To Gettysburg

Got up pretty much on time today (8:30). I had breakfast, blogged, and finished paying the bills and stuff. I got showered, and then headed out for some errands.

I ran to the bank and deposited some stuff, then went over to my parents to drop off my car registration. See, I got my car registration back in July. The old one expired on July 31st. But I keep forgetting to put it out in the car. I am very lucky that I hadn't been pulled over since the 1st. I didn't want my parents to get pulled over in my car and have to deal with this, so I made a trip over to my parents to drop off the registration.

I headed home after that and threw some burgers and hot dogs on the grill for lunch. Meg and I had lunch and then got the car loaded up for our trip to Gettysburg.

The trip went fairly well. We had one major slowdown trying to get on the Ben Franklin Bridge. For some reason, they kept closing and reopening toll lanes, making everyone have to shift around. In the confusion, I somehow got us stuck between two lines, and no one seemed willing to let me in. Common courtesy on the road is gone. Finally, a lady let us in, and we moved on.

Got to Mom's house in Gettysburg, and I unloaded everything. Mom took us out to this cafe in the center of town. It was okay, just not really my thing. I am more of a burgers and fries, cheesteak-type guy. This place had all kinds of fancy sandwiches, with chips instead of fries. I got a chicken panini sandwich. It was okay, but it left me feeling kinda queasy. Mom paid, so it was a nice free dinner, so I can't complain to much.

We got back to the house and relaxed a bit. I also got yelled at by the neighbor because Max was like 2 feet on her property. Mom lives in a town home, the second unit from the end. The garage is in the back, and there is no fence, so we have a 15 foot tether to put him on when he is outside. It allows him some freedom, and the cord stretches a few feet onto either property next to Mom's. We've trained Max in past visits to go to the bathroom in a specific spot, and he is very good about this. Well, for whatever reason, she had an issue with Max being on her property. He didn't even do anything; he was just standing there. So, I had to shorten Max's long-line so that he won't be able to reach the neighbor's yard. Now he only has like 10 ft to move about. I feel bad for him. These trips must be rough on him. He does okay with the ride up, especially since we took my parent's van this time. But you can tell he is nervous the whole time. Oh well, we are only here for two nights.

Being here is also stressful for other reasons. Meg's mom can be tough to deal with at times. From an outsider's perspective, she doesn't do anything really bad. She is just very hard to read, and if you are doing something she doesn't like, she gets all passive-aggressive, and then denies it if you say something to her. I am never directly affected, and she loves me. But I don't like the way she treats Meg and Cait. She is very critical, but in a way that's easy to deny. I just try to stay out of it, and be very supportive of Meg.

Later on in the evening, we went to Brusters, an icecream chain around here. I learned that the icecream terminology in PA is apparently different than NJ. They had Blasts, which were their version of DQ Blizzards. I wanted one of them with vanilla icecream, but couldn't find soft-serve or custard anywhere on the menu. So, I asked the guy if they had soft-serve icecream, and he said no. So I was like, "Well, what kind of icecream goes in the blast?" He replied, "soft vanilla icecream," which to me, is the same thing as vanilla soft-serve. Fine with me, but I was just a little confused. Not to mention that the guy took FOREVER to fill our order. I think people move slower in PA.

After that, we came home, watched TV for a while, and I discovered two more cool services offered by Google. I finally got a G-Mail account. You need to be 'invited' which I found strange, but I discovered that you can get invited by entering your cell phone number. Then, they send you a code to enter. I don't think I'll use it, but its good to have a backup mail account. Also, you needed to have one in order to try Google's Web Picasa service. You can upload albums from Picasa to a web album that you can share with everyone. Check out our web album here.

Well, Meggie looks like she needs some comforting, after a day of dealing with her family. Gotta go!