Time Flies When You're Having Fun

Wave Bridge, Toronto, Canada

Okay, wow, it's been a crazy few weeks. Yesterday and today have really been the first time I've had in at least two weeks to actually breathe. I'll try and catch you all up on what I've been up to, but no promises that I won't accidentally leave something out or not be chronological.

Aaaaaaand..... here we go

A few weekends ago I took a super short road trip through part of western Ohio. Basically, there's just lots of corn. Everywhere. And soybeans. I finally learned what soybean plants look like. Between the corn and the stop for ice cream, we fit in some hiking. Haha it was supposed to just be a stroll through the woods, but the sign pointing to the indian mound led us astray. After walking way longer than the sign said we should, we came out from the underbrush to a clearing, where there was a huge pile. The indian mound! Except there were suspicious tractor marks everywhere and it kind of smelled funny. It was not an indian mound, it was a composting facility. Somehow we did eventually find the actual mound and well, it was a lot cooler than the large compost pile. I think I will laugh about the compost pile adventure for years. The really embarrassing thing is that I took a photograph of the compost pile because I thought it was so hilarious, but apparently I forgot to take a photo of the real deal.

Now that I think about it, that may have happened four weekends ago. Wow, all my weeks just really blur together. Three weekends ago was nothing to blog about because I was preparing for a trip. Two weeks ago I was in San Antonio, Texas for a week long work conference. First time in Texas and it was beautiful - I had no idea it was so green! Although I was mostly working all week, I did get to sneak away for a little bit of pool time and caught a glimpse of the Alamo. Also, armadillo races. You just gotta look it up on youtube or something.

I got home from San Antonio on a Friday night and left for Canada the next morning. That was last weekend (two weekends ago). I don't know if you've noticed, but I mark the passing of time by weekends, because I think we can all agree that weekends are just inherently better than the rest of the week. Anyway, on our way to Toronto, we stopped at Niagra Falls. It was absolutely breathtaking - I had no idea it was so huge. Because it was Labor Day weekend, we had to deal with lots of other tourists, hence the baseball cap in the corner of my photo. By the way, my traveling companion from the past few months is named Matt. We get along quite well :) That ambiguous "we" is getting quite tiresome, so hopefully I've now fixed that problem.

Among other things, Matt and I ate good food (think poutine and Nutella cafe), saw lots of funky art that we did not plan on seeing, and generally had a fantastic three-day weekend. The public transportation in Toronto was super easy, and frankly, had we been less honest, I think we could have gone the entire weekend without actually paying for the transportation. You just get on and they assume you have a pass that you paid for. We are honest people and paid, in case you were worried.

Funnest story from our Toronto trip was our quest for fancy ice cream. Matt and I decided that on Monday before we left we would go find somewhere that sold charcoal ice cream because apparently, that's a cool thing to do. Buuuuuut, the place we were going to go no longer existed. So we found another ice cream place that served super cool dairy delights that would have made everyone on our social media feeds jealous, but once we finally found it, it was closed for the day. Google said it was open. Google lied. We had a little while longer before we needed to hit the road and were determined to get fancy ice cream (okay, if I'm being honest, I was determined to get fancy ice cream and Matt was more than willing to go along with that. He understands my priorities.)

Anywaaay, Google told us about one other place that was supposedly open, so hungry and in need of a sugar fix, we made the trek across town to find one other place. Once we finally found that place, Matt and I learned that we were an hour early. The place didn't open for another hour. But at that point, we needed to head out so that we could get back to Columbus in time to be responsible adults on Tuesday morning. So we determined to get milkshakes on the drive home. But do you know what happened? We got to Chick-fil-a half an hour after they closed for the night. Yup, we were defeated FOUR TIMES in our quest for good ice cream. We had to settle for Burger King shakes, and let's just say, I'm never going back there.

This past week at work was hectic, but I survived and this weekend was nice and quiet. Most excitingly, I finally put up bookshelves!! My apartment actually looks like I won't be moving out next month. So I'm very happy about that. And in case you were worried, I did finally get my good ice cream yesterday. It was a long wait and we will keep searching for something fancier, but it was dang good.

Happy fall! The temperatures are cooling, the leaves are starting to turn, and pumpkin flavored everything is baaaack!!

Tried to get a photo of a waterfall,
but some people got in front of my camera...