Weekend Thoughts - 11/29/09

It is our last full weekend here in Michigan, and we were pleasantly surprised to get nice weather. Sunny, in the 50s. So we decided to do some more exploring in our surrounding area.

• Fenn Valley Winery makes some very good wine. Specifically, their Lakeshore Red, Capriccio, and 42 Ice Wine were all very good.
• The city of Saugatuck offers horse-drawn carriage rides on Friday nights and Saturday afternoons during the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas.
• Within the city limits of Saugatuck is the ghost town of Singapore, Michigan. It is actually a pretty interesting story about it.
• Hercules' Hot Dogs in Saugatuck makes one of the best chili fries I have ever had. I was very pleasantly surprised.
• Hopcat Brewery in Grand Rapids has quite a selection of beers on tap, including one of the best I've ever had: Maudite, by Unibroue (Montreal)
• Founders Brewery in Grand Rapids also makes some very good beers as well.

I'm hoping to finish up a post reviewing our time here in South Haven later this week.

Black Friday Shopping

It has been a tradition that every year, I seem to go out into the masses on Black Friday, and take my life in my hands in search of a great deal and an interesting story. This one was no different than the others; stories to be found everywhere.

The Chicago news stations were covering the traffic outside the mall in Schaumburg. This is a HUGE mall, with tons of shopping on the surrounding streets as well. The place was literally causing traffic problems onto the freeways nearby, and this was a normal occurrence. Needless to say, we won't ever being going there for Black Friday shopping.

We started at the Walmart in South Haven. It's a 24 hour Wal-Mart, so when we were there last night around 9ish, they had begun to put out all of their doorbusters. However, they managed to keep people from buying them by having them shrink wrapped onto pallets, and with paper signs that said "Cannot be purchased until 5 am". I am sure that there was at least one customer who tried it, hoping to get the great price early.

We wandered in there around 8 am, as we were not getting up early just to look around. There really weren't any deals we were looking for, and figured that would let some of the more insane crowd do their thing, and allow us to look around a little easier. We were right.

This Wal-mart was different. As we walked around, there were still a lot of the door-busters in stock, sitting in the aisles. The customer load was heavier than usual for this particular store, but still much quieter than we were accustomed to for a Black Friday-type holiday. When we got to the front, there were cashiers waiting to help people, actively looking in fact. A very unusual sight.

After we finished at Wal-Mart, we headed for Kalamazoo. Almost every major shop is there, and along one street (Westnedge Ave). We wanted to get an electric frying pan, similar to the one we have been using here in our rental, and knew that we had gift cards to Bed, Bath and Beyond leftover from the wedding. They were fairly busy, but definitely a manageable crowd. We got our items there, and moved onto Kohl's.

Kohl's must have been having some of the best sales around, because the place was insanely busy. The line to purchase things wrapped from the registers, down the aisle, took a left turn toward the back of the store, and went all the way down that aisle as well. Realistically, there were probably about 100-150 people in line just on this one side of the store. And another line almost as long was on the other side of the store as well. Crazy.

We went to the Toys'R'Us across the street, and found them to be picked clean. They literally had areas of their store that looked like they had been robbed. There was nothing on the shelves in these areas. 

We also went to the mall, where they had a Sears (not super busy), a JCPenney (which was just a sea of people), and a Macy's (which appeared busy as well). Not really finding much there as well, we went to Best Buy.

Best Buy was super busy, and had also taken a couple of tricks out of the Disney guide to hiding how long the line is. They had cordoned off a portion of their appliance department, and had the line running through the refrigerators, where it couldn't easily be seen. It appeared, as you walked into the store, that there was hardly anyone in line at all. Very sneaky.

Target was one of our last stops, and it was interesting to see the difference location makes. I had talked to my sister earlier, who had been shopping back home in California. Apparently she had bought a dvd player for a co-worker, that she had to nearly fight to keep once she had grabbed it. Meanwhile, back in Michigan, almost 7 hours after they had opened, there were about 10 of the same dvd player still sitting on the counter, unpurchased.

We did manage to find a couple of items we were looking for (both for ourselves and as gifts), and are no worse for the wear. And also we didn't get up as early as some of the crazy people!

Our Next Assignment, and the Fun that Ensues

You know, I had started this post a couple of weeks ago, as you probably guessed from the fact that I said I would have an announcement soon. We had been working with Brynn's recruiter, and had nailed down our next assignment, and were just waiting for the contract to come in. That contract came in, and we were all set. Or so we thought...

Turns out that there is a clause in her contract with the facility she is working at (and apparently all facilities she works with) that allow them the opportunity to end the contract early for a number of reasons. This list of reasons includes low patient census. Now you'd think, well, that not having a lot of patients in the hospital is a good thing, right? And it is. We definitely think it is. But that said, the facility she is working for did, in fact, ask to end her contract early, for this very reason. So our time in Michigan is actually coming to a sooner end than we had initially anticipated.

Now, this came as a complete surprise to us that it could even happen. Her recruiter even said that it was extremely unusual, since it is very rare that a facility brings in a traveling physical therapist, and finds that they don't have a need for them during the assignment. Both the facility, and her recruiter, made it very clear that it was not a reflection on the work she had done.

This left her recruiter (and us) scrambling. Her last day at her assignment in Michigan would be 12/4. The new assignment that he had already lined up would not start until 1/4/10. A month without work, simply put, was not an acceptable option.

Another issue came from the fact that each state has its own licensing process for physical therapists. Currently, Brynn holds a Michigan license, and her original California license. Anywhere that he would have to look would have to either be one of those two states, or be a state where they could be reasonably sure that they would be able to quickly get her a license.

Over the past 2 weeks, they worked on finding her an assignment, and were able to get the final touches put on the contract for it late last week. Unfortunately, the previously committed assignment (starting in January), was no longer where we would be going.

Instead, we are now going to:

Murray, Kentucky

Now, you may ask, where is Murray, Kentucky? Here.

Murray is:

Home to Murray State University (and their D-1 sports programs)
About 3.5 hours to Memphis, TN
About 2.5 hours to Nashville, TN or Evansville, IN
About 4 hours to St. Louis, MO
About 8 hours from here in South Haven, MI

You can find more information about them here: Wikipedia, City of Murray

Now, you may notice, that this town doesn't appear to be a whole lot bigger than South Haven. We're alright with this. And the main reason is Murray State itself. The college pretty much ensures a couple of things:

1. There's going to be work in the area, due to the need to support the college.
   
2. There are going to be things to do and things to see, due to the college being there.
3. There are bound to be a lot of people around our age there, due to the college.
4. Murray State is a division 1 school for athletics. This means that there is a possibility that they will be playing meaningful basketball games in early February through March. Also the potential for some baseball and softball games to watch as well.

So, we now know where our adventure is going to lead us next. I'm hoping to have a few more posts in the coming week.

Weekend Thoughts for 11/8/09

We spent part of this weekend in Chicago, and we were very pleasantly surprised at the weather. It was in the mid to high 60's all weekend. All-in-all, a very good weekend.

The car is fine (so says the insurance guy anyway), and slowly starting to smell less like deer.

• Every time that we go to Mia Francesca's in Chicago, the food is amazing. And always somehow better than the previous time. And this trip was no different. We HIGHLY recommend this restaurant if you are in the area.
• For all the problems that they run into with public transit, Chicago's CTA does a very good job of getting people from point A to point B. It is efficient, clean, and runs very often. We simply parked our car when we arrived, and left it there until we were ready to leave town.
• Emilio's Tapas was also excellent. We were a bit concerned when we walked by the place prior to dinner, because the place was deserted. But the food was excellent, and was very busy by the time we had finished dining.
• Ann Sather makes really, really good breakfast. We didn't really need lunch as a result.
• I found out on Friday that apparently McDonald's is the place to hang out in the morning if you are a senior citizen. There is bottomless coffee which appears to be attracting them there. It was a larger gathering than any in town we had seen to that point.

Working on another post with an announcement that will hopefully be up tomorrow...




Apparently I missed out on my big break this week. 

Weekend Thoughts for 11/1/09

So, among the number of things that I figured I would experience while here in Michigan, I did not include large dead animals in the road. While coming home on Friday night, we were driving on a 2 lane road. As we crossed over the top of a small hill, shortly on the other side was a full sized deer carcass in the middle of our lane. At this point, we have three choices, none of which were particularly good: Swerve to the right, and potentially go into a ditch. Swerve to the left, and possibly get into a head-on collision. Try to pass over the carcass straight on, and hope nothing too bad happens. We chose option #3. The car is fine (or so it seems anyway), we are fine. The car is going to be checked out later this week to be sure, but other than the fact that even after a wash (with a full undercarriage), it still smells like dead deer at times. Hopefully when we take it in, they will find nothing wrong or potentially to happen later either.

Some other observations from this week...

• We had our fair share of trick-or-treaters last night, and went through 7 bags of candy! At one point, we had gone through 5 bags in a little over an hour, so we had to get 2 more. I think it's possible we may have needed more, but since it was dark and we turned off the light.
• Best costumes from last night: A family dressed as Mario (Dad), The Princess (Mom), and Luigi (Son).
  
• It was refreshing to see only children trick-or-treating. As I've gotten older, I have come to have more of a problem with teenagers (or older) doing a lot of trick-or-treating. But that probably stems from the most common costumes I get from teenagers: "I'm a high school student", "I'm a teenager", etc. It's one thing to go around with your younger brother/sister/cousin, etc. But if you're 16 or 17, running around without even attempting a costume, and collecting candy because you want free candy, that doesn't fly with me.
• The other thing which I hadn't really seen before was this: Most of the parents were following their kids around in their cars. When the kids would reach the end of the street, they would get back in the car and drive to the next street. I'm not sure if this is because it was fairly cold here, or if it was because there were distinct possibilities that a majority of houses would not be passing out candy, but it was different for sure.
  
• When we gave candy to one group of kids, Brynn noticed that they had toothbrushes in their bags. Apparently one of the local dentists was giving out candy AND tootbrushes to all his trick-or-treaters. Awesome.
• We went to Kalamazoo on Friday night to try out a brewery with one of Brynn's co-worker. We went to the Olde Peninsula Brewpub, which unfortunately does not have a website of their own. So here's their group on Facebook, for those that are interested. The food was excellent, and their beers weren't bad, but it was hard to tell since the one we really wanted to try was not available at this time.
• It was surprising how enjoyable it is to just walk around and browse in a bookstore. We were in Barnes and Noble, and actually didn't buy anything. But it is a lot more fulfilling to browse in a bookstore than it is to look online. Although the prices are better online to be sure.
• We enjoyed half-price pizza night here at Maria's. We'd been there before, and the food had been good, so we couldn't pass up an $8 16" pizza with 2 toppings. And good quality pizza too. Seems somewhat unlikely to be found some of the other places we've lived before.
• We carved our pumpkins this week (and they'll disappear at the end of this week as well). It was actually the first time I had carved a pumpkin that I could remember. I'm told that I carved one before, but that I wasn't very appreciative of all the goop and mess that goes with it. I found that my opinion on that part of it hasn't changed, but that it was still a lot of fun.
• We were also told that we "did our pumpkins the old-fashioned way" by one of the trick-or-treaters. Apparently stencils are considered to be required to carve a pumpkin. At least according to 5th graders (my best guess).
  
• The Bears won today, which is good, because they needed to beat Cleveland, and beat them severely. They can't lose to bad teams if they want to do anything in January.
• Getting ready to watch the Packers/Vikings game, and Brynn's take pretty much summed up my opinion of it: "Brett Favre blah blah, Brett Favre blah blah blah..." Looks like he may win though, which is also not great. This would be a game where we would both love to have both teams get a loss, but alas, not possible...