nanovivid

I’m a little late on getting around to this, but whatever. The weekend before last, we took a trip to Pennsylvania for Bryan’s sister’s wedding. The wedding was lovely, the food was amazing, and the hotel was… odd. We stayed at the Golden Plough Inn in very country Peddler’s Village. Our room had a lovely farm animal theme, complete with a wood cutout of pigs suckling. Confusingly, even though we were in room 108, there were two flights of stairs required to reach the actual quarters. Even though the accommodations were a bit strange, it was a nice time. Since Bryan was in the wedding, I took a bunch of pictures with his fancy camera which he’s going to post at some point. However, the camera was apparently in the wrong autofocus mode, so a lot of them didn’t turn out so well. Here they are anyway. Oh, and there was a massive thunderstorm during the outdoor reception, so that was exciting.

After the wedding (and breakfast at the Cock ‘n Bull… no, seriously), we drove on to visit Dave and Olivia. They already posted a nice summary of our activities and some pictures, so be sure to check those out. It was great to see them again and to finally get to experience firsthand the amazing work they’ve done to their house (even if the fact that it’s a row house lead Bryan to remark that their neighborhood was “like The Wire”).

We also took the opportunity to visit IKEA, where I picked up some white DIODER lights for my desk, replacing the halogens I had previously. Even though the LEDs are a little flourescent-ish, they put out barely any heat and are wonderfully diminutive.

The trip was very enjoyable and I definitely want to get back to Philly at some point in the future. Due to poor planning and research, we missed out on all the museums, so that’s at least one reason arrange another visit. I could probably pass on a second Peddler’s Village experience though.

♫ Sigur Rós - Inní Mér Syngur Vitleysingur

Courtney and Hilary came to visit this weekend, and we had all kinds of fun. Between museums, wineries, eating, and bowling, there wasn’t a lot of time for sleep. I’ve posted some pictures of the debauchery for your enjoyment.

♫ Antony and the Johnsons - Crazy In Love

Last night’s downtown bowling outing turned out to be quite an adventure. An adventure where we learned that apparently Tuesday nights are secretly no-bowl nights at most places. Let me explain.

We set off in high spirits for a night of bowling, following Aurda’s directions. First, to get to the parking lot, we had to pull around the back of the building between some run-down warehouse-ish places. As we were rounding the corner, a minivan parked in front came into view. A minivan with all four tires flattened (and maybe a broken window or two). There was a grand total of one other car in the parking lot. I immediately noticed the two signs in the entrance’s front window - “Closed July 4″ and “Closed July 15 through Aug. 8.” Um, ok. Nothing about being closed last night, even though it didn’t look very open.

Audra went to investigate and returned with news of yet another sign in smaller print saying “closed Mondays and Tuesdays beginning April 18.” Right. Awesome. As we started to pull away, a guy came to the door looking like he wanted to invite us in but we were all a little creeped out ready to move on at that point.

We figured that this place must just be weird (and scary and run-down), so we decided to go back to Ambassador Lanes where we had bowled before. Ambassador Lanes, which happens to be on top of a parking garage. This time, we weren’t even greeted by signs, just locked doors. Apparently there’s a secret law that no bowling is allowed in Cleveland on Tuesday night?

The only other bowling alley anyone knew of downtown was The Corner Alley, which had been described to Audra as “martinis and bowling.” That prompted the following exchange:

Megan: That sounds like a recipe for disaster. Me: No, no. It sounds like a recipe… FOR AWESOME.

We did a drive-by to make sure that our last hope was actually open, and shockingly enough they bucked the trend. In addition to being open, the place is really cool and they have nice comfy couches for sitting while bowling instead of those uncomfortable plastic swivel chairs. They also have a hell of a martini menu, with forty choices. In short, it is indeed a recipe for awesome.

Unfortunately, we were far too sensible and only bowled one game and didn’t have any drinks, what with it being a work night. But we have promised to go back and partake of the full experience. Because that cajun martini? Has my name written all over it. But not, apparently, on a Tuesday night.

♫ Feist - Honey Honey

A very happy 30th birthday to my Bryan. Even though you like to claim that you’re “old” now, I still love you the most. I hope you enjoy our new house, also known as the most expensive birthday present ever!

♫ Muscles - Ice Cream

Apparently it’s the season for people to visit us. A couple weeks ago, Courtney came up and hung out for a few days (she may have had a job interview somewhere in there too). Then last weekend, my brother and his girlfriend came to visit. Then this weekend, Dave and Olivia will be here for an overnight stay. For some reason, nobody comes to Cleveland when it’s nice, preferring to enjoy the lovely snow and frigid cold.

Bryan and I are also trying to decide who we’ll be going to see this summer. I really want to go out to see Jeremiah and Arthur in California, but we might be too poor for that after buying our house (at least according to Bryan). We also might finally go see Dave and Olivia at their place in PA. Does anybody else have vacation proposals?

♫ Loveninjas - My Lust Is Dead

Tonight I decided to actually stop being a total recluse and sign onto the Adium. Can you believe it? I barely can. It’s been… a while. I even videochatted with Ryan! As if that alone wasn’t enough sexy excitement, I also talked to Martha and Jeremiah!

It just dawned on me (how’s this for random) that I’ve never mentioned my love, nay, ado-fucking-ration of Arrested Development. And that, my friends, is a great tragedy, since it is easily the funniest show ever.

But wait! Maybe that wasn’t quite as random as I thought! See, this past weekend, Courtney and Jenni came to visit. Since Courtney always brings bad weather to Cleveland, we ended up spending most of the day Saturday watching the whole third season. Which, of course, is amazing.

Even when we weren’t watching Arrested Development, we had fun with Courtney and Jenni, between the shopping and the eating and … dirty girl scouts? They even brought me a bottle of wine with my name on it (though they sadly couldn’t find a Bryan wine to go with it).

So, yes. I am still alive and well, and will hopefully prove that fact slightly more frequently.

♫ The Beatles - Because (Shiloh's Just For Annie Remix)

Who wants to be my friend on Netflix? I only have two friends and I’m feeling lonely! Send an invitation to adam @ this domain and I’ll love you forever. Or at least consider it.

♫ Slow Funeral - The Loss

Geocaching was a lot of fun today. Well, except for the part where I jinxed us from having good weather in the morning. The day started off pretty chilly and rainy, which wasn’t so fun for those of us wearing shorts and having no umbrellas. Once it cleared up the day was much more enjoyable.

We did four caches and found all four, including the Lakewood Mini-Park one that had stumped us for a long time. Bryan was especially bitter about that, since he had spent hours looking for it in the past and Lisa found it in about two minutes.

Every time I go Geocaching I always thing that I should do it more often, because it’s very enjoyable. Of course, there’s also that feeling of accomplishment when you discover a cache. Definitely a great way to spend a Saturday.

♫ Ohm - Follow My Fate

Woah, I almost missed my blogging deadline for today. But I shall remain victorious!

Bryan and I are going Geocaching tomorrow with some friends, which should be great fun. The weather is even looking like it should be pretty ok!

That’s about the extent of our big weekend plans at this point. My only other goal is to continue hacking the fuck out of my MySpace page until it is marginally less ugly. You can see the progress I’ve made so far if you’re interested. There’s still a long road ahead, I fear. It would be much longer were it not for the genius work that is Hacking A More Tasteful MySpace. GENIUS.

What are YOUR exciting plans for the weekend? I’m hoping somebody is staging a peaceful takeover of a hostile alien warship because, MAN, who doesn’t love a good takeover?

♫ Junior Boys - Count Souvenirs

In addition to being a lazy-ass loser, one of the reasons I haven’t been blogging lately is called Deanach OSX.

It’s a port of Deanach3 for Windows to the Mac that I’ve been working on (with Anubis from MacThemes Forums) for, oh, the last four months or so. Theming OS X is insanely time consuming, because there are exactly thirteen-bajillion elements to skin. I’m not kidding. I counted. And by counted, I mean… approximated.

Today, however, I am freed from the time-consumingness of this theme (well, except for the bug-fixing and tweaking). It’s finally released, and the reactions have been good. Finishing a project of this magnitude and having people like it feels quite nice.

For as much as I enjoy pixel hacking, I’m definitely going to wait a bit before diving into a new theme. The amount of time sucked down by creating (or even porting) a theme is rather insane. Plus, Bryan gets tired of me constantly having my nose in ThemePark and Photoshop.

To celebrate Deanach’s release, we’re going out to eat with Bryan’s friend Sandra tonight. Actually, dinner has nothing to do with Deanach. But I can pretend that it does, because I’m a dork like that!

♫ Swimmer One - Cloudbursting