What A Summer…

It’s hard to believe that the summer is almost over.  I am leaving for school on Thursday.  This has probably been one of the craziest summers I’ve had.  Although I’ve been out of school since May, it hardly seems like any time has gone by at all.

The summer started with work, of course.  For the first month of my vacation, I worked while my sisters and brother were still in school.  That month wasn’t that eventful.  Once they were out of school is when the insanity started.  The first thing that happened was my brother’s fish tank leak, which quickly lead to new carpet.

Then of course we had my cousins graduation, which was the first of many trips we took this summer.  The next trip was Woodloch, which was incredibly fun and one of the high points of the summer.  Only a few days after Woocloch, we went to Seabreeze which was the other high point of the summer.  Seabreeze brought our trips up to 3.

We received sad news this past Thursday that my grandma had died.  We went up for the funeral on Sunday and got back yesterday night.  It was quite sad.

The fifth trip of the summer will take place on Thursday, me going to college!  I’m excited and a bit nervous.  I haven’t started packing yet, which probably isn’t good.  Eh, I’ve got 2 days to do it.

Saturday was my last day of work.  This I was excited about, but it was a bit strange.  It will be odd not going to work until December.  Plus, after I got home, I realized ‘Wow, I’m not going to be making anymore money.’  And that isn’t really a good thing.  But I’ve saved up enough for school, so I’m good.

The summer trips won’t even be over after I leave for school.  Two weeks after I move in, my cousin is getting married.  It has been quite the busy summer, but I don’t want it to end.  I have spent the last few months working and being lazy.  I don’t really want to trade that in for homework.

What Were They Thinking?!

Never before did I think I would write an entry using both my Harry Potter category and my Really Grinds My Gears category.  Yet, here it is.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the movie, was going to be released on November 21 of this year.  Everyone was looking forward to it.  My family and I were planning on seeing it in Imax with some friends of ours just like we did with Order of the Phoenix.

Then, on Thursday, Warner Brothers announced that they were delaying the film until July 17, 2009.  I was shocked and extremely mad.  I even thought it was a joke at first, because never before had I heard of a movie being delayed when it was already showing previews before other movies.  (The HBP preview before Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants was excellent, by the way).  But alas, it was not a joke.  The news appeared on both The Leaky Cauldron and MuggleNet.

And what was the reasoning behind the delay?  A snag in production or filming perhaps?  Nope, the film is perfectly on schedule and could be released in November.  The reason is for money.  Of course!  It’s all about the money.  Warner Brothers believes that they will make more money with the July release.  Not to mention the fact that this July 17 release date corresponds with the same weekend The Dark Knight was released this  past July.

Then, Warner Brothers had the nerve to say that Harry Potter fans might actually APPROVE of this decision.  And why?  Because that way the time in between Half-Blood Prince and the first Deathly Hallows (slated for release in November 2010) will be shorter.  Apparently they didn’t think about the fact that this will increase the time in between Order of the Phoenix and Half-Blood Prince.  The wait time in between those is now 2 years.  Coincidentally the same time that would have been in between Half-Blood Prince and the first Deathly Hallows.  Do the math, Warner Brothers, do the math.  Everybody had already come to terms with the fact that there would be a two year wait in between HBP and DH.  We did not mind that.  We were excited about the fact that HBP was coming up.  Not anymore.  Now we have practically another year to wait until Half-Blood Prince instead of just under 100 days.  And yes, I have a countdown on my home page, but unfortunately now it is wrong, as it still says there is 96 more days until Half-Blood Prince is released.

I Think I’ll Stick With The Spoon…

While we were in Buffalo briefly almost two weeks ago, my parents had a dinner to go to, so my siblings and I walked to the nearby Bob Evans. It was only a short walk from the lovely La Quinta Inn we stayed at for all of four hours.

We were on our way inside when we noticed the sign in front of the restaurant. It was quite funny, because it looked like they were advertising a knife and fork that cost $599. If they cost that much, I’d just eat my meal with a spoon.

Hmm, it seems the only way I can put pics in now is if I upload them directly to WordPress.  Well, that’s kind of a pain.

La Quinta

A bit of advice, if you ever need a hotel in Buffalo, NY, don’t stay at the La Quinta Inn in Williamsville.  It has got to be the worst hotel we have ever been to.

My dad reserved a room for one night there with 2 double beds.  We get there and my dad goes in to get the room keys.  The lady at the desk tells him that the only available rooms are ones with one king size bed.  Um, not going to work for 6 people.  So we decided to just take the room for the evening because my parents had to be somewhere in a half hour.  We were going to find a different hotel after.

We were pretty mad about this already, since it was going to be a pain to find a new hotel.  We go up to the room without bothering to unload the car since we were going to switch hotels anyway.  My dad unlocked the room and we walk in only to see that the room has not been cleaned.  The bed was unmade, the bathroom sink covered with various used towels and other junk, empty beer bottles in the garbage, garbage on the floor, and a half eaten danish next to the TV.  I half expected some guy to come out of the bathroom and say ‘What the hell are you doing in my room?’

My dad called the front desk to complain and then went down to get keys to another room.  He got the keys and tried them on the door.  They did not work.  He went back down to complain again and the lady told him to try room 231 instead.  We did and luckily it worked.  My parents got ready for the dinner they were going to and my siblings and I went to Bob Evans for dinner.

Once my parents got back, my dad got reservations for a different hotel in Rochester since we were doing stuff there the next day.  He went to the front desk to check out and the lady was on the phone talking to someone who wanted a room for the night.  She said they had no rooms available.  My dad said ‘Yeah, except the one we’re vacating right now.’

The lady then said,  ‘Oh, no, you’ve been in there for five hours, we need to thoroughly clean it.’

My dad wanted to mention how clean our first room was, but he didn’t.  This was last weekend and now we look back on it and laugh.  Our vacations are always memorable.

Grandma’s Lost It

We all know that Utz makes the best chips around.  I have been looking for the salt & vinegar kind for ages, but wasn’t having much luck since the only place around that sells Utz is Wegmans.  They have the kettle cooked S&V kind and I absolutely love those, but I wanted to try the regular ones.

The other day I was shopping with my mom for college stuff and we were in a Dollar General.  We were about to check out when I saw an entire display of Utz.  I was quite shocked and happy.  Since when do they sell Utz at Dollar General?  I was even more happy that they had the S&V ones.  I picked up a bag of those as well as a bag of ‘Grandma Utz’ just to try them.

The next day I grabbed the Grandma Utz chips and settled down to eat them.  My bro was sitting at the table as well and was watching me eat them.  I took a bite of one and was overcome by the nastiness of it.  I shouted, ‘These are disgusting!’.  My bro burst out laughing and told me they were baked in lard.  I looked at the ingredients and sure enough, lard was on there.  Who on earth cooks chips in lard anymore?

So naturally I wanted my sisters to try them, since they didn’t know about the lard.  Turns out Heather had already tried them and hated them.  But Linda was still in the dark.  Last night I told her to try them and she listened to me.  My bro and I watched excitedly as she ate one and promptly spat it out in the garbage.  We then told her they were cooked in lard.  It was quite funny.

My dad asked what was going on and we told him about the lard.  He said ‘My grandmothers cooked with lard.  All grandmothers cook with lard, so it makes sense.’

My mom said ‘My grandmothers didn’t, they were Jewish.’

But on another note, the salt & vinegar chips were quite tasty.  I will just steer clear of Grandma Utz from now on.

RIP Weasley

When we came home from vacation two nights ago my sister Linda was looking at Weasley and she noticed that he looked pale and his fins were torn. I went over to see and she was right. He pretty much turned all white on his body and his fins were transparent. He’s always been a very vibrant red with a beautiful double tail.

My bro diagnosed him with dropsy, and despite the fact that we had 3 different fish medicines in the house, none of them were the correct one. Since it was midnight when we got home, I had to wait until the next morning to buy the right stuff.

Unfortunately, the medicine didn’t help. I got one dose in yesterday and then this morning he was dead. It’s so hard to save fish. They get sick so quickly and I’m not even sure when he got sick. He was fine when we left last Friday.

RIP Weasley, I’ll always remember you.

Woodloch

I am now officially back from vacation. I have quite a few entries to make about it, so I figure I might as well start at the beginning. Vacation started with going to a resort called Woodloch Pines. It’s in the Poconos in Pennsylvania, on a lake called Lake Teedyuskung.

We have been there 2 other years and probably had the best time this year. Mostly because our rainy curse ended. Both the other times we went there, it rained the entire time. Last year, it was not only rainy, but about 50 degrees as well. This year we had blue skies and warmth the entire time.

This place has so much stuff to do. I went waterskiing (unsuccessfully), kayaking, paddle boating, swimming (in the indoor pool and the lake), go-karting, bumper cars, bumper boats (those were my favorite), and they even put in a year-round tube run. Although snow tubing is much funner.

We even came in second place for the infamous Woodloch scavenger hunt. This is not your ordinary scavenger hunt. There was a large list of things to find, of course, but they were very specific items that you couldn’t just pick up off the ground. Specific kinds of cell phones, specific items of food, people dressed up as various characters, etc. Then there were the trivia sheets. This year’s sheets featured a page of celebrity eyes that we had to guess who they belonged to, without a list of celebrities to choose from of course. We teamed up with a family we met at the resort last year and wound up coming the same weekend we were. With the large group of people on our team, we managed to snag second place and earned 50th anniversary Woodloch silver medals. The team that won first place has done so for 17 consecutive years. We shall beat them next year.

Then, of course, there was the food. You definitely won’t go hungry there. I made the mistake of saving my smallest pair of shorts for the last day. They did not fit and I had to wear the same shorts I had worn the previous day.

I have pics, but unfortnately, WordPress is screwing up and will not let me insert any images. Here is the link to the pics and hopefully I will be able to post pics soon. I also have a video which I will upload soon. Sorry that the link is not clickable, but I have no idea how to make clickable links on this.

http://s131.photobucket.com/albums/p301/PupBenedict/Woodloch%202008/