Weather Woes

It's just that kind of day today - yuck and blah. Anyone living in the midwest, you know exactly what I'm talking about; it's not rain, and it ain't snow... we're getting ICE CHUNKS. Absolutely disgusting. I Headed home from work early today, because business was slow (hmm... not many people want to come out and eat when the chance that they wreck along the way is about 50/50...) and that I'm the person that lives farthest away from the restaurant. Not much extra happening about my trip - a while ago, but after the last entry here, my Mom and I went out and got some of my travel gear; among it was a luggage set that, while really unnecessary to get (because we had luggage here), works really nicely and will be easy to spot coming out of baggage claims. It's bright red, with fluorescent green tags. Check it out:

Yes, I know - I said that it had GREEN tags. Keep in mind I also said fluorescent. They seemed to react to the camera's flash when I took the picture. Trust me, though... they're green.

Anywho, back to the point (if there was one). Ice storm. It hit around 9:45 around here, starting as freezing rain. Nasty stuff, there. Once it hits something, it's frozen. Take the cars in the parking lot at work, for example. There were people coming out of the restaurant and scraping their cars off. Mine didn't have much luck escaping the weather, either:


So yeah, it's pretty much disgusting out. I love how you can see the ice actually coming down in the last pic, but I hate the fact that the ice is there. Hopefully this'll all be gone by the time I have to leave on Monday morning for the Consulate.

Have a blast, everyone, and keep warm. It's nasty out there...

motto baribari (Keeping busy)

Sorry about cutting off so abruptly and staying quiet for the past week point five - it's been busy.

Since I last spoke on here, I've gone through quite a bit of stuff for my trip. My certificate of eligibility came in from NUFS, and so I'm going to head up to the Consulate in Chicago on the 26th of Feb., and take care of that. On Monday, I went in to Gulliver's Travel, and picked up my plane ticket receipt. I use it for each of the stops on my way in.

Here's me and my travel agent, Janelle, reviewing all of
the ticket's info.

I've gotten much of my stuff ready for packing - bought the essential things for the bathroom yesterday, after taking my family out to eat at Granite City, in Davenport, IA. It was awesome food, but the price on the bill left my wallet cringing, to say the least. Definitely a place I would recommend for people to go once or twice a year, for special occasions.

Work has been keeping me really busy. Keep in mind that this is a Good Thing™. Keeping me busy also keeps the moneys coming in for my trip. I've added it up, and I'm expecting around $400 or so for the next two weeks, and another 2 checks like that by the time I leave. However, it's running me a bit ragged, as you can tell - I haven't been posting on here regularly. I haven't been on the internet for more than 5 minutes at a time in the past week; some of you know, that's quite a statement for me. Fortunately, I get this weekend off, so I'm going to plan a optometrist appointment, get some traveler's checks, and keep preparing for the trip.

Now that I'm done here, I'm off to bed. Have a nice night everyone, if there's even still people reading. I'm sure that with a week off, most people have forgotten about my little corner of the inter-web here. Oh well, I'll keep on posting - it makes a good vent for me as well to remove some of my building tension.

Snowed In

Sorry about not posting for a while... things have been a bit busy, and I haven't touched my computer in days - which is quite the feat.

I went up to Dubuque on last Wednesday/Thursday to take care of some business, and also to get my tuition reimbursment check. The check was nice... I'm expecting people to be asking for "borrowing money." Sorry, guys - all of that goes to my trip. On the weekend, we went out and used some that I paid back to my mom (I owed her a bit for car payments), and managed to buy a new DVD player, coffee pot, microwave, tv antenna, and some stuff for my new job. Monday, I went in for my first day of work. It went well - I was trained for the greeting line (getting people their drinks, silverware, and running them through the cash register), and quickly took the hang of it. There are some things that I still need to be shown (temp checks are the biggest - making sure that everything's at the right temperature), but I'll pick it up soon enough. I would have gone in today, but it snowed over the past day; there was enough snow that I got out to my main road to Davenport in 30 minutes, instead of the normal 5. I pulled over at the Rock Island County Animal Control Center, and hung out there for a while, so that plows could come through and so the snow would die down. I came home after calling to tell them I couldn't make it. It turned out to be an all right day, however.

I got my partial schedule for school while I was up at Clarke Wednesday. Seems that Clarke is going to be getting rid of it's Computer Science division, so they're going to be running all of us through in three semesters; I finally get a schedule that I like - many different major studies classes in one term.

On Monday, I bought my plane tickets. Going through a travel agent in our mall in Moline, I picked up a round-trip ticket for my trip at a nice, low price of $1402.

Cutting a bit short here. I'll put more up later.