ayashi | yay for trip to michigan!!

I'm at Rocket Star right now :) It's a nice, small little place with wireless internet <3 I purchased a strawberry smoothie which is magically delicious :) The internet really sucks for games (every few minutes it will lag for like 30 seconds... sadface) so I stopped trying to play WoW on it and decided I may as well get an LJ entry out of the way :P

Now that this has been open for ages but I spent all this time doing other stuff.....

My trip so far!!

Friday night, Chris and I left home and visited my parents. It was fun! We went to St. Patrick's Day dinner with my mom at Friend's bar in Pittsfield. We had super delicious St. Patrick's Day dinners :D (Chris and I did not get anything to drink since... we don't drink. I'm so bad at being a stereotypical Irish person I guess :p) Dad was SUPPOSED to meet us there but was confused apparently and arrived after Chris and I already left :( it sucked because I didn't really get to see him much. We also stopped by Jim and Shannon's just before that, it was really good to see them... I am going to miss Jim SO MUCH when he moves way out to Colorado or where ever :( I will miss Shannon too, of course, but Jim has been around forever and... :( I'll miss him a lot.

We woke up bright and early (ok, not bright at all... but early) saturday morning to begin our trip. It started off well with Chris freezing himself in the hall bathroom shower because it sucks and no hot water was coming out. He had a much more successful shower in my parents' bathroom! After my shower... we were off! About 30 minutes after we left, we discovered that we were silly and definitely left Erin's monitor at home (we were bringing my old computer to her because her laptop blows). So mom and dad shipped it out to her priority... whoops!

Anyway the rest of the trip went much better! We met Eldra (Dan), Ibiki (Justin), and Helian (Scott?) for lunch at a nice diner in Rochester! Chris and I had lunch stuff (as we had been up for hours already) while they ate breakfast. For anyone who doesn't know, Eldra, Ibiki, and Helian are all guys we know from our guild on Mannoroth. They were all really nice and we may be seeing them again on Thursday, along with Thrin (don't know his real name) and Tendermuffin (Tender-Chris!!). I'm really excited to see Tender-Chris again because he's awesome and I'm excited to see Thrin too since I've never met another hunter from our guild (but by today I have met THREE druids, Alynia, Eldra, and Evaki).

Anyway after lunch we wen

t back on our way. We arrived in Pittsburgh around 4-5pm. I got to see Chris' sister's apartment :D Her apartment is pretty nice, it's way bigger than ours (although she described it as "small" :P hehe) or at least her bedroom is. I love how tilted her entire kitchen is! We walked to a Japanese restaurant to eat dinner (which was very tasty, I had teriyaki chicken but couldn't eat all of it because there was a LOT of it. Also got to meet one of her friends :) Her friend was really nice although her name is evading my memory at the moment :(

We woke up again pretty early the next morning. Stopped in Ohio at a rest stop for food. Became pissed off when we realized the only thing there was McDonald's, so we decided that Ohio sucks. (The toll cost almost $7 too for only about 2 or 3 hours of driving)

Next rest stop was AWESOME and had a million places to eat, so we ate there instead :) We decided to hate Ohio slightly less!

Around 1 we arrived in Bellville (or Belleville... don't know) Michigan where we stopped at Applebee's and met Evaki (Jess) from AU :D She was really nice, of course. She talked a bit about her son (another member of the guild) and it was really cute (and completely understandable) how protective she was of him while she was talking (such as saying how she would cut off the head of anyone who flipped out at her son if he made a mistake during a raid, etc). I want to make a point to be more friendly toward him, not that I was unfriendly before, but he gets a bit upset because no one talks in guild chat (well, he perceives it as no one talking to HIM so he gets upset) and whatnot. He's only 11 years old. But he's been really nice online and much more mature than many of the guild members we have who are in college :p Evaki is obviously very proud of him, she lets him play WoW (and soon is going to let him start raiding) as a reward for his straight A's in school and whatnot. I dunno they seem like a sweet family although we didn't get to meet her son ;)

Theeennnnn we left and arrived in Kalamazoo! Yay! We met Erin and after dropping some stuff off in her dorm went to the International Festival and saw Steph!! The Japan booth was definitely the coolest but it didn't win, got 2nd place :( Also got to meet a lot of Steph and Erin's friends! Afterward, we went to eat at Subway, then went back to the dorm where we played some Guitar Hero! I gloriously failed at Crossroads at 98% completion :( and I cried on the inside. Kimi came over!! (I know her as Love from WoW, in DotA on Bronzebeard, but she is a real life college friend of Erin's) So we got to meet her which was neat :D Afterward, around... late... lol, we went over to Kimi's. Kimi has one of the cutest dogs ever (a papillon) named Eppi (or Eppy? or Epi? I don't know how to spell it!!) and also a guinea pig :D We talked for a while at Kimi's house and went to bed.

Woke up monday morning, we went back to the dorm to see Erin quickly, then Chris and I decided to go on a crazy adventure!! or something... because we had nowhere to go :) (except stay in the dorm, but Steph was sleeping and we didn't know what to do). We went to IHOP for breakfast, then went to the mall! The major street area here (at least that I know of) that the mall is on is crazy. There's 2 McDonald's and Burger Kings on the same road and just about every other fast food restaurant you could imagine, PLUS tons of stores and other normal restaurants. Around 2 we went back to meet Erin at the Bronco Mall (on campus) then went back to the dorm. For dinner we ate at the dining commons with Erin and Steph, where I met the infamous Randy, wearing an awesome chef hat and cutting up ham. It pretty much made my day. Erin came over to Kimi's with us since her first class wasn't that early annnd we went to bed!

This morning! We went to Erin's dorm and Chris and I pretty much hung out there all day. We went to Pizza Hut for lunch (with my mom's bunch of $5 gift cards she gave us that she won or something) then came back to the dorm where we watched approximately one million episodes of South Park. I also rocked out in Guitar Hero and beat both Crossroads and Ace of Spades on expert mode, I still can't get No One Knows yet though :( I can't get both hands to coordinate correctly and I suck. We went to Red Robin with Erin... I decided to be daring (for me) and I got a teriyaki burger with lettuce, cheddar cheese, and pineapple. I discovered to my dismay that the pineapple... well.... not so much :( I pulled it all off but the rest of it was delicious! And wow...unending fries! On a weird note, I think about 7 people had birthdays celebrated there tonight.

I probably left a lot of stuff out :( but bottom line is Kimi is awesome, it's crazy how long it has been since I've last seen Steph! and it's really fun to get to hang out with her and meet all of Erin's (and Steph's) friends :D

Tomorrow is steak dinner, and thursday we are going to Tender-Chris' house where we will hopefully maybe also see Thrin, and maybe Eldra/Helian/Ibiki again! We're probably going to NOT go all the rest of the way home thursday although that was the plan before... it's a lot of driving and better to be on the safe side. We don't know if we are going to sleep over at Tender's or get a hotel for the night... having a real bed for once would be sweet (futon mattress isn't exactly the MOSt awesome thing in the world although it's better in the floor) but then again... money! O_O Either way we'll be home friday morning with my sweeet Lily-cat who I miss so very much.

Ohhhh and we might be seeing Aurowene friday morning or something :D (from Bronzebeard on DotA, she is in the Rochester area too!) I really hope it works out but we'll see :D I wrote her an email and don't have a reply back yet.

I've been having a LOT of fun on this trip. It's really fun because of course, Erin and friends! But it's also awesome to be on my first big trip with Chris! :D

All this travelling has turned me into a total pansy though. It's only 9 and I'm ready to go boom! Sooo tired.