Wow, a lot has happened since the last time I posted a new blog entry. Let’s start at the beginning and see if I manage to get everything that has been going on. First, let’s go back to the weekend following the Lions first victory (against the Raiders). It was my first Compressed Work Week, CWW, where I had a Friday off. To celebrate this new schedule (okay, not really celebrate it, but to have some fun!) me and Susan decided to take a trip down to Cedar Point. The initial plan was to pack up the camping gear Friday, drive down, set up our site and go to the park at 6 PM (as this is when they first opened for the day). Then we’d go back Saturday to catch all the rides we really liked (and hit ones we didn’t get a chance to get on). Well Mother Nature had a different plan. The forecast called for rain that day in Sandusky and we thought it best to drive down Saturday.

Not wanting to get wet, we thought we’d stay a night in a hotel. A quick search on the internet led us to a couple different options as to where we could stay (or so we thought). With mapquest directions in hand and a print out of hotels in the area (no, we didn’t make reservations…) We were off to Sandusky. My avigator got us to the outskirts of Sandusky with no major problems (and no turning around!) As we followed the signs through the residential areas, we were wondering if we were indeed on the right track. Finally we came to a stop light with a sign pointing left to Cedar Point. We had wanted to get a hotel and kill a few hours before going to the park and just get what’s known as the twilight pass (going on the rides in just the evening). My avigator insisted we go left even though I really wanted to go right (left it was…) We ended up going straight to the park and paying the $10 parking fee before we knew it.

We were directed to a spot and the excitement in the car was rising (for rollie-coasters of course 😉 ). We decided what the heck let’s just get a day pass and worry about a hotel later. A little sun screen, opening and closing the trunk half a dozen times (don’t ask…) and we were on our way. It was a chilly day, but the sun was shining and the cool breeze felt kind of nice (as long as you weren’t standing in the shade). We made our way to the gates and man the lines were still long (even though the park had been opened for an hour or two already). We finally get up to the window and I bought the tickets, it was slightly unusual to sign with a highlighter, but nonetheless we were in. As you may or may not have known during the months of September and October, Cedar Point has a Halloween theme going on, and has extended hours (the park didn’t close til midnight!) They have all sorts of activities going on and man if you follow a parade it can get annoying (we kept hearing the same song, over, and over, and over again!)

First stop, the bathroom (exciting, I know!) Then it was off to our first ride, The Mantis. The wait was long, but worth it. They ended up taking the still picture camera’s out of this ride and replaced it with motion camera’s on the ride itself. After we got off, you could watch a short clip of various parts of the ride… I had to giggle at Susan who was scrunched down, holding on for dear life (she really did enjoy it though, even if we couldn’t get the DVD 🙁 ). The rest of the rides were really fun. I worked up the guts to get on Top Thrill Dragster. This ride starts you off at a mere 120 MPH, shoots you up a 90 degree ankle (straight up) for 420 feet, where you come back (straight down). This ride was awesome! The wait however, was not that awesome… The sign said it as about 1.5 hour wait and I tried to talk Susan into going, but she didn’t want to do it (next year she says…) After waiting awhile (and making idle chit-chat with the other nervous thrill seekers), I noticed the cars haven’t been sent up for awhile. The line kept moving though, and I continued to wait. A few minutes later, an announcement came over that no one could understand, except for short delay, maintenance problems. Apparently those who have waited for a couple hours decided to get out of line (chickens…) Once the ride was going again, they thought they’d get back in line (guess again, suckers…) The wait was around two hours, and man was the ride fun (all 17 seconds of it, heh!)

Even though it’s a wooden roller-coaster (according to some, wooden ones are very smooth), I’d advise agaisnt Mean Streak (though if getting rattled around is your thing… by all means… go for it) We did enjoy the Gemini, that’s actually a very smooth cooster, and the second (or third) time we went on it, they didn’t even brake us on the last corner, before going to the loading/unloading station. We were flying near the end, it was awesome. We were looking forward to getting on the Maverick, Cedar Point’s newest addition, but it was down for repairs all day (ugh, guess we got to go back next year to try it out 😉 ). Last time I was at the park, the Millienium Force was the newest ride on the block. The first time we tried to get on, it was down for repairs. We figured we would try to get on it later, and when we came back we ended up going through the Scare Zone (not sure that’s the offical name , but you get the idea). Basically there was this section that had half a bizillion fog machines going. It was dark and you couldn’t see anything through the fog. They had all these people following behind you and jumping out at you and just trying to have a good ol’ time scaring you. Susan actually jumped when one guy shouted and jumped out at her, though we think it was another patron (not someone working, hah!) We finally get to the Millienium Force (about 30 min before the parked closed). It was down again for repairs (it had been running after we initially saw it was down for repairs). We waited to here the announcement and the lady said it was a short delay and didn’t know when the ride would be up again. We figured we might as well wait it out (30 min left, what the heck?) A few minutes later, it was running! We got in line and thought that was a great way to end the day (we didn’t even have to get out of line for Snoopy On Ice, 8) ). After getting off the ride, we were on our way out. We happened to pass the Iron Dragon, but the line was still opened. As soon as we passed the pole holder, she was radio’d telling her not to let anyone else on. We managed to be the ONLY ones on the ride and got to sit in the front seat. Of course we screamed our heads off to make up for no one being on the coaster… that was pretty sweet!

Wow that was a lot to write about Cedar Point, but the story doesn’t really end there. With all the thrills we had gotten that day, I was pretty much wide awake and would have rather drove home that night… but that didn’t happen. We took out our print off’s of the hotels and started the search for them. The first stop, a Hampton Inn… no rooms. The next stop was just down the road at Comfort Inn… no rooms and I asked if she knew if there was any hotel with rooms (she didn’t know of any…) Another hotel, this time I had to wait about half an hour for the receptionist to take care of other people. Finally she got to me and was sorry they didn’t have any rooms, but a hotel in their chain eight miles away did. After hearing this, me and the guy behind me turned towards the door (he needed a room too). I was joking around when I said, “Race ya!” but he must have been grumpy because I didn’t get a response (oh well…) We managed to get a room at that hotel (Micro-something), which we probably won’t stay at again. It was nice the pool was opened 24 hours, but I think a train came by every hour or so and kept waking Susan up (I guess I was more tired then I thought, because I slept through all of them). We got up, went to Perkins’, no not for breakfast, but for their famous chicken tender melt (even though it was breakfast time). We managed to make it back home, just in time to watch those awesome, awesome Lions get their second victory (I know, I know, 2-0, who would have thunked?) Undefeated and looking pretty good, the Lions beat the Viking’s.
As you know from reading my blog’s ;), me and Mittag have been playing racquetball and it’s getting more and more competitive. We ended up playing a couple times this week and I learned a very important lesson. Midland had this great idea of flashing red lights for left turns before turning to green arrows… not so great in my opinion, but oh well. We were coming down Waldo and I needed to turn left onto Patrick. The left turn lane for this intersection is crazily long, so I get in and before I’m about to turn, the light turns yellow… I have a flashing red light, which was momentarily about to turn to a left green arrow, so I went through the intersection. Sure enough a copper was sitting in the left turn lane on Patrick. A few seconds later I see his lights go on, and know I’m about to be pulled over (I then get in a high speed chase that you can still watch on You-Tube, j/k 😉 ). I pull over to the side of the road get my license, registration, and proof of insurance out (atleast I have my tags up to date, unlike the van I was driving the last time I got pulled over, thanks dad!) Anyway the officer comes to my car and tell’s me I should have stopped. I tell him once the light was going to a green arrow. He’s not buying it, so I quickly apologize, tell him he’s right, and that I should have stopped and waited for the intersection to clear (a “what-to-do” I had heard on the radio a couple weeks before, aplogize, say he’s right, and have your information ready…) He goes back to his car for quite some time, until he gets back. His words, “I’m letting you off on a big warning this time.” Phew, dodged that bullet… I did mention though I didn’t realize you had to actually stop at those flashing reds (for fear of being rear-ended), but from now on I’ll be a-stopping… His remark was, “Well… I guess they don’t have too many of those in Negaunee.” Yeah… not really…

This weekend we pretty much chummed around the house and got it all cleaned up. Afterwards I had another racquetball game scheduled with Matt… It was tough going, but I managed to win the first game. The second Matt took a victory in… The next game was going in my favor, but I had managed to sprain my ankle pretty bad near the end. I jumped up for the ball, and came down, rolled my ankle and was in quite a bit of pain. I told him I needed a few minutes, went outside the court and tried to walk it off. Suprisingly it started feeling better, and I managed to take a win, sore ankle and all. The aldrenaline must have really been pumping, as I was ready for another game. My ankle had not starting swelling and it didn’t really bother me unless I made a sharp turn… I actually beat Matt the last game, and knew I would pay the next day for playing on my ankle… On our way out, it was really starting to hurt. The next day I was slow moving and limping around (probably shouldn’t have been walking on it, but oh well…) It started getting better and by the weekend I was able to put most of my weight on it (still hobbling around a bit).

If you were paying attention, you’d have realized this was my short week, and we decided to go up north to see Susan’s folks and take a tour of the copper country. We got to help Susan’s dad hang a door and see some pretty amazing colors. We drove up Mount Brockway, and I’ve never been in wind quite that powerful before, it was kind of cool (if only we had a kite…) We tried coasting down the “hill” in neutral and probably would have done it except there was a slow moving car in front of us and a fast moving car behind us (yeah, he was most likely getting annoyed by me, oops… so we ended up “driving” down… We left a little later then I wanted, but luckily we were able to catch most of the Lions game on the AM radio… They actually managed to beat the Bear’s in the fourth quarter also achieving an NFL record (most points scored in the fourth quarter… 34). Sadly they had lost the week beforehand to the Eagles (guess that’s what you get when you can’t protect your QB or play defense…) Still, 3-1 is already better than last season where they only won two games…

This last week has been all about getting the lawn going… yay, we might finally have a nice lawn! We had a sprinkler guy come out, and he had some pretty neat stuff to show me… We decided a sprinkler system would be a good idea now as we planned to have a guy come in, kill the lawn, re-rake and spray hydro-seed. That way we won’t have to tear up the lawn after it’s planted. The sprinkler guy made it out to our house Friday and had all the heads/outside piping done by the time we got home. Only one little mishap, he hit our cable line. After spending an hour on the phone with Charter to figure out if cable was out in our area or if it was just us (it was…), we had a technician scheduled to come out the next day. That’s why my site was down… blame Charter as the lines they painted didn’t match up to where the actual cable lies… Saturday was when the sprinkler guy should have been there to do the indoor work, but the guy doing it was having some problems on another project and wouldn’t be able to make it out that day. He rescheduled for the next day, which he was a little earlier then I expected him. Well, it was one problem after another getting the indoor work done, and I sort of felt bad for him as he kept apologizing and saying it shouldn’t take this long (he projected an hour, it was closer to three). Finally after all that hard work was done, he fired on the system and showed me how to use the computer. It is all very cool stuff (you should come by next year and see it in action, along with our beautiful lawn!)

Still employed with Dow, but I did have a job interview not too long ago… with Wanigas (Saginaw backwards, whoa!) Credit Union. The interview went pretty good, but I haven’t heard back yet, so I’m guessing it’s a no-go. I see there are a couple posting’s I’ll be applying for later today, hopefully something comes up soon, as I may or may not have a job next year (not to mention this job is boring as can be). I was put on a new building/project where I was assigned all these protocols to write, but they’re already done… yeah, my job is useless, but my boss thinks I’m doing a good job! So much going on, I forgot to mention about the corn maze we went to Friday night.

Susan’s co-workers organzied a get together and we had a lot of fun, walking through the maze. There were two parts, a small part and a big part. There were also seven posts, and if you got a punch from each post on your card, you could enter to win a gas card. We started off as one big group, but shortly after entering the maze we split up. The other group found post three before us and told us it was in the small part… it wasn’t (we totally would have beat them had we known that). We finally find the third post, in the large part, and managed to get every other post but six. On our way to six, we met up with the other group, who was looking for the exit (they had all seven posts ). We got to six and somehow I was put in charge, and we lost someone from our group. I would have beaten them out, but someone from my group led us to a dead-end. Oh well, it was a lot of fun… We also managed to make it to the movies this weekend and saw The Kingdom, excellent movie if you get the chance to see it! …and the Lions lost, pretty bad to the Redskins (not much to say there…)