A Spectrum

That's what was advertised on a blog with this first video, ya, I totally cried. However, the little girl didn't win. The second video is the guy who did win. He was a cell phone store employee and he could sing like this. Wow.

Technically, I am stealing the title to Trisha's novel but it plays here too. Tom, myself, Kyle, and Trisha went to Six Flags yesterday. We had a blast. There were a lot of people there, the waits on the roller coasters were not really too bad, but the waterpark was jam packed with people. Next time it's the middle of the week for us.

6:30 am. I roll out of bed with a sore throat because it was the first night we had the air conditioning on.

6:45 am. I successfully rouse Kyle, no easy feat mind you.

7 am. We leave. I forget my flip flops.

8 am. We pick up Trisha. Her sister is MIA and we hope not kidnapped or worse.

8:15 am. We get McDonalds. Tom whines that I made him wait so long to eat.

9:15 am. I am whining to use a restroom. Tom reminds me how I made him wait.

9:30 am. We stop at Dunkin Doughnuts. There's no soap and the hand dryer is possessed.

9:45 am. Libertyville is having a parade. Our way is blocked. We spend the next 20-30 mins trying to find our way through the maze that is Libertyville. We hate Libertyville. They have floating balloons in their parade. We wish the balloon handlers would maneuver their balloon into live power wires. We try to scare the horses. We spot Abe Lincoln.

10 am. The park opens.

10:15 am. We arrive at the park and are greeted with 7 lanes of people waiting to get in. Tom gets in the fastest lane. Go Tom. Tom moves out of the fastest lane. I whine that we're not in the fastest lane anymore. Tom gets annoyed with me. The security people stand helplessly. What use are they? Trisha's sister calls, she is not kidnapped.

10:30 am. We park, load up on sunscreen, and head toward the gate forgetting to look where we parked.

10:40 am. Kyle gets in line to buy a ticket. The rest of us get in the security lines to enter. Kyle magically appears in the park before us. He tells us he hopes to puke or maybe it was to see someone puke at some point. We laugh at his jest. We ooh and ahh over the sheer number of dippin dots stands.

11:30 am. We are on Superman: The Ride. The assent upwards is suprisingly fast. I have been on this ride before. The first loop you do is head first and is very disorienting. Tom is on the edge of the car. This is Trisha's favorite ride. This is Kyle's first roller coaster in a very long time. Here follows our dialog.

Lauren screaming: "I know what's happening. I know what's happening. It's head first. It's head first."

Tom violently leaning towards the center and screaming: "Woah, those poles are close!! Did you see that one?!?"

Kyle screaming obnoxiously: "AHHHHHH" "Whoahhhhhh" "Geeeeeeeez" "AHHHHHHH"

Trisha: Laughing so hard at all of us, she's crying.

Around Noon: We eat in a wonderfully air-conditioned expensive restaurant. Kyle loads up on wetnaps.

After Lunch: We decide to go on Raging Bull thinking it will be a long wait and our food will have time to digest. Within 15 mins, we are on Raging Bull. "Kyle, you might get to see someone puke now." The ride ascends, and ascends, and ascends, and ascends, and ascends...then pure joy, for this is my absolute favorite ride. Trisha and Tom are trying not to think of their stomachs and Kyle is acting out some bizarre fighter pilot scene only he can see. We exit the ride and find our picture. All of us are smiling except Kyle who is wide eyed and furiously clenching his teeth.

Next: We head to Batman. The wait is long because only one car is running. We have time to digest and let our stomachs settle. I keep my eyes closed and my head back during the ride and actually enjoy it this time. Most times I don't like Batman. Kyle observes aftwards how the rest of us look jostled a bit.

Around 3 pm. We change into our swimsuits. We realize we don't know where we parked and that I forgot my flip flops. We enter the filled to capacity hurricane harbor. We deposit our stuff on a beach chair. We get in line for the tornado. We decide against all four going at once and opt for two and two. We wait forever. We get our tubes. We watch others ride and decide our two and two plan is the best way not to flip over. We wait forever again. We get to the top. Trisha and I get on our tube. I end up going backwards the entire ride. We shoot down the slide into the vortex, go up one side until we are practially perpindicular to the ground, then shoot to the other side, then back and forth until we shoot out the end and I bail off like no other. What a fun ride but probably not worth all that waiting. Tom ends up going backwards the whole way too.

Next: We head for the lazy river, significantly short wait. We link our tubes together and enjoy the slowness. Tom pushes me into every waterfall, water jet possible. Kyle scrapes both his big toes on the ground and they bleed after. My tube is partially deflated and I keep sinking into it so it's just my head, arms, calves, and feet sticking out. I love that the lazy river is so long.

Next: We head for the water slides that look like flushing toilet bowls at the end. We again wait forever. Tom and I get on our tube. I am in front. We shoot down into the darkness then out into the bowl part. We spin and spin and spin around the bowl at least five times, manuver ourselves so we don't go out backwards. We hit the pool at the end. The tube buckles underneath me and I go down in a flurry of limbs. I feel one of Tom's legs barely scrape over the top of my head as he goes under too. We watch Trisha shoot out. Her tube performs a similar buckling manuver. We get yelled at by the life guard to move. We watch Kyle shoot out and gracefully glide in his tube across the pool.

Next: We head for the wave pool. We let ourselves get beaten by the waves for 15 minutes or so. Then decide that we're spent and thristy. We get Dippin Dots from the one stand out of a 1000 that is out of everything except large cups. I keep spilling mine and Tom's all over the table, myself.

Between 5 and 6: We leave the park. Trisha and I sleep the whole way back to DeKalb.

Around 8: We see Trisha's aparment/storage unit of others, change out of our swimsuits and decide after much deliberation to eat at Applebee's. We eat and relive the day's events.

9:30 pm. We leave DeKalb. Tom is tired but makes it to Rochelle, then I have to drive.

10:30 pm. We arrive back home. Tom goes to sleep. Kyle and I watch the last disk of Firefly until 2 am. Then we crash.

Please enjoy this Underdog cartoon. I especially like the part where it says "No smoking on the premises" and yet two of the characters are smoking.

Tom gave me a Nintendo Wii for our anniversary. I am never going to get any work done. (Insert Evil laugh here). Oh well.

Ah, the good old U.S.A. the world's melting pot. However, my melting pot is of a different kind. It's the fabulous fondue restaurant called The Melting Pot. Tom and I and Eric and Corryn dined there on Saturday to celebrate new jobs, new house and the like. I have been wanting to go there forever. It was amazing. The fondue pot was right at our booth and they sometimes made the fondue in front of us and sometimes brought it out. We went all out and got their "Big Night Out." We had a Cheddar cheese fondue as an appetizer with bread, veggies, apples to dip. Then our entree was lobster, two kinds of steak, shrimp, chicken, pot stickers and veggies that we cooked in a Caribbean spiced fondue plus like five different sauces. Then, of course, the piece de resistance, the dessert fondue which was white and milk chocolate mixed with a streak of Carmel. It was heavenly. Plus they gave us strawberries, bananas, pineapple, pound cake, cheesecake, and these awesome Oreo and graham cracker covered marshmallows to dip in it. Oh, wow, it was all soooo good. We spent two hours just eating. ;) And then two hours letting it digest while we watched Ocean's Thirteen at the AMC 30. I swear where we were sitting was like twice as tall as our house. It was insane. What a great night out!!

Today my job took me to Galena. What a beautiful drive. It doesn't really seem like you are in Illinois up there. Mounds (no mountians), hills, rough terrain, valleys. It's called the Driftless Zone, an area that last glaciation didn't touch. Blame the huge continental glaciers for making the rest of Illinois so freaking flat. It's also crazy that the Galena river used to be home to several 30 ft wide steamboats when today the river is barely 20 ft wide. Back in the day it was 350 ft wide. You can still see the large floodplain that's now grassy areas with paths and benches. Crazy. However, I got a whole work day to drive through the country eat lunch at Vinny's courtesy of work and get paid for doing it. ;)

Well, last week was crazy fun but I am sure glad it's over. Memorial Day weekend we were all over the place and then every night last week we drove 1.25 hours to rehearsal for Choral Dynamics and back again, then Fri, Sat, and Sun performances. I had a blast though. Wish I could do it again. We'll see if I am up to the craziness again.

Work is good. I had like 5 visits from law enforcement type people this afternoon and so got nothing done. I do have two interns to boss around though. (Insert evil laugh here). Thankfully, I get along real well with the one I have to share my office with . The other one is significantly older than us, seemingly a real nice guy, but a terrible communicator. Half the time I don't know what he is talking about or referring to, usually I can catch on to what people are trying to say, but not this fella. Plus, he mumbles. Great, that really helps with the communication.