The Droopy Eye

I am working to cleanup the Photo Album page for this site. The old photo album had a bunch of old photos and was lacking the wonderful depth of content I felt it deserved. I am working to create a new gallery and will put it up soon.

Oh, and I am working to keep the spammers out again. I deleted the old gallery because I had about 3,000 spammers listed as registered users. Luckily, they never actually finished the registration process, but it made filtering out the real users impossible.

On July 20, 2011, I got home from a long hto day of work. My wife had been home for the day preparing for a little romantic getaway we had planned for Amish Country. She surprised me with the news that she was pregnant. The funny thing about that…. we weren’t supposed to be able to have kids.

Vacation was overshadowed by the inevitable “holy shit we’re pregnant” discussion. The wife was in full panic mode, but I was sort of enjoying the whole thing. That was, until we discovered morning sickness on day 2 of vacation. She sort of attributed it to the prenatal vitamins though. It wasn’t really that bad apparently.

One of the great things about finding out when we did was that we were out of town and didn’t have any time to tell our families. On August 13, we are visiting the Gendron side of the family and the following week we are visiting the Seise side. Somehow, we will have kept it quiet for a month before telling the Seise side. I am saving these posts for until after the announcement.

We are working to switch the house around and create a nursery while clearing out the old stuff.

The wife and I decided to do the first couples getaway we have ever done. We decided to head out to Amish Country in southeast Pennsylvania. The Amish part moved a little too slow, but Hershey Park and Chocolate World saved the day!

We started out on Thursday and did a nice drive down the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware River. Once we hit the Lehigh Valley, we headed southwest and got our first encounter with farmland in a heat wave. It was over 100 degrees and instead of the faint aroma of maure rolling across the hills, we got the rancid cow patties baking in the hot sun next to the fresh asphalt. Not all that pleasant.

On the way to the 1825 Inn, we stopped in Lititz PA, at the Lititz Pretzel Factory. We used to come here periodically as kids, and I remember it being fun, plus, the wife loves pretzels. We stopped in during the peak of the afternoon heat. Luckily, but sadly, they stopped baking in this facility back in 2006. We still got to try our hand at pretzel twisting and got to experience the insane heat of the bakery in the summer.

After the pretzel factory, we headed over to the Bird In Hand Farmers Market. We wandered around the market and checked out the goods. We also hit the “antique” store attached to the farmers market. After passing on some of the “Made in China” antiques, we decided to roll over to the Bed and Breakfast. Upon arrival in Hershey, we were hit by the really pleasant aroma of chocolate blowing down the Hershey Highway. It was nice.

The B&B was beautiful. We were greeted by the standin Innkeeper, Jane. There were fresh baked chocolate chip cookies waiting. We got the Amish room with a nice kingsized tempurpedic mattress. Highly recommend it. The B&B is just three miles north of downtown Hershey, PA.

We hit up dinner and decided to hit Hershey Chocolate World for dessert. It was not bad at all. It was a pretty nice ending to the day and a nice introduction to the area.

The second day of vacation was Hershey Park. Colleen held up pretty well. The offcial temperature was around 103, but the heat index was well over 110. The water rides were mobbed. We saw three roller coasters break down including one that was stuck in the middle of a loop. Colleen spent about 30 minutes watching the rescue crews try to figure out how to get folks down. We hit the zoo which was disappointing since the animals appeared burned out. The whole experience was really pretty good despite the insane heat. It was great for people watching too! Dinner was a traditional amish feast at Houlihans…. stupid vegetarian diet. We were feeling pretty wiped, so we went back to the B&B and called it a night.

Day three was a trip to the Amish country. We hit the tourist trap Amish Village, did some shopping in a legit Amish wood working store, and grabbed some Whoopie Pies at the Bird In Hand Bakery . Since it was still 97 degrees, we swung over to the Indian Echo Caverns and hid out in the nice 52 degree caves for a while. Once again, we headed out for dinner at “What If…” in Hershey. Very impressive little restaurant in the basement of a Howard Johnson. The crab alfredo was amazing. The Insalata Pizza was also really good.

Sunday was an unintentionally early departure. Apparently, the Amish are a fairly religious folk, and they shut down operations on Sundays. We packed up and moseyed home along the back roads. We did find a covered bridge, but it wasn’t very photogenic.

It’s nice to be home, and the weather seems to be breaking and cooling down a bit.

Today marks the one year anniversary of my quitting smoking! Over the course of the past year, a ton of stuff has happened, and I have been remiss in keeping this blog updated. I will be posting more in the future. Keep your eyes on it!

Chantix was the way I quit, but recently saw some studies that show that Chantix can lead to elevated risk of heart diseases. Well, so far, my heart is still going. We will see. My swimming was going fine, and I expect it to return to relative normalcy after the summer. The YMCA messed around with the schedule for the summer months. Right now, I am sticking with Kayaking. I was impressed that Colleen joined me for a treck through the Monksville Reservoir. It is worth checking out.

Although my last post stated that I quit smoking, I was still taking Chantix to officially quit smoking. This morning was my last pill and I have now actually quit smoking. Big thanks to Doctor B for the prescription.

I have also continued with my swimming. I had a bought with excercised induced asthma from chloramine exposure during my workout. Once again, the Doc came through with some scripts to help me out. I am currently at 166 miles for the year. My goal is set for 200 miles this year. I am on track to make it. Keeping my fingers crossed!