The weekend back was great. Make that an all-capital-letters GREAT! I have been telling everyone that I felt like Drew Barrymore in her movie with Adam Sandler, 50 First Dates, in which she has that short-term memory loss thing and goes to bed every night to sleep, wakes up the next morning, and forgets everything that just happened the day before. Except for me, it felt like I went to sleep in Ohio, woke up the next morning in Wisconsin, and forgot that everything in Ohio ever even happened. I was just back in Wisconsin and it felt like I never even left. The places, the highway routes, the people's faces - it all felt welcoming with big open arms as if to say, "Hi Ashley!! We've all been here waiting for you to get back, not moving a muscle until we saw you coming our way again." (Of course, that's not really what happened - Wisconsin surely has gone about its daily life after I left. But it's nice to know it's still alive and well. The sun still shines there and the people are still friendly and down-to-earth.)
To finally have that sense of familiarity, that sense of normalcy, back, was so soothing. I ate it up as much as I thought I would.
I started the visit with going back to campus and peeking in by various floors in my UWM engineering building, saying hi to my old bosses, deans, and academic advisors. From there I hung out with Zach and his parents at their house, and had a Friday-night Wii party with our bestest buds Sonja, Craig and our mutual friends.
Saturday brought a visit from my family, who drove down from Green Bay to meet me after all of the traveling I went through to get to Wisconsin, too. We checked out the Harley-Davidson museum in downtown Milwaukee, which was a lot of fun and held several very interesting factoids & memorabilia to study up on. It was our first time checking it out and we had a fun time learning but also goofing around like we usually do. :) READ: Chris, Trusko, and Grandpa: each of you three would really enjoy this museum! I was walking around it the whole time saying out loud (if only to myself in case no one else with me was hearing me, ha ha), "Scott would REALLY like this place!" or "Ha ha, Chris would find that plaque interesting to read." Grandpa would be fascinated, absolutely fascinated, with reading up on all the history there.
The H-D museum near downtown Milwaukee.My last day in WI.....today....went by quickly. The unfortunate thing is that by Saturday night, I was already internally getting upset to my stomach about having to say good bye all over again. I barely had an appetite to finish off my burger for supper. :( It's just hard to see all the folks I care about here in Wisconsin, and realize that I voluntarily left them to go after my love of cars.
Except it was very hard to leave, the hardest to leave Zach. I know I took this job in Ohio because it is working with cars and that is only what I want to do, but I am frustrated with myself for being so far away from him and doing this "long-distance" thing to him and I. I care so much about him and I picture having a life with him. He makes me very happy and being with him has brought the old, good healthy Ashley back. :)
But yet, just when I started to get depressed and upset for leaving, I was sitting near a television and this commercial for Honda Civics came on:
The timing of it all spoke to me, and I pushed the depression away. :) Really, I've come too far to turn around.
And thus, I report to work tomorrow. Vacation is over....... :)
More to come on this blog - I realize there's been a lapse in posts on here, and this blog hasn't done a very good job of holding your hand through my new life out here. I've been surprisingly busy, surprisingly tired.....and STILL wrapping up a few things from the whole relocation process. But I've been keeping a mental shopping list of topics to post about, everything from who this Zach fellow is (hehehe), the stereo he helped me install in the baby Beetle, what sort of venues I've checked out around town on the weekends, and some more character profiling from folks at work. It's coming, just cut me some slack and let the dust settle on my to-do list that has been FINALLY, ever-so-noticeably, shrinking since January 22nd when I first moved out here. :)
Happy Easter, everyone!
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