Insane Random Ramblings

Woo Hoo! Last week we went to IHOP in Morgantown Wv. We found a closer one to us. It’s in Youngstown OH. It’s 60 miles away but it’s still closer than the one in WV. After we ate, we drove around Youngstown. The population of Youngstown is only 82,000 so it’s really tiny. The weird part is they have a different variety of restaurants than we have. In addition to IHOP they have a Perkins and a Burger King. There’s only 1 or 2 Burger King’s in Pittsburgh.

We need to get some gift cards for the various restaurants that we visit. We don’t spend too much but we do go to a lot of restaurants. I think our biggest expense right now is gas since it’s so expensive. It could be worse, we could be doing shots off of a beer pong table or something.

We’re going back to Ohio in 2 weeks to buy baseball tickets so I know that we’ll stop at one of their restaurants. The ticket shop opens at 10am. We’ll probably leave home around 8am and not get back home until 7pm or 8pm. As long as we have decent weather that will be an all day trip.

Tomorrow is the first day that we can register for summer classes. I kept forgetting to call and make an appointment so I can’t in until Thurday. I need to look through the course catalog and decide which classes I want to take. There’s only 3 or 4 that will fit in my schedule. Unfortunately all of the classes fulfill the same requirement (history), so I can only take 1 of them.

I have to decide which class looks to be the most interesting (None of them really), and which days they’re offered. I know most of them are Monday and Wednesday night. There’s really not that much to choose from. I do realize that it’s summer and most people don’t want to be there. So I have to just deal with the few classes that I am able to get.

First let me say that I’ve always drank Pepsi and will continue to do so. My consumption doesn’t change with any particular promotion that they may offer. Having said that, I’m extremely disappointed with the new Pepsi Stuff promotion.

A dvd is 90 points while a cd is 60 points. Are you kidding me? Even if you buy cubes of soda, you have to buy 15 cubes to get a dvd or 10 to get a cd. @@@ major eyeroll here. Those point totals are ridiculous. A music download is 5 points. Considering you can get them for $1.00 or less on I-tunes and other places, that’s still too many.

To say I’m not enthused about this promo is an understatement. To me the best option for points redemptions seemed to be the sweepstakes. Those odds aren’t much better though. There’s 1 trip, 1 home theater, and 1 $500 prize per day. If you go for the MP3 player or the camcorder, you have better odds with 50 and 40 prizes respectively.

I’ll probably just save up my points and enter the sweepstakes once a week to give myself better odds. I still think this promotion stinks though!

I’m really not that good at picking presents. I try to do my best but I never think it’s good enough. Even if the person that I buy the gift for loves what I get, I always second guess myself.

I’m just going to come out and ask John what he wants instead of trying to buy him something. I know he loves the games for his PSP or Nintendo DS. But I don’t want to get him a game that he already has. Even worse would be to get him something that he doesn’t want.

I really hate shopping for other people. Oh and Happy Valentine’s Day everyone.

I don’t have any. We’re going to drive to Cleveland for a baseball game or two. We may also try to get down to Florida to visit my family. And New Jersey to visit both of our moms. We might also go to Erie to go to the beach. There’s no real beach around here and Erie is the closest one. That should be a day trip though. We’ll leave Pittsburgh in the morning and get home around midnight.. 

The main reason why we can’t take a real vacation is because I’m trying to get done with school as soon as possible and that’s gonna be expensive. I don’t get tuition reimbursement for these classes and I don’t get financial aid. I have to pay for these classes totally out of pocket. I still don’t know how I’m gonna swing that. Since this is such a large expense, we have to give up vacation this year. Not even Hilton Head rentals for a weekend. That super sucks! But it’s the sacrifice that I have to make in order to move within the next 12-15 months.

I’ve decided that it’s imperative that I move soon, so I have to make some sacrificies. You can best believe I’m going on a killer vacation next year!

We eat at the same restaurant’s all the time. It’s usually Golden Corral or the chicken place. Last week we went to IHOP in Morgantown WV and I wrote a post about our trip. It was the first time I had been there in quite a few years. Now we might go to Shoney’s in a few weeks. We want to wait until the weather is more stable before we take that drive again.

There’s no Shoney’s in the Pittsburgh area so we have to go to WV to visit. I also want to visit their mall while we’re there. I want to look at their clothes and see how much they go for. As long as I don’t start trying to look at diamond rings or jewelry in general, I’ll be fine. I might get a new pair of sneakers for the spring. The ones that I wear every day are getting pretty old looking.

Hopefully Shoney’s will live up to the hype. I wish Pittsburgh would get some more restaurants. I hate driving to Cleveland or WV just to get something to eat.

Check out this cool link for free e-cards for Valentine’s Day. I know I would be happy if someone sent me an e-card at work on Valentine’s Day. Hint, hint.

Here’s some insane ramblings for ya:

1. Women are nasty. Just go into any office building and check out the “ladies” room. Ughh. Enough said.

2. Google took the pr of this blog to 0. Oh well, now it matches my other blogs.

3. I need to start exercising again pronto. I’ve gained most of the weight back that I lost this summer. That is totally unacceptable. I hope to lose it again by late May/mid June.

4. I’m really starting to dislike blogging for PPP. I don’t do PPP on this blog but I do entries for them on my other blogs. I am earning money for school, but the way they’re set up now I’m hardly earning anything. Once I’m done with school I’ll probably drop them.

5. This is a 3 day weekend. Woohoo! I love bank holidays.

I had a page rank of 2 on this blog. Sometime over the past week, I went to pr 0. Now all of my blogs are ranked 0. Oh well. I’ll just keep plugging away and not worry about page rank.

We drove all the way to Morgantown WV to go to IHOP. We didn’t know what we wanted to eat and started driving aimlessly. Then John jokingly said that we could go to IHOP. I said ok and away we went. It was a hard drive because it’s very windy outside today. It’s also a mostly uphill drive which sucks. It took us over 2 hours to get there because we got lost.

John told me to call for directions and I kept saying “Oh we’ll run right into it”. Needless to say we didn’t. We finally stopped and asked for directions. The guy directed us straight there. We were way lost too. We were over 5 miles in the wrong direction!

Once we got there, John got an omelette and I got the classic breakfast. I had 2 of each of pancakes, bacon, hash browns, eggs and sausage links. I ate most of it too. John had 3 pancakes and the omelette. He ate all of the pancakes but only half of the omelette. Too bad they didn’t have espresso machines because that would have been the perfect ending to a great meal. Especially since it was so cold outside. The food wasn’t that expensive either, coming in at just over $20. 

I told John that if we go back, it won’t be in the winter. But we’re definitely going back.