thursday: i make it back to buffalo relatively early. amanda’s parents came up to buffalo for the weekend, but they were off to dinner at romeo an juliet’s before i arrived. but that was alright, as i was not very hungry and had to unload my auto. i brought some things up from ithaca in preparation for my move… basically, on my actual move date, i want to do as few round trips as possible from my old place to the new place. of course, eventually everything in buffalo will be moving back to ithaca in the fall, but that will require a truck of somesort.
we still have not closed on the new place in ithaca (brooktondale actually), but things are slowing moving to resolution on that end.
lainie went to dinner with amanda and her parents. they came back afterwards, and lainie wanted to work out, but amanda was too full from dinner. lainie eventually headed back home, whilst we started watching lawrence of arabia. its a freaking long movie, so we ended up only seeing maybe a third of it before going to bed.
friday: i worked. woohoo. amanda had class or something that morning, so she headed off for that. her parents later met her for a public lecture that she had to attend and for lunch later. then they headed off for a walk around delaware park while amanda went to work or something. i of course was working through all of this. later we had dinner at don pablos and watched the rest of lawrence of arabia (damn that is a long film). the film itself was alright, but there was too much of “look at the scenery for a while” followed by “a few lines of dialog” followed by “look at more scenery” ad naseum.
saturday: we went to the buffalo and erie county botanical gardens. they were very cool. we spent the time wandering about the greenhouses and conservatory since the outside grounds have not recovered from winter yet. we will have to go back in a few weeks to check out the place again. we then had lunch with erika at the ihop back in amherst. i guess the afternoon was kinda relaxing, since i do not remember what we did. actually, now i recall that we did a bit of shopping at joann fabrics (yarn) and kmart (flower bulbs). i later made dinner (baked tofu, couscous with leeks, mushroom, and pine nuts, bread, cheese, wine, kalamata olives) and amanda made some sweet potatoes. everything turned out alright, but i do not think those versions were good enough to add to our cookbook. we watched the matrix afterwards since amanda’s father had not seen it, but everyone but myself fell asleep.
sunday: amanda made french toast for bfast, and then her parents made their way back home to ohio. mere minutes after they left, a freakish storm blew through the area. the day instantly turned to night, the wind roared, and rain started pouring out of the sky. amanda was talking to her mom via cellphone about the weather, when we both saw a tree in our backyard blow down, taking out our neighbors power, phone, and cable lines down with it. the tree also landed on a car, but it has not moved in over a year-and-a-half (all of us in the neighboring buildings believe it was stolen and dumped here). in a matter of minutes, the storm passed and all looked normal. it was a good thing her parents left when they did because otherwise their car would have cables draped all over it.
we called niagara mohawk and our landlord and decided to stay inside to work/study instead of venturing outside. piglet wanted to have outside adventures, but we did not want her playing near the downed lines. rather soon the electric company showed up to assess the damage; i was surprised they responded so fast since there were probably trees and power lines down everywhere. they looked around for a while, then left. they did not seem too alarmed about anything, but upon further inspection the power line broke from the pole and not the house (probably a safety feature, i imagine), so there was no danger from the downed cables.
eventually, we left the apartment and met up with erika at the boulevard mall. erika wanted to do some shopping at victoria’ secret where she successfully found some suitable clothing items. we spent a lot of time in the body shop as erika and amanda had the employee person try out various makeup stuff on them. the employee had been sad because all the people that day she had asked “do you need any help with anything?” totally ignored her. amanda and erika ignored her too, but i admonished them much to the amusement of the employee person.
later in the afternoon, amanda planted the bulbs near our front door. when the repair guys showed up, piglet freaked out and ran off, but we corralled her and took her back up to the apartment. the two repair guys nonchalantly looked around and did their thing. one guy got up in their fancy crane thing, maneuvered around to pick up the cable, bought it back up to the pole, and reconnected it. the other guy watched for a while, then got back in the truck until the other guys was done. shocking how simple it was, really.
i felt bad for our next door neighbor chris. his truck had gotten broken into a few weeks ago, and now it was covered with various utility cables. he took it all in with good spirits, tho. what could you do, after all?
the evening was spent in more work and study for amanda and myself. i had leftovers for dinner with some newly cooked lentils whilst amanda had a salad with tofu patties. amanda fell asleep early, but i worked for quite a while until the early morning.
monday: more work for amanda and i. i also did the usual cleaning and laundry (well, true cleaning will be later today). amanda came back home early because she was feeling nauseous for some reason. after chowing down some tums she felt slightly better. now she is studying whilst waiting for our vege casserole to finish cooking. i do not know what the rest of the evening holds.