deralte | The trip out and back, new Red Dwarf (Reply)

It's been a crazy trip that's mostly been marked by how bad my allergies were each day. They were bloody awful down in Kentucky, bearable in St. Louis, a little better in Louisville, then descended into the sinus headache from hell that wouldn't go away, and is still lingering now. I'm hoping now that I'm back in NJ it will go away *sigh*

Notable things from the last few days:

On a day when my allergies weren't too bad, I took a walk in Bee Tree Park right along the Mississippi River. It was pretty and relaxing, though rather hot. I saw a beautiful lavender bush and only sneezed a few times.

It never fails that we're driving home and run into ridiculous amounts of traffic in Penn. Not just construction traffic either, but there was a truck on fire on 78 so they closed down the whole highway and getting off and around it took over an hour. It seems no matter what time we leave Cincinnati we're destined to get home after 11pm.

I never realized how badly I was sleeping at my brother R.'s house until I slept like a baby at my brother J.'s, and that's despite being on cough syrup and allergy medicine.

I really like Bob Evans menu these days with the section for people who don't want a lot to eat. I like paying less for portions I can actually consume in one go and not feel guilty about. I also like how our waitress urged us into seconds of hot chocolate then gave us a third cup to go. Pity there's no actual Bob Evans in NJ.

Being knocked out by the allergies meant I spent most of my time at R,'s house curled up on their sofas and/or watching my youngest niece who is 1 1/2 and adorable. By the end of my stay, she'd gotten into the habit of handing me tissues for the gobs of phlegm I was hacking up *L* She also decided that my name was 'shiss' despite repeated attempts to get her to use my actual name *L* No idea where she got 'shiss' from though.

I had a great time at my brother B.'s (I have four brothers, three older who live in the midwest, in case all these initials are confusing you.) sci fi book group in Louisville. I hadn't actually read their book for the month but I knew the author and half of the time they talked about scifi tv shows and comic books so it was entertaining.

Through visiting every single used book store we passed and had time to stop in, I managed to narrow my books to read/buy list down to one page of 38 books. Particularly useful was the bookstore we found in Louisville, who not only had a good book selection, but as a bonus, had a good manga section which I was forced to raid. *whistles innocently*

I finished my research on Romania, and so have begun planning the third chapter of Uric in my head, though I'm currently coming up with and discarding ways to open the chapter.

I've been voted funniest aunt by my brother R.'s kids. This is mostly because I'm their only aunt who indulges in massive tickle fights and can discuss Spider-man with them...

We watched the new Red Dwarf (9:1-3) with my brother B. who is a huge fan and hadn't heard they were out, so he was nicely surprised when I had them:) With him around to point out the massive parody of Blade Runner, I think I enjoyed it a bit more (I'm not sure if I'd have caught it watching it on my own in the wrong move). The ending wasn't all that great, but I wasn't expecting much from it so eh.

I played MarioKart with my nephew E. (J.'s son) for awhile, and I'm depressed at how bad I am at it now. I used to be able to at least beat my little brother Kirk occasionally. *sigh*

I had some really good rum (mixed with caffeine free coke) from the Bahamas that my bro. J. brought back from his last vacation. Must get some of my own, methinks.

B. and I also had fun watching Jurassic Park for the millionth time and making up a very long list of recommendations for opening your own dangerous theme park. Later, we invented our own alien demolition ammunition, Zud.