Heading Home

My vacation is sadly coming to its end, and I head back to Riverside today. It's been a really wonderful break from the "real world", and I don't particularly want to go back. ;-)

On the 21st, Elissa and I had a wedding reception for all the MN folks who couldn't make it down to our wedding in TX. We had a really nice turn out, about 60 people or so showed up. The festivities were from 1-4, but we were entertaining guests from 10am until 10pm! It was a lot of fun to see family and friends again, and I think Lis did a wonderful job of taking the masses in stride. She comes from a significantly smaller family than I do, so I'm sure it was a bit overwhelming to meet so many relatives.

The day after the reception, we had some more guests come up (an uncle and aunt on my mom's side) who weren't able to make it on Saturday. They spent most of the day visiting, but Lis and I were able to sneak out to go for a little hike around the park in St Augusta. No salamanders this time, but it was still fun!

Elissa had to head home earlier than I did, so she's been back for over a week now -- she had collecting to do for her research. She only got to stick around for two days in MN before heading home. Kinda sad to spend the week without her, especially given how wonderful the weather has been! But it'll be nice to see her (and the kitties) again when I get back.

I spent most of my bachelor time alternating between working my ass off, and lounging. My parents bought a lake lot up north, and I spent three days with dad trying to get a dock put into the lake. It took forever because we ended up having to blaze a trail to get it down by the water, and putting it together for the first time was a bit more time consuming that originally anticipated. For my efforts up in the woods, I ended up with just shy of fourty wood ticks on me. Not to mention the countless mosquito bites. But it was still very pretty out, and the rides to/from the lot left me plenty of reading time. The other good workout I got was digging/cutting/pulling a stump out of my parents front yard. All of the birch trees died this past year, and this stump was the largest clump left to take out. That took about 4-5 hours of back-breaking labor. Yee haw!

On the lounging front, I managed to get plenty of good naps in. ;-) I also read Atlas Shrugged, which is an excellent book. Oh, and I read the Jungle Books finally -- never had the opportunity to read those before. I'm probably going to read Call of the Wild and White Fang on my trip back to SoCal as well.

In terms of social activities, I did a good split this trip between seeing family and seeing friends. I went down to the farm to visit my grandparents, which is always fun (though I did get put to work down there too!). I watched two River Bats game (a local semi-pro baseball team) with my family, and hit a bucket of balls with dad at the local golf course. I had a really great bar night with friends, and a few lunches with various awesome people like Adam and my cousin Maggie.

It's always weird to see my hometown change when I'm gone for a while. This trip back, I noticed a few new businesses in town (especially on Pine Cone road). I also was sad to see the old boathouse down by the river was taken out -- that'd been there for at least 50 years. The new bridge was complete, which was neat, but spooky to see the remnants of the old one's pylons still there. Despite all of the changes, things are still very much the same. Stearns county still has some of the worst drivers in the world, and St Cloud still can't figure out how to time their stoplights to save themselves.

So all-in-all, it was a wonderful trip home. It's great to be able to see everyone, and spend some time with my family. But I'm also looking forward to getting back to my wife, my cats, and the reality of work (which I've managed to almost entirely avoid for two whole weeks!).

Oh, and happy 4th of July if you happen to be from the States. And if you happen to be from the UK, "na na na boo boo, we won!" ;-)