Why do you need a parent when you have computers?
I spent last week on Easter Break according to the official academic calendar of Greenville Tech, a public college. I'm surprised the ACLU in the Upstate didn't raise a stink about it being called that.
I flew from GSP to Dulles Friday night. I had some time to kill before my flight left so I pulled my laptop out in the lounge on the 2nd floor at GSP (between the bar and restaurant) to see if I could get wi-fi. It showed me as getting a signal but taking forever to connect. Another guy was walking all over that level of the airport with his laptop in one hand watching for a signal. I did finally get a connected signal but it was at 11 mbps and said that I was getting no or low connectivity. I later determined this to be on their end and that their server wasn't assigning network addresses. After I went through security, I got the same result in terminal B (another level up.)
As I went through security they swabbed my laptop and put the swab in some sort of detection device that I didn't get a good look at. There was a similar machine on my return trip Easter Sunday at Dulles but their volume of laptops that day was sufficient higher than GSP was the week before so I didn't get "randomly" selected there.
It was my first time flying Independence Air and I spent around $40 for the trip to Dulles from GSP. That flight was pretty empty and I sat on the 3rd row. It was the first time I'd seen people moved past the 10th row for balance on takeoff on any regional jet I'd ever been on (a testament to how empty it was.)
Mia Hamm's recorded voice did the safety spiel at the beginning of the flight. All I can say about the flight is that I had forgotten how bad flying with a cold or congestion truly is. I had been using Cold-Eez and Zicam for the couple of days before the trip when it felt like I was coming down with something and I finally found some Airborne that day just prior to leaving.
I got into Dulles around 9:45 that night and had to wait on Jenn to park and get into baggage claim as I waited. It was then a quick dash around the western part of DC on the Beltway and then around the Baltimore beltway before crashing for the night. It turned out TSA had gone through at least one of my bags in GSP but things were put back pretty orderly for the most part.
We were up early the next day for her sales call near Annapolis and then we went to DC via the Metro as I mentioned before. We had lunch at Old Ebbitt Grill and then I proposed to her at the Jefferson Memorial (as previously mentioned.)
We then took the Metro to Rosslyn and a Georgetown Connection bus (a new thing for me since my days in DC) to M Street. We shopped at Georgetown Park and ate dinner on M Street before walking around the area around M and Wisconsin. We walked around part of campus at Georgetown as well, including the courtyard between Healey Hall and Dahlgren Chapel.
We got the same bus to the Dupont Circle end of their route from M Street right in front of the Ukrainian Embassy. We made our way back out to New Carrolton very exhausted for a relatively early evening.
I'm not going to go in-depth blogging on the rest of the week since I honestly didn't do alot during the week other than laze around her condo while she worked.
We did go to her church for Palm Sunday and had lunch with her family that day so she could tell them about our engagement. I actually had an instructor for an online class (the only one I'm taking online this semester) require two assignments to be done by midnight of that night since break didn't technically start by the calendar until Monday.
I spent most of Monday resting and staying warm since apparently Maryland didn't get the memo that spring was on the way that week. Jenn cooked an excellent dinner of pork chops, scalloped potatoes and corn that night and I watched 24 while she watched the various Stargate and Battlestar Galactica episodes on Sci-Fi.
I was lazy again Tuesday. We ate spaghetti for dinner at the local American Legion post with her parents and then I watched most of Georgetown's win over Cal State-Fullerton on ESPN before we left for her sister's shop so I could get a much needed haircut.
We wound up going with her sister and several of her friends to Bill Bateman's Bistro in a neighboring town for trivia that night. I nailed one as soon as I walked in for their team (the answer was Russo-Japanese War) and by the end of the night they were trying to figure out how to get me back up there for the tournament in a few weeks (this was the last night to qualify.) I discovered that night that Yuengling is much better on tap than in cans or bottles.
Wednesday was rainy if I'm remembering correctly and we stayed in for dinner if I'm remembering correctly. Thursday we went to Towson during the day after she got off work early. I had wi-fi problems at the Panera Bread across from Calvert Hall. My laptop connected fine but both Firefox and IE timed out when trying to access any website.
We went to White Marsh that night and saw Miss Congeniality 2 (it was okay but not great) before going to Red Brick Station for dinner (I had fish and chips and their IPA which were both excellent.)
I had my first taste of what her family calls Easter Pie Thursday also at her family's house. It's an Italian dish consisting primarily of cheese, pepperoni, eggs and milk among other things.
Jenn was off Friday so she wound up cooking for Good Friday dinner that night at her parents'. She cooked a dish that I can't spell (and no one else knew how to either) that consists of pasta, peppers, sun-dried tomatoes, onions and anchovies mixed together. It was a lot better than I expected. We had pierogies her mom made with that. Jenn and I went to the contemporary service that night at her church which included the youth of the church performing the stations of the cross in pantomine.
Jenn cooked an Easter pie Saturday to take for Sunday lunch and we had pasta for dinner that night before going to Easter Vigil that night (since she was lectoring at that service.) Two and a half hours later we left and went shopping for some of the other ingredients for her cooking for the next day and to get a last minute fix on some of the junk food that I can't get down here (including Martin's Kettle Cooked Chips.) We also finished shopping for her nieces for Easter and got some Peeps and other candy for our own consumption.
We had lunch at her parents' house Sunday at 1 after I finally got everything I took with me plus the stuff I got during the week to fit into my luggage. Her sister, brother (and his wife and two daughters) and parents were all there. The dinner included ham, turkey, stuffing, gravy, corn, glazed carrots, cranberry sauce, crescent rolls and a vanilla cake.
We left around 3:30 to make the trip down to Dulles for my 6:30 flight. We ran into traffic problems on 95 between the Baltimore and DC Beltways and ended up taking a sidetrip through Laurel to skip a few exits down to miss the back-up.
Befitting the holiday, the return flight was filled by a lot more people (which is why it cost about 80 dollars.) Dennis Miller did the honors on the safety announcements for the return trip. I wound up on the ground at GSP by 8:05 but my bags were the last ones off the plane and were a bit damp from the rain outside (not as soaked as they were on the way up to BWI over Thanksgiving.) A couple of zippers were open on one of my bags, exposing some of the contents to the elements but nothing was missing and apparently it wasn't an indication that the bag was searched at Dulles as I first thought.
Waking up to make a 9 a.m. in Greenville Monday morning was rough after a week of sleeping late but I made it with plenty of time to spare. Of course the class was cancelled (the 4th or 5th time that's happened this semester for that same class) so I had 4 and a half hours to kill until my lab in the afternoon.