A little TOO emotional

I've been feeling a bit emotional lately.  Sometimes I notice this about myself in my relationships - I get a little more frustrated with being far from Wade, I get a little more hurt if I'm left out of a social activity, I get a little more overwhelmed by busyness at work.  But a lot of times I don't notice those things first.  What I do notice first is when I start to get teary-eyed at stuff on TV that really should NOT make me cry!  A random commercial, The Bachelor or something like that.

Well today takes the cake.  I actually CRIED a little bit at SAVED BY THE BELL!  Hahahaha.  I can't believe I'm admitting that on the internet.  Wade gave me a whole bunch of seasons of SBTB on DVD, so I'll watch them periodically when there's nothing better on.  Today I watched the episode where they all have to do a class presentation about their heritage and ancestors.  Lisa's ancestors were slaves and Jessie's were slave traders, so Jessie goes all crazy trying to make it up to her by doing all these favors.  

But that's not what got me choked up - Zack finds out he's related to this Indian chief and he goes to a Native American guy to find out about him.  He doesn't really care at first and just wants to know enough for his presentation so he can run in the Bayside track meet against Valley, but then as he learns more, it means a lot to him and he becomes close with the Native American guy.  Then after Zack does his presentation and is set to run in the track meet, he finds out that the guy just died suddenly and decides he (Zack) can't run in the meet.

So I'm watching all this sitting on my sofa, and when they find out he died, I felt the tears prick behind my eyes and literally had drops start spilling out onto my face, before I got up to close the blinds and was like, "I am CRYING.  Over Saved by the Bell!"  I'm glad no one can see me right now.  Haha.

Oh man, well, please don't laugh too hard at me :).  But I will understand if you do.

Bar... Meet Girl Scouts

A funny thing happened to me at work today (ha, I always wanted to say that line :))...

We had our annual Women of Distinction luncheon for the Girl Scouts today at the Westin hotel downtown.  It all went fine, whatever, and then after we had cleaned stuff up and were close to leaving, the next event was setting up in our space and I hear this voice ask me, "Are you here for swearing in?"

I turned around and said no, but as I did I saw that the lady's nametag said Mecklenburg County Bar on it, and I said "Oh my gosh, Mecklenburg County Bar - I used to work there!"  She was a little surprised, but I recognized her as the woman who took my old boss's job after I left and my old boss left.  (For anyone who doesn't know, the Bar was where I worked for 6 months after I graduated, and I left there to work at the Girl Scouts.)

The lady said that the other staff were there too, because it turns out they were having the spring swearing-in ceremony right there at the Westin in the afternoon!  (When I was there I helped plan the fall swearing-in ceremony.)

So I ran over and said hi to Lisa, Jill and Jen - three of my former co-workers (about the only 3 that are still there!) and talked to them for a bit.  They crack me up.  They're just funny characters who roll their eyes at the Bar, but they stay working there anyway because that's just the way things are.  I got to show them some of my handiwork because we had some of the event programs and our annual reports that I designed there with us.

It was just so random and fun to run into MCB people at a Girl Scout event :).

April feels weird

So my life took a dramatically boring turn, apparently, after the month of March and the first weekend of April.  It feels weird not posting a list every day (but kindof good, because that was a lot of pressure).  

April has been super busy at work, as my biggest project of the year kicks off, and a LOT of other smaller ones are still going on.  I know lots of people do this all the time, but I do NOT like working til 6:00 every night.  By the time I get home, maybe walk Paisley, work out and fix dinner, it's like 9 or 10 o'clock!  How do people do it?  I don't understand.  

But anyway, not too much longer til Wade's graduation, so I better have pictures from that - and then he's HOME, in CHARLOTTE, working HERE, in the SAME CITY as me!  I can't even believe it is going to happen.  The past week or so has been tough, because his cell phone suddenly gets no reception in his apartment...  So the whole "talking on the phone" thing has just fallen apart.  He'll call me at work around 4:00 when he's leaving the high school where he's student teaching and driving back up the mountain.  But that's about all we get, because by the time free minutes roll around at 9:00 (for me), he's usually home for the night and has no bars.  And it's tough for him not only because of that, but because he's busy planning all the lessons and grading papers for school, and he also has no furniture at his apartment anymore because he was borrowing it from another guy and that guy took it all back already!  Wade does have a bed (that he "borrowed" from Covenant), but now he has no dresser, no desk, no tables in his room, no coffee table, etc.  The guy took their sofas too, but they got another one from somewhere at least.

Well, that's the status of my life right now.  Hopefully something exciting will happen (like I'll ever be able to do some gardening if it quits raining on Saturdays) that I can blog about :).

Road Tripping

Last weekend, Wade and I went on a road trip to Jackson, Mississippi, to attend the wedding of my good friend Brad Overcash and Ms. Jennifer Jill Smith.  It was my first and only assist (in dating terms, an assist is when you are the last person to date someone before they date the person they marry).  The assist may have taken a while to come to fruition, but I could not be happier for Brad and Jennifer to have found each other.  I've gotten to know her a little bit on a couple trips and visits while she and Brad were dating, and she is truly the best girl I could think of for such a dear friend of mine.

Anyway, the wedding was in her hometown of Jackson (well, nearby Carthage, MS), so I broke the trip up into 6 hour segments and drove first to Wade's on Thursday, then with him to MS on Friday, back to Chattanooga on Sunday, and back to Charlotte on Monday.  24+ hours of driving in 5 days.  Phew.  The first two legs of the journey were RAINY.  Lots of storms moving through the southeast.  Not tons of fun, but I managed.

The Marriott

We stayed in the Marriott in downtown Jackson, and let's just say they were strugglin'.  I will give them the benefit of the doubt, because there were power outages all over the city and I think they had a lot of airport overflow guests.  But our room smelled like smoke when we walked in, and Saturday we spent 3+ hours trying to get lunch, to no avail.  The guy at the front desk told us where to walk to find a restaurant... there was no one on the streets, walking or driving, and when we did find the ONE restaurant, it was closed.  So we came back and tried to order pizza - the only place nearby was a Domino's the guy said - after numerous attempts at getting through, we found out there was a 2-hour wait for delivery.  Um, no go.  

So we were in the room snacking on grapes and trail mix we did happen to have available, and decided to just order room service pizza even though it was overpriced.  At that point it was about 2:00 - we need to leave for the wedding at 3:30.  Surely in an hour and a half they can bring us a pizza from downstairs.  40 minutes after ordering it, Wade calls again to see where it is.  "Oh, our system went down and we must have lost your order.  We'll get that right up to you."  30 minutes later, he calls again.  "It will be on its way up very soon."  It will be?  What does that mean?  Look, we have to leave in 20 minutes for a wedding, so please bring it as soon as possible.  We start getting ready for the wedding.  15 minutes later, Wade calls again.  We're leaving in 5 minutes, so if the pizza is not on its way up right now, please cancel it.  "Oh it's on its way up."  5 minutes later - no pizza, so Wade calls to cancel the order.  Knock knock... pizza!  Too late, we're walking out the door to go to this wedding.  Sorry bud, take it back.

So we never got to eat lunch and needless to say we were very grateful for the food at the reception!

The Wedding

The wedding was beautiful and simple - small church that seated about 70, pretty flowers including hydrangeas, which I love.  We got to the church an hour early so we would get a seat and ended up sitting right behind the family rows - go us.  Brad and Jennifer, you set a new record for the shortest wedding I've ever been to.  From the seating of the first grandmother to the exit of the last processional - 15 minutes flat.  Git 'er done!

The reception was at the country club nearby, and they had a great little beach music type band I really liked.  And FOOD!  Ahhh...  

Brad and Jennifer's first dance was Carolina In My Mind - what else?

Cutting the cake - Brad's distinguished look with the glasses and bowtie, Jennifer's gorgeous look with sparkling white dress :).

The Game

Sorry I didn't get more pictures of the wedding and festivities.  I spent part of the evening in an alternate universe.  One in which the Tar Heels get down 28 points to Kansas in the Final Four.  One in which they go 16+ possessions without scoring.  One in which the whole team other than Hansbrough has a total of 4 points in the first 12-15 minutes of the game.  Yeah.  We did come back to within 4.  I was really starting to think we could pull off the unthinkable.  Nope.  Locoya summed it up thus, "If we lose this game, I am NEVER going to forgive Brad for getting married on this day!"

The Craziness

On the road trip back to Chattanooga, Wade got a little antsy.  Like begging me to stop at Miskelly's Furniture Cafe for lunch instead of someplace normal that we had heard of.  (Miskelly's was closed, and we couldn't find Fernando's Mexican either, so we ended up eating Papa Johns - satisfying our pizza craving from the day before!).  Like turning on my emergency flashers and honking my horn repeatedly in the middle of the highway.  Like putting CD 1, song 7 on repeat and repeat and repeat (the Friends theme song I'll Be There For You).  Like the pictures below.

Wade out the window

Wade's hair after being out the window

At one point, we stopped so I could take a break from the road, and I tried teaching him to drive a stick shift.  He did a good job, but no one learns to drive a stick in 10 minutes, so I continued the highway driving.  He also bought a road atlas and decided we should stop at random tourist attractions (and I use that term loosely) along the way.  I sound sarcastic, but it was a lot of fun just being together, being carefree and not having a schedule to stick to.

This is Wade at Noccalula Falls in Gadsden, Alabama.  I wish I could've taken more pictures but my camera died.  It was really pretty though, even though the park was closed.

And alas, the final day of the trip came, and I had to make the trek back to Charlotte.  I drove through Knoxville and Asheville to avoid Atlanta traffic, and I do love the pretty views on that drive, through the mountains.  Below is approaching the mountains from Tennessee, heading towards home.

Only a few more weeks and Wade will be coming this way too... for good!

Charlie bit me

Wade and I spent most of this past weekend laughing at this video. It gets funnier and funnier every time you watch it...