Cookout 2010 Stories: Vol 4

This final entry into the cookout stories will consist of some random things that happened over the course of the trip and the final day/night.

Cooking Out!

Most of Sunday was spent loafing around and actually doing what the name of the event implies. Cooking out.

The menu included the basics:

Hot Dogs.
Burgers.
Potato Salad.
Actual Salad.
Sangria.

Kay fixed the potato salad. Eri grilled the burgers and dogs. Kreo fixed the sangria and I'm not sure who fixed the actual salad.



Drakus + Food = Amused.



Shootin' the shit while eating out on the deck.



More shit-shootin'...



I need to smack someone for managing to get both my bald spot and my gut in the same picture...

Gracie the Sidekick

Stripes got his own column mostly due to his ability to find hiding places, so I figure I should at least put a small blurb in here regarding Gracie. She's a rather laid back kitty that's been declawed. So she was an easy one to play with whereas Stripes, still having his claws, could pretty much maim you in a heartbeat.



Doesn't mean Gracie couldn't still kick your ass though...dog better not be on my porch bish!



Patrolling the window...



...more patrolling.

Gracie was often times found on the backs of furniture or on top of keyboards and would often times go limp when you picked her up.

A Collection of...Backs of Heads...

We apparently managed to get a near complete collection of the backs of our heads...



Kreoss...



Kaylea...



Kaelis...



Suraph...



Me...

Not sure how we managed to do that, but slightly humorous that we did...



To Baltimore! Again...

As Noon on Monday rolled around, it was time for a number of us to depart. Kaelis and Eri were driving back home. Kreoss and Kay were flying back home out of Baltimore. This means that we were going to have to drive to Baltimore to drop 'em off.

This also meant we were going to have to take 5 people in one car or someone was going to be sitting at the house for a number of hours...

Drakus was highly amused and stayed at the house.

Off to Baltimore we go yet again. This drive seems to get faster each time we made it. The odd thing about this particular excursion was that I actually got to see what the outside of BWI looked like. Every other time I had been there, I was changing planes, so I couldn't actually get out to roam around much.

One thing I do have to note about this airport is:

Their parking system is f***ing fantastic. They got these little sensors above each parking space that relays a signal to a post out on the main drive areas as to how many spots are available in each row. Makes finding a space incredibly easy. This is being compared to BNA's airport parking system of "LOT FULL" only to see about 50 spaces open as you pull in or "582 SPACES AVAILABLE" and I can't find a single one.

We go through the whole check-in process. Kay and Kreo have both checked in online, but couldn't print passes. Kreo had some bags he had to check anyway, so he got to go stand in line.

Kay, on the other hand, just had a carryon, so she had the option of going up to a kiosk and just reprinting her boarding passes...

...if she hadn't forgotten what her confirmation number was.

She swore up and down she had it memorized, but obviously, she didn't. Reception was rather bad there, but after fiddling with our phones, we finally got logged into AOL mobile and got her correct confirmation number. But!

In that time, Kreo managed to go through the line, get his bags checked and his boarding passes reprinted...



Final picture at the airport before parting ways.

Final Toys R Us?

After Suraph and I saw them to the security line, we left and headed to the last Toys R Us we had mapped out from a couple days prior. It wasn't too difficult to find, but again, nothing new as it relates to Transformers.

Unless you count this:



Really? A fkn fishing rod? WOO SLAP AN IDENTIFIABLE BRAND ON ANYTHING AND IT'LL SELL I TELL YOU WHAT!

Although...now that I think about it. That fishing rod could probably transform into a nice whipping stick for the dipshit marketing execs who thought this would be a good idea...

Oddly enough as well, Suraph found a game for $5 that he's apparently very fond of:



Upon exiting the Toys R Us, we stopped to take a picture at a very easy target:



Back at Launchpad...

Suraph, Drakus and I spent the rest of the evening just relaxing and cleaning things up. While watching TV, eating pizza rolls and broccoli-stuffed chicken, and playing Southpark's tower defense game, we got wind of some air travel troubles coming out of Baltimore.

The first was rather obligatory. Kreoss wouldn't have luck if he didn't have bad luck. He had basically cursed himself on the way to the airport by remarking that his flight will probably be delayed. I just piled onto said self-cursing by confirming it would be and sure enough...his flight was delayed by about 30-45 mins. Nothing too bad really, especially when compared with the later shenanigans.

Kay's flight ended up being delayed by about 6 hours. This was due to a litany of reasons. The first was a mechanical problem. The second was they had missed their window to take off due to the mechanical problem despite being out on the runway ready to leave. The third was they had reached the max amount of time they could be on the plane out on the runway and had to get off. The last was weather-related. Don't get me wrong...Southwest rarely has issues like this and Suraph could speak more to the conditions surrounding the problems, but it seems to me the BWI-Hartford flight could have just piled onto a bus and got there before they ultimately did.

On top of that, and I usually hate "if we had known...", but if we had known this sort of stuff was going to happen, Kay could have just caught a ride with Suraph the next morning on his way back to NH. Needless to say, clusterfuck.

But while she was miserable at the airport, the 3 of us were comfy and cozy pigging out on junk food and playing games. :)

(Yes, that's a rub-in...)

She ultimately got in around 1AM.

The Drive Home

Tuesday morning came too quickly. We had packed up most everything the night before, so there was really little to do when we got up aside from shower and do some final checks to make sure we didn't leave anything.

The plan this time was for Drakus and I to take the 68-79-64-BG PKWY-65 route back to Bowling Green. We had mapped out a few Toys R Us' to visit along the way, so it was indeed, not the final Toys R Us visited on this trip.

We got down the mountain and about 20 minutes out though when it hit me.

No I didn't forget anything.

Unless you count taking a poop before leaving as forgetting something...

Not even 30 minutes into the drive and I already had to pull off. We pulled off at a gas station that had a rather nice bathroom, but skimped severely on the quality of the toilet paper. You couldn't pull more than one or two sheets out at a time without it breaking and that's rather infuriating.

It's also a sign you should probably pull out a little extra if it's that brittle. I spent more time getting the toilet paper ready than I did doing my business.

Anyway, now that I was done, back on the highway we go! First Toys R Us we pulled off for wasn't open yet, but we were close enough to it opening that we just killed some time exploring a nearby K-Mart, Wal-Mart and Target. Said TRU had nothing new though, so back on the road.

Second TRU, we hit the jackpot. I found some figures I had been looking for. Thrust and Drift specifically. Drakus ended up buying the 4-pack of Generations: Wave 1, which included the 2 I had just picked up along with TF: WFC Prime and TF: WFC Bumblebee. After picking up some McDonalds, we got back out onto the highway headed for the third, and last TRU mapped out for us along our route. That TRU had nothing new either, so it was time to just kick back and drive.

Until we ran into some of this...





Yes that's me driving while taking a picture.

The weather got a little rocky after that last TRU, which slowed us down somewhat. On top of that, there was a ton of construction happening on I-64 at the WV-KY border that kept having lane closures and jamming traffic a bit. There was also apparently some sort of wreck or cop convention that actually had us stopped long enough on the highway for me to get one of the new Transformers out of it's package and show it off.

Once we were about 15-20 miles into KY though, it cleared up completely and the rest of the drive to Lexington was w/o incident. Drakus had never seen a castle before either, so this was a treat for him to get pictures of as we were driving by:



(He obviously doesn't know which way is up on his camera...)

About 5 miles after this though, we discover the on ramp to the BG Parkway was closed. This resulted in us having to drive around to Versailles and get onto said parkway there through a huge clusterfuck of traffic as we had managed to hit Lexington during rush hour. Once past that, everything else went smooth.

We get back to my place, divvy up the luggage and then head in so that Drakus can log himself in to one of my comps. The purpose for this is that he wasn't going to be home in time to catch Einherjar. The other thing he didn't count on was that I was still seeking vengeance for the joke played on my character while I was sleeping.

You see, I woke up to find Gungnir stuffed in storage on one of my mannequins and I was carrying around a Gae Bolg instead. Turns out Lect was the mastermind behind this joke, but since Drakus, Kreoss, Kaelis and Suraph were all there to take part, they're getting the favor returned.

Drakus got home a couple hours after Einherjar ended to find:

- His mog house furniture all shoved to one side a la Tetris.
- All of his gil divided up and sent to each of his 10 mules.
- His HP was set in Rabao.
- The idea was planted that some of his BLM gear was moved.
- His 8 DB slots had 1 gil ea. in them.

He made it home safe obviously as did everyone else.

Conclusion

It's hard for me to say "most" as it relates to anything to one of these cookouts. Each one of them have something awesome that happen each year. First year was awesome just cause it actually happened. Second year was awesome because it involved a pool and a pair of people that really need to show up to the next one, but having kids kind of puts a bit of a wrench in the ability to do so. Last year, in Maine, the locale was obviously one of the awesome pieces there along with the cooking clinic Kay's mom put on. This year was awesome because of the locale and a number of other things.

It's obviously a tradition we've started that we hope to keep going. Next year has been discussed to take place in FL, but we're still a long way away from that time period and who knows what circumstances will be around when it comes time for this to happen again. Tons o' fun was had by all.

Bonus: Married Man Wins...Twice

I alluded to this in the previous post, but here's your Cookout: Moment of Zen

We had a number of multiplayer games we were abusing while hanging out. One of these was Mario Party 8. I was taking a nap when the shenanigans were going on, so I only got filled in when I woke up.

One of the mini-games in MP8 is apparently reminiscent of an SNL skit featuring Alec Baldwin:



There's not really much else I can say to introduce this...



...but there's a whole lot I can say about it after you watch it. Left to right is Kreo - Drakus - Kaelis - Suraph. Out of that quartet, Kaelis is the only married one. This video is actually the second time the four of them got stuck with that mini game...

...and Kaelis won them both despite the fact he never played MP8 up until this cookout. Anyone else find it odd the married guy is the best one at masturbation wii games? :)

Not so sure about that whole marriage thing myself now...