Weekend Update

I hope you all had fun labor day weekends. Jeremy and I managed to keep ourselves busy. It weather was really nice, although I hear that in CA it is hot, hot, hot! Thankfully it was pretty mellow here with a nice breeze and NO humidity! Thank goodness!

So friday night we met up with some of Jeremy's fellow students for drinks and dinner to celebrate one of the students defending his thesis and officially becoming a PhD. The margaritas were flowin' and it was nice to be out and about.

Saturday was a big day for me because I got to go to a spin class at the gym. Yeah! I joined Bally's for a month to try it out. I've been running and cycling around town, but I have totally been missing the gym and spinning classes! It was great, except I was the only one in the class. Hopefully on Tuesday when I go again, there will be some other people there. After my trip to the gym we had plans to go into Branford, a town about 5 minutes away, to check out Branstock. We had read about Branstock in the local paper and it sounded fun...a day of bands, booths, and fun. But upon our arrival to Branstock, we got the feeling that maybe this wasn't going to be a day of fun. The town of Branford was really cute and nice looking. Branstock however, was another matter. It looked as if everyone there had stepped out of the "Smells like teen spirit" Nirvana video. Not kidding, it was the town that grunge forgot. The band onstage was a bunch of high school students, they were ok, but once they were done the WWF style wrestling began. There was also a couple of sad tag sales going on. For those of you west-coasters, a tag sale is the word over here for garage or yard sale. Basically, there wasn't much to do and the wrestling was humerous, but really terrible. We decided to stick it out until the reggae band came on, but that proved to be a waste of time. We left after the second song. All in all, Banstock was great for people watching, but I don't think we will be attending next year.

Sunday we started out on our trip to visit Phin and go sailing, but a stop at Dunkin Donuts needed to be made in order to get us ready to brave the CT drivers. If you don't know, Dunkin Donuts is huge out here. There are more Dunkin Donuts than Starbucks if that puts it into perspective. The slogan of the dominant donut chain is "America runs on Dunkin" and let me tell you I am becoming a believer! Let's change that to "Schacalieu runs on Dunkin." It is some yummy, yummy coffee. Don't know about the donuts though, if you know me, you know that I do not eat that kind of fried goodness.

Sailing with Phin and Carla was great! It was a really nice day, could have been a bit more windy, but it was still fun. It took a while for Phin to get the motor started, some technical difficulties, but once it started, it was full steam ahead. Phin gave us some lessons on what we needed to do and now I know that port side means left and starboard means right. I also got to steer the ship, which was lots of fun. I'm steering and saluting at the same time in the picture! Jeremy learned how to tie a knot. No one lost their cookies (although I think all of us at one point felt a little sick) or fell overboard. Here are some more pics of the day.

This is Phin starting the motor, this was pretty much his position for about 30 minutes before we left the harbor.

It was really beautiful out there. We were sailing around the Long Island Sound. It was really cool that you could see the New York Skyline from out there!

After sailing, it was time for relaxing. We watched Steel Magnolias, which wasn't a good idea because I was bawling!!! I have no idea why Jeremy agreed to watch it with me, he just kept laughing at my crying.

Yesterday was labor day, so no work! For me that really means nothing right now though. I started out the morning with a nice little run and then we went downtown and checked out the 20K race that was going on. If I had known about it before and had money to spare I would have trained and registered, but I was just a spectator this time. Probably a good idea since my knee has been bugging me. After the race we relaxed at home and then got ready for a BBQ at Jeremy's professor's house. It was a nice little party with a lot of great food. We brought the famous 7-layer bean dip. Oh, little known fact about CT...refried beans do not exist! I about had a fit in the grocery store. The only ones we could find was refried black beans and there was only one kind. There is no rhyme and reason to the grocery store here....there were olives placed in 3 different aisles!!! Ugh, don't get me started, we were so frustrated!!! But I digress.... Once the night got movin'...the guitars and bango's got pulled out. Yes, Jeremy's professor is an awesome banjo player! It was a fun party, we got to mingle some more with the other students and professors.

Today is Jeremy's first day of school. No....I didn't take a picture because he did not pick out a special outfit. So, hopefully that is going well and he is learning all about what is in store for him.

Peace out!