Long over due update

[joetheone]

Ok where to begin since June when I last updated: Well, Pat and I had our annual 4th of July party and it was smaller then normal but it was fun and we enjoyed the company of many friends and relatives as usual it threatened rain up until the last minute then turned out to be a very pleasent evening and well the wine was very good this year and the food was good as well if I do say so myself. Hate to brag but this is the one time I like to cook when company around. July went pretty quickly did not get much swimming in this summer which I really missed it just seems life has kept me so busy with work I feel like it swallowed me whole and it not letting me out for breath and partially because I'm still so stuck in the Brokeback realm of life. I come home at night and try and do normal things then usually late in evening I start reading the great stories here on live journal or on fficiton.net and well then I'm up all night again and back to work again the next day. We did take a vacation starting on July 28 and went through August 16. Started out at my family reunion in Clearfield Pa it was very nice seeing all of my large family and all. My sister could not get in from England but saw all my cousins and aunts and Uncles and well if you read my journal you know I have a large family. Pat gets a little intimated being around all those laughing people who just love to hug and kiss not Pat's kind of family but I love them all to death. He also gets funny when people ask how we are and stuff, but heck they all love us to death. Being he is a psychologsit people are alwasy asking him questions about stuff this bothers him also since being a psychologist you cannot base an opinion off a few remarks or questions. We went to the Clearfield county fair and it was a lot of fun but so hot it was hard to walk through all the animal barns but made me long for being near animals again. Next we left for Chicago IL. We took my car which is a small Neon to save on gas mileage but I hated driving in that heavy traffic with a small stick shift it kept up very well. We stopped in Marshall Michicgan to visit the antique shops and had a nice lunch then off to Chicago well the weather was extremely hot this entire vacation so excuse me if I repeat that. They had black out that day since the heat and electric overload we spent most of the day on Navy Pier trying to be near a breeze but it was warm. Then the next day shopping the miracle mile and of course Marshall Fields which we both love and will miss it when it becomes a Macy's I know they say it will not change but I'm in fear it will. Bought some great shirts and stuff at Nordstrom Rack I love bargains getting designer clothing at a fraction of the cost. Then off to St. Louis never was in St. Louis before and well I was in awe of the ARCH and wanted to see if for years I always loved things like that. They had just had a horrible storm the week before so a lot of debris and stuff in the town and surrounding areas. Yes, I went up the arch and took so many pictures I think I could fill a hard drive on just the arch. Pat got clausterphobic but I was enthralled. We took a nice riverboat cruise thinking it would be cool but it was not this was our only fight this trip and that was good even though I wanted to throw him in the Mississsippi and I think he wanted to do the same with me. The best part of this trip besides the arch and the train station and Anneheiser bush was the Missouri Botanical gardens they had Chihuly in the gardens and well I have always loved Botanical gardens and this one was fantastic I recommend visiting to anyone and the glass that Dale Chihuly does I always loved when he did Glass on Venice a few years ago I saw that and well this was much better he keeps getting more creative and doing more imaginative things with glass every time I see his exhibts and next year he will be in the Phipps gardens near me so Yahoo!. We were lucky to be at the conservatory on Chihully night which they had extra entertainment and a demonstration of how they made the glass and so forth. It was fantastic and I loved it. We stopped in St. Charles MO also very historic and of course the home of where Lewis and Clark returned home from there trip also the former captitol of MO. Very nice town and lots of nice restaurants. Then off to Columbia MO for the annual antique lamp show this was what Pat was looking forward to and yes he made a lot of contacts with other lamp collectors and dealers and hopefully found another one of his rare lamps to buy from a guy in Michigan. He always wants the rarest things according to so many dealers but that is ok. We drove through the Lake of the Ozarks did not stay it was way too hot and well Pat does not like water so off to Springfield MO and spent the night then onto Mansfield to see Laura Ingalls Wilder home. Last year we visted her home in Walnut grove this year Mansfield where she wrote her books and visited her grave. It was nice Pat was extremely happy I was too hot to care to be honest but I guess nice. Then across back roads over to Tennessee we spent the night in Nashville and visited the "Hermitage" The home of Andrew Jackson. Since my Uncle collects Federal homes and is putting all 7 on for house tours when he is done we love to visit them as well and compared to Uncle Bills 3 plantations this one was average but it was nice it was all accurate and well very nicely laid out. I forgot we visited 3 homes in St. Louis and one in Fulton and so on. We did stop at Grand Ole Opry to browse around the museum then headed to Lexington KY and only stayed a day then off to Huntington WV to the art museum. It is a very nice museum for such a mall town and the glass they have for display is fantastic and since collecting antique glass is another passion of both Pat and I we really enjoyed a lot. We stopped at Charleston WV for dinner then headed up to Erie again for a day to get some business done for a day. Then off to NYC. We had not planned on staying in NYC but spent a night anyhow the traffic was bad so we drove into Manhatten got a room and well walked around our favorite spots in the village and soho of course enjoyed great food and so forth actually wish we would have spent a few more days in NYC but we go there enough I guess it is ok. Then off to Boston well the traffic was so bad we ended up staying outside of Providence at a cheap and lousy motel. I fooled Pat the next day I called this guy I have been talking to on the internet for well over a year he is a harvard boy and Pat accuses me of flirting with him but he tells me he is not gay. I suspect he is but why would a very smart 26 year old guy want to talk to a 41 year old social worker form Erie I don't know but we do and he is very nice. We met at my favorite lunch spot the Parker house motel in Boston of course we had the parker house rolls and the place where they invented the Boston Creame pie and I love the fact that JFK proposed to Jackie in that dining room. Justin was great in person as well as on line and on the phone. We really had a lovely meal and visit. I forgot on this trip Pat wanted to visit all the department stores he could and in St. Louis we went to Famous and Barr to eat and shop so in Boston we visited Filiene's before it closed they are closing that building since Macy's is right next door I feal the bells will never ring again on the side of the building. We visited a historic home in Boston also one we never did before and the name is escaping me at this time. Next stop Newburyport to see Pat's step sister Wendy in her 1795 gristmill turned home and well she was getting the last steps done on her landscaping since two magaizines were coming to photograph for displays she has really enhanced the property in the years she has lived there. We were going to visit Beaumont in Glouchester but ended up in Ipswitch visiting two historic homes there instead while Wendy has some stuff to do. Of course as usual it was a very pleasent trip and on this part we took the new Jeep Grand Cherokee Pat does not want to be outdone by Wendy and her Yuppie ways I don't care how much money a person has but Pat did not want to take my car he wanted his fancy car for her. It was cool but I get tired of the fakeness of people who only talk about brand of this and that. Knowing people with old money they rarely talk about it like young people who do this but I played along and it was ok. Yes, of course on this entire trip I had my Moccha Frappacino at Starbucks everywhere I went. I actually strated writing reviews on the different Starbucks we visited and sent it to the corporate office. I took the laptop with me but I promised Pat I would not do the Brokeback thing on the trip even thoug a few times I got up in the middle of night to read some of the stories. We stopped at Hampton Beach to admire the boys on day then headed for Burlington VT. Here we found a great antique store we never saw before and the guy said he has been there for 40 years and well with all our trips to Burlington I'm suprised we missed it oh it was a treasure trove of fun. Of course we had dinner at Lunigs on the main street one of our favorite places and shopped the shops and enjoyed the street muscicians as usual I love Burlington such a wonderful place. Took the fairy boat to NY and well it was late and did not get to go through the Ausable Chasm this year maybe next. So off to Lake Placid for a late dinner then they confused our reservation so we drove onto Tupper lake and stayed at a little motel that had those quaint 50's style cabins I loved because at least they had high speeed internet and spent that night trying to catch up on my brokeback stories. We toured the new museum in Tupper lake called the "Wild Museum of the Adirondaks" Well it opened in July and it is a beautiful building and well eventually the walking trails and the displays should be quite nice I do not think a museum should open until fully running and they did not even have adequate parking or restrooms or so on. They opened way too soon and when I talked to the people at the museum they said they did not think they would attract the crowds they did and figured they would just open and they were incorrect. I told the director that was a mistake because now all these people will go home and tell others how bad it was. I was so dissapointed but I did promise the director to come back in a year or so and try again. Our neighbor back home had donated a lot of the land for the museum and quite a bit of money since Tupper Lake was her hometown and she had donated the park in tupper lake a few years ago. She is 93 now and cannot make the trip and she had arranged for our tour since she has VIP privelages so that is why I got an ear with the director. I tried to be diplomatic but was so dissapointed in it. I did not let our neighbor know this I sort of played along that it was still underconstruction and should be so much better later on. We stopped in Watertown having lunch at the CRystal a historic place to eat that is very nostalgic of things from the 1920's. Then we took a long leisurely drive across route 20 on the way home instead of the highway to admire all the great finger lakes even though not much time to stop at each we did get to a few shops and things on the way.

Ok I have typed too much will promise to update soon. Joe