Training Camp Update

Things have been going well here in Rochester. I've been really busy. The first two days we had two full practices. Things have settled down a little since then, but there isn't a lot of down time.

I've been working with the running backs. My coach's name is Eric Studesville.

He's a really relaxed and easy-going. To read his bio, click ... here.

When he wears his sun glasses, he looks like Lawrence Fishburne from the Matrix.

His wife is also the director of my graduate program at Canisius. To read her bio click ... here.

I've been too busy working to take any pictures, but Warren found this picture on the Internet.

Yeah. I'm pretty cool.

Training Camp: Day 1

Today we moved up to Rochester for training camp. The Bills hold their training camp at St. John Fisher College. It's a small private school with really nice facilities.

Last week we spent most of our time moving our department from Orchard Park to Rochester, but today we moved in for good... well, for a month. I'll be living here until August 20th. That means I'll be away from Brianna and the dogs. It's going to be hard, but Brianna and I have learned how to make a long distance relationship work.

Here is the welcoming card that we got when we arrived:

This is the view from my dorm room. You can see the practice field and the sports facility to the left.

Here's a closer view of the Verizon Wireless tent and school sign:

And here's a closer look at the practice fields:

Below are some pictures of my dorm room. This will be my home for the next month. I feel like I'm a freshman in college again.

There were two beds in my room, so I took the mattress off of one and stood the rest of it on end to give myself more room. I've been using it to hang things on:

This was the picture on the front page of the Rochester newspaper today. It shows Woody, one of the full time staff members, working next to one of the lockers in the St. John Fisher locker room. This is where we spent a majority of last week:

Practices start tomorrow. We've got two of them. I'll be working with the running backs again. It should be fun, but a lot of work. This last picture is of the sun going down over the campus of St. John Fisher.

Our Neighbors

These are the baby birds on our porch. They have gotten really big and got some feathers. There are three of them and they don't fit very well. One is looking at me. And the one in the front has it's eyes closed tight.



And here is the momma bird keeping watch. She's a good mom. And we try to keep out of her way so that she can feed them and so that she doesn't worry.

One week in Buffalo

We've officially been in New York for a week now!

Brianna has started working at Mercy Hospital. She's working on a Telemetry unit in a travel assignment. This will help keep her busy while I am away at camp. It's different from the unit she worked on in Utah, but she's adjusting well. Monday she'll start orientation to work at her permanent job at Erie County Medical Center in the trauma ICU.

A couple of days ago I started with the Bills. We've been packing all of the teams stuff and transporting it out to Rochester for training camp next week. Starting Thursday of next week I'll be in Rochester for about a month. To look at the bills training camp schedule and information you can click:

http://www.buffalobills.com/team/TrainingCamp.jsp

The other day we drove into downtown Buffalo to check everything out. Here are some of the pictures we took:

This is where Brianna is working now, Mercy Hospital. It looks really old on the outside, but the inside really isn't that bad.



Here's the parking structure:



This is the Erie County Medical Center. Brianna will be starting here Monday. I think she's excited to be able to do trauma again. And definitely excited to be in the ICU and have only 2 patients.










This is one of the buildings at Canisius College where I will be going to school at the end of August.



Here I am looking at a map of campus to try to find my way around.



Here is Canisius's campus. It's pretty cool. It's really open and has lots of old buildings and lots of catholic statues.



Below are a couple of pictures of the University at Buffalo. This is where Brianna will go to start her graduate degree.








On the porch of the apartment we have a nest with some baby robins. We think that they just hatched the day we got here. On the first post we did from New York they looked like little slime covered membranes. They're still pretty ugly, but at least they have feathers now. This one was watching us as we moved in our stuff.




This is the water tower of the town we live in, Orchard Park. It's a really small town just south of Buffalo. We really like it here. There are so many trees and lakes that it seems like you're living in a park.



This is where we are living right now. We like the place a lot, but we'll probably be moving into a town house in the same complex at the beginning of September, so for right now all of our stuff is still in boxes.



Mia has learned to be an inside dog. She can even play fetch now.



Brady's too sophisticated for fetch. He enjoys reading poetry.




Hopefully we'll be able to post more often now that our Internet is up and running. I'll probably be taking the computer with me to Rochester so I can blog from training camp.

We miss all of our friends and family, but we're doing really well and getting adjusted to the New York life style.

Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York...marked multiple times.

Today we drove from Cleveland, Ohio through Pennsylvania, and arrived in Orchard Park, New York. It was only a three hour drive, but Brady still had a hard time handling it. He was fine the first two days, but after that, he just couldn't cope. Poor kiddo. He's got some kind of anxiety.

As we were driving, I made more phone calls. It turns out that we wouldn't be able to have our furniture and things delivered until Monday. Also, we wouldn't be able to have internet access until Monday, either. So we would be camping out for the weekend.

We brought sleeping bags and blankets with us. But we had to go to Wal-Mart to get towels and pillows. Then we opened an account with Blockbuster and rented movies to keep us occupied for the weekend.

After that, we walked around our new place. We just love it! It is so small town and cute. I don't know how it has managed to stay so small town. It has the cutest old buildings and houses. It is really cozy.

The best part is that we live right in the middle of a park and in front of a lake. It is awesome!! I just love walking around the lake. There are ducks and geese and rabbits and squirrels. The lake is in front of us. The park with grass and baseball fields is to the right of us. A golf course is to the left of us. And a forrest is behind us. It is awesome! I did good!! It is so cute and quaint. The only bad part is that it is so small town that everything closes really early.

We went for a long walk and just fell in love with the neighborhood. If a house is for sale here, I think we might buy it because we like it here so much. It is just our style. And it makes living in an apartment not so bad. It is strange to live near such a big city but have such nice surroundings. It is like an oasis. I can't get over it.

And everyone in this city has dogs. Seriously. Which is nice because they don't look down their nose at you for having dogs. We have quickly become the community favorite with our beautiful pups. Within the first hour, we had about twenty people just come and talk to us and dote on our dogs.

We found some nice places to eat, and then watched movies on the lap top.

This is the apartment complex that we live in.



This is the Pennsylvania border in drive-by mode. We just wanted to hurry and get there. I did a crappy, crappy job at getting a picture.



Here is the New York state border.



There are a lot of trees in this area. It reminds me of pictures I've seen of the Sacred Grove. Just lots of green, deciduous trees and bushes and vines. This is in drive by, so it doesn't do it justice.



This is Brady's ear our the window in the rear view mirror. When we needed to talk on the phone, we needed the window up higher so we could hear. But Brady needed the window at least cracked. Every single time, just his ear would be out the window and it would flap in the wind. It was awesome!!



This is our exit.



This is a nest on our porch with fresh baby birds.



This is me and the pups outside our apartment. The dogs were really excited to explore. You can see the porch in the background. They are pretty nice. They are a little bit older, like late 70's or early 80's. The basement has wood paneling. It's great! We want to get a beaded doorway for it.



This is Spence by the lake in front of our house. Isn't it pretty?!



This is part of the park. We thought it was cool.



Here I am with the doggies by the lake.



This is the park by the lake again. People are always fishing here. It's like a daily activity. How neat is that?!



Here's the dogs chillin' in the humidity after a long walk.



We are really excited to start our new life here. And we are grateful that the place that I chose has turned out so nice. I did a good job. We could have ended up in the ghetto of south Buffalo. Thank goodness I did my homework.


Best
Bri: The relief of seeing where we were going to live and being thrilled about it. It's pretty perfect for us.
Spence: Finally getting to our destination and knowing that the drive was over.
Mia: Getting to sleep with mom and dad because they didn't have a real bed. So they slept on the floor with us. I love that!
Brady: The long walk rocked!

Worst
Bri: Not having our stuff. Actually, not having internet was even worse. We couldn't mapquest things or find stores or restaurants. I also couldn't update the blog. Our society has changed so much. No one can function without a cell phone or the internet. It's crazy.
Spence: Sleeping or rather not sleeping on the floor.
Mia: Mom was worried because I hadn't pooped in over four days. So when we got here, she bought an enema. Yeah...mom made me poop everything that I had been holding in.
Brady: Mom calling me a freak of nature. Ouch mom. Very ouch.

Favorite part about Buffalo so far
Bri: I love that we live in a park. I knew that was the name of the city, but I didn't know that it was actually a park! It is so cute and a small, New England town. I'm glad that I won't be scared for my life while Spencer is away at camp.
Spence: How green it is. I love the scenery. We live in a small town, and I like the feel of it.
Mia: I like all of the little animals to hunt. I'm gonna get that squirrel...
Brady: All of the trees to pee on. I have a lot of work to do.

When did it hit you that we moved
Bri: As we were driving in New York, almost to Orchard Park. I just all of a sudden looked over at Spencer and thought "whoa."
Spence: After we got here and went grocery shopping for the first time. We drove around the town and I kept saying "Where are we?" It just suddenly hit me. None of the stores or brands were familiar. Topps? What's that?
Mia: What does that mean? Moved?
Brady: What?! We moved?! I thought we were just on a torture trip!

Just Ohio

We were up late last night and with traveling east we keep losing hours of time...so we got a late start again this morning. We finally left Sandusky and made our way across Ohio. While we drove I had to make some more phone calls. I found out that our apartment got changed. It's actually better because now instead of switching into three different apartments...we only have to switch between two. The crappy part is that the apartment wouldn't be ready today. We had planned to go to Buffalo today and start moving in. We also found out that the truck couldn't be delivered today. This meant that we had to stay in a hotel tonight. So instead of staying in a hotel in Buffalo, we decided to stay in Cleveland. The thing about it was that we were driving through Cleveland at the time. So we very suddenly decided to stay there and go to the Indian's game that night.

I told Spencer to hurry and pull off of the freeway. We pulled into the post office parking lot and made some phone calls. I called my sister and had her look up hotels in Cleveland that accepted dogs. She found a couple (thanks Kar, you are a life-saver) and I made some phone calls. We found a place in a good neighborhood at a good price pretty close to the stadium. We drove there and checked in. Then I took my tests for work and we rested a little bit.

Then we went to Progressive Field in downtown Cleveland for the Indian's vs. Tampa Bay Rays baseball game. We thought that it would be a blowout game in favor of the Ray's because they have the best record league. The Indians have had a ten game losing streak and one of the worst records in the league. But we were pleasantly surprised...

We got awesome seats for just $10 each! We got seats facing east so the sun wasn't in our eyes and we could sit in the shade. We sat next to an older gentleman who was really nice and a big fan. We enjoyed talking to him the whole game. What a nice man! The weather was perfect. It wasn't humid or hot. It was just right the whole game. The atmosphere was more chill than in Chicago, but there was still good attendance.

The Ray's started out making two runs with a home run, but then the Indians came back in the 5th inning with a few home runs. It was really exciting. They made a few more home runs and other runs in the 6th and 8th innings. The man that we were sitting with was convinced that we were good luck. It may be true because every game that we have gone to, the home team has won. He said that Cleveland should hire us as good luck charms. We thought that was a good idea, too.

During the game a sketchy, drunk guy came up and sat close to us on the row behind us. He was a really shadey guy and he was very, very drunk. He obviously didn't have tickets to sit there because he wasn't there the whole game. he kept trying to talk to Spencer. We both were worried that he was going to ask for money or else try to steal his wallet. He talked about how he has been in jail multiple times and he stunk really bad. He was annoying and asked Spencer to introduce me to him. It made us uncomfortable. Then he started swearing a lot. He kept trying to talk to us, and we kept ignoring him. Spencer left for a minute and while he was gone the sketchy guy started to freak me out. Then he tried to come really close to me and spilt his beer all over Spencer's seat. That was the last straw. I went and found security and asked him to check the guy's ticket or something because he was bothering us. He asked the guy for his ticket, and he didn't even have a ticket. So he asked the guy to move somewhere else. We were a little bit worried that he would freak out, but it was okay.

We enjoyed the game immensely. We were worried about traffic after the game, but it was set up really well, so that traffic wasn't too bad. We drove back to the hotel and took the dogs for a walk. Then we got some Denny's and went to sleep. One more day, just three hours left in our journey. Oh yeah, and unpacking...


This is a picture of Cleveland.



Here is another picture of Cleveland skyline.



This is Progressive Stadium.




This is Progressive Field.



Here we are outside the stadium, as is the tradition.



Here is the field.



And the logo.



Here we are. The nice man sitting next to us offered to take this picture.



Here is the scoreboard. It isn't like Wrigley Field at all. It is very modern and electric. But we liked how the field was set up and how downtown Cleveland was behind the scoreboard. We also liked the celebration fireworks after homeruns.



This is the scoreboard saying who is playing.



This is the board at the end of the game. You can see the runs in the innings and there is also a list of everyone who made home runs.



Here we are after the game. The security guard who helped us offered to take a picture, and we accepted.



It was a great game and a great day. I'm not really looking forward to all the stuff we are going to have to work on. It was fun to be so spontaneous and it was nice to have another stadium checked off of our list. Thanks again Kar for helping us out.


Day 5: Ohio

Best
Bri: Being able to have one more fun vacation-like day, and the baseball game.
Moose: The Cleveland Indians baseball game. It was perfect. It was exciting, there were lots of home runs, great weather....perfect.
Brady: Only driving for 40 minutes.
Mia:

Worst:
Bri: Having everything suddenly change, i.e. the apartment, our address, our plans, etc.
Moose: Trying to find helmet ice cream. I walked all around the stadium and finally found the ONE place that they were selling it. Hooray for my Indians helmet!
Brady: Being drugged and left behind...again!
Mia: Having mom yell at me for not going potty when she wanted me to.

Most Annoying
Bri: Having some young, punk guys hit on me and follow me to the grass where I was walking the dogs to go to the bathroom. I was like "Yeah, I'm married."
Moose: The drunk guy at the baseball game. He would not leave me alone! And he spilt beer all over the seat.
Brady: Having mom yell at me for freaking out.
Mia: Having Brady step on me and drool on my head in the car. I just wish that he would realize that it's not so bad. You just take a nap.