England

An Ode to Rick Steves

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Though awkward seems to be thy major trait
Appearing with the visage of Bill Gates
And foreign words thou seem to mispronounce
Huge glasses thy misfit status doth announce
It must be said thou never lead astray
A lonely traveler with little cash at hand
Thy book a pilgrim’s bible to the world
Where and when it’s worth to spend a day
Which restaurants and sites are bland or grand
And where head upon a pillow safely curls

‘Twas Italy where first we learned to trust
The walking tour of Rome which was a must
We quickly learned to check with thou before
We even set one foot out yonder door
In England books of thine were in demand
A thief who broke our window just to steal
And left us in distress without your aid
Since all the trip upon the book was planned
Forlorn and nearly ruined by this ordeal
‘Til the guest house’s copy we managed to persuade

And now with trip to Paris looming near
No other guide’s advice would we now hear
When traveling through far and foreign land
We know we are kept safe in adept hands
From shortcuts in the Louvre to look and leave
and tips on what to buy to skip the lines
To spaces for the kids or fine cuisine
We wouldn’t know what to do without Rick Steves
We know that our vacation will be fine
And Evie even gets a guillotine!

(Special ode formatting thanks to Ode to a Grecian Urn by John Keats)

Hey, remember this thing?

/ Shane / Leave a comment

I was just catching up on some friend’s blogs and I remembered this thing here. I really would like to get back to writing in here. For awhile it just became too much of a chore.

So I’ve been married a year, so far so good! 🙂 Everything’s going really well and married life is even better than I thought.

Work has been a handful. About 5 months ago or so I kind of got a promotion to where I’m a team lead and I’m managing 3 or so people. I say “kind of got a promotion” because it was a promotion in responsibility but not a promotion in money or anything. 🙂 It’s been really good so far, but it makes me work a lot more than I used to.

On top of that school was really kicking my ass. I just got done with my capstone class, which is like the “end-of-your-masters-wrap-up-the-program” class. Between all the extra hours at work and all the extra hours for school, I’ve literally had no time to do anything. I can’t wait until I graduate in December!

Now that class is over and our delivery is about to go out the door at work, I find myself without anything to do. I’m still kind of in hurry up mode so I feel like I should be doing something. T.V. just seems boring now. (Hence me picking the LJ back up…)

I’m trying to actually DO some of my hobbies now that I have time, particularly picking the guitar back up. Unfortunately my callouses are completly gone now and I’m not able to play for very long.

Somewhere in there we also took a trip to England to see Sara’s sister who was doing study abroad. It was a great trip (although we prefered Italy) except for on the first day when someone broke the rental car window and stole Sara’s purse. Kind of put a damper on the trip…

Okay, I started this too late and now it’s time to go to bed. Who knows, maybe I’ll have some extra time now that school is out and I’ll update this thing!