Wednesday, the last day before we left, went went to the county fair. Aside from some miscommunication, it was fun; we visited the animal farms, saw part of the cattle and pig judging, tried out one of Ohio's computer-based voting machines, and ate out share of fair food before heading home to play our last card games of the year.
