nekosensei | Entries tagged with traveling

I meant to write this post a few days ago, but time seemed to have gotten away from me again...

Labor Day Weekend was awesome.

doomsey and I drove out to Quincy, Illinois-- a town on the Mississippi River-- for

forestdruid's wedding. Since

doomsey was best man, he left on Thursday to help

forestdruid and his soon-to-be wife run errands and, in general, get things set up for the ceremony on Sunday. I left late Friday morning with

doomsey's parents and we pulled into Quincy just in time for dinner. My in-laws got dinner on their own, but

doomsey and I ate with the bride and groom's relatives. They were an awesome bunch, so I had tons of fun. I also got to practice speaking German with A's father. (Ich kann nicht so gut Deutsch sprechen. Did I say that right?)

[And since this gets kind of long...I'm going to have to put it all behind some cuts. Feel free to jump to the parts that sound interesting...or not read at all].

( Caving! )

( Hannibal, MO and the Mark Twain House )

( Parties! )

( A Riverboat Ride )

( Weddings )

( Busted Ankle Blues )

Damn...it's getting late. Maybe if I get some time over the next couple of days, I'll post some pictures....

Current Mood: content

One of my LJ friends,

hellziggy, is trying to win a trip to Antartica through Quark Expeditions and needs your help. This is her second attempt as she tried to win a similar trip in 2009, but did not get enough votes. Anyhow, she needs people to go here, sign up, and vote for her. It only take a few seconds. Boosting the signal on your own LJ or Twitter would also be very helpful.

You can read a longer explanation on why she wants to win this trip on her blogspot, here. Aside from a brief stay in Canada, she's never been outside of the United States before. Wouldn't it be cool if the first stamp on her passport were Antartica?

Current Mood: hopeful

I wish life weren't so crazy busy that I can sit down and read my LJ. Unfortunately, I've only been able to read things here and there when I get a chance. If there's anything going on with you that you'd like to share, drop me a note in the comments.

( What I've been up to )

Hmmm...this got kind of long. Maybe I'll write about what went on this week in another post.

Current Mood: rushed

Okay...so I entered this contest for shits and giggles.

MakeUseOf and Zozi are doing a contest for a trip for 2 to New Zealand

Current Mood: tired

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It'd be a toss up between Europe and Japan. Considering that I'm now studying German, I think Europe would win out. I'd see Britain and Ireland. Then, I'd head over to the continent to see Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and maybe Italy. And I'll travel first class, of course!

Current Mood: content

I'm so tempted to enter into this contest to visit Australia's Great Barrier Reef. I know I won't win it, but hey, one can dream huh? So...if I do decide to fill out the application, does anybody want to come with? I'm supposed to put three names down. I'd volunteer

doomsey, but he would be miserable. He hates beaches because the sunlight reflecting off of the water and the sand gives him migraines.

Current Mood: hopeful

( Click here for pictures )

Since the weather forecast said that it was going to rain most of the week except for today, I decided to make a trip out to the zoo. Got a bunch of cute pictures. I think I'm going to end up posting some of them in the days to come.

Current Mood: tired

( Click here for pictures )

Current Mood: content

As I may have mentioned earlier,

doomsey and I went to Seattle on Thursday and came back yesterday afternoon. On Friday, a bunch of us went to Mount Rainier and hiked all the way to Comet Falls. Our friend, Kumar, found the hike in a book of hikes for kids. He saw that it was a 1.8 mile hike and thought it was doable for us and his family. Um...no. First, it was 1.8 miles uphill. Second, the ground was wet, and it was quite treacherous going downhill. I'm pretty damn lucky that I didn't end up skidding off the trail, down the mountain, and into the rapids below. Can you say certain death? If I had known ahead of time that we were going to do this hike, I would have procured a pair of hiking boots.

I also discovered this weekend that I'm better at high altitude hikes than my husband. You'd think with all of my lung issues, that it would be the reverse. Of course, it didn't hurt that I was guzzling water like there was no tomorrow.

Anyhow...I thought I would share this video that I took of Comet Falls. Pretty, huh?

Current Mood: content

Blergh. I have been sick since about Thursday, and I really haven't been feeling the greatest these past few days. Yesterday was the costume party at

voidness' house. I got dressed as a vampire and went over there for a couple of hours. (Monster make-up is confusing! Next time, I'm going to use clown make-up and improvise). I didn't feel up to staying much longer. There were a lot of people there, it was loud, my voice was going...going...gone, it hurt to talk, and I didn't feel like shouting over people to be heard. I was also having a hard time breathing. So, I had

doomsey take me home a little after nine o'clock. I told

doomsey to go back to the party since he seemed to be having fun. I watched tv, knitted, and ended up coughing so much that I gave myself a nasty headache. Ouch!

Today, I didn't do much of anything. I sat on the couch and vegged out with the computer. Gosh, I didn't even shower or get dressed until six in the evening. That never happens. I hope I feel better by Tuesday.

Oh...as I told

doomsey during dinner, I've also been a woman of few words because my voice is pretty much shot. Why do I keep losing my voice every time I get sick?

And now I leave you with a link and a meme.

This link is swiped from

brightflashes. A group of people conducted an experiment in which they sent unlikely objects through the US Postal Service to see what would get delivered and what wouldn't.

The meme is from

tx_cronopio:
If you could have seven homes like some unmentioned recent political candidate, where would you have them? ~~For simplicity, let's limit this to the country in which you currently reside~~ (Aww...that's no fun! I would love to live overseas so I'm including some non-US locations as well). So for me, that'd be the US. Obviously, we're pretending that money is no object.

- Chicago, IL
- San Francisco, CA
- Somewhere in the mountains outside Boulder or Golden, CO
- Tokyo, Japan
- Granada, Spain
- London, England
- Enh...I don't know. Someplace warm. Let's say Hawaii. It's warm year round and they don't get hurricanes.

So...does this mean I get to pick eleven cars now too?

Let's see. I can only come up with two: a Toyota Prius (wait...I already have that!) and a Tesla Roadster (Oooh! Shiny!)

Okay...I lied. I have one more link courtesy of

ginmar. Obama is talking about reversing 200 of Bush's administrative actions and executive orders once he assumes office in January. It's about time that we start seeing some sanity in the White House!

Current Mood: sick

I fix things like that all the time! (Courtesy of

cuteoverload).

And here, we have what is quite possibly, the world's most dangerous hike. It's called El Camino del Rey and it's outside of Málaga, Spain. And to top it all off, it doesn't look like the person filming this is using a harness and the guide wire at the side of the cliff. I don't see him slowing down to hook himself up to anything. It must be a pretty view, but very scary! (Courtesy of

tx_cronopio).

In other news, I went canvassing for the Obama campaign today. They sent us up to Waukasha, WI. (By the way, I thought it was a cute little town). I had a lot of fun and hope to do it again next month. Basically, they handed the different groups a folder covering one neighborhood, and you had to go to the addresses listed and ask people who they were leaning towards and what issues were important to them. Then, you had to check off the appropriate boxes and tally it up at the end. I met a lot of interesting people. There were a few Obama supporters in the area, but we came across a lot of people who were undecided and some people who either supported or leaned towards McCain. I think we did a good job getting some people who were still on the fence interested in the campaign and thinking about the issues. *keeps fingers crossed* We also encouraged them to watch the debate on Friday.

Oh...for those of you who are interested in volunteering, but don't have the time to go canvassing out of state, there is a way you can make phone calls to people in battleground states from home. I haven't checked it out yet, but here's a link.

On the way home, I had a nasty scare in the car. We were just south of Milwaukee when we came across some asshats who must have been racing. One of the guys cut us off...badly. In fact, he damn near forced me out of my lane!! I thought he was going to sideswipe us. Part of me thinks he might have been playing chicken with his friend and using us for his little game. He did the same thing to another car that was ahead of us and on the right. In other words, he was seeing just how close he could get to him. And he ended up not going into that guy's lane!! Seriously, WHAT THE FUCK?? There so happened to be a car belonging to some random security company behind us, but he obviously didn't have the jurisdiction to pull the idiots over. (On the other hand, he would have been an excellent witness had anything...God forbid...happened. I just hope that he had a radio and that he contacted the police about those bozos so they could get them off the road...PERMANENTLY...for reckless driving. There was no excuse for that. None! He could have gotten us killed!! I swear...people are crazy.

Anyhow, I am dead tired. It has been a long day and we did a ton of walking. Off to bed with me!

Current Mood: sleepy

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All the traveling I've done.

Traveling to foreign countries is one of my greatest passions and I wish I could do more of it. Let's see. I've been to Spain twice, Japan, Germany, France, Belgium, and Holland. I'd like to go to Japan again to practice my Japanese, which I'm rapidly forgetting. I also want to visit Costa Rica, Peru, and Mexico.

Current Mood: content

doomsey's flight out of D.C. got cancelled. Now he's not coming home until tomorrow morning. I miss my

doomsey.

Current Mood: blah

I got back yesterday evening after spending four days in Cleveland. I've *finally* caught up with my friends list. It took me several hours and it looks like some more drama happened with Six Apart while I was gone. I don't feel like getting into it too much here, but I get the impression that both the fandom and Six Apart are being stupid. The fans are blowing things out of propotion and Six Apart should have given those people who were deleted written warning that their content was in violation of the Terms of Service like they said they were going to do back in May. Whatever.

Early Friday,

doomsey,

emygination,

judygs, and

bmtstandard drove to Cleveland. We also took

jharter41's two kids, Rayna and Noah. The trip there was spent knitting, reading, and reading the new Harry Potter book aloud to Rayna.

On Saturday,

bmtstandard and

emygination took the kids to see Ratatouille and afterwards went to the pool.

doomsey,

judygs and I went to Latrobe, Pennslyvania to see

doomsey's great aunt, who has been sick for quite a while. According to what she said, her cancer seems to have stopped growing, but she is having problems with her back and her hips. It sounded like she was having a good day on Saturday, but we left after about an hour and a half because she was starting to look tired and sore.

On Sunday, we went to visit another of

doomsey's aunts in Wooster, Ohio. She served a wonderful dinner. We also got to meet their new Corgi, Dewey. Corgis are so cute!

When we got back to

doomsey's grandmother's place, Rayna watched a show on

emygination's computer. I'm mentioning it because I wanted to make fun of one of the quotes I heard while I was knitting and listening to the adults. "Saved by fashion!" Yeah...that's what we're teaching our kids...that fashion is more important than...oh say...education. The fake science of kids' programs is also funny. At one point, the characters said that they were using "The World Wide Web" in order to save themselves.

emygination was looking at the screen and said that "The World Wide Web" was a big glowing ball. Yeah...uh huh. They don't write any intelligent tv shows for kids anymore, do they?

After everybody left for the hotel (

doomsey and I were staying with his grandmother), I decided to measure the size of the blanket I was working on by putting it on one of the twin beds in the guest bedroom. I managed to give myself a nice bruise on my good knee when I ran into the wooden footboard on the bed, which stuck out quite a bit. Man...those things are dangerous! Anyhow, it hurt for the rest of the evening. And of course, I really needed to have both knees hurting like I needed a hole in my head. Needless to say, I spent Sunday evening walking like a cripple.

On Monday, we all headed back home. It was nice to sleep in my own bed and pet the kitty cats again.

cosettemonster was very stressed out about having to spend the weekend at

judygs and

bmtstandard's house. When I went to pick her up and put her in the cage, she peed on me. Poor kitty. She was given more food and lots of snuggles when we got home. Also,

doomsey was being paranoid that the house "wasn't going to be there" when we got back. This is the first time since we've moved that we've both been out of town for several days.

Current Mood: content

I *love* to travel and this video makes me drool.

Does anybody out there want to pay me to travel around the world and do a little dance in each place that I visit? :)