Today marks day #7 of being on vacation. It does not feel like it's been that long already! We'd been at Tim's parents house in Pennsylvania until yesterday, and now we have four more days left at home. It's been pretty enjoyable so far. Here are some of my favorite parts:
- Rereading The Lunar Chronicles. While we were in Pennsylvania, I reread the first two books. At home so far, I've read the third book and just started the fourth one. I love it when it's been a while since I've read a series and can't quite remember everything about it. I become a lot more engrossed in the books.
- Tim's parents live in the middle of nowhere in Pennsylvania (seriously, the closest store is a Dollar General, and it's about half an hour away); however, they've got the cutest little antique cottage shop about a mile from their home, and they just opened a bakery! I got a mango smoothie, as well as a sugar cookie, a croissant filled with spinach, feta cheese, and some other delicious ingredients (it's got a special name, but of course I didn't take a photo of it, and now have NO CLUE what it's called! Ugh.), and some really cool bread which I also can't remember the name of it, but it had a bunch of holes in it and was covered in pepper, parmesan cheese, salt, and some other seasonings. Tim got a chocolate filled croissant. In my opinion, you can tell how good a bakery is from their croissants, and theirs were delicious. It was pretty cool talking with the owner who had overheard me talking about going to King Arthur Flour. She said they took some courses there about opening up a bakery. I can not WAIT to go to pastry school!!!
- Enjoying a day out with Tim when his parents were too tired to go anywhere:
- We first went to the mall and got Tim his first pair of gray high-top converse (lol! He never really cared for them when I wore them before, but then I got a pair of really cool motorcycle shoes that look like cons, and he was changed haha!). We also went to Target later, and I got three shirts and a pair of gray shorts :)
- We found an arcade/video game store and spent time playing in their arcade, which was a lot of fun. I even found and bought Exodus, which was a game that I absolutely LOVED growing up! Interesting and depressing fact that Tim told me when I bought it: the creator of this game along with the rest of the Christian games the company made were actually made illegally apparently...so way to make a good name for Christians lol. Moving on...We also went to a couple comic book/nerd stores later in the week (I don't know what else to call them haha-they've got everything a nerd would want: comics, music, games, toys, clothing...etc) and I got my very first two comic books (Supergirl and Serenity!) as well as a Ron Weasley Funko-pop figurine (the one where he's wearing his yule ball outfit haha).
- We looked up pizza nearby on yelp, and found this super junky-looking, in-the-ghetto pizza place but figured we'd give it a try because they had great reviews. Turns out it was the best and cheapest meal we had on our trip! Don't judge a book by its cover! We each got two pizza slices that were so big, they were served on two paper plates. Add two drinks to that, and our total was only around $9!!! Super delicious pizza. Tim got pepperoni as well as chicken, bacon and ranch pizza (YUM!), and I got pepperoni and banana peppers as well as a taco pizza slice.
- We went to our very first recliner-seat movie theatre! We watched The Mummy, with Tom Cruise. Not the greatest, but not the worst. It was SO comfortable though-I don't know how many times we started to recline our chairs, looked at each other, and we both had the cheesiest grins on our faces haha! I've never been to a movie where I actually feel rested after watching it for 2 hours, and it was so nice to not have our backs hurt at all! We got some popcorn and drinks, our total with the tickets was about $40. Not worth doing that all the time for sure, but it was a fun experience on vacation :)
- Driving to Scranton, PA, where The Office took place. Technically :) Most of it was actually shot in LA. We went to three locations there:
- The Steamtown Mall, which is in an episode where Michael takes the women employees shopping at Victoria's Secret for Women Appreciation day lol :) They didn't have much set up here, just the Scranton sign used in the show. I found a shop that could definitely be a hoarder's paradise that had a Dunder Mifflin mug, so I picked that up for $5.99!
- Lake Scranton, where the beach games took place as well as the time when Michael followed his GPS directly into Lake Scranton...haha :) When we got there, it was pouring rain and technically the park was closed to the public, so Tim parked the car and I sprinted to get a photo and we left immediately :)
- Alfredo's Pizza Cafe, which is Dunder Mifflin's employee's favorite pizza place. This was in the episode when Michael accidentally ordered pizza from Pizza by Alfredo and then kidnaps the pizza guy because he won't take Alfredo's Pizza Cafe coupons :)
- We went up to Montage Mountain later in the week, which is near a ski resort and they've got a strip mall. It was pouring rain when we got there, so we honestly only went to Guitar Center and then Starbucks for some mochas to drink on the ride home. Tim and I love doing that when it's raining :) Tim has been looking to test out a particular type of drum pedal, and this Guitar Center had it! They were nice enough to let him actually try them out on a (horribly tuned) drum set, but it helped-he bought them! He's so excited-he's got all top-of-the-line pieces to his drum set now, his music room has been painted, and he can finally start recording! Well, after we get some spot lighting. But still, he's SO CLOSE! I love it when he plays in public, I just feel so proud to be his wife. Even when he's playing on a badly tuned drum set, people still take notice.
- Waking up today, it's raining, I'm blogging, drinking tea, and will continue reading The Lunar Chronicles. Yesterday was a relaxing day as well, but Tim mowed the lawn and I got groceries and my new glasses lenses (they're thin now!), so we weren't 100% at home yesterday. We did take naps though haha, which made it definitely feel like vacation since I don't like to nap usually.
- Tomorrow I finally have my hair appointment to get rid of this ugly orange! I'm so happy! Last time she bleached my hair, parts of it turned out more red which looked nice, but fast forward three months, and obviously with washing it a lot, the red faded and it turned into an orangish-yellow. Yuck. I'm excited to see what it'll look like-either completely back to my natural hair color or possibly with some more blonde. That'd be fun for summer. I'm going to possibly pick up a couple more book shelves for our dining room because two book shelves is just not enough lol, get some macarons of course, go to a couple second-hand shops, then probably end at Target.
