I've been in New Jersey..

Yeah, in case you were wondering where I disappeared to the other day...I was in the Garden State. Late Wednesday afternoon, Same, Emile (Emile is the french kid that Sam stayed with this summer...they got along so well that they invited him to stay with us for 2 1/2 weeks so he could improve his English. He leaves on Sat.) and I drove over to Rockaway, NJ to spend the night with his Grandparents. We used the new GPS system and it worked great but it had us get off I-80 a little sooner than we should have and we ended up traveling 10 extra minutes because of stop lights. We had dinner with Bubbe and Zadie and eventually went to bed. LOL...I had a strange little fellow in my bedroom, holding a beer can. Wait, wait, it gets better...lol, I made the mistake of checking to see if he had any clothes under his long beard and I about fell over laughing. Who knew Bubbe and Zadie would have such a well endowed doll in their guest bedroom. I was going to tell them that I had a hard time sleeping because of the strange man in my room...but I totally forgot.I wasn't going to post a picture of that thing...but I knew nobody would believe me if I didn't provide photographic proof. Well, that and the fact that it reminded me of the thing I made for my friend Steph many years ago. I took nylon stockings of many different shades and with the help of some batting and a needle and thread, I created a whole jar full of multi sized "man parts". Yep, and I put a label on it that said, "Steph's Pickled Peckers." She loved it. I wonder if she still has it. I'll have to email her and ask her. I never got a picture of it. Hey, it was before I blogged. Anyway, back to the Jersey trip. Thursday morning we got up early and drove to Princeton to tour the University. It was a lovely campus and Sam said he would definitely go there if they accepted him but only if Harvard rejected him first. Oh, interesting enough...if you watch the TV show House, in the opening credits, when they show the hospital House works at....its really an aerial view of one of the buildings on the Princeton campus. WE are big House fans around this house so Sam and I were impressed. After we ditched the Princeton Experience...we headed to SIX FLAGS GREAT ADVENTURE in Jackson NJ. Hello! Roller coasters! Need I say more. 
 

This picture is of Emile and Sam on the Superman ride. We'd already gone on it and it was the last ride of the evening...I decided to skip out so I could go buy The Rue a Six Flags T-shirt and pink Superman cape. That and I had to admit that I'm getting old. After all the rides we went on...I started to feel the effects and was slightly nauseous. We went on a ton of rides and some of them more than once. My favorite was the Nitro ride. OMG...the drops on that ride were awesome. Oh and get this, the boys talked me into going on a water ride. You know those giant spinning rafts that travel down a mock river and though rapids. I knew before I went on that I'd get nailed and they'd stay dry-ish. Well, I think we would have been OK if it wasn't for the bimbo next to me announcing really loud that she wasn't going to get wet. I looked at her and about shouted, "NOOOO! You just jinxed us! You were supposed to say, 'I hope we get totally drenched!'" I could have beat her. So, guess what happens. I get totally drenched and the boys are barley wet. Emile managed to stay dry except for a spot the size of an orange. Sam was maybe twice as wet as that and my entire left side and entire back were wet. Yep, we are talking dripping wet. I had to ring out my pants and shirt...that wet. I was freezing my a$$ off and it took a good 6 hours for me to dry out completely.

We left Six Flags after 9 PM. We turned on the GPS and I thought it was so strange that it was taking us down these crazy back roads and highways with street signals. I thought it knew a shortcut to one of the parkways or interstates....and perhaps it did but I got sick of passing signs for them and not getting on them so I just jumped on the Garden State Parkway and let it reset. Why should I drive 45-50 when I could get on the parkway and fly, right. Everything was great until I Got across Staten Island and over the Verrazano Bridge. Bam! WE hit traffic. Come to find out that they are in the process of repaving the Belt Parkway and they had it down to one lane of traffic instead of three. Yeah, that backed everything up for miles. Then Sam had his ipod playing though the radio when he fell asleep. Suddenly his song list ended and the radio came on and blared, scaring the holy crap out of me and not two seconds after that the car in front of me decided to slam on his breaks, thus causing me to act fast. I mean, seriously, I was no where near him but he locked his breaks up, we are not talking a tap, he stood on that break and came to a complete stop. I still can't tell you why. I could see the van in front of him and it kept moving as well as the cars on both sides of him. Needless to say, I passed him as soon as I could.