It’s been too long

I have, so far and despite Samantha’s grievances and protests, managed to spend time with everyone who is available. Luckily, Robyn had spring break last week so we were able to grab some lunch and do some driving. Who knew you could get so lost in the town you’ve lived in all your life?

I’ve gone out with Wendy many times including a few games of bowling which I didn’t excel at and a couple bars. One, the local gay bar, actually had a drag show going on the night we went and it was pretty cool to see the Miss Gay Wausau Pageant. I took a couple nice pictures but my camera was dying so I held off toward the end.

I saw most of the family at Easter which was dramatic as usual (Grandma freaked out when Grandpa showed up and my uncle and his wife called up whining that they had no place to go so mom was forced to invite them and then they begged my grandparents for money); I really shouldn’t come to expect anything else from the family. I was a little disappointed at how little time any of my grandparents made to spend with me but, from what I hear, Grandma is drinking more again. I also was a firsthand witness to one of Grandpa’s stranger traits: he brings over his junk mail for the younger grandchildren. He writes to strange people who send him things like Chinese doilies and chain saw key chains. He’s a bit off.

I spent additional time with my aunts Liz and Grace as well as my uncle Ed. I had some time to spend with my cousin Ginger and will spend more time with her tomorrow. Overall, I feel like I’ve spent a fair deal of time with my family although Mom has had to work a lot which isn’t as much fun as one might think it is.

Last night Wendy, Ben and myself bowled, went for a few drinks and fooseball games afterward and finally headed to his house for a few rounds of Halo during which Wendy kicked my ass, before calling it a night. It was really fun and both of them seemed to get along great, which was awesome.

I’ve also seen Sav a few times, including a little road trip we took with Wendy to Appleton, specifically the Fox River Mall that was all but boring. I had searched for a few places online I’d like to go and printed out a Google map with all the information. As fate would have it, the printer was running out of color ink so the map was pretty sloppy and hard to read and I didn’t want to print out the list of places so I kind of didn’t know what dot on the map was which. -lol-

We made it down there without much problem, headed down what must have been the main drag. En route, we found a comic store where I felt I needed to purchase something for Ryan and did. We visited a rather large occult/spirital/metaphysical shop, Angels Forever, which was pretty awesome and both the girls made purchases but I decided not to. We found this oh-so-wonderful shopping center which had absolutely nothing in it (City Center Plaza, if you’re wondering).

My map included restaurants, bars, Eldorado’s, some art galleries, the Historial/Houdini museum and music stores. Unfortunately, because of my lack of knowledge about points on the map, our unfamiliarity of the city and because we simply didn’t have enough time, we didn’t get to most places. We wound up skipping the bars and just ate at the food court of the mall although we tried to eat at TGI Fridays, there was too long of a wait.

Savannah and I both would have liked to see the museum but since it was a Saturday and many things were only open until 4 and we arrived about 3:45, it didn’t pay to even try to find it.

We also has to skip all the music stores which was disappointing because they have so many! Wausau has 1, which is tiny and stores like Best buy or Walmart are you only other choices for buying music in a brick and mortar establishment.

We did stop at Eldorado’s on the way out where I made a purchase and also bought something for Wendy. Mine came with a free DVD which sucked and not in the good way.

We left nearly 7 hours after we arrived and I was a little confused at just exactly what we had done. We did spend a good deal of time at the mall which was okay. No one bought a whole lot but I was excited that they had a Torrid and even if the in-store collection was a little disappointing compared to their site, I did buy some pants and something a little sassy I’d been considering for a while. It’s probably a good thing I did as it’s no longer available online and I grabbed the last of my size they had in store.

Somehow, the way out was a lot more confusing and I had only gotten directions to get there. It would make sense to just follow them backwards but none of us really remembered any of the sights we passed. We must have been on the right path because when we stopped to ask for directions, we were only a few blocks away from the highway. unfortunately, we weren’t exactly sure which entrance we needed to take to go in the right direction and by the time I spotted it, we missed it so we wound up heading toward Green Bay.

I figured that as long as we were going in a generally northern direction, we were fine. I was wrong. We drove about half an hour out of the way and I was afraid that we were headed to Door County and although we were farther East than we wanted to be (we probably weren’t far from lake Michigan) we did manage to go around Door County. It didn’t help that the former resident of Green Bay – Sav – thought she recognized the road we were on when she didn’t.

We finally asked for more directions and had to backtrack 20 minutes or so until we found the right highway (though not the same one we took down) which took us right to Wausau where we spent the night at Wendy’s after watching the horrible porn. All in all, it was pretty fun.

It’s been great seeing my friends. I had forgotten how fun they all are and regret not spending more time with them when I could.