We're Open 'Til We Close / Baby Cows Are Fuzzy
Time to catch up on the weekend! Skip this post at your own risk, as this is the most robust picture-post I've made in quite a while, and most of them are cute and/or hilarious.
Friday, October 17
Most of the day at work was taken up with a big hubbub over the new insurance rates. I'm actually considering the 'Health Savings Account' this year, since the employer contributions are front-loaded (50% up-front, the rest in diminished contributions). I think pretty much everyone was wary of what would happen if, say, someone broke an ankle on icy ground in January immediately after signing up for a plan with an $8000 out-of-pocket maximum for a year, but with nothing in the account to start. At least it helps in getting a safety net established.
Can't remember much of what we did that evening. I think we finished off Get Smart season 5 - or was that on Saturday? - but I can't think of anything major.
One fun thing we did was a particular online survey from e-rewards. Yes, you too can be paid $7 for a 20 minute opinion study on commercial soap dispensers! Is this model 'warm' or 'cold'? 'Beautiful' or 'ugly'? Is this model "friendly"? Or are this one and this one the cream of the crop? Your opinion matters!
Seriously, that was a weird survey, but it put me over the top for a $25 Gamestop gift card, so I'm not exactly complaining. Not sure what I'll put it toward - I ended up picking up Star Ocean on PSP in the week of the 20th, so... hm. Anyway.
Saturday, October 18
Since we'd made plans to have Chad over in the afternoon, we decided to take a trip in the morning so we weren't cooped up all day. Didn't quite get to all our stops (I miss Fry's), but we had a good time.
We took off up I-65 around 10, and our first stop was the Goodwill up by aquahaute's work, since she was having trouble coexisting with the Goodwill donations we had in the front seat of the truck. It was nice to get rid of the extra yard-sale cows, and some other garage sale leftovers we had from our own attempts. We didn't actually go in and shop, though.
Next up, Petco in the same general area. They had a bunny there that we looked at for a bit, then we cruised around looking at other stuff. Nothing terribly notable that I recall, though I was a little mystified at the "take a picture of your pet and we'll turn it into a throw rug" display.
We wanted to check her workplace to see if it was open, since she had some buy 1 get 1 coupons in her cubicle. We drove up to the entrance, and passed a Shred-It truck on our way in. The entrance was wide open, so hey, no problem, right? We got to the offices, and they were locked. Oh well.
Then we tried to drive away, and saw that the gate to the outside was closing. It wasn't going to stay open long enough for me to get out, so I just stopped. We briefly panicked, but within a minute, another truck drove up to the outside of the gate. The drive hopped out and pressed a couple buttons, and the gate obliged by opening. Thankful, we sped out of there before the gate was even done opening. >_>
Big Lots was our next target, where we once again cleaned up on food. $1 for Campbell's Select soup boxes? Yes, please. I was impressed by their stack of Guitar Hero III wireless PS2 bundles for $50, but... PS2. If I could use that guitar on some other platform, it'd be worth it just for the guitar - which is probably why these bundles ended up at Big Lots.
We went to Trader's Mill for lunch after that. We weren't sure if they were open at 11:30 or not, so the first thing we looked for was their sign. Here is what it read:
"TRADER'S MILL BAR AND GRILL"
"OPEN MON-SAT 11 AM TO CLOSE"
"OPEN SUNDAYS [hours here]"
Trader's Mill - we're open 'til we close!
The food was pretty good - my 'pizza burger' was very tasty, and so was aquahaute's chicken quesadilla. I had a little trouble with the bill-paying, though, since I had two disputes with the waitress. The first time, she'd missed the "burgers include a side of cottage cheese or potato chips" line in the menu and charged me $2.50 for my cottage cheese. Uh, no? She got that taken care of with the manager, but then the next bill came back with a $2.50 charge for fries, despite the fact that the menu says "Get french fries on the side for $1.75 with any burger". I brought it up:
Manager: "That's only if you don't get the side of cottage cheese or chips."
falcon815: "That's fine if that's your actual policy, but that's not what the menu says. It doesn't say 'or get french fries on the side for $1.75', it says 'get french fries on the side for $1.75'."
I didn't feel like fighting over 75 cents, so I just made that comment, paid, and left. It wasn't a bad experience, but they really need to update the menu. Also, the manager needs to get off his cell phone and, y'know, manage.
I noticed when we left that we didn't have enough time to go to Fry's, so we made our way across town and hit up the Petco at 72nd and Keystone to see if they had any of the Indiana House Rabbit Society adopt-a-rabbits there. No luck - Emily was nowhere to be found, which made us sad. For that matter, they didn't have any rabbits. :\
We went home after that - got back around 2:15. Just as aquahaute was unlocking the door, Chad called to confirm that 3:00 was OK. No problem. We cleaned a little downstairs, then picked up the mail at 3. The mail contained an eBay package for Andrea, so she went upstairs to leave feedback for the seller. Just then, Chad showed up.
The three of us sat around and chatted for about an hour, then we decided on what food we were going to have for supper, and aquahaute volunteered to go pick up some stuff we needed. While she was out, Chad watched me play a couple stages of Mega Man 9 to see how that was, and we caught up on the Virtual Console / WiiWare releases.
We split the next hour or so between Rock Band and cooking. Since I still haven't received my replacement Stratocaster from EA, I was stuck on vocals, which was fine, since we were playing RB1. Mostly, Chad played bass and aquahaute drummed, though they swapped for one song at the end of our three-person set. I quit to go cook for a couple songs, wherein Chad took over on vocals and Andrea swapped to bass. It was a lot more fun with Chad than it was with Andy, largely because Chad can hold his own on medium bass and vocals and doesn't fail out every 2 minutes. Sorry, Andy. >_>
Food (tasty turkey pot pie filling over biscuits / garlic bread) was next, then we played a round of Scene It on the 360, which I won by running the table on the Blue Lagoon-themed questions at the end.
Chad had to go at that point - it was roughly 8:45 - and by then, the remaining two of us were pretty z-ful after our long day. We briefly considered watching the Get Smart movie that doesn't suck, but decided against it, opting to follow Red Sox / Rays on the internets instead.
Sunday, October 19
On Sunday, we got up significantly later than our usual, and ended up relaxing for a bit even after that. It was about 10 when we decided to finally go visit Kelsay Farms, a local dairy farm that has a corn maze and various other activities every October. We drove over (taking the back roads this time, after learning last year that we lived significantly closer to the farm than we'd realized), but they weren't going to open 'til 12. Whoops.
We decided to head over to Ace Hardware instead (they just opened one at 31 and Worthsville, right by Blockbuster). Some of our pepper plants are getting too tall for their roots, and have been tipping, so we figured we'd pick up some dowel rods or yardsticks or something to tie them to. Dowel rods were the cheaper (and easier) option, so we decided to do that once we finally found them practically hiding in the back corner of the store. They weren't labeled with prices yet, so we asked an employee to check them for us. While we waited, we spied an amusingly labeled toilet-in-a-box.
Once we had our dowel rods, we took them home. I broke them by wearing down the center with wire cutters, then snapping them with my thumbs; once I was done, aquahaute tied the plants to their new stakes.
A little after noon, we headed over to Kelsay. Our first stop after buying our tickets and facepalming at the cow-themed cornhole sets was to see the adorable little baby cows. They were 20 days old this year - a whole 3 days older than last year's batch. One of them was having a snack when we walked up, while the other one had a nap. Andrea took a little video of them with our 'new' Flip video camera while I snapped some pictures, then we headed off to the corn maze.
The maze was a lot more complex than last year's; rather than just being a gigantic cow shape, it was a set of smaller items: a fence, barn, silo, and cow. It was a lot harder to navigate than last year's, though it wasn't hard - they give you a map to go along with. It was still fun, though!
We made another stop by the baby cows before we left. Andrea took another video, I took some more pictures, and one of the babies let us scritch it. So fuzzy and soft! I didn't expect the little guy (or girl) to be so fuzzy.
After that, we decided it was time to go. On the way out, we were floored by the number of cars that were at the farm, so Andrea decided to count them while I went to my truck and drove back to pick her up. There were 54 cars in the lot when we left; 55 if you count the one that left and one that came in to snipe my spot when I drove away. That's a lot of people going to a farm on a Sunday afternoon. I wonder if Denny's noticed the drop in business. >_>
We had a late lunch when we got back home around 2:15. Over lunch, and afterward, we watched the Get Smart movie that doesn't suck. In fact, it was pretty good, for an extended episode of the show. Despite the fact that it resembled the Nadesico movie in the fact that it spent half the movie reassembling the ol' gang, it did so in a much more entertaining manner. And no, it wasn't just because I missed Hymie being around, though his return was very welcome.
Once the movie was over, I watched some of the disastrous Colts game, then got bored and plowed through to the end of Etrian Odyssey II. Or at least the end of the pathetic, whimpering excuse for a "plot". Come on, guys, you can do better than that, you showed it in EO1. The game was pretty fun, I guess, if a little more borked than the previous game. Borked in the player's favor, I might add. They may have nerfed Protectors and Medics to the depths of hell, but in their place, the Ronin is a walking God. I swear, I made a party including three of the four "worst" classes in the game, and it was still mostly a cakewalk just because one of my other two was a Ronin. tl;dr - if you play Etrian Odyssey II, take a Ronin if you would like a world-destroying force; do not take a Ronin if you want to reset a lot.
I forget what happened after that. We were mostly kind of "wah, no want the weekend to be over", supper was lazy (tasty Campbell's soup from Saturday), and we were quite sleepy. So we went to bed early, as I recall.
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End of weekend writeup! I'll try to finish off the catchup soon.
Friday, October 17
Most of the day at work was taken up with a big hubbub over the new insurance rates. I'm actually considering the 'Health Savings Account' this year, since the employer contributions are front-loaded (50% up-front, the rest in diminished contributions). I think pretty much everyone was wary of what would happen if, say, someone broke an ankle on icy ground in January immediately after signing up for a plan with an $8000 out-of-pocket maximum for a year, but with nothing in the account to start. At least it helps in getting a safety net established.
Can't remember much of what we did that evening. I think we finished off Get Smart season 5 - or was that on Saturday? - but I can't think of anything major.
One fun thing we did was a particular online survey from e-rewards. Yes, you too can be paid $7 for a 20 minute opinion study on commercial soap dispensers! Is this model 'warm' or 'cold'? 'Beautiful' or 'ugly'? Is this model "friendly"? Or are this one and this one the cream of the crop? Your opinion matters!
Seriously, that was a weird survey, but it put me over the top for a $25 Gamestop gift card, so I'm not exactly complaining. Not sure what I'll put it toward - I ended up picking up Star Ocean on PSP in the week of the 20th, so... hm. Anyway.
Saturday, October 18
Since we'd made plans to have Chad over in the afternoon, we decided to take a trip in the morning so we weren't cooped up all day. Didn't quite get to all our stops (I miss Fry's), but we had a good time.
We took off up I-65 around 10, and our first stop was the Goodwill up by aquahaute's work, since she was having trouble coexisting with the Goodwill donations we had in the front seat of the truck. It was nice to get rid of the extra yard-sale cows, and some other garage sale leftovers we had from our own attempts. We didn't actually go in and shop, though.
Next up, Petco in the same general area. They had a bunny there that we looked at for a bit, then we cruised around looking at other stuff. Nothing terribly notable that I recall, though I was a little mystified at the "take a picture of your pet and we'll turn it into a throw rug" display.
We wanted to check her workplace to see if it was open, since she had some buy 1 get 1 coupons in her cubicle. We drove up to the entrance, and passed a Shred-It truck on our way in. The entrance was wide open, so hey, no problem, right? We got to the offices, and they were locked. Oh well.
Then we tried to drive away, and saw that the gate to the outside was closing. It wasn't going to stay open long enough for me to get out, so I just stopped. We briefly panicked, but within a minute, another truck drove up to the outside of the gate. The drive hopped out and pressed a couple buttons, and the gate obliged by opening. Thankful, we sped out of there before the gate was even done opening. >_>
Big Lots was our next target, where we once again cleaned up on food. $1 for Campbell's Select soup boxes? Yes, please. I was impressed by their stack of Guitar Hero III wireless PS2 bundles for $50, but... PS2. If I could use that guitar on some other platform, it'd be worth it just for the guitar - which is probably why these bundles ended up at Big Lots.
We went to Trader's Mill for lunch after that. We weren't sure if they were open at 11:30 or not, so the first thing we looked for was their sign. Here is what it read:
"TRADER'S MILL BAR AND GRILL"
"OPEN MON-SAT 11 AM TO CLOSE"
"OPEN SUNDAYS [hours here]"
Trader's Mill - we're open 'til we close!
The food was pretty good - my 'pizza burger' was very tasty, and so was aquahaute's chicken quesadilla. I had a little trouble with the bill-paying, though, since I had two disputes with the waitress. The first time, she'd missed the "burgers include a side of cottage cheese or potato chips" line in the menu and charged me $2.50 for my cottage cheese. Uh, no? She got that taken care of with the manager, but then the next bill came back with a $2.50 charge for fries, despite the fact that the menu says "Get french fries on the side for $1.75 with any burger". I brought it up:
Manager: "That's only if you don't get the side of cottage cheese or chips."
falcon815: "That's fine if that's your actual policy, but that's not what the menu says. It doesn't say 'or get french fries on the side for $1.75', it says 'get french fries on the side for $1.75'."
I didn't feel like fighting over 75 cents, so I just made that comment, paid, and left. It wasn't a bad experience, but they really need to update the menu. Also, the manager needs to get off his cell phone and, y'know, manage.
I noticed when we left that we didn't have enough time to go to Fry's, so we made our way across town and hit up the Petco at 72nd and Keystone to see if they had any of the Indiana House Rabbit Society adopt-a-rabbits there. No luck - Emily was nowhere to be found, which made us sad. For that matter, they didn't have any rabbits. :\
We went home after that - got back around 2:15. Just as aquahaute was unlocking the door, Chad called to confirm that 3:00 was OK. No problem. We cleaned a little downstairs, then picked up the mail at 3. The mail contained an eBay package for Andrea, so she went upstairs to leave feedback for the seller. Just then, Chad showed up.
The three of us sat around and chatted for about an hour, then we decided on what food we were going to have for supper, and aquahaute volunteered to go pick up some stuff we needed. While she was out, Chad watched me play a couple stages of Mega Man 9 to see how that was, and we caught up on the Virtual Console / WiiWare releases.
We split the next hour or so between Rock Band and cooking. Since I still haven't received my replacement Stratocaster from EA, I was stuck on vocals, which was fine, since we were playing RB1. Mostly, Chad played bass and aquahaute drummed, though they swapped for one song at the end of our three-person set. I quit to go cook for a couple songs, wherein Chad took over on vocals and Andrea swapped to bass. It was a lot more fun with Chad than it was with Andy, largely because Chad can hold his own on medium bass and vocals and doesn't fail out every 2 minutes. Sorry, Andy. >_>
Food (tasty turkey pot pie filling over biscuits / garlic bread) was next, then we played a round of Scene It on the 360, which I won by running the table on the Blue Lagoon-themed questions at the end.
Chad had to go at that point - it was roughly 8:45 - and by then, the remaining two of us were pretty z-ful after our long day. We briefly considered watching the Get Smart movie that doesn't suck, but decided against it, opting to follow Red Sox / Rays on the internets instead.
Sunday, October 19
On Sunday, we got up significantly later than our usual, and ended up relaxing for a bit even after that. It was about 10 when we decided to finally go visit Kelsay Farms, a local dairy farm that has a corn maze and various other activities every October. We drove over (taking the back roads this time, after learning last year that we lived significantly closer to the farm than we'd realized), but they weren't going to open 'til 12. Whoops.
We decided to head over to Ace Hardware instead (they just opened one at 31 and Worthsville, right by Blockbuster). Some of our pepper plants are getting too tall for their roots, and have been tipping, so we figured we'd pick up some dowel rods or yardsticks or something to tie them to. Dowel rods were the cheaper (and easier) option, so we decided to do that once we finally found them practically hiding in the back corner of the store. They weren't labeled with prices yet, so we asked an employee to check them for us. While we waited, we spied an amusingly labeled toilet-in-a-box.
Once we had our dowel rods, we took them home. I broke them by wearing down the center with wire cutters, then snapping them with my thumbs; once I was done, aquahaute tied the plants to their new stakes.
A little after noon, we headed over to Kelsay. Our first stop after buying our tickets and facepalming at the cow-themed cornhole sets was to see the adorable little baby cows. They were 20 days old this year - a whole 3 days older than last year's batch. One of them was having a snack when we walked up, while the other one had a nap. Andrea took a little video of them with our 'new' Flip video camera while I snapped some pictures, then we headed off to the corn maze.
The maze was a lot more complex than last year's; rather than just being a gigantic cow shape, it was a set of smaller items: a fence, barn, silo, and cow. It was a lot harder to navigate than last year's, though it wasn't hard - they give you a map to go along with. It was still fun, though!
We made another stop by the baby cows before we left. Andrea took another video, I took some more pictures, and one of the babies let us scritch it. So fuzzy and soft! I didn't expect the little guy (or girl) to be so fuzzy.
After that, we decided it was time to go. On the way out, we were floored by the number of cars that were at the farm, so Andrea decided to count them while I went to my truck and drove back to pick her up. There were 54 cars in the lot when we left; 55 if you count the one that left and one that came in to snipe my spot when I drove away. That's a lot of people going to a farm on a Sunday afternoon. I wonder if Denny's noticed the drop in business. >_>
We had a late lunch when we got back home around 2:15. Over lunch, and afterward, we watched the Get Smart movie that doesn't suck. In fact, it was pretty good, for an extended episode of the show. Despite the fact that it resembled the Nadesico movie in the fact that it spent half the movie reassembling the ol' gang, it did so in a much more entertaining manner. And no, it wasn't just because I missed Hymie being around, though his return was very welcome.
Once the movie was over, I watched some of the disastrous Colts game, then got bored and plowed through to the end of Etrian Odyssey II. Or at least the end of the pathetic, whimpering excuse for a "plot". Come on, guys, you can do better than that, you showed it in EO1. The game was pretty fun, I guess, if a little more borked than the previous game. Borked in the player's favor, I might add. They may have nerfed Protectors and Medics to the depths of hell, but in their place, the Ronin is a walking God. I swear, I made a party including three of the four "worst" classes in the game, and it was still mostly a cakewalk just because one of my other two was a Ronin. tl;dr - if you play Etrian Odyssey II, take a Ronin if you would like a world-destroying force; do not take a Ronin if you want to reset a lot.
I forget what happened after that. We were mostly kind of "wah, no want the weekend to be over", supper was lazy (tasty Campbell's soup from Saturday), and we were quite sleepy. So we went to bed early, as I recall.
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End of weekend writeup! I'll try to finish off the catchup soon.