This Weekend Flew By....

I made it through Monday. It was nice and calm today at work. What a difference an environment can be when certain people aren't around. I was tired walking into work after what may have been my quickest weekend in a long, long while. Yes I know that all weekends consist of around 60 hours.

Well this one seemed way shorter as a lot of it was spent in a car either as a driver or as a passenger as J and I drove up to Youngstown, Ohio to surprise her Mother at her father's side of the family "family reunion. Yes I know wrote the word family back to back. LOL. Even funnier was that her Dad was back home in Hemderson, NV as he couldn't make it back east for the family dinner.

What did I discover this weekend? Well I saw that West Virginia has absolutely beautiful scenery with its' greenery and rolling hills. It isn't the easiest state to drive through because of the Appalachians especially in a 4-cylinder car. It seems to me that no matter what route you take, you are going up and down these ancient mountains.

U.S. Route 19 is a nice route to take though you are stuck driving through towns at

times and have to deal with traffic lights which slows things down. Taking this route though does afford you the opportunity to see the New River Gorge. The bridge that crosses the New River near Fayetteville is the 5th highest vehicular bridge in the world at 876 ft. and is pretty darn cool to see. Until 2004 it was the highest such bridge in the world. We didn't stop on this trip.

The other option in going to Ohio is taking Interstate 77 all the way. We took the W.V. turnpike on the way back as we ended up in a part of Ohio that was closer to 77 than 79 near Pittsburgh on Sunday morning. Only issue is paying $6 in turnpike tolls. Taxpayers' dollars already went to building the Eisenhower interstate highway system. This is a blatant revenue grab and almost as annoying as being on the Maine Turnpike but that one doesn't cost $6 to travel at least. I can't vouch for that 100% as I haven't been on it for a few years now.

Back to the reunion dinner. I found out about it last Wednesday when J was in Aberdeen. She didn't think that she could make it due to her travel schedule but when I found out about it; the decision was made to go to the dinner even though it involved 1200 miles of driving round trip over a weekend.

To see the look on her Mom's face when she first saw J at Johnny's Fine Food & Spirits in Boardman, Ohio was absolutely priceless. She was in total shock and never ever expected her to be there. The only thing that would have made it even cooler was if J's children were there as well. Gives us something to work on for the 5th installment of the Montiori, Mondora & Neopolitain family dinner on July 20th, 2013. I may have spelled the first last name wrong; I'm a Schlewing after all. LOL.

As for the evening it was pretty effing cool even though I am not related to anyone that was there. I was amid five generations of a family that all started back in southern Italy years and years ago that had a member or two emigrate to the States in the late 1800s. I think that the first ones here would be darn proud of their descendants. Among the 60 or so people in the room; there were seven or eight engineers, a doctor or two, a television producer, a teaching nurse, a teacher, an airplane pilot, a couple computer geeks and two men that could have been extras in the Sopranos. That was it. I think I was the only that uses curse words on a regular basis. Dang what is with that? I will have to socialize more next year just to see if there is anyone that can teach me a lesson or two in Italian curse words.