This Weekend

This weekend was awesome. The only bad part... I am a total wreck recently. I am messed up emotionally an physically.

Why? Well, there are many reasons. First, I recently went through something... big, that messed me up pretty bad emotionally. I'm still trying to find ways to get over it. What happened? Well that will be saved for another post, and even then I will likely not reveal all of the details. Right now I'm not really ready to talk about it though. There are 2 people other than me who know any details, 1 is kinda the cause of the whole thing, the other is one of my best friends over the past 15 years (give or take.)

Also, my meds are playing games with me. As you may know, I'm in the beginnings of switching medicine again. I'm still feeling the side effect of the keppra (lots of emotional side-effects) and I'm starting to get side effects from the Lamictal as well.

The Lamictal is causing me to be tired, which is expected, and it is also causing some dizziness. Usually for a couple hours after I take it, and right now it's only when I'm standing. If I'm sitting or laying down I'm fine. The label says "may cause dizziness", but so does every other medicine I've ever been on for my seizures, and none of them have ever actually caused me to be dizzy.

I talked to someone I know who is on it, and she said that she experienced the same thing while coming onto it, but that it goes away after your body gets used to it. But I can expect to feel this at each increase in dosage, which means I'll be dealing with it on and off for the next 6+ weeks, depending on how quickly my body adjusts.


So onto the good stuff.

My dad came in from Florida on Wednesday and is staying with my brother in Buffalo, then going back tomorrow (Monday.)

Saturday I woke up early to get some work done on my car. My tires are no longer slowly losing air, and it rides a lot smoother thanks to a fuel injection system cleaning. Then I drove into Buffalo to my brother's house, where I met up with him and my dad. From there, we were deciding what to do. We had a list of things that we wanted to do throughout the weekend, and were planning an itinerary of sorts.

We started by going to Niagara falls. We've all been there many times before (we = me, my brother, and my dad) but none of us had ever done the cave of the winds, and we wanted to do some other things too.. So we got a "Discovery Pass" which included the cave of the winds, the maid of the mist, a movie about the history of the falls, the aquarium, and a discovery center. We didn't get to the aquarium and the discovery center, but the pass STILL saved us money on the things that we did do.

The cave of the winds is the most amazing thing that I have ever experienced. You walk on a wooden deck of sorts and actually approach the falls on foot. I took some pictures, but as I got closer I had to put my phone away in fear of water damage. On the "hurricane deck", the water is so powerful that it actually hurt when it hit me. for about half of the walk I had to squint my eyes to see anything, because there was so much water coming at me and going into my eyes. So pro tip to anyone who wants to do that... buy some swimming goggles. Those small ones that cover only your eyes, not a mask, and a water proof camera.

The maid of the mist we had all done before, but it's still cool. You go onto a boat and approach the horseshoe falls. You get pretty close, and are basically surrounded by water on 3 sides of the boat at the furthest point. There is an upper deck and a lower deck on the boat. If you go on the upper deck you will get soaked. On the lower deck, in the front you still get soaked because it juts out a little farther than the upper deck. But the rest of the lower deck you can stay fairly dry.

For both of these (maid of the mist and cave of the winds) you receive a poncho to wear, which actually keeps you pretty dry underneath, as long as you actually wear it. Some people there took them off, or never put them on, and they got pretty wet.

After the falls we went back to my brother's place and built a fire in his fire pit. It was fairly comical because it took us forever to get it going, and my dad and my brother's roommate were basically commentary for the whole situation. I burned the tip of one of my fingers pretty badly... I grabbed a log to move it and touched the wrong spot. Luckily I put some aloe on it, and it healed up pretty nice. There's a small blister, but it doesn't even hurt anymore.

We went to make s'mores, but his girlfriend had filled the Graham cracker box with left over marshmallows and other goodies, so we had s'mores with only marshmallows and chocolate.

Today (Sunday) we went to the piece arrow museum. Pierce Arrow is a car company that no longer exists that was founded in Buffalo.They had some cool stuff in there too, I took some pics. Then we went to the Irish festival. We ate corned beef sandwiches and salt potatoes, and listened to some good music.

Finally, we went to see where my brother's new brewery is going to be. The company is in its infancy, so there isn't much in there, and the building is going to need some work, but it's a nice place.




Then after all the awesome things that happened this weekend, back comes the "something... big" with an in your face reminder straight from the source. Thanks. That's what I needed to end my weekend.

Oh well, it happens. It was still an awesome weekend.