To avoid the syndrome known as “oh crap I can’t remember what happened 6 days ago”, I decided to write down what happened each day at the end of each day, so at the end of the week I would have a very comprehensive list of things I had done. So without further ado, here’s how my week in Wisconsin was, August 31st to September 6th.
Monday, August 31st
Mal and I woke up around 10am, thankful that we didn’t have to set an alarm for the first time in a few days. Sleeping in was a good idea, and we were finally well-rested. After we got ready, we headed over to the brand new Sonic that opened up (it had only been open for one day). The midwest is new to Sonic, but apparently very, very eager to try it: it was so busy that people had to direct traffic to get us into the parking lot. They even tried to explain how to order (“you’re going to want to press that big red button, ya hey”), as if it wouldn’t be self-explanatory (that, and the fact we’ve had Sonic in the south for years).
Even so, we ventured through the bustling fast food joint and ordered up some food. Popcorn chicken for both Mal and myself, with ranch and honey mustard dipping sauces (I ate both of the sauces since Mal likes chicken plain… yeah, I know, gross, right?). Sonic is delicious no matter where you are, and here is no exception. I know they’re going to give Culver’s (located right across the street) a run for their money, but Culver’s welcomes them with open, sarcastic arms (Culver’s sign says “Welcome to the neighborhood, Sonic”).

After we finished eating we traveled over to Britt’s house, a friend of Mallory’s whom I had met for a few moments way back in June 2008. We spent some time talking to her and playing with her cat (subtitled by Britt, “the worst cat in the world”), and after an hour or so we headed back to Mallory’s house to meet her mom and boyfriend Rob for dinner at Waverly Beach.
Dinner was nachos and pizza with sausage, pepperoni and green peppers. We spent some time talking afterwards, but since it was getting cold (yes, even in the summer, and to make it worse I had only brought one pair of pants) we headed back to the house.
Once we got back to the house, Casey and Tara as well as Nicole and Patrick all wanted to go do something, so Casey suggested bowling. We had to stop by WalMart so I could buy some socks (hey, I live by the code of Rainbows, ok?), then we headed off to Sabre Lanes.

We bought three games and split it up men vs women. Our team consisted of Sally (myself), Peter (Patrick), and Cashew (Casey—though I’m starting to feel like I should just call him Cashew from now on). The girls used their regular names (how boring!). After the first game, I had beaten Mallory by 20 points (109 to 89), but games 2 and 3 didn’t bring in the same victory tunes. She beat me pretty badly, but hey, there’s no shame in losing to a girl, right? …right?
When we finished bowling, we said goodbye to our friends then headed back to Mallory’s house. We were both exhausted (it would be a few days before the effects of the car ride got out of our systems) so we headed to bed. Well, right after I set up the wireless router so we could use the internet. Then we used the internet and headed for bed.
Tuesday, September 1st
Today was the day we’d be heading to Wisconsin Rapids to spend a few days at Mallory’s father’s house. We woke up and were out of the house by 1pm, and headed to Mallory’s grandparents house first since it was on the way (Mallory hadn’t seen them in a while). We stopped and talked with them for about half an hour, then picked up some double chee at McDonald’s before heading off to Rapids. Somewhere in there we stopped at a game store and looked for SNES games, but there were no purchases.
When we got to Rapids, Mal had to stop by the UPS store to pick up a monitor she ordered for her computer. After that it was just a short drive over to her dad’s house where we unpacked our stuff. He wasn’t home from work yet, so we decided to use the computer for a while until dinner (we had dinner plans with some of Mallory’s old friends from school). However, since I had reformatted Mallory’s computer, she no longer had the WEP key, so we had to reset the router and set it all back up again. By the time we nearly had it working again, it was time to head over to Steven’s Point and meet some folks to eat some food.

Stephanie still lives in Pray-Sims (the dorm her and Mallory shared when Mal still went to school there), so we drove over and picked her up. She was sporting Fangamer swag on Fangamer swag, the latest in geek style this season. We went to the top of the hill to Hilltop Pub (what a literal name!) and met up with Cassie, Morgan, Liz and Lindsey. We sat outside (and got annoyed to death by the lakeflies), but had a good meal. I got a chicken tenders basket (oddly enough, with ranch and honey mustard, just like the day before) since I had been craving it. It was nice to meet Mal’s friends, especially since I had heard so much about them for over a year now. We took a picture together then we parted ways (well, mostly—we took Liz back to her house, then we drove over to Cassie’s house to meet up with her and Steph).
Cassie insisted on showing us her dog, Mini Lassie, er, uh, Romeo, then we headed over to see the lot where her new house was being built. Back at her house, we all sat around and talked about how technology sucked and disputed over prices in a Best Buy sales circular. We agreed that we should meet for lunch the next day at the KFC buffet (much to Steph’s dismay, who stated that she hated fried chicken).
We took Steph back to her dorm, and also went inside to look at it. It’s quite different from SCAD—Stevens Point looks more like a prison than a dorm, really. We met her quiet Chinese roommate, Yi, then said our goodbyes as we went back to the car. While we were on our way back to Rapids, I called my parents to say hello, but also to tell my father happy birthday (52!). 20 minutes or so later, we were back in Rapids at the house. Mal’s dad was already in bed, so we quietly made our way inside, where Mal proceeded to rip open her monitor like it was Christmas morning. After we got it all hooked up, she just stared at it, wide-eyed.
“It’s… so big!”
I mean, I guess so. 20” is big when you’ve been stuck with the Macbook’s incredibly tiny 13” screen, so I can see why she’s excited. She played around with that for a bit, then we watched a little Family Guy on television before heading to bed.
Wednesday, September 2nd
Woke up at 10am and promptly got out the Macbooks. After we goofed around for 2 hours or so on the internet, we got ready, ate some pop-tarts (well, Great Value brand toaster pastries, for what it’s worth), then headed off to Stevens Point again. As planned, we were to meet with Cassie and Steph again, this time for lunch at the KFC buffet. We went to Cassie’s house then carpooled over to the KFC in Plover (Mal and myself took a car separate from theirs since we would head back to Rapids afterwards).

I’ve eaten plenty of KFC in my day, but never had I had the chance to try the wonder that is KFC buffet. Try to wrap your mind around this concept: $7.99. All-you-can-eat. Full menu (like, near everything—original, crispy, grilled, honey bbq wings, salad bar, mashed potatoes, corn, biscuits), and even the drink was included. They also had vanilla pudding and an ice cream machine (with toppings!!). Honest to God, I don’t think I’ve ever wanted a business put into my hometown as badly as this before. Getting to pig out on the Colonel’s secret recipe before diving into applesauce and pudding (and, of course, ice cream) was the highlight of my day (well, in terms of eating). I can only hope we get these in South Carolina soon (or in Savannah), because it’s a crazy good deal. Steve Campos (Plo) even called Steph during the meal, so I was able to talk to him for a minute or so (despite the volume being incredibly low on the phone, or so it seemed).
Anyway, after my south had shown all over the place, we drove over to a petstore across the street looking for some sort of dog treats that Cassie wanted for her dog, Mini Lassie Romeo. They didn’t have them there, but they had some really cute puppies that proceeded to lick the four of us near to death. They were tiny and cute, but the huge signs that said “DON’T PICK UP THE PUPPIES” as well as the Wisconsin hick at the counter convinced us to follow protocol. We pet their heads and they wagged their tails, but we were off to find the pet treats again.
This time we headed to a Petco, which I’m assuming had what we needed (though we were there for a long time so I’m not really sure if Cassie ever got what she wanted). We looked at the animals (including two cats, Daisey and Vee Vee, priced $75 and $5 respecitively—putting a price on love is wrong!), then went next door to the Best Buy so Steph could get the new Professor Layton game. We also attempted to play Rock Band with no sound—we passed, but we have no idea what song we were playing. Kinda takes the fun out of the game, methinks.
When we left Best Buy we knew it was goodbye, so we said our farewells to Cassie and Steph, and gave the expected hugs. Steph’s flying out to Seattle for PAX (I wish we were going!), so we wished her happy trails (clouds?) and a safe trip. I’m sure we’ll see each other again sometime, just give it a few months.

Mal and I headed back to her dad’s house in Rapids where we’d finally get to see him (you have to remember that even though we’d been there for a day now, we hadn’t seen him yet). He greeted us and we sat and talked for a while, and showed him some pictures from the long ride up. One of his friends was having a cookout that night (apparently we were the only guests), so we waited around a bit then headed over there—but not before taking a ride in her dad’s Corvette. I had never been in a Corvette before (let alone one that had upgraded everything), and I have to say—that kitten can purr. I mean, purr. Dang. Mallory had described it to me as being on a rollercoaster. She was right. Anyway, after that, we headed over to the coworker’s house.
The guy (I believe Troy was his name) had a big house, and a fire going in the backyard (they actually had a firepit built right into the deck—awesome). He invited us down into his basement for a drink. Like a typical Wisconsinite, his fridge was loaded with this and that beer, and when he asked Mal and I what we wanted, he was sort of stunned when we repied “Coke”. He actually asked “…seriously?” We spent the rest of the night eating cheeseburgers and brats, and watching a TV while sitting around the fire. It was really nice, but I knew we’d smell like smoke later. We checked it when we got back to the house—yep. Especially our hair: it was like we had lit it on fire.
We changed clothes then snuggled on the couch to watch Donnie Darko, a movie I had seen at school with the guys, but had wanted Mal to watch for quite some time. As I suspected, she really enjoyed it, but had to take a trip over to the Wikipedia page before she understood it all. We watched an episode of Good Eats and Family Guy before heading to bed.
Thursday, September 3rd
Woke up really late, watched TV, took showers, and basically laid around not doing much anything today. When Mallory’s dad got home (which was around 5:30pm), we went to look at some houses in the Stevens Point area, and then headed over to The Bamboo House for dinner.
Our waitress was very obviously new, as she frequently did many wrong things (though it could be that we notice things more easily now that we’ve walked a mile in a server’s shoes). The food was good, however, and Mallory, her father and myself enjoyed a delicious dinner of hibachi shrimp, teriyaki shrimp and teriyaki chicken, respectively. After dinner we headed back home, then Mallory and myself went to pick up some movies at Family Video.
We knew we wanted to rent Twilight (not because we actually had any desire to see it, but because Chaz had given us the RiffTrax back in Indiana and we were excited to listen to others make fun of it), but we had no idea what else to rent. I had recalled reading on RottenTomatoes that I Love You, Man had scored at least in the 80%, so we went with that. Afterwards, we headed over to Copp’s to pick up some snacks (and lemonade!).
We got back home and put in I Love You, Man (Twilight needed to be ripped then aligned with the RiffTrax in an video editor). The reviews on RT said that it was humorous throughout, but never really gut-bustingly funny. After watching the movie, I would say that that was correct. It was okay, but we found ourselves chuckling instead of laughing.
Once the movie finished, we watched a little King of the Hill (which Mallory has finally come to love) while waiting for some laundry to finish.
Friday, September 4th

Woke up this morning around 10:30 or so. Mallory’s dad was off today, so he was working around the house. We got ready and packed most of our stuff, then went over to WalMart so Mal could do some school supply shopping. After we spent a good deal of time in there (and debated on whether we should each purchase PC copies of Left 4 Dead), we went to Family Video to return the movies and stopped to get gas. On the way back to the house, we stopped by Trade-A-Game and looked through their selection. They had a good selection, but the prices were too high (3 copies of SMRPG, but $75 each? no thanks). We didn’t find anything of interest so we headed back.
After quite a bit of time we finally finished packing and loaded up the truck. We said our goodbyes to Mallory’s father and headed off to Eau Claire (about an hour and a half drive). Our plan was to stay with Hayley, but she was in class when we were scheduled to get there, so we wasted some time in the ShopKo (think of a store that’s less than Target but classier than K-Mart). Finally we could go meet Hayley and Mark.
We took our stuff up to Hayley’s dorm, attempted to get the Twilight Riff working, got angry, tried some other stuff, then eventually settled on something that would definitely work, all before heading out to get some food. Across the street lay in wait Mancino’s, a place to get “grinders and pizza”. Option 1, sir.

Good food, normal meal, but I do feel like pointing out a ridiculous story that may or may not make me look like an idiot/crazy. When I got up to the counter and ordered, the cashier told me the total was $11.15, to which I handed her a 10 dollar bill and a 1 dollar bill. Now, in my mind I was actually expecting change back—85 cents, you see. That’s why it struck me kind of odd when she asked if I had any cents, to which I replied “nope, no cents at all.” She looked at me funny and said “uh.. okay” and started looking at the “take a penny leave a penny” station for some change. She gathered 7 cents there before looking over at the other cash register. Mallory walked over in the meantime and asked if I needed change. I was like “sure, that’s fine”, thinking that I could get my dollar back. Mal handed her a quarter and the woman gave me back a dime…. oops. That’s when I realized I was an idiot and meant to give the woman twelve dollars instead of eleven. Man, I felt dumb. Anyway…
After the meal we went back over to ShopKo to get socks or something. I don’t remember, I was very full from my huge sandwich so the world was a blur. Then we headed back to Hayley’s dorm to watch the RiffTrax of Twilight (which was hilarious, by the way). We finished the night by buying Left 4 Dead on Steam and seeing how it performed on a 2007 Macbook in Boot Camp (answer: very, very poorly).
Saturday, September 5th
Originally we were going to wake up around 8am, but I talked Mal into letting us sleep until 10am. As such, we woke up around 10am. I put on some pants then realized the horror: I had to get ready in a real college bathroom. SCAD offers each room their own private bathroom, but this was real college. Bold font.
Getting ready wasn’t as bad as I would’ve thought it (but it was still bad and I have a deeper appreciation for having my own bathroom, even if it is with Alex ‘Hairy McGee’ Forsythe), and I was ready for the day afterward. Hayley took us around her campus for a few minutes before we went back to the room to gather our belongings. We loaded the truck again and were off.
My stomach was growling seconds after we left (seconds before, too), so we stopped at Sonic to get a sausage, egg and cheese croisSONIC (no, that’s seriously how they spell it) with a strawberry slush (pretty much the only drink I ever order at Sonic). Mallory didn’t want anything (which made me feel fat), but we ventured onward anyway (despite the fact we’d eat only a few hours later at the mall of America).

Before we arrived at Hayley’s house, Mallory drove us over to Menomonie, where she goes to school (at Stout). We saw her dorm, looked at the town, then headed over to The Devil’s Punchbowl, a really cool looking natural occurrence from nature. That may or may not have made any sense, so just check out the pictures of it and hopefully that’ll explain something. During our adventure there, I slipped and got mud all over my sandal. I wasn’t too happy about that.
45 minutes or so later, we arrived at Hayley’s house to drop our stuff off. Her mom greeted us, gave us a coke, then went back to yard work (I guess you could call it that—there was recently a tornado that went through and there were like 50 trees down and they had like 10 people that day helping them cut the trees into smaller pieces and also burn them and stuff). We got back on the road, this time heading toward the Mall of America (or as I thought of it before today, the mall with a roller coaster in it for no reason).

The mall… was large. Very large. Larger than anything I had ever seen. It took like 40 minutes to walk around a single floor, and there were 3 floors. That’s not even counting actually walking into places and checking them out, either (there might be some slight exaggeration here, but it’s for dramatic effect, and thus, necessary). Despite looking for hours, we only ate a small amount of food in the food court as well as buy a single gift for my mom. I should also mention that we found a vendor trying to sell EarthBound for $129.99. I told him he was out of his mind (recent completed eBay listings show the current price is between $70 and $90). The guy was obviously insane, though: he was trying to sell a complete FF7 Greatest Hits for $99.99—what? eBay listings for that are anywhere between $25 and $40, and I bought mine new a few years ago at a KB toy store for only $15.

When we left the mall it was about 5:30pm and we headed over to Karley’s dorms in Minneapolis. We checked out the inside of her dorms then took her car over to a local sushi place called Kukigawa. At first I was worried because the sushi seemed so expensive ($4.50+ for a single piece), but then I realized the price was for two pieces of nigiri and suddenly the world was okay again. We had our fill (and tried shabu shabu) and headed out. We stopped by Karley’s dorm again to say our goodbyes, then headed back to Hayley’s house.
It was about 9:30pm or so when we got back to her house. Hayley wasn’t home (and wouldn’t be for a while), but her parents welcomed us (back) with open arms and let us use the hot tub. We soaked in there for a half hour or so then got in the showers (well, not until Hayley’s dad showed me his awesome Resident Evil 4 skills—he’s apparently beaten the one-player game multiple times). Once we finished, we caught the last half hour of Coraline on Pay-Per-View then waited up for Hayley to arrive. She didn’t arrive until midnight or so, and things after that are hazy. I recall falling asleep on the blow-up mattress.
Sunday, September 6th
Woke up at 8:30am (the alarm was set for 9, but I laid awake for 30 minutes trying to swat a fly that wouldn’t leave my poor ears alone). Eventually I woke up and got ready, then Hayley made some pancakes (I should clarify that ‘some’ was equal to about 20 or so). Mal and myself managed to handle 5 each before calling it quits. Hayley’s parents arrived back home before we left and saw us off. Hayley, Mal and myself made our way to the airport.
It’s a fairly long drive (45 minutes or so), but it feels so, so, so much longer when you know that this is the end. The end of the summer, the end of a long period of time before you get to hug that person again.

When we got to the airport I said goodbye to Hayley (who waited in the truck) while Mallory and myself went into the terminal. I got my bag all checked in, went to the bathroom, then we sat down on the benches—a position we’ve been in way too many times before. Sometimes I’m leaving, sometimes she’s leaving, but it’s always hard. We sat there for a good 20 minutes or so; Mal just about soaked the shirt I was wearing with her tears. Eventually I made my way toward the gate and she waited in line with me. As we neared the end of the line, we knew we had to stop, so we slowly let go of each other and said our last goodbyes. And then… she was gone.
There’s always a sigh after she leaves. A sigh of relief, in a sense—the event that I had been most dreading for the past 3 months is now over. No more Mal everyday. Have to go back to Skype every night. It’s a weird feeling, really. We haven’t had to talk to each other on AIM in a long time.
I made my way through the concourse and found my gate. Ate a chocolate chip cookie before I boarded. It was a pretty long flight to Charlotte (2 hours or so), so I decided to finally try out Final Fantasy 3 for DS. When I landed it was about 5pm EST.
I got a slice of pizza and talked myself into getting a Cinnabon (always a good decision). I took my time eating and eventually was able to board the plane. The time was 6:20pm, but after that I don’t remember anything. The next sound I heard was the plane coming down, to which I shakingly woke up. 7pm and we were back in Myrtle Beach.
And well… that’s it! That’s the story of my week in Wisconsin. Third time I’ve been there, even though I swear it feels like more. I unfortunately had to leave my girl there, but I know I’ll see her again in December. School starts a week from now, and I’m heading back to Savannah on Friday. 10 weeks of school… time to get back to the grind.
Oh, and as always, if you want to see the nearly 300 photos I took during the week, you’re more than welcome to by clicking here.