Girly Weekend

This weekend, some girlfriends came to Athens to have our annual girly weekend of eating and drinking and playing games! Kara, Jenny Wray, Anne and Beth made the trek, and Rose joined us for the festivities. It was an awesome weekend full of delicious food and plenty of fun! We also shopped and made brownies.



Click here for photos.

Road Rash

Yesterday I decided to ride my bike. Often, I turn around at the Plains, but today I felt like going all the way to Nelsonville. It's 26 miles round trip, and takes me a little under two hours. I made it all the way to the end, and turned around to head back to Athens. About ten minutes into the return trip, I totally wrecked my bike.

I'm not sure what happened, there was nothing on the bike path that I could see. All I know is that I hit the ground really hard and skidded along the blacktop on my arm. I stood up and looked at my bike and tried to see if I could ride it and the whole front part was twisted to the side, and the chain was all mangled. I did a bunch of swearing, and then remembered that I had just seen Movie's 10 before I wrecked. I decided I could walk there, cross the stream and walk through the field to the theater. From there, I could call someone to pick me up.

As I was walking there, though, this couple on a tandem bike saw me and pulled over. They were so nice. They said, "first, let's make sure that YOU are okay. Then, let's fix up your bike!" The guy said he could fix anything. He twisted the frame back to shape and fixed my chains. Then they said I should use my whole bottle of water to wash out my cuts, and that they had extra water they could give me to refill. Haha, at first it was confusing because they asked me how far I had to go, and I said I lived in Athens right off the bike path. They looked worried and said, "you do know that you were walking towards Nelsonville, right?" and I laughed and said yes, that I had been thinking about walking to the theater. I said, "THAT would have been a bad sign, huh!?"

They set me up and helped me get going and I rode the 45 minutes back to my house. It didn't hurt too much because I wasn't stiff yet. The wind stung a little though. I came home and had Adam take some pictures of me. Then I cleaned out all my cuts and went over to Mom's to have her look at it. We went out to Peter's house (our doctor friend, Jason's dad), and he said I had done a great job cleaning it out. He said that if I HAD gone to the ER, they would have put some stitches in my elbow, but that I didn't need them. He said the most important thing of all was to keep it clean, and that I should soak it in the tub several times.

So I went home, did a little stuff to get ready for the week, and then settled into the tub. Adam made me a nice, stiff whiskey drink, and that made me feel better too. After the shower, we played some Trivial Pursuit and I had another whiskey, put some bandages over it to sleep in, and hit the sack.

















When I got home, I went to Mom's to get some supplies. Here's how the cuts look after a shower and a good scrubbing.









And here's a diagram that Mom made, detailing my leg injuries:

Welcome to Transylvania

So, remember awhile ago when there was a bat in our house? Well over the past week or so, there have been about five different nights where we had a bat. It has been completely unnerving. Adam has had to spend tons of time each night trying to catch them (since he stays up late, they come in while he's still awake.) One night he was just too tired and so we shut the bedroom door and hoped he would be gone in the morning.

Adam has been trying to narrow down where the bats have been getting in, and he narrowed it down to a couple of spots. So, with the help of my mom's friend Chuck, he sealed up all possible entrances, and finally we have been bat-free for awhile. We bought a couple of cedar bat houses and Adam filled them with guano, hoping they'll decide to live in those, outside. Here are some pictures of Adam with his bat net, and some pictures of what was HOPEFULLY the final bat.

The Fair

I went to the fair tonight! I hadn't been in a couple of years, and it was a lot different. They had tons of different rides than they usually do! Unfortunately, the ferris wheel was broken. That was unfortunate.

The first two rides that I rode on, the teacups and the swings, there were barfers. On the teacups, this girl with an orange lei was barfing, and on the swings, this girl got off her swing when the ride was over, barfed a little trail over to this spot, and then collapsed and barfed all over the place. It was gross.

I had lots of good fair food! I had a fish tail sandwich, a choco-vanilla swirl soft serve cone, and a candy apple. I also got tastes of two different kinds of fries, and a bloomi' onion!

My favorite ride of the night might have been The Scrambler. Rose and I could NOT stop laughing. Much of that had to do with the two guys in the cart in front of us. They were these two goth guys with longish black hair, and they were both swiveling their heads with the rhythm of the ride, such that their faces would be pointing into the wind so that their hair would flow back behind them. They did this for the ENTIRE DURATION OF THE RIDE. It was the weirdest thing to watch. They weren't laughing or smiling, just making sure that their hair was flowing.

I also walked away with a sweet unicorn necklace, engraved for FREE. It was a good time, The Athens County Fair.



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Race to the Hills

Today was Race to the Hills at Lake Hope! Mer helped organize the race, and I went as a photographer. Mike Brown helped me find good spots to take pictures, since he wasn't racing. He was, however, in charge of one of the cowbells! Several race volunteers carried cowbells to ring as racers rode past. It was fun and exciting!

At some point during the race, I swore I heard a cat meowing. We were way out in the woods, though! I was like, "are there cat birds in Ohio?" Later when we went back up to the water station, Christina and Tina had a little kitten! They had heard meowing too, and called "Kitty kitty kitty!" and he came tearing out of the woods!

He was tiny and skinny and hungry. They fed him some leftover Casa and he chowed down! Some jerk must have dumped him out of their car. We took him down to the finish line with us, and almost as soon as we got there someone said they wanted him. Yay! He was the cutest. So yeah, there was some bike racing and stuff but ALSO, there was a KITTEN.



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Fish

Last night was poker night at Suzanne's! She lives in one of the oldest houses in Athens, which is now a sorority house. Delta Gamma. Anyway, it is haunted by the original owner, Mary, and during poker a bowl of tortilla chips FLEW OFF THE SNACK TABLE and spilled all over the floor! It made the loudest sound ever. I think really she was trying to tell me to lay off the chips and black bean salsa, because I ought to save room for the delicious raspberry pie Suz made. I didn't win poker this time. But I still had a lot of fun.

When I got home, Adam was outside. He said there was a SURPRISE inside! I went into the living room, and he had unpotted all of his giant plants and put them into FISH TANKS! He had done some experimenting and found that they need only water to survive! So he rigged up three tanks on our windowsill and the plants wind between them. It looks really great, and the kitties are going NUTS.