Soap Dispensers and Birthday's

So I'm a month late. :) There's much I want to catch up on and blog about, so I thought I'd start from the one furthest back and then do other small posts over the next few days to catch up. So be watching. Very exciting things to come. ;)

First things first, the week before my birthday I drove out to NY to visit Keith, since he was disappointed he couldn't be with me for my birthday. His parents were in town, and for the first time since he and I met, I think they actually started to like me. Earth starting to shake now... ;) While Keith worked on Wednesday, I spent the whole day window shopping with his mom, then went out to lunch with his parents, and finally took them to the airport. I actually got his incredibly stoic Dad to laugh at one of my jokes, which I took as a HUUUGE accomplishment. Keith made me brownies (after the suggestion from Devon of making me anything chocolate, but probably brownies best) and we ended up accidentally going to a really nice restraunt for dinner one night, that we both now claim has to consist as my birthday present. It was called Mezza Notte, and the look of it should have been enough to stop us from entering before we couldn't turn back. :0)


Let's just say, I've never been at a restraunt where they come and first thing offer me THREE different types of water, seeing which I prefer, or if tap water will do. I laughed and Keith and I looked at eachother wondering just what we'd gotten ourselves into. Most of the items on the menu were fish, and most were types I'd never even heard of. The bathroom had large gilded framed pictures IN the stalls--mine was of oiled men in diaper type things carrying seaweed...yeah, I don't know--and two separate fancy holders for their toilet paper, just in case you felt better unrolling two rolls at once instead of just one (my educated guess). I had to laugh, however, when I went to wash my hands and found that the soap dispenser was the exact same $7 dispenser I had in my very own bathroom at home, which I had purchased at Wal Mart. Guess that tells me much of gilde is just show, or that practicality wins out, or really, I don't know what it tells me, but I hope it means I can pick up one of those pictures of the seaweed men at my local WalMart...;).

For my actual birthday I ended up going hiking with my really good friend Kyle, then out to dinner with my roommate Nikki, and then finally home for an impromtu birthday party that my two roomies threw for me. I had so little time between each of these things that I hadn't even changed out of my sweaty hiking clothes or finished eating my take-home dinner by the time the first guests arrived. Fun stuff. Everyone else got to look cute while the birthday girl was stinky, sweaty, and with hair that had been rained on, plastered to my head, then finger brushed. Hot, I tell you. :) But I'm getting ahead of myself. Here are a few photos from the hike.


My friend Kyle and I at the start of our hike. This photo was taken by one of 6 people who got married there that day. Three middle-aged couples drove up to Hocking Hills (where we were hiking)on their motorcycles and held a combined wedding with just the six of them, somewhere down there in the enclaves. A combined biker wedding in the hills. Just wonderful. :) We were glad we got to share a moment of their special day with them, and I still wish we'd have gotten a picture of THEM.

We went down to a place called Hocking Hills, which everyone tells me is the only real place to go hiking in Ohio, and which is supposed to be especiallly beautiful in the fall. It must have been the dry season or something because the "waterfalls" were all just mere drips (literally), and what water there was happened to be really oily and greasy for some reason. See below:


Still, it was beautiful, and we had a good time. I'm really glad that Kyle was willing and wanting to go. I needed me some hiking.


I put my feet here, and only after the picture realized that I'd narrowly escaped putting my foot right into the web of this welcoming guy--


He was about the size of a silver dollar, and totally gross (but cool). We saw a few other fun insects along the way--which was the main type of wildlife we did see.




Toward the end of our hike we came to Ross lake, which was beautiful, but you only walk by it for about 300 feet, ha.


It poured on us for a short while, so we hid under the trees and talked and played 20 questions. Kyle loves the rain.

Birthday party was nice. A lot of my close friends weren't invited, sadly, because Katie didn't have their numbers. Still, it was really kind of her and Nikki to do that for me. You can see the birthday sign that has my name just taped up on new paper across an old birthday sign that I'd made for Nikki a few weeks before. They'd joked about keeping up all the decorations and then reusing them for my birthday, and it stuck. :) So it went.


This is me blowing out the candles...


No, I didn't gain weight and become a man, but whoever was in charge of the picture taking sure did a good job of keeping me out of the picture and making it look like my friend Andrew was the one being given the candles for blowing. It makes me love this picture even more.

Well this is a lot longer than intended. Sorry for that. More updates soon. If interested, I'll let you know where I do all my bathroom shopping and interior decorating later. ;) It's all about look and not price, aparently! Happy soap day!