Thanksgiving '08 - Q @ Kay's.
Christmas '08 - Kay @ Q's.
Q's B-day '09 - Q @ Kay's.
Kay's B-day '09 - Q @ Kay's
Summer Cookout '09 - Q @ Kay's
Labor Day weekend '09 - Kay @ Q's.
Long distance relationships can be brutal for some in terms of visitation. Even though she lives 16 hours away by car, I'm fortunate enough to know people (Mr. and Mrs Pun) along the way that I can visit as well. Flying up there is rather easy and cheap too. It actually costs a little more to fly up there when you consider taxi fares in the equation, but it's obviously a lot less time depending on the flight. Usually for me to fly up there and nab a cab ride to her place takes a total of around 8 hours. Breaks down like this:
1 hour drive to Nashville
Arrive 2 hours before flight (fkn Southwest seating plans...)
2-6 hours in the air/changing flights/in layover (usually in Baltimore...)
1 hour wait for disembark/luggage retrieval/cab arrival
1 hour drive to Kay's place by cabbie.
So am I saying driving is better than flying? Sometimes, even though it takes twice as long. I'm not having to deal with crowds of stupidity and I'm not being packed into a seat between people that probably didn't bother to shower before they got on the flight. The only other advantage to flying is the fact that most of that time (as long as I'm not being bumped around by passengers with no concept of personal space) is that I can play my DS or PSP.
Anyway, I digressed...
Kay came down to visit for Labor Day weekend. This was a rather unique visit cause her friend (we'll call her "Bean") had come down too. This particular weekend was the 15th anniversary of the National Corvette Museum and every year, they host the Corvette Homecoming weekend where basically anyone who's ever purchased a Corvette brings the thing back to the factory/museum to show it off. Bean's Dad owned a couple of said 'vettes and since it was a milestone anniversary, decided to make the drive from Boston to Bowling Green for the festivities in a corvette caravan. Some of you out there might have seen said caravans across the nation along the highways or at various restaurants. Bean couldn't take the time off work to actually drive down with her family, so she and her brother flew down to Nashville, rented a car and drove up here with Girlfriend in tow.
Sept. 3rd - The Arrival
Nothing super exceptional here today except for me working most of the day while Kay napped after I picked her up at the hotel. We stopped off at my sister's house so that Kay could get a chance to see my niece before they went out of town for the weekend for a family reunion on the other side of their family. Upon entering the house, my niece looked a little wary of Kay as she hadn't seen her for a long time. So I pointed to Kay and I asked "Who's that?"
Niece: /silence
Q: That's Kaylea! (Not using Kay's real name in the blog)
Niece: /silence
Q: Can you say hi to Kaylea?
Niece: That's not Kaylea, that's Kayleapooh!
Kaylea: ...
That actually amazed me more than cracked me up. As a joke well over a year ago, I was trying to get my niece to call her Kayleapooh through the use of a phrase that Kay really dislikes. Since that time, I hadn't said anything to my niece about "Kayleapooh", yet she remembered. So after that, my sister spent some time trying to correct her daughter, but with no luck. When asked a few days later who Kaylea was, we got "Kayleapooh" more and more.
This filled me up with more pride than the transformers bit, much to Kay's chagrin.
Rest of the day/evening was spent mostly loafing around with some FFXI mixed in.
Sept. 4th - Getting Reacquainted
This was another day I had to spend working a good portion of it. Which was fine for Kay as she got to sleep in a bit and generally goof off most of the day. The only plans that were made were for she and I to have dinner with Bean and her family. I had met Bean's family before at an italian restaurant in Boston on my way back from Maine during the Kay's B-day trip. This was where the idea of meeting up in Bowling Green for this was hatched. They already knew they would be coming down, but I'm not sure they knew that this was actually where I lived. Small world eh?
Anyway, we went to a new restaurant here called Griff's. It's basically this Sandwich and Salad shop that offers a rather wide variety of food. I had never been there before, but you can't go wrong if they're actually capable of serving a good greek salad and they were.
We spent over an hour and a half there just chatting away. They were telling me about their trip earlier in the day to visit Abraham Lincoln's boyhood home in Hodgenville, KY and their visit to the Maker's Mark distillery where they had a barrel named after them. They can come back in 7 years to get some of the bourbon from said barrel since Maker's Mark lets it sit for 7 years before selling it.
One of the oddest parts of the conversation had to be listening to their perceptions of my hometown. Obviously having lived here (and having seen a lot of the US), I'm a little biased, so it's always odd for me to listen to what someone who is actually just visiting here has to say about the city. They liked it and remarked about how busy Scottsville Road was. This was the main thing I found odd. These are people from Boston commenting about how busy a particular street here was. I didn't find that street to be any worse than most of the streets I've been on up in the northeast, but if they're saying it's super busy, they certainly have the experience to compare. :)
Played more FFXI after dinner. Was time mostly spent fishing while Kay leveled her DRG. I do have to say it's rather comical to be sitting next to Kay while she's playing FFXI. She rarely touches her keyboard, so I get to type out a bunch of random stuff while she's tied up fighting or in the middle of a cast. She'll be wrestling a fish in only for everyone around her to see:
"Kaylea rips an ass-flapping big-one as she reels in the Giant Catfish."
or
"Kaylea sharts."
or
"Kaylea teabags herself."
Sept 5th - Nashville, Bayou River Brewery, and The Hermitage
Saturday rolls around and it's time for Einherjar. The night before, during dinner, we had made plans to meet up with Bean and Family in Nashville. They were trying to see as much of the region as they could and well...there's only so much to do here in Bowling Green and I'm sure there's not as much to do during the Corvette events.
Einherjar raped us. This was further exasperated by the fact that Kay loves to try and irritate me while I'm trying to organize Einherjar or Dynamis while she's around me. Most of you think that the irritation thing is completely one-sided, but what you don't see is that Kay dishes out every bit the amount that she takes. My approach to aggravation is carpet bombing and hers is simply precision strikes.
Anyway yeah...Einherjar coughed up 12 clots + 12 clusters and a whole lot of sore rectums. We were due for a room like that though. It had been a long while since we had an impossible room and I had suspected that we were going to run into it given that we just needed one T2 to finish up 2 Odin sets. Murphy's Law and all yeah.
Onto Nashville we go with Einherjar in the rearview mirror. We met up at a place called Big River Brewery for lunch. Again, this was a place I had never eaten. Wasn't any place too spectacular, but was a good place to hang out with friends as they served a very wide variety of food. I also tried their beer sampler - mostly so I could take pictures and tease Canuck with it.
The images are a little fuzzy due to my phone camera being a piece of shit, but there's the sampler. There were 7 different samples there with the only one not pictured being their seasonal one...
Banana Beer.
I have to say, that was one tasty beer. I'm not a beer drinker. I'll drink it to be a little social and to try new things, but usually I'm left with the same horrible aftertaste. This one didn't leave that though and I actually considered getting a mug of it, but then I remembered I was driving and didn't want to risk it.
During the course of lunch, we got to talking about the other things to do in Nashville. Again, I'm a horrible guy to have around as a tour guide, so I couldn't offer much in the way of suggestions. They mentioned that they had already visited the Parthenon and it made me remember that The Hermitage was in the vicinity. Given that Girlfriend and Bean are both history buffs, I thought that would be a good place to visit. Unfortunately, Bean's family was on a bit of a schedule, so they weren't going to have time to go visit. It ended up being Girlfriend, Bean and myself going to visit the home of our 7th President.
I didn't take any pictures, but I do have to say...that place was fantastic. It's showing it's age obviously, but you get to see so much history in that plot of land from that particular time period, it really makes you wonder just how we ever got to this point in our evolution. We spent a solid 2 hours touring the place.
Apparently you can also have weddings at this place too. A wedding was one of the last things I needed to see taking place as Kay has used the whole marriage thing as a point of irritation with me at times. "Can we invite X" where X = someone I dislike. "Can we go shopping for dresses?" "Can we go shopping for rings?" "My mother has already bought decorations" - (and we've not set a date yet...) and so on...
We got back home around 6 and spent the rest of the evening eating ice cream and fishing in FFXI.
Sept 6th - Q's Revenge
Bean and her family have gone back home today. We had initially planned on going up to Mammoth Cave today, but opted to just veg out instead. In yesterday's post, I mentioned that I got Kay to go see Transformers 2 and that she had almost managed to make it through the trip without going to see it until she turned on some reality TV garbage during dynamis.
The initial idea I had for the day was to go out driving somewhere and spend some time away from FFXI without being on a schedule or rushed to do things, but Kay wanted to go to Dynamis. Most of you guys know that Dynamis is a boring event. During the runs, Kay will usually be watching a movie or some smut-tastic television show that she missed during the course of the week like Hell's Kitchen, Jon and Kate, etc. Most of you guys also know where I stand on reality TV.
Crap that sells itself as realistic and is the furthest thing from realistic is just not worth the time spent watching it.
The foundation of Kay's argument against Transformers was that she didn't make me watch stuff I didn't like. She had maintained all along that if she ended up in the theater with Transformers tickets, she'd stay out in the lobby until the movie was over or go see something else. So the second I heard whatever reality smut she turned on at her laptop, I made up my mind to see if she actually followed through with it.
After dynamis was done and she had a brief nap, I had her get in the car under the notion that I was going to surprise her with something. The surprise ended up being Transformers 2. She wasn't happy, but she sat through it. She also spent the rest of the evening pissed off at me. Not "silent treatment" pissed off, but letting it be known in no uncertain terms that she was mad about it. She seemed to cool off when Mr. Pun, who doesn't like anything Michael Bay does, reaffirmed the fact that "Twilight", which Kay had tricked me into seeing, was worse than Transformers.
So now Q is even for being subjected to Twilight and reality TV garbage. :)
Sept 7th - Girlfriend's Revenge
After talking it all out, we decided to go see a movie again. We went to Red Lobster for dinner and destroyed some shrimp since it was their endless shrimp time of the year, then went to buy me a PSP from Gamestop. I had been trying to convince Kay to go halfsies with me on it and we'd just exchange it each time a visit happened. There were a couple games she wanted to play and a couple games I wanted to play on it. She insisted that I wait until Christmas so she could get it for me as a gift, but I would rather her spend that amount on other people.
While eating dinner, we got to talking about which movie to go see. She said she didn't know what she wanted to see, so we ran out a list of suggestions...
The Hangover
The Proposal
Julie and Julia
Funny People
Transfo----FUCK NO
It was her turn to pick and with Transformers 2 still fresh on her mind, you can probably guess which one of those movies I ended up having to go see if you didn't read yesterday's blog post.
Honestly, I thought the concept of the movie was neat. It was basically a movie about a blogger. I didn't like all the other mushy shit they put into it though. Overall, the movie was all right with a number of light-hearted, funny moments, but it's not anything I'd recommend for theater viewing. I've seen the real life Julie Powell's blog and some of the interviews she's done in the build up to the movie and the release of her new book and there's not much of anything in that movie aside from the concept that makes me think those two are actually similar.
Once back home, more FFXI fishing as the fish ranking contest finishes up the next day.
Sept 8th - The Departure
We had some time in the morning to laze around. Kay spent it trying to farm up coffer keys for her DRG AF2 and I spent it fishing. Nothing really noteworthy happened. Around 11:30, we went to pick up some lunch and go over to my sister's house to eat it with the rest of my family. My niece was dancing all over the place and still calling Kay "Kayleapooh". Went back to the house after my niece had been put down for her nap to finish packing up and then it was off to Nashville for Kay to fly home.
Kay apparently had a ton of issues with the flight home and didn't get in until nearly 11PM her time despite leaving around 5. So naturally she was tuckered out. That was assuaged a bit by me taking her into Einherjar while she was flying home and completing her Odin set for Saturday. Not sure what we're going to do when Thanksgiving comes around as there won't be any horrible movies for us to drag the other one to see, so I imagine we'll be spending a lot of time playing FFXI and eating.
Hopefully Bean and Co. enjoyed their trip here to my little podunk corner of the world too. :)
Generally speaking Southwest's boarding policy is extremely stream-lined these days, what with 24-hour pre-boarding check-in online (and soon 36-hour pre-boarding, for a small fee (24-hour will remain free))... I can't imagine why they'd leave Nashville out of the loop on that... (except for the obvious reason that's it's Nashville, and f*ck Nashville). As for the rest, TL:DR :D
ReplyDeleteSince they changed it so you get your boarding number when you checked in, yes it's a ton better and it doesn't actually take long at all to board the flight, but the reason I say what I do about them is that just because you have Group A-Seat 27, doesn't mean you're getting on the plane in that particular group. I've been on numerous flights where I've watched people get there a couple hours early and literally sit in the floor at the front of the boarding section regardless of their pass number and the Southwest reps do nothing about it.
ReplyDeleteTwo hours now is a bit much yes, but I always make a point of getting there around that early cause Nashville is fkn stupid when it comes to their general driving ability. Been plenty of times I've gotten to the airport an hour later than I intended due to craptastic construction zones or someone that was driving really dumb and clogged up the interstate. :)
Complain to the Southwest employees about it, and if they refuse to assist get their names etc and report them to corporate -- management in all the airline companies is really aggressive these days due to lower passenger turn out than in the past.
ReplyDelete