Grad School ate my life;
it chewed until it sucked all the juicy delicious part out, and spat out the
rest for me to keep. That is where I’ve been the past few months, and I must
MUST finish these road trip blogs, so that I can start sharing more great adventures
on this side of the ATLANTIC!
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| Hrm... Should I have given this advice to the newbies too? |
Also, on a side note,
just to update you quickly, I have been writing micro-fiction and was even
given the opportunity to read my micro-fiction at a fundraiser event for the
great Penumbra Magazine! (That blog to come). And here we go,
instead of participating in the NANO novel November writing experience, I will attempt
to catch up on these, I hate that I’ve kept you all waiting for so long!!
So, where were we…. Ah
yes, once upon a long long Long time ago... after the great George
Watsky Concert and the Artbreak hotel, I began my drive to Baltimore to see
Jenni and Greg! I was so excited to see their new apartment and life in
Baltimore and to be their first ever guests in their new big city!
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| Jenni and Greg at their wedding! |
The last time I saw
Jenni and Greg was at their wedding in May, and I was excited that due to an
unfortunate event of a maniac deer running into my car -as if it were avenging
it’s father who too had a vengeance out for little Betcy and died 1.5 years
ago- attacked her front passenger side and caused me to have to return to KC
early from my road trip to pick up my car from the shop, but in turn granting
me a whole extra 36 hours with the awesome Jenni and Greg duo! This unfortunate
event, actually worked out in my favor the entire road trip, causing me to change
my schedule a bit and giving me extra time in all the places I went.
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| The deer that attacked me was much much bigger... but somehow this little one is scarier! |
The actual unfortunate
thing about going to Baltimore was driving on the long boring turnpike through
Delaware and New Jersey. The drive itself is not long, approximately 3.5 hours,
and actually I made it in good time, it was just the turnpike itself was a
hideous gray color stretching out forever and blocking the view of anything
possibly beautiful. Where, on one hand this was great because it did not
involve any more deer, and on the other hand was awful, because all I wanted to
do was teleport past all the concrete and non-self serve gas stations and get
to this infamous place called Baltimore.
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| Concrete Trees |
Finally I reached the
street I was supposed to and Greg met me down at the sidewalk, jumped in my car
and we began the search for parking. You would think that this would not be an
adventure, but it turned into one as we parked, then had to go to the bureau to
get a weekend “visitors pass” which little did we know was not necessary now that
they had moved two blocks from their old apartment, and caused me to play
roulette with my car the next three days… Although strange, I got to ride on
the free hybrid buses that they have as public transportation and I felt a
little bit at home.
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| One of the great views from their apartment in Baltimore! |
Jenni came home and we
all went and had SUSHI! It was A-ma-zing! If you can’t tell, I am a little bit
of a lover of sushi, so this was a huge treat for me! We walked around
Baltimore a little bit more and settled on just relaxing at the apartment,
drinking banana bread beer (which was delicious!), and they introduced me to
“Parks and Recreation”, a T.V. show that I came to love, and after Jenni went
to bed, because she had to do science-y experiments the next morning at work
(because she’s a crazy smart scientist!), Greg and I watched endless amounts of
“Malcolm in the Middle” and he made the best snicker doodle cookies I’ve ever
had, which became our breakfast the next day.
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| Gigantic, Delicious SNICKERDOODLE!!! |
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| Banana Bread Beer, it tasted like beer, with an aftertaste of banana bread; I mean who wouldn't want that!?! |
To my surprise I slept
in extremely late and woke up with adventure cat walking across me. I then- of
course- blogged about my adventures and we went to meet Jenni at her work - a
giant amazing science lab that would have made anyone love science growing up!
They had beakers galore and plastic containers a plenty! I wanted to touch
everything! Which may explain why our science labs in school were never so nice
with so many gadgets… *pauses to ponder* yeah, that’s exactly why… After a
while, Greg and I decided we shouldn’t touch anything, because we would
probably break science, leaving all of the scientists with nothing to do and
young children crying.
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| Please wake up, you are on my couch... |
The only ironic thing
about our joke was that Jenni’s experiment that day was the only one in her set
that failed the entire week… So maybe I did break it? … Oops.
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| Oops... |
Our adventure
continued to a nice bar where we found a table with a zombie drawing on it, and
as the table was far big enough for six people, and Jenni and I had both
studied in Europe, when a man asked if he could sit at the other end of the
table, we thought little of it. Until, of course, we realized that we had made
a terrible mistake at sharing our table in America… The man was clearly out of
his mind, re-named all of us, which actually was to our benefit, stroked
Jenni’s hand, asked me if I was spiritual due to my tattoo and wooden ring, and
commenced to telling us his “extremely convincing” conspiracy theory. To our
great fortune, the man “needed to leave and quick” and disappeared into the
night. His whereabouts are unknown, and we are okay with that.
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| ZOMBIE MAN |
After that we enjoyed
the evening walking in the beautiful night air of Balitmore, and I thought to
myself, I think this is one of my favorite cities so far. And I truly mean
that, it was nice walking everywhere again, and taking the bus, and just being
with good company!
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| Baltimore!!! The statue of Lafayette if I am not mistaken. |
Sadly, the adventure
in Baltimore ended early the next morning as it was a two day drive back to KC
and I had to pick my car up Monday morning.
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| Washington Monument |
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| They also live near this beautiful church: the Vernon Place United Methodist Church |
I had a wonderful time
in Baltimore and I just want to say THANK YOU SO MUCH Jenni and Greg for
letting me stay at your place, taking time to spend some time with me and show
me around the town, and of course for just being all around AWESOME! Miss you
guys!
Until our next adventure,
Raelynne
