the long-awaited mega update!!!!
Okay, so I got back on April 15th. It's definitely time for me to update. :-) So much happened that I couldn't possibly write it all in one jam-packed paragraph. I'm going to organize it by which states we were in instead:
WASHINGTON: I arrived at the airport and Mike was almost an hour late because there were six car accidents on the road on his way. I couldn't have been more relieved when he showed up, lol. But yeah...I learned four new things in Washington:
1.) It rains almost all the time there.
2.) I can't handle margaritas. Mike and I were eating at Applebee's and he ordered a strawberry margarita. We were sharing it and I only had a few sips, but I was nearly passing out at the table. The waitress kept giving him suspicious looks like she thought he'd slipped something into the drink. When we got in his car I started coughing and he was soo worried...he told me he was afraid he'd gotten me all the way to Washington only to kill me. O_O When we got back to his apartment I said I was taking a nap. I must have only slept for half an hour, but he was watching me the whole time to make sure I didn't stop breathing. Hehe, it all turned out fine. I love how he gets so concerned about me.
3.) When Mike shaves, his stubble leaves a rash on my face.
4.) The contents of an entire apartment can be stuffed into a pickup truck in one day. His apartment was tiny but there was sooooo much stuff in there it was unbelievable. We organized it, filled up the whole dumpster with things we didn't need, and fit the rest of it into his truck. All in one day. And we even had time to get the carpet cleaned.
OREGON: When we first arrived in Oregon we stopped at a petting zoo. Mike thought I was going to kidnap one of the lambs...it was the cutest freakin thing I'd ever seen! Lol. We spent a few nights at Pat and Shannon's apartment (they're friends of his). Not much else happened.
CALIFORNIA: We visited a ghost town called Calico, which used to be really crowded in the nineteenth century before everyone moved out. It was one of those Old West towns, which was fun. He and I had our picture taken in old fashioned clothes...he was dressed as a cowboy and I was a barmaid. I looked hot. ;-) Later on we were driving around looking for a place to use the bathroom, and we came to a town that seemed like it was from a Stephen King novel. The town was deserted. And I mean, COMPLETELY deserted. All the buildings were closed and everything. (Mike said, “It’s ironic that in such a shithole, there’s no place to use the bathroom.”) Finally, we decided to pee behind a building. I tripped over a chain fence and banged up my leg pretty badly. It hurt.
The next day we came to Berkley, where we stayed with Mike’s friends Sam and Roz. We all went to Fisherman’s Wharf together, and it was POURING. The whole city of San Francisco was like a damn puddle. We had fun, though. We ate at The Sea Lion café, and there were sea lions in the water outside. I swear, sea lions are the laziest animals I’ve ever seen. They lie in their own poop and don’t even move. I even saw one sea lion use its poop as a pillow, and then another one came along and they fought over who got to sleep on it. Ew. And the radio deejays in California talk about smoking pot all the time. Weed is so open there, it’s unbelievable. You’ll see people sprawled out on benches in the middle of the sidewalk, puffing the peace pipe. There was a huge political demonstration in San Francisco a few days before Mike and I got there. It was a demonstration for legalizing marijuana, and there were hundreds of people selling and smoking weed outside the town hall. The police didn’t even arrest anyone.
We had fun with Sam and Roz. They have the cutest little pug dogs ever. Normally I don’t like pugs much, but these were adorable. Their faces look all squished, it’s so funny. Roz calls them “accordion faces.”
Mike and I were supposed to see my Aunt Abby and friend Talaria, but Abby was too far away and Talaria was too busy. Oh well…
On our way out of California, it snowed. I’ve never seen snow in Cali before…it was a surprise, but not a very nice surprise for Mike because he was driving.
NEVADA: We stayed in Las Vegas! In our hotel room we had a broken alarm clock. Mike told them about it, and they replaced it with the same broken one we had before. Shitty hotel service aside, we had a good time.
We went to the Shark Reef, which is a shark aquarium with a glass tube you can walk through. We also went to a jousting tournament and dinner at Excalibur, a Medeival-themed hotel that looks like a Fisher Price castle. The show was AMAZING. We also went to Tony & Tina’s Wedding (a really funny fake Italian wedding where the actors interact with the audience), Madam Tussaud’s Wax Museum, and Bite. Madam Tussaud’s was a blast. They had life-size wax figures of celebrities that were so eerily realistic, they looked like they would blink at any second. They also had setups where you could take pictures with the wax people…there was a big bed you could pose on with Hugh Hefner, and you could wear Playboy bunny ears and hold a bottle of wine. They had a fake altar and wedding dress you could wear to marry George Clooney, lol. And Bite was incredible. It was technically a strip show where the strippers pretended to be vampires (no surprise it was Mike’s idea to go to the show). But it was soooo much more than that. I used to think strippers just took of their clothes and jiggled around. Not these ones. They were mind-bogglingly flexible and INCREDIBLE dancers and acrobats. I kept pointing out to Mike which ones had implants, though. I think that kind of blew the fantasy for him. :-P
On one of the streets of Las Vegas there was a street evangelist standing on top of a milk crate, preaching to everyone about Jesus. Mike said he wanted to pull up a crate next to him and start preaching too to compete with him. ;-)
It’s kind of sad, watching all those people sitting at slot machines all night. You’ll walk into a casino and see someone sitting at a slot machine at 9:00 at night, then you’ll see them sitting at the same slot machine in the morning. They actually don’t have clocks in casinos because the owners don’t want people to think about the time, they just want them to zone out and gamble. Luckily Mike didn’t gamble much. I did hear some interesting conversations in the casinos, though. I heard one guy telling someone else about all the ugly women he picks up when he’s drunk.
Oh, one time in Las Vegas Mike and I were walking down the street and a guy on a bicycle yelled at him, “Your girlfriend’s hot!” Needless to say, I was pleased. ^_^
After we left Vegas, we visited the Hoover Dam. I was wearing a miniskirt, which I NEVER would have worn if I knew how windy it would be. I was trying to hold down my skirt and take photos at the same time, which is no easy task. Mike enjoyed watching me struggle for a while, but he finally decided to take the pictures and let me handle the skirt.
ARIZONA: It was windy. Really windy. We went to visit a crater that was made thousands of years ago when a comet hit the earth. The crater was 300 feet deep, and it was so windy outside that I was afraid I’d fall in. Mike was holding onto me…he makes a good anchor. I actually heard one woman say, “Too bad I don’t have a broom with me; I could fly!”
NEW MEXICO: We visited the grave of Billy the Kid, and another guy who was visiting came up to us and told us that Billy the Kid wasn’t really buried there. He said that after the government put a reward on him two of his friends killed a Mexican and pretended it was Billy, so it was really the Mexican who was buried there. I’m not sure if that’s true or not, but I thought it was interesting.
We stayed at a hotel and forgot about the change in the time zone, so I got an angry phone call from the man at the front desk. We were supposed to check out at noon and I thought it was only 11:30, but it was actually almost 1:00. The man at the front desk said he would charge us for an extra night, so Mike went downstairs to talk to him. The guy was a lot more polite to Mike than he’d been to me. Mike reasoned with him and managed to get us out of paying for another night, which was good.
I noticed that in New Mexico, there are a lot of stores selling overpriced Indian jewelry. The average Native American necklace there costs $30 even though it’s made in China.
On our way out of New Mexico, we drove through an Air Force base. They had a wonderful Japanese steakhouse there. We shared a table with an old couple who had some funny stories. The old man worked at the base and said that he always brought his dog, Killer, to work with him. Every day when he showed his ID to the guards they’d ask, “When are you going to get Killer an ID card?” It had been a running joke between them for years. Then one day, the man actually did it. He pulled an ID card out of his pocket that said “Killer” in big letters, and underneath was a photo of his Chiuwawa. He said there was a traffic jam on the base that day because the guards called everyone down to see it.
TEXAS: Texas was by far the stinkiest state I’ve ever been in. Every time we rolled down the car window we’d start gagging. It smelled like horse manure everywhere, and I mean EVERYWHERE. There was no escaping it. We stayed in a hotel room that had a broken sink, so the manager let us use the sink in the room next door. As we drove through Texas, we noticed that bugs kept flying into the windshield. By the time we were in Oklahoma, the truck looked like a bug graveyard.
OKLAHOMA AND ARKANSAS: We just drove through. Nothing exciting happened.
TENNESSEE: We went to Graceland! I loved it. Elvis’s house was incredible. One of the rooms had three TVs because he liked to watch them all at once. I noticed two girls there who were wearing ironic T-shirts. One of them was wearing a shirt that said “Everyone loves a blonde,” but she had dark brown hair. (I pointed that out to Mike, and he said she was probably just complaining). Another girl was wearing a shirt that said “My eyes are up here.” Um…yeah.
Tennessee is an enormous state. It took us two days to drive through. We were supposed to visit my Aunt Tina in South Carolina, but those plans fell through.
VIRGINIA: This was also an enormous state. Mike and I were driving along in the car and we randomly started singing, “This is the state that never ends, it goes on and on my friend…” Then we looked at each other and he said, “I think we’ve finally lost it.” Then we laughed.
PENNSYLVANIA: Another ridiculously huge state. We had planned to stay with Mike’s friend Dave overnight, but we ended up not having enough time.
NEW YORK: When we reached New York, Mike was determined to get home by the end of the day. He popped five energy pills in four hours and swallowed them with an energy drink. Needless to say, he got very sick and we had to stay in a hotel. Poor Mike. :-(
The next day we got home, though, and were greeted with bear hugs from Mike’s family. Then we moved the entire contents of his truck into his bedroom.
So all in all, it was a long and exhausting trip but it was also loads of fun and I’d do it again in a heartbeat. And believe it or not, Mike and I still love each other!
SIDE NOTES: At Tony & Tina’s Wedding, there was a really funny woman who was supposed to be Tony’s father’s girlfriend. She was talking to a really old couple at one of the tables and said, “These two have been sleeping with each other for forty years! How do they find new positions?” Another time she said, “You’ve got to have sex before you’re married. After all, you need to try on a new pair of shoes before you buy them.”
In a bathroom in California, there was a sign above the changing table that said, “PLEASE DO NOT USE CHANGING TABLE AS BEER TRAY.”
In another bathroom, someone had written on the wall: “If Tony Di Gaetano hits on you, please call this number for important information.” And then the number was labeled “Disease Control Hotline.”