Its Been A While

Sorry about that shit, I know all my rapt and attentive readers must be furious that I have been so lax in updating but there have been some conditions, my birthday, illness, out of townness, etc. I will get to them, I promise Let me start from the beginning. It all began last Friday...

Katie and I got up fairly early, like 7 or so, and took off for the King's Debate Tournament in Wilkes-Barre, BA. I had never really understood why people spoke of upstate New York so highly, I mean, I have driven from here to Boston and really nothing gets impressive until Massachusets. Regardless, we drive from Buffalo to Syracuse, stopping briefly at McDonald's to enjoy some McBreakfast. I finally got to really thoroughly chow down on a couple McGriddles, though I could admittedly go for a three bacon-egg-and-cheese-sandwich-wrapped-in-pre-syruped-griddle-cake meal, I probably won't do so for a while. After that we turned South in Syracuse onto I-81 and holy shit, it was like an immediate transformation of the place wherein I live. First of all, the city is really quite nice. Its not far from Buffalo, only like 2 hours, but it looks so much more like St. Paul, a prettier Midwestern style city.

Beyond just the buildings and the general tone of Syracuse, New York, it quickly is noticeable that the whole place is set deep within a river valley. This means, of course, that immediately after leaving the downtown areas all the suburbs are set into beautiful hills with a scenic river running through the middle. There are little town churches and houses and shit. This continues non-fucking-stop for the entire 2-3 hour drive to Wilkes-Barre. Katie's dad told us that he thought the drive from Syracuse to Binghampton was the most beautiful he had ever made, and I can't help but agree with him. I have never been to the mountains really and only really to the ocean when I was in the Carribean. I mean, I would still drastically prefer to set on one of Antigua's 300+ white sandy beaches, enjoy a Cuban cigar, a margarita, and the pleasurable company of one Ms. Kauf, but with the exception of the islands, I have never been in a more beautiful place. Green lush hills, little villages. Beautiful old architecture, white wooden churches, barn-style homes, and gigantic tree lined bluffs. There were so many places that a person could find a nice view and just relax. I was stunned.

The town of Wilkes-Barre, tucked in amongst the Scranton area, continues that beauty. In the five or so miles around the area the valley just opens up, instead of just a beautiful but narrow valley, there are rolling hills within a big bowl of an area. As you enter of 81 you can suddenly see mist covered divots of earth extending miles across. Its what I imagine a well devloped suburb in Ireland would be like, the mist, the green and so on. Loved it. I will discuss further, a little later on, the debate tournament which occurred in Wilkes-Barre, but let me say, first of all, that it rocked. The whole weekend was fantastic, but the debate tournament rocked very hard. It may have been the best debate tournament I have ever been to and was certainly the most laid back. I was slightly tired on Saturday morning, but besides that, literally, the whole thing came off without a hitch.

I will hopefully get around to updating again this evening, maybe even doing the whole debate tournament story so that I stay all chronological like. Right now, however, I am going to take some medicine, since I spent this afternoon getting one of my wisdom teeth removed. This was an odd experience, since I hadn't planned on getting this done until this morning, when the checkup to solve the cavity that was hurting me yielded this new discovery. Having this done actually sucks much less than I thought it would. I mean, I didn't enjoy getting the shots of novocaine or whatever, but the removal of the tooth part felt extraordinarily moderate considering it actually involved the fucking removal BY GRIPPING AND WRENCHING of a fucking tooth from my mouth.

Anwyay, I am back motherfuckers. I will be back on the updating trip which the end of September was rolling on. Give me a while to swallow all this Vicodin, but trust me, its on.

Peace,

MB-K