Great Lakes, Great Times

First off—if you weren’t home for a week (due a total of 43 colorful hours of travel time for 31 hours of absolute wedding/up north awesomeness) and came back to see the place you live in look like this, would you be concerned?

I’m back to my newly decrepit apartment after what feels like just blowing through half the state of Michigan. My life has been such meshugas since last week—I haven’t been able to update on all the happenings! The weekend clearly deserves it’s own post, but here’s a brief recap on last week’s sitchus leading up to my trip to Petoskey:

My new job
I work part-time out here in an attempt to keep food in my fridge and to pay for all of my East Coast desires like driving around looking for Amish people and babysitting my inner 8-year-old at a day of arts and crafts. I’ve been coaching, but the season is almost up and gosh if I’m ever going to go to the Jersey shore to partake in a day of drunken beachery and nighttime drug induced raving, I better find a way to fund it myself, right mom?

Naturally, as I attain just about all of my major life experiences, I turned to the Internet. I’ll save telling the whole story again since almost everyone from my brother to my second cousin’s cat has heard, but basically I’ve been offered a position as a nude house cleaner of a very eccentric, rich Pennsylvanian man. And to think I almost started the job hunt for this up coming December. Any advice on how to look good while cleaning baseboards?


Emeril’s work dinner
The Bam master himself has a chophouse at the new casino literally three blocks away from my apartment. I had just about accepted that the closest I’d come to actually eating there would be my daily drool as I drove past en route from work when I received an invite to dinner there from the chair (wo)man of our company!

After a big meeting, my entire team went to dinner. The wait staff placed your napkin on your lap for you, replaced and refolded it when you got up to use the bathroom and used tiny golden scrapers to pick up any crumbs from the table top. The food was good, but sorry Emeril, but my mom makes better apple pie than you.

After dinner I played the slots for a little. Hurray for my first time gambling! I tried to get back to my place with enough consciousness to pack, but my food coma was so terribly overwhelming that I barely got a t-shirt in my backpack before I passed out.

I <3 public transportation
My trip home on Thursday was by far the longest and most exciting trip of my life. I left my apartment at 5 a.m. to sit at a bus station in Harisburgh next to an old lady with a snaggletooth. As I attempted to read my magazine and stay awake, she told me about the "boo-boo" on her thumb, her sister’s dogs Amber (who isn’t the color at all therefore she just calls the thing Emily) and Ebony, and laughed wildly each time the old chair she was sitting on at the station squeaked.

I could not quite bring myself to sit next to her for the first leg of the trip. Instead I accidentally fell asleep pretty much on the shoulder of a young black guy for the first hour and then talked to him about college athletics and inner team drama up until we reached Pittsburgh.

My bus driver from Pittsburgh to Cleveland was clearly having a bad day as she proceeded to get us two hours worth of lost lord knows where. I was coming in and out of consciousness when I overheard the cell phone conversation of the nice larger man/woman next to me. He/she was trying to arrange a meeting place with a stranger who had apparently called his/her phone by accident but who he/she had already sent three photos of him/herself to via cell phone. If this doesn’t make sense to you, you are not alone.

Despite the chazerai of a trip, it really wasn’t bad, except that because we were running so behind schedule I never got to stop for lunch or dinner. Thankfully when my family picked me up in Detroit at 11 p.m., they brought a bag of fantasticness from Arby’s with them. I promptly unhinged my jaw and gulped the entire meal down.

Detroit back to Harrisburg last night was much less entertaining, especially considering I was only awake for about three hours of it.

The entire trip was well well well well worth it to participate in my sister’s beautiful wedding, to see lots of family and friends and to take a break from marveling over the mountains out here and to redirect that oogling to the sunsets over Lake Michigan. Michigan = a superior state.