My Vacation

So I've been MIA lately because I went home to VA for a week. I left work on Friday the 21st at 11 to meet Howard at home so he could drop me at the Nashville airport 2 hours away. My flight was at 3:30...or was supposed to be at 3:30. Howard dropped me off and I went and checked in via the electronic touch screen. While walking toward my gate, I noticed that the departures screen was showing a departure time of 3:50. Not too bad. Then my phone rang and it was Southwest telling me my new flight time was 5:20. This wouldn't have been such a big deal if I wasn't flying into BWI and Jeanette and Matt weren't picking me up. I called Jeannette and let her know about the delay and went to have a beer while I was waiting. Next thing I know, the flight is delayed again until 5:50. Then again until...well, they had no freakin clue when. I called Jeannette again and told her I would just get a rental car so she wouldn't be driving aimlessly around BWI waiting for me. In the meantime, I spent the next couple hours stalking some guy I knew I had seen on TV and figured had to be a country music star considering I was in Nashville and he had a guitar. I sneaked some pictures of him and sent them to Howard expecting him to figure it out for me but he had no idea. Around 6:30, the Southwest agent came over the speaker and told us to go get food or do some shopping because it was going to be a while. I was hovering near the booth trying to get some insider information while other passengers took off to get some food. Not even 10 minutes later, they called us to board. At least 1/4 of the passengers weren't there but they didn't wait for them. One guy was on the plane telling the flight attendant that his friend had gone to smoke a cigarette outside and he was now running to the plane. They wouldn't wait for him. Not right at all. So we finally got up in the air and then once we hit Baltimore, we hit turbulence. And then the pilot comes on and tells us we have to fly in a holding pattern for another 45 minutes...in the turbulence. Ugh. We finally land and then we have to wait another 45 minutes because the gate crew couldn't direct us in in the lightning. I got off the plane at 11 pm. I was supposed to have gotten in at 6:10 pm. Needless to say, I was not happy. I called Enterprise and made a reservation then hopped on the shuttle to take me there. Once I arrived, I noticed the line for Enterprise was ridiculous but no one was at Budget or Alamo. Since I had a reservation, I went ahead and got in the line for Enterprise. While standing there, I realized I had some sort of card for Enterprise they had sent me a while back. It stated I was a plus member. Score! There was no one in the line for the plus members so I got out of line and went to stand in it. The couple standing in front of the regular line gave me the dirtiest looks I have ever seen. I was trying to hold my card so he could see it. When the lady at the plus counter left, I proceeded to walk up to the counter. Before I could get there, the guy from the couple in line, ran ahead of me pretty much knocking me out of the way and said "No way, we have been waiting in line! We are next" to which the man behind the counter replied after seeing the card in my hand "Sorry sir, but you will need to get back in line, she is next because she is a plus member". Normally, I would have let the couple go ahead of me because I am way too nice, but not that night. I had been waiting all day for flights and I was tired. I really wanted to tell the guy to back the eff up but I smiled politely instead. Then I told the Enterprise guy that it was the first thing to go right for me all day and who knew a stupid little plastic card could be so handy. I got to Jeannette's house at midnight and she was already passed out. Oh well. At least I got there.

Saturday, I woke up and went and got a pedicure! Then I went and had pizza with my mom and brother. Then it was off to Josh and Jen's for the fantasy draft. I'm not all that happy with my team but it's early and that could change. After the draft we proceeded to play beer pong and drink way too much until way too late. I woke up at 1:30 in the afternoon on Sunday feeling like a train had run over me at some point during the night. Josh, Jen, Rockett and I were laying on the couches feeling near death when Jen decided to be a savior and go to Glory Days for carry-out. I love her. I finally rolled off their couch about 4:30 to go back to Jeannette's to take an ice cold shower and then go to my parent's house to surprise my dad for his 60th birthday. My brother had also come into town to surprise him. We went to dinner at McCormick & Schmick's in Tysons. Big mistake. Food and service was terrible but the company was good :)

Monday my brother, mom and I went down to Richmond to see my sister and grandmother. We had lunch at the seafood restaurant at Bass Pro Shops. It was my first time in one and it is now my new favorite store. Lunch was great as well. We headed to my grandma's next and though we couldn't spend a lot of time there, I had a great time seeing her.

Tuesday - Lunch with Heather at the Old Brogue, shopping with my mom then happy hour at Wings with Netty and Michael - then met up with Matt later.

Wednesday - Slept past lunch with Dawn (sorry girl!), more shopping with my mom then happy hour at Glory Days with Jen.

Thursday - And MORE shopping with my mom then wine tasting given my Dawn at Amanda and Amy's house...I never thought I liked wine but pair it with tons of tasty cheese from Wegman's and it's delicious! Too bad I couldn't order any to my house because they won't send to Kentucky. My free bottle has to be shipped to Jeannette's house...who thinks I will ever see that bottle??

Friday - Lunch and yes, more shopping with my mom, then happy hour at Wings again with Nicole, Amanda, Matt, Ashley and Jason. Then a little get together back at Jeannette's with everyone plus Joe and Amy where we played charades allllll night. So much fun. Props to Matt for actually getting into it this time!

Saturday - Lunch at my mom's then off to the airport where my flight was actually on time! Only problem was Howard had a flight out to Montana earlier that morning from Nashville so he dropped my car there for me to pick up. He told me it was in D2 and that he had walked from the lot to the airport. So I took off walking in the direction he told me which was diagonal right. I could not find a D2 and I couldn't get a hold of Howard because he was in flight from Denver to Montana. I finally ended up getting on a shuttle to long-term parking crossing my fingers that I had remembered D2 from previous flights out of Nashville where I had left my car. The last stop on the shuttle was D2 and there was my car. Only took me about an hour to find it. Wouldn't you know that as I was getting off the shuttle, Howard calls to give me better directions. I have no idea how he walked from there?!?

Yesterday I spent the day on the couch watching girly movies with the dogs :) And now I'm back at work. Blah.

This Just Made My Day

This is one of the employees here. And no, he doesn't dress like this normally. But he went to a funeral this morning. So yes, this is how he dresses to go to a funeral. He obviously knows the old saying that a funeral should be a celebration of one's life. How could you be sad with this guy there??

PS. His shoes match his hat.

PPS. (or is it PSS) I love Kentucky.

House Hunting

For the last 3 years or so that Howard has lived here, he has been told that eventually his office will be moving from Paducah to Murray. We've been living in Benton which is located between the two cities so that when his office did move, he would still have an easy commute. Paducah and Murray are about an hour from each other with Benton right in the middle. We got word that his office is definitely moving to Murray in October. They are even having a ribbon cutting ceremony on the 27th of that month which I can't help but find funny.

This means we can finally look to buy a house in the Murray area. We met our realtor on Saturday morning to look at 4 houses. Howard wants land. Preferably more than 3 acres. He's a farm boy and wants what he's used to. I couldn't care less about the land but I do like how serene and quiet it is in the more country parts of the area. The first house we looked at was perfect and we both fell in love with it. Thankfully we agreed that the second and third houses were piles of crap. Both of them were located right next door to run-down trailers too. My only real stipulation is that I will not have to look at an eye sore every morning when I wake up. I don't think that is too much to ask. Our realtor had to get a key from the seller's real estate office for the fourth house. We got there and couldn't find it at first because there wasn't a for sale sign. We finally found it and it's brand new owners moving in. No clue why the agent would give us the key when the house had already sold.

The realtor took us to lunch that afternoon to discuss options for the first house. None of those options panned out though. I am not going to waste my time on talking about how excited we were and how it didn't work out in the end. Pointless. There are plenty more houses out there to fall in love with. It just wasn't meant to be.

After lunch we went to the Murray version of our Paducah bar (I felt like a traitor). We sat down and the bartender didn't even acknowledge us. No one at the bar did either. I am not used to this. And then it dawned on us that by moving to Murray, we are virtually starting over. We don't know anyone. No one knows us (except for the lady who randomly recognized us from breakfast at the Pancake House earlier that morning). We have friends in Paducah. We know the regulars. They know us. Tear :(

I joked to Howard that the bartender should just call the bartender, Potter at our bar and Potter can tell him how great we are and then we skip the next couple of" get to know ya" years and we can just be BFF's already. If it was only that easy...

On a positive note:

1. The bar is a lot nicer. They have pool tables, basketball, darts, TWO Mega-Touches and a bunch of other games.

2. At least will be living in a city where they serve alcohol at bars though you still can't buy it at a gas station. We will have to cross into Tennessee to buy beer or liquor. We made the drive a couple weekends ago and it only took 15 minutes round trip so that's not too bad.

3. That's it. I can't think of another one. So sad.

Sunday we decided to go to the bar in Paducah. Howard and I were talking to Kenny, one of our favorite regulars. He's probably in his late 50's/early 60's and is just as nice as can be. (Side note: I have two favorite regulars. The other one is Brad who is in his mid-30's.) We were talking about the Cash for Clunkers program and he says, "My son Brad, well you know Brad, went up to the Toyota dealer...." I didn't even follow the rest of the conversation because I was trying to process what my brain was telling me. Kenny has a son named Brad. The Brad? My Brad? Kenny got up to go to the bathroom and I looked over at Howard who looked just as perplexed as I did. We've had conversations with both of them at the same time and I never put it together. I asked Potter about Kenny and Brad thinking he was just going to tell me it was coincedence. Nope, they are father and son and we had no idea. This just doubled their cool-factor though. And doubled my clueless-factor.

Definition of a Hypocrite

Our 18 yr. old neighbor, Carly knocked on our door Saturday night at about 11 pm. She wanted to know if we knew anything about securing our wireless internet since ours was blocked. Howard and I both shrugged. I didn't have a clue. She went on to tell us about the issues she was having with Katie, the girl who lives below her. Katie thinks Carly and her roommates make too much noise and keep her 6 month old child awake at night. Carly lives with her boyfriend, brother, another guy and her brother's two kids who are 3 and 4...in a 2 bedroom apartment. I can't seem to make the math work but somehow they do. They are loud. Like really loud. Katie and Carly now work together at a summer camp. One day while outside on a smoke break, Katie asks Carly about the noise level. She asks her to please keep it down after 10 pm as it specifically states in the lease. This angers poor Carly. Carly knows that Katie has been using her wireless internet connection because Katie told her she was. So Carly decides to get even and secure her connection because "it's not right that she's stealing from me! Blah Blah Blah" Throughout this whole long sob story, I am on the internet trying to find step by step directions on how to secure a wireless connection. I printed out a couple things for her but then it dawned on me. I asked her how she knew our wireless connection was secured.

"Oh, well I tried to steal it when we first moved in".

The Lake

Yesterday afternoon, Howard and I decided to go to the lake. Honestly, I don't know why we don't do this more often as it basically in our backyard. I get so jealous reading my friend's Facebook status updates about the beach all the time being the closest beach is 9 hours away but this is the next best thing. It takes 10-15 minutes to get to what we call Pebble Beach. We arrived there about 5:30 in the afternoon and it was a gorgeous day. They had been calling for a thunderstorm earlier in the morning but it passed right over us and onto Louisville where it produced massive flooding.

We had about 45 minutes of pure bliss before I noticed something threatening our perfect afternoon. I asked Howard what this dark cloud was in the distance and he said, "Oh don't worry, it's moving in the other direction..." Riiiiight...

"Hey Howard, I don't think it's moving in the other direction anymore..."

This all happened in the span of about 3 minutes. It went from a beautiful and bright day to a dark and stormy night in 3 lil bitty minutes.

This picture doesn't even do this scene justice. You could see the rain moving across the water in a sheet coming right at us. The wind picked up to (according to reports) 70-80 mph and limbs began falling from trees. The rocks on the beach were flying across the ground as well.

Seriously, it was pretty effing awesome. We got out of there before the rain hit us but not by much. The scary thing is there were people out on the water in boats who had no time to prepare for this freak storm. As we drove back into town, we noticed all of the power was out. And in a wave, we saw it all come back on. Also, pretty awesome.

I told you Kentucky was weather was strange.