Monday, June 30, 2008
Friday (the 27th) was Jake's and my one-year anniversary. We went up to Traverse City to celebrate; we've decided that taking trips together would be better than getting each other presents. So Friday around noon we left here, made it up to Traverse City at almost exactly 3pm, and checked into our hotel. Then we went downtown to walk around. We stopped to have lunch at a bar which I believe was called the Union Station; they make a delicious Cajun chicken sandwich (but they give you potato chips instead of fries to go with it). We wandered back down the street afterwards and stopped in a couple of the little shops. I bought some new sunglasses, since I'd somehow managed to forget mine. I bought my most expensive pair of sunglasses ever at $16.99 - but, the woman told me, they're "one of our best copies - they're a copy of Guess sunglasses." Not that I particularly cared, but they were purple and didn't make me look like a bug or an owl...plus they came in a nifty bag that doubled as a lens-cleaning cloth. After I made my purchase we stopped at Cold Stone Creamery, since we don't have one here, and had some delicious ice cream.Of course once I bought the sunglasses the clouds started rolling in. Nonetheless, we found the Old Navy, so Jake bought some swimming trunks since we were hoping to go to the beach. Then we ventured further into town and found the Grand Traverse Mall, where we discovered that Payless was doing their BOGO sale... so we each got a pair of shoes. :P
We then returned to the hotel to watch the weather channel, which showed thunderstorms moving in, so we decided to hold off on swimming... but it never did rain. I think I felt about 3 sprinkles when we walked down to this Red Mesa Grill restaurant for dinner, but by then it was dark and the beach was closed (weird, huh?) so we swam in the hotel pool and sat in the hot tub for awhile. By then it was after 10p.m., and we had the whole pool area to ourselves.
The hotel provided free breakfast the next morning (and it was good breakfast: waffles, bagels, toast, cereal, fruit, muffins, donuts, yogurt, orange and apple juice...) so we ate there before checking out and going back downtown. We searched for some of the stuff we found to do in our little hotel tourist-attraction pamphlets but didn't end up doing most of it. We did stumble upon a farmer's market, but didn't buy anything. We sat by the water for a little bit (it was still a little cold for swimming at 11am) and went into a store called the Cherry Stop (turns out we were a little too early for fresh cherries; the cherry festival is next weekend). Then we headed off for the Sleeping Bear Dunes, intending to camp that night, and stopped at another cherry orchard along the way.
We didn't end up camping, since we weren't quite prepared (the forecast called for more storms again anyway), but we found a couple of the parks in the area. The first was a scenic drive with several places to stop and look out at Lake Michigan; we got some good pictures. The other was an area where you could hike through the dunes to get to Lake Michigan. Well, I had no idea what I was in for, and assumed it was just the initial big hill; Jake, having seen the map, said he knew it was more of a hike than that but didn't realize how far it was. So we took off our shoes and started climbing; about two hours and multiple large hills of sand later, we finally came upon Lake Michigan. The water was quite refreshing, being as hot and tired as we were from the hike (or at least I was).
We were there long enough to cool off and rest for a bit, then started back (with a slight delay once Jake realized he'd left his glasses on the beach and had to go back for them. Luckily he did find them, laying in the sand). The return trip didn't seem quite as long, though I did have to stop and rest at the top of nearly every hill. We finally made it back to the car at about 5pm. Once we made it over the top of the last hill ("I feel like I'm in the end of Homeward Bound," I told him), we could see our shoes sitting right where we'd left them (we'd debated along the way whether someone would've taken them or not; he said he thought they'd be gone, but I didn't see why anyone would bother them). Not far from that was a random drinking fountain which the sun was shining right down upon like in the movies (that could have had something to do with the fact that it was partially made of shiny metal). I headed straight for that, then we sat in the car for a few minutes and recovered before deciding to head back into Traverse City.
We had dinner at a place called Jonathan B. Pub, then decided to come home. It was a good thing we did, because the clouds started rolling in for real this time, and the wind was whipping quite harshly when we stopped for gas just outside of town - not a good night for camping. We didn't really prepare very well anyway... so it all worked out.
Posted by Rachel at 11:09 AM |
I want this. Though any of the orchid plants would do just as nicely.
Posted by Rachel at 11:03 AM |
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
In light of the ridiculous gas price situation, I just wanted to express my satisfaction with having gotten over 325 miles out of my most recent tank of gas... I usually get about 260, when I'm fortunate. How, might you ask, did I do that? Well, apparently there is some truth to the notion that changing your driving habits will save you gas.This page has a few things you can do; I can't find one that's very comprehensive but there's about 505,000 pages available, according to Google, if you're feeling diligent. I, however, am not, so I just do these three things:
1. Coast up to a red light, especially if I know I'm going to end up stopping. When you think about it, it's kinda silly to "hurry up and wait" by staying on the accelerator until you have to brake.
2. Accelerate from a stop more slowly. I try to keep my car's RPM's under 2500 even when I'm speeding up. Trust me, it makes a difference.
3. Maintain a consistent speed. Speeding up and slowing down just wastes both gas and energy. I've started taking a more "scenic" route to work just so I don't have to deal with all the traffic around me. I don't think it makes my drive any longer - I'm still usually about 3 minutes late. :P
A bunch of the other sites I found had other tips, like making sure your tires are properly inflated, getting a tune-up regularly, and changing your air filter... all of which are things I'm too lazy to do. But an extra 80 miles to a tank is certainly worth the meager efforts I have made...
Posted by Rachel at 7:09 PM |
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
I made my dad a mix tape (well, CD) for Father's Day. Is that weird?I have no reason to believe that he will or will not like any of the music on it. Heck, maybe he'll never listen to it. But I figured maybe since he's in a band now, he might want to expand his musical tastes (maybe?).
I'm almost afraid to ask him what he thinks of it.
Posted by Rachel at 6:47 PM |
Monday, June 09, 2008
Yesterday was the Raconteurs concert in Detroit. There were three main things keeping it from being practically perfect:1. The ghetto construction signage along I-75. In fact, the whole construction scenario is stupid and ridiculous. Luckily we left hours early and Jake knows how to read a map, since on the way home our goal of returning to north 75 was thwarted by signs which directed us onto 94 west and into eventual oblivion had we not decided that something was wrong.
2. The douche bag in front of us at the show who kept jumping and flailing around, slamming into everyone around him (despite his girlfriend's best efforts to control him). Security almost escorted him out and I really wish they would have. It's a little distracting to have to constantly be on guard against being body-slammed or elbowed to the face. It's seriously amazing that neither of us walked out missing a tooth (and that no one else around gave the kid a black eye. He was seriously an asshole).
3. The fact that I left my camera in the car, only to discover upon entering the theater that photography was permitted and that I could have gotten some AWESOME pictures. Instead, I have shitty blurry camera-phone pictures that I'm not even going to bother to post.
Now that I've got that out of my system, let me tell you about the concert. It was excellent. I still maintain the opinion that Jack White is genius and the rest of the band was quite awesome as well. The Fillmore was relatively small compared to some of the venues I've been in, and we were on the floor standing in front of the stage, probably literally 10-12 feet away from the band. That's the first time I've ever been close enough to make out the expressions on the musicians' faces (except with Jedi Mind Trip at the Pub, but they don't count) and I loved it. They started the show with "Consoler of the Lonely" and ended the first set with an excellent extended version of "Blue Veins" - probably the musical highlight of the show for me. After the "intermission," if you will, the band came back out with Meg White, who walked up to the drums as though to play until one of the Raconteurs said, "hey, wrong band." So she waved and went back stage, but it was pretty cool nonetheless. They started the second set with "Salute Your Solution" and played just about as long as they had the first set. They finished the show with "Carolina Drama" which was, of course, much better live (all of the songs were).
Here's the set list (as much as I can remember, in no particular order):
first set:
Consoler of the Lonely
Hands (with an interluded chorus of "Intimate Secretary")
Store Bought Bones
Level
You Don't Understand Me
Together
Old Enough
Hold Up
Rich Kid Blues
Steady as She Goes
Blue Veins
second set:
Salute Your Solution
These Stones Will Shout
Top Yourself
Broken Boy Soldier
Many Shades of Black
Carolina Drama
Their show lasted something like two hours (their opening band, The Black Lips, played for about an hour I'd guess - they weren't bad - for some reason they reminded me a little of Clash-esque punk [not that they were as good as The Clash] mingled with... well, rock. Ha ha.) and we were out a little before 11. I would've liked to buy a poster or something (since the only concert print ads they had left were locked in a glass case outside... jerks) but the line was a mile long and Jake said the prices were pretty high anyway. Eh, well. Maybe someday I'll get to go see them again. I know I'll want to, especially if they come back to Detroit.
Posted by Rachel at 11:47 PM |
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
Lately I have been...working. We had to do inventory on Sunday; Monday night we had to rearrange the store for new merchandise and yesterday we had to put out about 7,500 new pieces. But I picked up some extra hours which should mean a few more dollars in my next paycheck.Friday night Jake's brother Caleb and his g/f Elaine hosted an 80's themed party; I pretty much went all out (or at least as much as I could in 5 days' preparation). Pictures are on Facebook for those of you privileged with my virtual friendship. There are lots of pictures, actually...
I'm also working on an idea for a project; hopefully I can get it off the ground within the next couple days (I've been doing a lot of planning, but I think I'm about ready to start doing). It's a sort of cross between a scrapbook and an "archive," as Jake called it. I would explain it better but I haven't got all the details worked out for myself quite yet.
That's the basic gist of my life thus far. Saturday night is potentially another prom-themed party in Bay City and Sunday is the Raconteurs concert in Detroit. Jake's birthday is coming up as well, along with a family reunion in Ohio that I may or may not attend. July and August are still wide open.
