Homeless No More

After calling around 15 apartment complexes in our pajamas in the lobby of the Candlewood Suites without success, we stumbled upon one possibility on craigslist. We found a couple that are trying to sell a house and want to rent it in the mean time. We changed out of our pajamas and went to see the house right away. Lucky for us, it was only 2 miles from our hotel.

We told Dotti, our soon to be land lady, that we would take the house on the spot! It's a 3 bedroom house/1 bathroom. We quickly lined up furniture, electricity, cable and internet. The picture above is taken from the street. A closer picture. The living room is to the left. Master bedroom downstairs in the front. My bedroom has the windows in the front of the house and Lauren's room faces out the back of the house. We moved out of the hotel the next day. Dotti let us unload our cars and leave a car at the house while we headed to Delaware for a few days.

Upstate University Hospital

This is where we work. The tall tower in the back is brand new. This is where I work most of the time. The new tower has Neuro ICU, Neuro Stepdown, CardioPulmonary ICU and Cardiac Care Unit. The shorter building in front is the older part of the hospital which has the Surgical ICU, Medical ICU and Burn Unit. So far I've been in all the units except SICU and MICU. Of course Lauren and I were the only ones taking pictures during orientation on Day 1. How could you not document a school bus tour of the hospital campus! Here we are on the bus. We sat over a wheel. We didn't want to be too far forward because we aren't goodie two shoes and we didn't want to be all the way in the back because we aren't trouble makers. I'd say we're a nice mix of both...so we sat just behind middle. We also wanted to be able to hear the tour. We love a guided tour! I'd vote this as the best orientation yet! It's hard to beat a field trip!

Temporary Home

We moved into the Candlewood Suites after our adventure in downtown Syracuse. The first week was stressful and rather unsettling. My mom took the picture above: Steve (our recruiter) is on speaker phone trying to resolve our housing issue. Our first Friday night in Syracuse included a bottle of wine and a movie in our suite. That's Lauren in her bedroom.

Here's the view from my room. Kitchen is to the left. Study is center. Living room is to the right. So homey! This was home for a week.

Downtown Syracuse

Syracuse, New York: Home of the Serrated Knife and Dental Chair.

Yes, ladies and gents this is where I'll be working for the next 3 months. In the midst of figuring out our housing situation, we were homeless for the afternoon. We drove around downtown Syracuse. We tried to follow signs to the visitor center, but seemed to keep missing the actual building. We pulled over to ask a friendly Syracuse police officer for help, but he was no help. Eventually we found it on our own. That's my mom above playing around with a mural outside the visitor center.

I too was playing with the mural. My mom was very excited to find that the visitor center was also home to an Erie Canal museum.

After chatting with the locals...we ran around the museum and had a little fun. That's me playing the guitar like Elizabeth Cotton, left-handed and backwards.

Lauren and Lynn on an Erie Canal replica boat. Lauren! Steer us in the right direction!

Lauren may have been steering the boat, but I think I have a little "captain" in me too!

Road Trip to New York

The road trip to New York State was a two day affair. I was luck to have my mother make the trip with me.

First day we drove from Plano TX to La Grange KY.

I had my heart set on Cracker Barrel for dinner which I knew would not be hard to find in Kentucky. That's me eating biscuits and honey! I really don't eat biscuits anywhere but Cracker Barrel. And yes I also had hashbrown casserole too! Second day we drove from La Grange KY to Syracuse NY. I have to give credit to my mom for doing most of the driving on day two. We met up with Lauren and headed to Chili's to decompress. Yea for margaritas at happy hour!

Labor Day Family Fun

The 4 Scholzs haven't all been in the same place together in about a year. That's us at Rudy's BBQ. Here's Elsie in some hot sheets. Her favorite!

Elsie sitting outside and enjoying the Texas heat.

Me and Dad

Me, Gale and Alyson.

(We were trying to get Gale a good profile picture for her Facebook.)

NYC Surprise

In the middle of August, being unemployed as I was, I decided to have a weekend visit to New York City to surprise my sister. With the help of Sarah, my sister's roommate, I was able to ambush my sister on the streets of NYC just a few blocks from Grand Central Station. We quickly finished out that day's activities with a tour of the subway tunnels by Alyson, trip to the Barney's Warehouse Sale, excellent cheap Italian food with Sarah, & dancing and drinks at Automatic Slims (shout-out to the DJ!).

After a late Friday night, we slept in Saturday morning. Then recounted the events of the evening as we walked to a favorite of Alyson's for lunch, Pop Burger. You get two mini burgers with special sauce. I think the special sauce did just the trick for our hangovers! We enjoyed walking on the High Line until it started raining. We tried to go to a movie, but that's what everyone in the city does when it's raining on the weekend. We had to go home and buy tickets to a later showing. I'll start by saying Sunday was shopping day. We had breakfast at a diner and yes we sat at the counter on my request. I like a show to watch with my meal. Then headed to Lord and Taylor (my favorite department store) where we stayed for the next two and a half hours. Afterwards we made our way to SoHo. We had tea that afternoon. Alyson had boozy tea! We headed over to McSorley's Old Ale House afterwards. You only have one choice of beverage: BEER! You can order either dark or light. We ordered light, but it was still on the darker side. When you order, you get two little mugs of beer. It has a stand-up bar with saw dust on the floor. They have posters and articles on the walls that go back as far as Abraham Lincoln's assassination reward poster! I saw it! McSorley's Old Ale House was opened in 1854 and is New York's oldest continuously operated salon (http://www.mcsorleysnewyork.com/home.html). The bar has only minimally changed since it opened. The only change was because they had to add a women's bathroom. Women weren't allowed in until 1970. I really liked this place. I'm sure I'll go back there on another trip! We had dinner at Bar Pitti that night and spotted Famke Janssen (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000463/).

Alyson had to work on Monday. We had breakfast together (another fantastic meal) and then I went back to her apartment in the West Village and napped. I met Alyson for lunch and afterwards met up with my friend Jamie. Jamie and I worked in Hawaii together. He now works in New Haven CT at Yale Hospital. He was in the city for a few days to visit a friend. We all told stories over a couple of beers and of course Jamie had to introduce me to a new piece of cuisine.

We had takoyaki, better known as octopus balls. It's like a fried dumpling with boiled octopus inside, it has a few different sauces on the outside, one being mayo and fish shavings or fish flakes as I liked to call them on top. I only wanted to take a bite, but Jamie insisted that I had to eat a whole one at once. And it's a good thing I did because the inside was very creamy. All in all it wasn't bad. I could eat another one. Just don't think I could eat all six in one sitting, very filling.

Jamie enjoyed two servings of octopus balls, for those of you not paying attention that's 11 balls, minus the one I ate.

Jamie is half Japanese...so he was giving us his best Japanese tourist impression. Pretty good in my opinion!

I left the boys in the East Village and headed up to Madison Square Garden to meet sister for dinner. And then we went to Britney's Circus concert. We sat in a press box. Brit is back, but she doesn't dance as much as she used to. We had a great time!

Alyson escorted me to Grand Central Station and onto the bus Tuesday morning and I was on my way back to Dallas.

Kendall & Ellyn

After the wedding in Linville, I headed over to Charlotte to spend a few days with the McKinney Family. Kendall and I got to spend lots of time together! Allison took me on a tour of her office which included a wax figure of Dale Jr. We had a mini photo shoot with his wax likeness and then saw the real Dale Jr. drive up to the building and go inside as we were leaving.

Family dinner! I taught Kendall how to play I-spy.

Then we had our own photo shoot in order to get a good picture for Kendall to have in her room.

It was a nice visit. I miss my McKinney Family!

Rob & Cora's Wedding

Road Trip to NC a success! Lauren and I drove from Delaware to the mountains of Linville NC for Rob and Cora's wedding (friends from Hawaii). We made it to our motel, The Pineola Inn. After unpacking we decided that we should enjoy a refreshing adult beverage while waiting to get ready for the evenings festivities. We drove down the street to a gas station, in which they sold no such beverages. They kindly instructed us to drive back the direction we came from and that we could buy beer at the Pineola Inn. If you recall from earlier...that's where we were lodging. We traveled the half mile back to our inn and found what we were looking for. We enjoyed some tunes from our window and enjoyed the mountain air. We even discovered that the DJ for the wedding was staying at the same place, which turned out to be a good thing later that night!

All our Hawaii friends!

Laura, Cora, me, Lauren, Ben and Rob

If it hadn't been for Rob and his coral colored pants, we never would have become friends. We had a blast playing corn hole and dancing the night away at the rehearsal dinner. We ended up catching a ride home with the DJ! Here's a shout-out to Mr. C's Mobile DJ!

Saturday morning we headed to Grandfather Mountain. First stop was at The Split Rock.

Next stop was the swinging bridge!

I was expecting it to swing a lot, but it really didn't. Mildly disappointing, but the views were fabulous. This was the same place that Rob proposed to Cora.(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYwtbi9po0A)

After the bridge, we decided to go on a little hike. This is the sign we saw as we embarked down the trail! And later that day when we turned around to head back...we passed people that warned us they had heard a bear. I'm also pretty sure we heard baby kitten mountain lions squeaking in the bushes. Just a guess.

The best part about the trail we picked was that it had ropes and ladders. That's me headed up one of the steep sections on a rope pull.

We had to squeeze through two giant rocks to get to this ladder and then several more rope pulls at the top. At the top of this ladder Lauren made sure to mention we didn't have health insurance and that I should be careful.

The wedding cake!

The groom's cake!

The wedding was outside with a view of Grandfather Mountain in the background. The weather was perfect and scenery was gorgeous! Mr. & Mrs. Eidson

Lauren and I also become good buddies with the minister, Randy!

Paying the toll of passage with a kiss.

Welcome to the Navy Mrs. Eidson!

We had a yummy dinner and then danced the night away! I love me a Navy wedding (guess I need to find my own sailor!)!