6 hours later...

Christian and I made a long weekend for ourselves and headed up to Binghamton, NY on Friday to visit Albert. The distance/driving time is roughly equivalent as the distance from LA to Davis + 100 miles. It took about 6 hours to travel 300 or so miles, but that's including the mountain-y travels through Pennsylvania. It's a nice, scenic drive off I-81. I really like driving through PA in the wintertime, because the interstates are formed after the Dept. of Transportation blasts off sides of hills to make room for the highway, leaving these rock faces exposed. In the wintertime, these faces are covered in ice and look really pretty. In the summer, it's just brown but cool to see the different rock layers.

Anywho, we had a small tour of the finger lake wineries up near Ithaca. It was a lot of fun, and I bought 3 bottles, my favorite from each of the wineries we visited. Ithaca is a really quaint town, and Cornell must have an exquisite view of the lake from its campus. It looked really pretty from the road, nestled up in the hills. The lake we paralleled looked very serene as well. Must've been cold to play in, though, seeing how the finger lakes formed from glacial movement =/ After enjoying ourselves a little too much with the wine, we headed back to Albert's and saw hot air balloons go by from the windows. One was traveling a little too low, and the basket brushed by some nearby trees. We also watched Finding Neverland. Very touching movie. Today we went to Spiedie Fest, which is a small festival/bazaar/food outing featuring Spiedies, marinated cuts of meat served different ways. Very tasty. We would've stayed for the afternoon concerts, featuring Aaron Carter and JOrdan Knight (oooooh!!!!!), but we had to get on the road, sadly. (Please know now that I was being sarcastic for that last sentence.) Overall, a very fun and enjoyable weekend. My parents are coming next weekend. And meeting Christian's parents! (ooooh!)