Cruisin'
So, I have just passed my two year anniversary at my “new job”… the one that I was told I would have to work every weekend for the FIRST year…. Which apparently has turned into… I will have to work EVERY (freaking) weekend for the REST OF MY LIFE… but let’s not go there (oops… I guess we just did). Anyway, I was thinking it was time to request a weekend off and go on an adventure, so I found a group photo shoot for last weekend and called my shooting partner (pretty the only one that will go on these adventures with me anymore… and you will soon find out why…) and it was, as usual (Thank God!) easy to convince her to join me. The location of the shoot was to be revealed 5 days prior to the shoot… which came in an email about 2 days before hand, with the instructions… we will meet in a Wawa parking lot (and please DO NOT reveal the location of the Wawa). We were to look for a black van. This, of course, led to yet another lecture from my co-workers instructing me to take a cell phone photo of the license plate of said black van, along with a picture of the driver, letting him know that I will be sending these pictures to friends and family. This was not the first time that I have been given this advice. I didn’t do it…. I figure…. What’s the worse that could happen. I mean, after all… we are in a group!!! But, I did tell my partner that we should expect the possibility of having bags thrown over our heads and being thrown in to the back of the black van to be released after we have reached to location so that we will never be able to find our way there again, or share the location with others. (Honesty is the best policy… some surprises are not ones to be looked forward to! I felt she should be prepared!)
I told her that I would pick her up at 5:45 am. She is not a morning person. I was late (I’m always late). When she finished packing my car (best to be prepared!) I told her that I’m afraid that we will be late. The GPS was saying that our ETA is 8:39 and we were told to meet the mysterious black van in a Wawa parking lot at 8:30 SHARP. So, I was worried about making up time, or being left behind. As we got closer to our destination, it occurred to me, that the GPS was telling me that it would take an awfully long time to get to this location in South Jersey. And that’s when I realized… I never changed my car clock. So… was my GPS basing my ETA on real time, or my car clock time, which was an hour ahead of the rest of the world? That’s when I announced that we were either going to be a few minutes late… or more likely… almost an hour early. An hour early it was!!! (and then I remembered doing the exact same thing 2 years ago… some people never learn!) Yes, some people may have been upset about being picked up an hour earlier than necessary, losing an extra hour of precious sleep…. But no, we slipped quickly to Plan B…. BREAKFAST!! It just so happened that as I was making this realization, we were driving past a Cracker Barrel…. Abrupt right hand turn into the parking lot, where I proceeded to tell my friend (and yes, it is Susan) why I am going to propose that rather than cooking this year… my family meet in a Cracker Barrel for Christmas dinner…. We had this discussion at work… think about it… the place will be festively decorated, everyone gets to choose whatever they want to eat, and while we are waiting for our meals to be served… we can do our Christmas shopping right there…. No stress, no mess. It’s the perfect solution. Right? Not to mention that they serve breakfast all day long, which everyone knows is my favorite meal.(I'll let you know how well that suggestion will be received..I have a pretty good idea, already.)
After breakfast, we arrived at our photo shoot meet up point… met the man in the black van… who goes by an alias (of course he does, why not... which lead to another discussion about aliases. I've chosen mine... Susan is still working on hers) and had us sign many pages of papers saying we would not share this location with anyone, we would not try to come back to this site on our own, when posting photos, we would not include the location, etc…etc…. The photo shoot was great… a fun day. Going home, the adventure continued as we shopped for our Thanksgiving meals… well, Susan did… I bought tubs of ginger snaps and little chocolate chip cookies and pepperoni pizza mac and cheese. Then, in an effort to avoid driving home on a boring highway, we (well… I) drove in circles until, finally on a dark back road, I looked at Susan and asked… do you have any clue where we are…. Because I don’t. And she didn’t … and rather than be annoyed with me and my total lack of any sense of direction, she laughed. And that is pretty much why she is about the only one that will go out to shoot with me anymore! Thank you Susan … and to the man in the black van with the alias that set this all up. And I’d like to tell you that you really should go check this place out…. But I can’t. Ever.
But I can tell you that now I seriously want to drive a car with tail fins and a big gawdy hood ornament... and I want to create a new identity under an alias.
I have been missing in action for over a week now as the crazy retail season is upon is and I kept my part time job at Kohls and have basically been spending all of my time working two jobs. So, did I make up for it with an extra long story…. Or did I lose you several paragraphs ago?!!
Oh… the photoshoot was in a scrap yard/junk yard… and that’s about all I have to say about that!! LOL!
; )
Cruisin'
So, I have just passed my two year anniversary at my “new job”… the one that I was told I would have to work every weekend for the FIRST year…. Which apparently has turned into… I will have to work EVERY (freaking) weekend for the REST OF MY LIFE… but let’s not go there (oops… I guess we just did). Anyway, I was thinking it was time to request a weekend off and go on an adventure, so I found a group photo shoot for last weekend and called my shooting partner (pretty the only one that will go on these adventures with me anymore… and you will soon find out why…) and it was, as usual (Thank God!) easy to convince her to join me. The location of the shoot was to be revealed 5 days prior to the shoot… which came in an email about 2 days before hand, with the instructions… we will meet in a Wawa parking lot (and please DO NOT reveal the location of the Wawa). We were to look for a black van. This, of course, led to yet another lecture from my co-workers instructing me to take a cell phone photo of the license plate of said black van, along with a picture of the driver, letting him know that I will be sending these pictures to friends and family. This was not the first time that I have been given this advice. I didn’t do it…. I figure…. What’s the worse that could happen. I mean, after all… we are in a group!!! But, I did tell my partner that we should expect the possibility of having bags thrown over our heads and being thrown in to the back of the black van to be released after we have reached to location so that we will never be able to find our way there again, or share the location with others. (Honesty is the best policy… some surprises are not ones to be looked forward to! I felt she should be prepared!)
I told her that I would pick her up at 5:45 am. She is not a morning person. I was late (I’m always late). When she finished packing my car (best to be prepared!) I told her that I’m afraid that we will be late. The GPS was saying that our ETA is 8:39 and we were told to meet the mysterious black van in a Wawa parking lot at 8:30 SHARP. So, I was worried about making up time, or being left behind. As we got closer to our destination, it occurred to me, that the GPS was telling me that it would take an awfully long time to get to this location in South Jersey. And that’s when I realized… I never changed my car clock. So… was my GPS basing my ETA on real time, or my car clock time, which was an hour ahead of the rest of the world? That’s when I announced that we were either going to be a few minutes late… or more likely… almost an hour early. An hour early it was!!! (and then I remembered doing the exact same thing 2 years ago… some people never learn!) Yes, some people may have been upset about being picked up an hour earlier than necessary, losing an extra hour of precious sleep…. But no, we slipped quickly to Plan B…. BREAKFAST!! It just so happened that as I was making this realization, we were driving past a Cracker Barrel…. Abrupt right hand turn into the parking lot, where I proceeded to tell my friend (and yes, it is Susan) why I am going to propose that rather than cooking this year… my family meet in a Cracker Barrel for Christmas dinner…. We had this discussion at work… think about it… the place will be festively decorated, everyone gets to choose whatever they want to eat, and while we are waiting for our meals to be served… we can do our Christmas shopping right there…. No stress, no mess. It’s the perfect solution. Right? Not to mention that they serve breakfast all day long, which everyone knows is my favorite meal.(I'll let you know how well that suggestion will be received..I have a pretty good idea, already.)
After breakfast, we arrived at our photo shoot meet up point… met the man in the black van… who goes by an alias (of course he does, why not... which lead to another discussion about aliases. I've chosen mine... Susan is still working on hers) and had us sign many pages of papers saying we would not share this location with anyone, we would not try to come back to this site on our own, when posting photos, we would not include the location, etc…etc…. The photo shoot was great… a fun day. Going home, the adventure continued as we shopped for our Thanksgiving meals… well, Susan did… I bought tubs of ginger snaps and little chocolate chip cookies and pepperoni pizza mac and cheese. Then, in an effort to avoid driving home on a boring highway, we (well… I) drove in circles until, finally on a dark back road, I looked at Susan and asked… do you have any clue where we are…. Because I don’t. And she didn’t … and rather than be annoyed with me and my total lack of any sense of direction, she laughed. And that is pretty much why she is about the only one that will go out to shoot with me anymore! Thank you Susan … and to the man in the black van with the alias that set this all up. And I’d like to tell you that you really should go check this place out…. But I can’t. Ever.
But I can tell you that now I seriously want to drive a car with tail fins and a big gawdy hood ornament... and I want to create a new identity under an alias.
I have been missing in action for over a week now as the crazy retail season is upon is and I kept my part time job at Kohls and have basically been spending all of my time working two jobs. So, did I make up for it with an extra long story…. Or did I lose you several paragraphs ago?!!
Oh… the photoshoot was in a scrap yard/junk yard… and that’s about all I have to say about that!! LOL!
; )