Starting Another Week With a Hangover and a Sweet Tea

Okay, just kidding about the hangover part. But not the sweet tea. I don't joke about tea.

Hopefully everyone out there had a lovely weekend. Mine started out with a flinch and a wheeze on friday night when Melissa (a friend of mine from work) and I headed out to the Lincoln Theater in downtown Raleigh to behold the spectacle that is the Breakfast Club...a popular 80's cover band in which the lead singer wears a kilt. It couldn't be anything but "awesome", right? Well....sorta. The doors opened at nine and we got there fashionably late at 9:45 (downtown has an obscenely frustrating number of one-way streets) only to find that the place was relatively empty, hosting about 50 folks so far, 45 of which were girls in halter tops nursing beers. Already i was fitting in with my pink chucks and comparitively conservative bright green henley. Melissa and I found an elbow-free area near one side of the room and proceeded to watch the magical scene unfold: more halter-clad, beer clutching girls streamed in in hand-holding chains, dancing to whatever music was being piped in before the show actually started. The "opener" was one guy with big hair and a keyboard who was pretty decent but whose songs all sounded pretty much the same. He jabbed away at the keyboard while rocking his stool in a way that was reminiscent of Chris Martin of Coldplay but that made me quite a bit more uncomfortable. This went on for over an hour. It was eleven before the Breakfast Club came on and though they rocked the 80's pretty darn hard, I found myself seriously wishing for a pair of earplugs (currently sitting safely in my glove compartment back in Cary). They were so loud that I coudn't understand much of what they were saying between songs...I'd just catch multiple variations of the "f-word" followed by drunken, though enthusiastic, cheering. On three separate occasions, i was approached by an intoxicated gentleman with the same question: "Why aren't you dancing?" (leaning way too far into my personal space and swaying just a bit). This served as a reminder that being surrounded by drunk folks just ain't fun if you're not one of them. Melissa and I headed home around 1 am, about 35 minutes into a "break between sets".

Saturday, the fam and I met my brother's girlfriend, Caroline, and her Dad for lunch at Southpoint mall in Durham and had some always delicious pizza from California Pizza Kitchen. Then we joined the crowds of frantic shoppers, looking for just the right gift for Mom. I spent way too long in the "elastic pants" section of Belk looking for "Grandma" presents in a sea of grandmas before Mom and I found a cute gift and we could catch up with Dad and Nathan and leave.

Yesterday was an afternoon of Sloan Family Fun in good ol' Mamers, NC. There were hamburgers, hotdogs, and sentimental, flowery cards out the wazoo. A good time was had by all...until all heck broke loose and thunderstorms chased us all back home where they pelted us with rain and spiteful darts of lightning.

So now this morning finds me at my desk eating Teddy Grahams and swigging tea while typing away at my manual intermittantly (when i'm not updating my blog and checking MySpace for emails....thanks again Yam and Aaron for sucking me into this black hole of social "comment" tag).

Leave me a comment and tell me how much you love me!

How Do You Spell "Weimaraner"??

Because I have been taunted by my brother and various other friends and because I'm tired of seeing "Screw You Hippies" whenever I open my blog, I've decided to update. I have to admit that blogging has been the last thing on my mind over the past four months or so so updates have been sparse to say the least, but because God is so good, things are calming down and working themselves out once more and as a result...here I am.

I just had the best weekend at Caswell with Yam, Holly, Aaron, and other friends. I honestly almost didn't go because it's been a really tough week, but God used this trip to teach me a thing or two and to show me just how much He's blessed me. He blesses us when we're not even paying attention!!

I went down Saturday morning and made it there in record time (two hours...kidding, Mom. ahem.). Its funny how I forget (or don't realize) just how much I miss Caswell and my friends there until I get there and see and smell and hear and laugh....and eat oreo ice cream bars. with a stick. I had cheese sticks at Famous, made the unavoidable trip to Walmart, and spent a couple of hours talking Yam and Holly's ears off on Yam's psychotherapeudic couch (also good for naps). I watched way too many episodes of Friends and ate cookies and poptarts out the proverbial "wazoo". Yam made cookies the likes of which would shame the Keebler elves and I taught Aaron a lesson (or four) about why he should guard his inner arm with everything he's got once I resort to pinching. Stephen Jeffcoat, I am happy to say, has joined the ranks of the "stinky pizza" advocates (Domino's vegetarian, no cheese, extra sauce) and "Pa" is that much closer to being the trophy husband in a deal I made with his dad five years ago. I had such a good weekend overall that I even got some Provision Company shrimp thrown in for good measure (de-vein 'em yourself though).
So in a nutshell, I realized what good friends I've been given who are more than willing to be there through the crappy as well as the funny and who are really great about putting things into perspective for me. No matter how long you're gone, what's going on in your life, how awful you are about calling when you should, God doesn't go anywhere and to illustrate that, he gives you friends who love you like He does. So thanks for the hugs, the bruises, and the cookies this weekend everybody. My muscles are sore and I'm somewhat sleep deprived but I love you like Tim loves patchouli. It's a joke, Tim. I do love you guys though.

On a different note, i'd like to take this opportunity of publicly congratulating two of my peeps on two different events. First of all, congratulations to Holly for becoming engaged to her knight in shining....uh...fireman's getup. She and Chris will be getting married next spring and I am so excited for them both! As a bridesmaid, I'm seriously considering giving them the traditional gift of a bagpiper at the wedding.

Second, and maybe just a bit anti-climactic, congrats to Nathan for being published on the world's spookiest website...www.ghosts.org. He wrote up a story about Bentonville Battleground (called "Soldier's Campsite") that, once you get through two pages of historical documentation, is quite creepy indeed. Hopefully, Nate, fourteen-year-olds everywhere will be sleeping with the lights on and it'll be all your fault.

As I've said before and will say again: Everybody have fun tonight. No, better yet, everybody Wang Chung tonight.
Cheesy, but sometimes you just feel cheesy.