Well, it wasn’t the ideal weekend for a camping trip to Cedar Point, but
we still had a lot of fun! Around lunch time on Friday, we finally made
the go decision… I went home, took the dog out and loaded our camping
gear into the car. A quick phone call and a couple clicks on the internet
and the dog had a reservation at the kennel, us at the campground and
tickets to get into the park. After we dropped the dog off, we headed to
Ohio. We arrived at the campground around 10:30 PM… yeah it was pretty
dark there and the numbers on the sites were hard to read. We found our
spot, the only one left in the row… there were quite a few campers there
that got to see us put our tent up, in the dark.

Either the tent is getting easier to put up or we are getting better at
it, because I think we had a record time of 15 minutes getting it up.
After transferring our stuff from the car to the tent, I went to hook up
our extension cord to charge my phone, that was quickly running out of
juice! Unfortunately, there wasn’t a normal hook-up on our site, or any
sites nearby…

The next day I went to the office, they have power convertors we could
have used, but they didn’t have any left… I did manage to get my phone
charged up enough to call my sister to find out they wouldn’t be coming
this time… we’ll have to plan something a little further out next time.
🙂 We headed off to get some food and see if we could find a converter to
buy… Upon entering Meijer, I was in front of Susan and sort of talking
over my shoulder. I turn and realize she wasn’t there and she wasn’t in
the parking lot. Apparently when she said, at the camp site mind you, she
had to use the restroom, she thought it’d be alright to just take off
without telling me… After I found out she wasn’t abducted, we got our
food and some things we forgot to pack, but no converter. Thinking a
hardware store might be a good spot, we went over to Menard’s and didn’t
have much luck. They had a converter that went the opposite way of what we
needed… so close yet so far.

We got into the park and it was pretty dark out. We were able to get on
quite a few rides without waiting very long at all, then around two
o’clock it started to sprinkle and a lot of rides were being closed due to
the weather. We decided it was a good time to get some food and wait to
see if the rain let up. After eating, we headed back to our campsite and
it was still coming down… I’m not sure how Susan was able to sleep
through it, but it really started to pour and there was some thunder that
was quite loud. After her nap, the rain finally started to let up and we
headed back to the park. We were able to get on a couple rides and decided
to head over to Millennium Force. It was the 10th anniversary of the
Millennium Force and we noticed in line there was this guy with the
anniversary shirt, hat, and a number of Millennium Force pins on the
hat… I dared Susan to ask him if he liked this ride, but she wouldn’t do
it. 😉 We managed to get on the platform, a few trains back from the
silver gates when they had to close it due to rain. Since we were staying
nice and dry, we thought we’d wait it out. Several annoying teeny-bopper
stories later and quite a few people leaving, they sent a test train (it
was about an hour or so…) Then the next trains went and every cheered.
If I were to guess, I’d say Mr. Millennium Force could have shed a tear…
Millennium Force is a whole different ride at night, but man it is totally
worth the wait!

Packing a wet tent up is never fun, but we managed to get everything
back in the car and headed back home… blue skies and sunny with a few
clouds… go figure! We picked Waldo up from the Kennel and he was really
excited to see us, Scout on the other hand not so much… She just wanted
more food (and water!) All and all it was a pretty fun weekend!

Whoa…where has the summer gone, *ahem* and the updates to this site?
Last week my boss found we were heading for Nashville this year… things
will be interesting over the next couple weeks, it seems she has had it
out for me for awhile now… Both of the phone interviews lead to on-site
interviews… I already got my rejection from one of the companies and am
still waiting and hoping on the other job. We went to the bookstore to
pick up a GRE prep book for me, not sure if I see myself going back to
school, but it is something I have been thinking a lot about lately.
So far our summer has been pretty un-exciting (could be the reason for
lack of posts on here?) We had planned to go up north to stay with Susan’s
folks for the weekend of the fourth. Unfortunately I was unable to go. The
Friday beforehand I was told I needed to get a bunch of stuff done for our
client out in California. Not wanting to get sent on site again, I stayed
down and worked through the weekend. Susan took the dog and found out he
isn’t really fond of the water.

As you can see on the gym page, I’ve been able to do quite a few races
this year. My times seem to be getting better overall, but my best times
are when it’s raining out… who said running in the sun was fun? I’m
still trying to get my training in for my triathlon in September, it’s
getting closer, and I’m getting more excited. I’m getting a lot better in
the water and am pretty sure I won’t drown during the event. There’s been
talk of doing a 1/2 marathon in Nashville next year, whether we sign up is
yet to be determined.

All the extra work I put in to getting our client live, I was still sent
on site a couple weeks ago (whatever happened to restricted travel?)
Things went a lot better this time, most likely because I wasn’t sent by
myself… They actually bought lunch for us a couple times and took us out
to dinner! We went to a few different places, including a Mediterranean
cafe, an Indian restaurant, and a seafood place. It was all really good,
especially the seafood place. Our customer is finally seeing what it is to
deal with the third party company in the project and I think they realize
it’s not us that’s the problem… hopefully we will get them running our
new software soon with no problems (or I’ll have another job 😀 ).

It was our annual users group last week, and I had to give a
presentation Monday. Luckily I got there early, as my boss said her laptop
was set, but she never tested the software. I spent a good 45 minutes
getting everything set up so I would have something to show during the
demo of the software I had been working on. I spent some time talking to
one of the video vendors later in the week, and the things they are doing
was pretty slick. They were excited about the video software I had created
(…if only they were located in Tennessee!)