- My parents came to visit last week. It was a lot of fun. I wish they had stayed a bit longer, actually, because I had to be in class a lot of the time they were here and I didn't get to hang out with them as much as I would have liked. Still, we squeezed a lot into the three days they were here. We went to some fun restaurants, my parents spent time hanging out with their granddog and grandcat (yes, they actually refer to the hound as their granddog), and Mom and I went shopping and went to a crime museum (my mom was in heaven because she's a true-crime fanatic. Every time we turned a corner she was like, "Oh, Ted Bundy!" or, "Look at this, it shows you how to tell how long a body has been dead!" Also, they had a machine where you could fingerprint yourself and then print out a card with your fingerprint and your randomly generated "crime", which is why I got to call Penn on Wednesday night and tell him I was arrested for prostitution!). Speaking of Penn, on the first night my parents were here he came with us to dinner. I'm so glad that my parents finally got to meet my boyfriend, and vice versa. He has been such an important part of my life for the past six months that it was driving me crazy that everyone hadn't met yet. But now they have at least met each other, although I'm not sure one dinner is actually enough time to get much of an impression one way or another. My parents did say they liked him, so that's good. I honestly wasn't too worried that they wouldn't like him, though, considering he is an improvement over both of my exes (the two that were actually important enough for my parents to meet, I mean). College Ex was NOT meet-the-parents material (although my parents were always cordial) and my dad never warmed up to Phil (supposedly because Phil didn't strike my dad as ambitious enough for me, although I think the REAL reason was that Phil wasn't much of a sports fan and therefore he and Dad had nothing at all to talk about). I also figured that if my parents like my sister's boyfriend who has four kids by three different women--and they do like him--that they'd have to like Penn. Actually, I'm starting to think my mom would like anyone who wasn't an axe murderer. And even then she'd probably be excited to have a true-crime celebrity as a son-in-law, as long as he was treating her daughter well. Ha.
- School has been keeping me really busy. I'm finding that juggling my relationship, my social life, and my schoolwork isn't as hard as I thought it would be. I feel like I've balanced the three fairly well for the first month. The hardest part is forcing myself to work on weekends when I'm with Penn, but he has been really cool about just sitting around reading with me for a few hours at a time here and there, and on Sundays he watches football while I work, which has worked out really well so far (no idea yet what will happen when Sunday is no longer Football Sunday; maybe he can be distracted by a movie). I think I'd be very overwhelmed if this was my first year, but as a second year student I'm discovering that I'm now much better at judging which work actually needs to get done each week and what I can fudge. Today, for instance, I had only read about 2/3rds of my material for my two classes and had just skimmed the last 1/3rd for important points, but I was still "on" in both classes, making comments and connections that actually made me proud of myself. That isn't even always the case when I have done all of the reading. So yeah, so far so good, but this is also the easy part of the semester...
- I'm still really excited about Penn's new job. He doesn't have a contract in hand yet, which makes me a little anxious, but he called the new job today and they confirmed that it's definitely his, it's just going to be a few more days before it's official. Tomorrow I think we're going to go apartment hunting. It's a little funny to be apartment-hunting when I'm not actually going to move into the apartment until next summer, but I'm sure I'll be spending tons of time there between now and then. I have a lot to say about this, actually, so maybe it needs to be an entry in and of itself. We'll see. But in case I never get around to actually writing the entry that's percolating in my brain, the basic gist of it is, "This whole thing is a major step, but I feel really good about it."
- Niagara Falls. Niagara Falls was awesome. The whole weekend was really fun. You know when you're single and you start romanticizing what it's like to be in a relationship and you get all girly and Bridget Jones-esque and you imagine the cheesy-fun romantic weekend trips you will take with your perfect boyfriend if you can ever manage to get one? Well, that was my weekend. The drive up was really scenic, and the falls themselves were amazing. Either the American Falls or Horseshoe Falls would be impressive on their own, but the fact that they're both right there together is a bit mind-blowing. I took about 70 pictures, but the problem with pictures is they don't capture the roaring sound (that somehow manages to be really soothing) or the feel of being there in the mist. It's almost hypnotic. Penn and I would walk down to the falls and sit on a park bench or lean against the railing and watch the falling water and talk about life and our plans over the sound of the crashing water, and in what felt like the blink of an eye a couple of hours would have passed by. It was so nice. I'm glad we got to have the whole Niagara Falls experience together. Which is not to say that it was all momentous. Penn and I aren't all that serious. For every conversation about our families or religion, there was also a conversation about, say, exactly how often a reasonable person vacuums an apartment or whether Horseshoe Falls could crush a bus. We're all about balance! In fact, here are two pictures that nicely sum everything up:
You see? Beautiful, majestic Niagara Falls, as viewed from the Maid of the Mist. Contrast that with our totally pimp hotel room (they screwed up our reservation so we were upgraded to the Jacuzzi Suite, bow-chicka-bow-wow!). Please note the Canadian beer, the passport (which is still actually unnecessary for heading into Canada at this point if you're traveling by land, just FYI), and the fact that the Jacuzzi is like, a foot from the bed. I kept telling people that I hoped all the hotel rooms in Niagara Falls would have heart-shaped beds, it being a honeymoon capital of the country and all. While we didn't end up with the heart-shaped bed, I have to say that the mirrored Jacuzzi pretty much fulfilled that wish just as well. Those two pictures are pretty much my weekend in a nutshell, although there are many more pictures of the tourist-on-the-Maid-of-the-Mist variety over on Facebook if you're interested. All in all, it was a great weekend.
P.S.-Two Canadians actually said "eh?" to me! I love when stereotypes are true!
No comments:
Post a Comment