Back from NJ/MA/PA… it’s 106 out… and we got a fish tank
Lauren and I spent the last week and change running around the North East visiting the three states that we spent the vast majority of our lives calling home while seeing our families and friends.
We spent a few days traveling, three days in Massachusetts visiting the sights around Boston, a day in Pennsylvania visiting the Philadelphia and Bethlehem areas, and then another three days in New Jersey relaxing and taking a day to enjoy Six Flags Great Adventure.
We flew from Tucson to Newark and spent the first night in New Jersey with my parents, having my best friend Sam and his father and sister over for dinner, and then stopping in to one of the local diners to see some old friends from my first high school.
We woke up early on the second day, and spend the entire day driving to Boston (we hit 5 hours of traffic in Connecticut for a total of 9 ½ hours driving) to try to make it to pizza night with Lauren’s Mom’s boyfriend’s friends. We were an hour late, but got there without much trouble. Two of the three days were spent sleeping in and relaxing as well as touring downtown Boston. The other day was spent visiting Lauren’s Mom’s boyfriend’s daughter and her husband’s house outside of Boston. On the third night, we left around 9pm to get back to my parent’s place; we made it in the record time of 4 ½ hours.
On the sixth day of our trip, we spent the entire day driving. We woke up early to drive down to the Philadelphia area to have lunch with Lauren’s grandmother and then visit with her aunt and uncle’s family. After that, we booked it to Allentown to meet some college friends for some drinks, dinner, and catching up with them since we haven’t seen a few of them in almost a year. On a whim, after leaving the bar, we decided to see if our friend (and Lauren’s old boss) Carolina was around and up for hanging out. It was quite a late night out traveling, so we slept in late the next day.
The seventh and eight days were spent vegetating and waking up late in NJ while making sure we stopped in at another local diner (what can I say, I’m from Jersey and diners are in our blood) and the local mall. The only major events that happened were that I decided to have some routine blood work done (my doctor here in Tucson wanted me to do that moths ago) and I saw my dentist for a routine cleaning and not-so-routine other work done. Other than that, Lauren and I greatly enjoyed not having much to do.
Our final day in NJ was spent with my cousins Mary, Kenny, Maxine, and Stephan, my parents, my sister, and Lauren and I running around Six Flags Great Adventure. We did a few of the roller coasters, dodged the rain for as much as we could, and closed out the park right before the thunder and lightning rolled in.
Yesterday, we spent the entire day traveling from NJ back to Tucson where we were greeted by our little kittens who missed us greatly and an apartment that our pet-sitter very kindly cleaned for us. The kittens missed us so much that they were purring and cuddling with us even after we went to sleep!
We spent today running around getting food for the next week, running some other errands, pet sitting for one of Lauren’s professors, and picking up the things we need to have fish. Yes, I said fish. We have been talking about it for a while and decided that we wanted to get fish for our ever-shrinking apartment. The tank is “getting adjusted” right now, so we don’t have any actual fish yet, but we will be picking up some in the next few days. Our first day back to Tucson and it’s already 106 outside! We went from the mid-eighties with high humidity back east to mid-hundreds with low humidity; thought it’ hotter here, I’d take it over the humidity any day.
I didn’t take may pictures while back east, but I’ll post the ones I did take as soon as I can.
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