Asheville, NC

Okay, so we were only on Ashville one day but I think I have more pictures of there than Gatlinburg. And the ones on here are out of order because of course, I can never get it through my head that pictures will post backwards. I mean, I know they do and I try to get it right, but I never can. So these are all pictures of the Biltmore House than we went to the second day we were there. The last pictures are of us driving around taking pictures of the mountains the first evening we were there. Also, Biltmore was amazing, and I don't hae a picture of the whole house because it's too huge. That first one is on one of the patios or whatever you call it when they are huge.



Some of the shops around the house.



Part of the house.



The gardens - which were amazing and I couldn't stop taking pictures or posting them on here.



Sort of out of order - I think Dave took this picture as we were leaving the house and walking down to the gardens. Yeah, we were hot and tired so thought we should take something other than a happy sappy picture. (not cranky, just hot and tired)



The evening we got to Asheville we drove on this highway with all these lookouts of the mountains and it was gorgeous. It was a lot harder to find places like that in Gatlinburg. So we had fun taking tons of pictures. So here's mountains, us, mountains, us, mountains... you get the picture

GATLINBURG!

We went biking in the national park one day and then drove around and stopped by at this really nice waterfalls.

Pictures taken from the bike trail.

Hillbilly golfing. We rode this cable car up to the top and it was so beautiful and cool up there. Nice breeze...

We also rode a slightly larger cable car up a mountain. The cable car went right by our cabin several times a day. It goes up to an amusement park, but we just rode it and enjoyed the scenery and rode back down. It was a gorgeous view.

Shopping in Gatlinburg... I think Dave was a little bored. I didn't intend to spend so much time in all these shops, but you know, it takes awhile to find the perfect t-shirt.

So much of downtown was all glitzy and tacky, but then you'd find really neat places like these...

Our little cabin...

And yeah, this was the view from out porch. You just couldn't get much better than this. I couldn't decide which ones to post so I posted a whole whack of them.

This was taken from the couch in the cabin - nice view and my wedding bouquet is hanging out to dry.

Are there more than 2 people in the universe?

Hello all - warning: this is going to be a long, rambly post. I still don't have cell phone service and we don't have a home phone, so I feel a bit cut off from the world still. So leave lots of comments and send me e-mails, okay? = ) So, where to begin?? Let's see... as I mentioned, we did get our power back on Tuesday. We hibernated pretty much until Thursday evening. Side note -- this whole vacation thing is getting out of hand. Not that we're not getting anything done, but we've gravitated towards sleeping from about 2 or 3 till 10 or 11. We've also developed a fondness for the game 10,000, or greedy as some may call it. My family used to play that game and I introduced Dave to it. Now we have to play it nearly every night, no matter if we don't start till 12 or 1. Dave won the first game and I've beaten every one since then, which is oh so fun. Okay, back to Thursday - boy do I want to get pictures on here soon. When we just sit around our house unpacking, it's easy to think that life is pretty much back to normal. But when we went out on Thursday, life was anything but normal around the city. Most of the business were still closed at that point. We had a hankering for some Mexican food and had a coupon so we thought that justified going there. We are trying to not eat out much and save money, which is a very good thing right now. But anyway, we were also going stir crazy in the house and didn't have much to eat around here. So the place we wanted to go was open but the line was insanely long. So we went looking and lots of places were closed. There were trees down all over the place. The other thing that was odd was that in our backyard there's trees down all over and it looks like we just went through a hurricane. Which we did, but it just didn't feel that bad. How could all those trees fall and we didn't even know about it? Another interesting thing about Thursday was that we drove by this gas station and the line was all the way down the street for a very very long ways. I wish I had taken a picture of that. I've never seen anything like it. I guess so few gas stations were open and that was the result. In the end, there was a Chinese buffet that was open and incidentally, one of the best I've been to in ages. So that was nice. Then we went home. Oh, also, most of the stop lights are still burned out so driving is sort of chaotic. I hope I don't have drive before they are working. So, that was Thursday.

Okay, now I want to tell you about yesterday. There are a lot of things with unpacking that I either have to just do on my own, or have to do with Dave, but not as many things that Dave can do on his own. I wrote a list of things we needed to get done and mine was considerably longer than his. So, once we were finally up and ready for the day.... (OHHHHH, I have to tell you this - I mean, I'm embarrassed to tell you, but I'm going to tell you anyway. I took a shower and put on PJs. Yes, that's right. It was WONDERFUL! I mean, we were just going to be here unpacking all day - where does it say that that's against the law? I know someone who's husband doesn't like when she wears PJs all day. And I just wanted to celebrate the fact that that's not the case for me.) Okay, so we're finally getting started on things and Dave goes to the corner gas station that just reopened and bought eggs. (our milk is not drinkable, we can't find a grocery store that's open when we go out, so we haven't been eating cereal for breakfast - isn't that so interesting? I'm sure you're happy to know that.) So, other breakfast options - I made egg burritos the day or 2 before and they were some sorta yummy. Yesterday Dave made French Toast. All by himself. Well, with me barking instructions from the "couch"/computer area. This might not seem like much to some of you, but trust me, it's progress. I was very impressed. They were fabulous. (then he did the dishes too) He seems to be enjoying certain aspects of non-bachelorhood, such as having more than 5 items of food in the kitchen. And having a bookshelf with all his books organized, rather than looking for algebra textbooks buried under socks in a random laundry basket. And whenever I made something to eat, aka cook, his eyes bulge out of his head and he looks startled and ultra impressed, like - "YOU MADE THAT??" Anyway, it's fun. = P Another random tid bit of info - tomorrow I'll probably feel dumb for rambling so much about all these little details of our lives, but anyhoo... Dave discovered when he was unpacking that he had all these clothes that he didn't know he had. And he didn't have with him this summer in Warsaw. So yeah, we bought a lot of clothes for him over the summer and then come to discover a whole pile more and yeah, he has so many clothes it's not funny. I feel a bit guilty - like today I counted fourteen short sleeved dress shirts. Yeah, 14. And there's some in the laundry. I feel like we should be handing some of them out to homeless people or something. We sorted all his clothes yesterday and he let me get rid of some, but there's still 14 + dress shirts. The plus side is, we can go nearly forever without doing laundry, which is very expensive, so maybe we'll save money in the long run...

So, now I want to tell you about today. Ahhhhh today... where did it go? After sleeping in till some ungodly hour, the intent was to do some shopping. We had a few places we needed to go -Dave needed to get some small pieces of metal before he could finish putting the desk together, which is of utmost importance for organization sake, we had a rather long list of stuff from a wal-mart (shudder) type place, and then wanted to get some things from Bed, Bath, and Beyond where we were registered. It's a long story, but we had a coupon we could use and then biggest thing we wanted to get were dishes. I have to tell you this story. I've had these dishes picked out ever since we registered. They were really nice all white with a design sort of cut out of them in these cool stripey things. They were bone china though and always with the really expensive dishes. So I couldn't understand why a 4 place setting was only 44 bucks. I mean, that's corale prices. So today when we were actually going to buy and started looking closer, it all made sense. It was 44, not for a 4 place setting, but for 4 pieces: ONE place setting. We wanted to get enough for 12. Yeah, um we didn't get those. So I gathered what was left of my broken, weary spirit and went to the cheap dishes section, where we did find some that we both liked for a quarter of the price, and actually, the longer we looked, the more I liked them better than just stark white - no offence to anyone who owns white dishes - none at all. Anyway, the ones we got are Khaki swirly on the inside, brown on the outside with a stripe of various color around the outside. I think they'll go with pretty much any color we'd ever decide to have in the kitchen. I really like them. Yeay! Now we have dishes and a table. (side note: it's so nice to have a guy that has opinions about dishes and shower curtains and spoon rests and tables ... etc. I tend to be on the indecisive side [okay, that's a gross understatement] and it's so nice to have someone to help out with all these little and big decisions.) But oh yeah, what happened was the Bed Bath and Beyond didn't actually have the dishes we wanted, just the display. And they couldn't order them because they still didn't have power and were running on a generator. But there's another BB and B in town so we drove way over there (first we stopped at Lowes but Dave decided that what he needed he could get at Walmart so we left empty handed - that will make sense later in the story). So we go all the way to the other BB and B and they do indeed have the dishes. Annoyingly, they didn't have the shower curtain we wanted. That was at the other store but we didn't want to get it because we wanted to use our coupon for everything. After a big kerfluffel about coupons and things (I was SO mad at myself - I left my receipt at home for the cookware we had bought a couple weeks ago and they said they would apply the coupon to both purchases. So I have to find another coupon to get the rebate for the cookware and I lost a bit of money... bla bla bla... it's a long boring story.) So, we got dishes and a few other small items for a steal of a price with the coupon and with my gift card I had from my cookware purchase. THEN, we had the long list of stuff to get at Walmart, but we were really really stinkin hungry at this point, and what are we going to do. We're not supposed to be spending money in this fashion, but we had lots more to do. So we go to a restaurant and split something. And it's getting later and later. So the plan was go find Walmart. We asked Lucy to take us there and she did - out of business. So we went to another one - closed. So we tried Target - closed. At this point, we were a long ways from home. And also at this point, our need to use the facilities after drinking WAY too much beverage at the restaurant, was far overshadowing our desire to make it to Walmart and get our stuff. Oh my. So we're driving home and searching for ANY place that might be open and have a public restroom. Drove past a Walgreens, bummer, missed that one. Whipped into a CVS with all the lights on - closed. There's an open gas station! Hooray! Oh shoot, the store is actually closed and you can get gas only with your card. Oh, there's a Burger King right across the street, clearly open - so we go there: open only for drive through. It's getting painful. Keep driving - OH LOOK, there's a gas station with all the lights inside on! Hooray!! Relief at last! So I (hobble) in - look around... oh no... sinking feeling in my gut... "excuse me, where's your bathroom?" "We have no public bathroom!" WHAT? What sort of gas station doesn't have a public bathroom!! That's what people do! They fill up they're gas tanks, empty their bladders, and away they go. So terribly unimpressed. So we keep driving and driving and driving... and at long last... could that be a bar? With a generator? sure enough. We whipped in and made great haste and the wretched ordeal came to an end. I have never been so happy to see a bar in my life. And I think everyone was too drunk to notice a couple of non-paying customers using the bathroom. Except for one very creepy looking old man who sat at the counter and glared at me as I walked out. I'm pretty sure his intent was to follow and murder me, but Dave came just in time. whew! So we came home. Nothing from walmart, including nothing needed to assemble the desk. In fact, we were gone nearly the entire day "shopping" and bathroom hunting and came home with dishes. Yep, that's pretty much it. I just wanted to document the huge waste of time that was today. I feel bad that some of you will feel obligated to read all this. (I guess we did come home and Dave changed the burned out light bulbs and I scrubbed the quarter inch of crud off the ceiling fan in our room, as he handed me blade by blade. So all was not lost today.) So I'm going to go now. 10,000 calleth... or maybe Dave has to do Math tonight. I don't know. But it's only 11:22 meaning we have another 3 or 4 hours before sleepy time. goodnight. Oh, one more thing to mention. Sorry. If I may complain just a little - I really need a chiropractor. I tend to be tight in my neck and shoulders, but have been experiencing much more intense pain and tightness than is normal. It's so weird. It's like there's this spot right in the middle of my upper back between my shoulders that all the pain comes from and that has this catch that needs to "give" or pop or something. Like to reach in front of me and pick something up is very painful in that spot and then the pain shoots out from there. It's very not fun. I should close on a happy note. Well, this might be happy for you - some day I'll have a job and will do something with my life other than bore you with every detail of it. hooray! Oh but wait, I do have one more thing. Dave said the other day... "I'm just scared that one morning I'll wake up and you will have eaten half my arm." Okay, so being cooped up with little social interaction may make me a bit squirrly and I hate to admit, violent, at times. But only just a little. I feel like we are the only 2 people alive sometimes. But thank goodness for a sense of humor. We have spent more time laughing our heads off at eachother the last couple weeks and I think that has kept me sane. good bye for real.

Addendum: (following morning) I was getting ready to proclaim joyfully that the persistent, most aggravating insomnia that was such a part of my life the months leading up to the wedding was gone. I did have trouble sleeping on our honeymoon, but since coming to Baton Rouge, I've slept 9 - 11 hours many nights and still been groggy the next day. arg. also annoying. But it's really nice to not lay in bed and stare at the ceiling. Last night I slept from about 1:30 - 5 something. ugh. wide awake. Also last night as I was getting ready for bed, I dropped a dresser drawer on my toe. Holy jumpin, it hurt like the furry of I don't know what. So I went to bed icing my tow and heating my back. Then I woke up early. And my toe still hurt. So instead of eating half of Dave's arm, I stumbled out in the living room to look for something to do. And found myself here. What am I doing adding to this post that's already the size of Toledo? I don't know. But here's some more things that I woke up thinking about - 2 things actually. Our microwave, and our stove. Dave's (stupid, little, annoying) microwave does not heat things well. (I am grateful for Dave's microwave, really, I am) You need to heat things way longer than you would in a normally functioning microwave. I don't know if that has something to do with the fact that the rotating microwave plate is in Iowa at the moment... Anyway, I've just had this hankering for popcorn the last while. The first time I tried to make some in the microwave - oh my, the hideousness the resulted. Basically, it was way underdone -- most of it unpopped with enough of the buttery goodness for 20 pounds of popcorn in a quarter of the bag. ugh. The next time I was determined to not make the same mistake. I used the popcorn setting even - At no point did the popping noises become less than 2 seconds apart or whatever it is (I don't think anyway) but oh my, I think I heard a smoke alarm go off in Florida! The rock hard, jet black substance was not edible in any way. Now I only have one left. What do I do? Any suggestions?

And now, the stove. It's way hot! The other day I wanted to make homemade pizza (most of this is in the comments of Sabrina's blog, but I'll ramble about it here anyway). I had honestly not made home made pizza in years and now I remember why. First of all, it took me about 2 hours to make. Yeah, I'm slow, but 2 hours of precious unpacking (or 10,000) time? THEN, the STUPID oven - it was not in very long at all, and the first time I checked it, it was QUITE crispy. I was so torked. Dave thought it was wonderful of course, but I think the taste buds of guys are some how affected by that chemical bath thing that washes over their brains while they're in the womb. And then, what was the real clincher in my mind was when I started adding up how much stinkin money was in that pizza. Granted I wanted it to be good and put a lot of stuff on it, but we could have ordered any pizza anywhere for cheaper. Now I know why people order in pizza.

We have power! = )

What an odd few days we've had here. I was getting all excited about posting that we finally had Internet in our apartment and about that time, the hurricane came through and we lost power. I know some of you were following the storm more than others. But anyhoo... let's see... What has been going on. We got Internet Saturday morning and that was fun and exciting. We kept hearing ramblings about this storm coming through last week but didn't think too much about it. When we were finally able to watch some TV and have the Internet, we realized it was the talk of the state. At church, people were saying that the city would probably be without power for awhile and we'll get a lot of strong winds and maybe some flooding. And we should be prepared for days without power. Oh my. Oh, let me back up a bit - Saturday evening Dave and I were moving stuff around in our ritzy, upscale little condo and discovered that the window in our bedroom is actually composed of cheap, flimsy, plexi-glass. And it had a couple spots that looked like a rock tried to come through the window. I barely touched it and it cracked like crazy. great. So, in light of the coming storm, we thought we should board that one. So Sunday after church we did some last minute shopping - the lines were insanely long and businesses were starting to close up for several days and a lot of them were boarded up. I guess this is for real. So we boarded up the window and such. Monday morning it was stormy and the power went out for awhile and then came back on. Yeay, thought we. Then it went out. = ( Unpacking is bad enough, but unpacking in the dark is just no fun at all. We made ourselves work for awhile. We also tried to get all our food from the fridge and freezer in coolers and were preparing to be without power for days. My cell phone stopped working and what an odd feeling - it felt like we were totally cut off from the world. I remembered last night that we had a radio around and they were saying that most of the city was without power and it would take weeks for a lot people to get power back. ugh. Today we continued to have no power at all. Our food wasn't staying cold at all. And we weren't sure when classes were starting at LSU. Last Dave had heard, things were starting up Thursday, but that seemed unlikely. If school was closed and we were without power all week, we'd probably find somewhere to go. Hanging out in 90 degree weather with no AC isn't so much fun. Not to mention the rotting food and such. So this afternoon we were going stir crazy and walked around our neighborhood. There were trees down all over the place and people were missing roof shingles and things like that. One building on our street is missing a roof - someone said they think that one got hit by a mini tornado or something. We decided to drive to the house of someone from church who has a generator so we could make some phone calls and check about classes. To make a long story short, we stayed there and talked with him for awhile (his family had been gone for a few weeks so I think he was glad for some company as well) then stopped at home to grab some things and were going to go back to his place for supper. When we got to our place, miracle of miracles - the power was on! Hooray!! From all the doom and gloom reports, this is way earlier than we were expecting. AND Dave doesn't have school until at least next Monday. So hopefully we can get a lot done this week. There are still tons of people without power. I guess we got lucky. What a fun way to spend Labour Day. whoo hoo. Let's see - here's some quotes that were very funny at the time - probably not anymore....

(we were using the freezer as a cooler and Dave was putting stuff from the fridge into the freezer packed with lots of ice) "... But of the power comes in in the middle of the night we might have a lot of Aunt Jamimasicles!"

Staring into the closet...
person 1; "Look at the butload of hangers we have hanging in the closet."
person 2: "Look at the hangload of butlers we have hanging in the closet!!"

Random question from this 80's game show where the contestants have to say if the statement is true or false:
"The St. Bernard is named after a saint named Bernard."
"True"
"That IS true!"
"YEAYYYYYYY" (does that seem funny to you? It seemed very funny to us at the time)

Okay, rather than bore you any longer, I should go to bed. It's late. Oh, we bought a really nice oak table and 6 chairs that I really really like. They are used of course - found the add in the paper. So now we own a bit of furniture. We feel so civilized actually sitting at a table to eat. We had been sitting at an end table and using 2 camp chairs (and eating out of tupperware for the first couple days). But Dave broke one of the camp chairs so it was time.... K, leaving for real now.

random tidbits

* After almost one week at the apartment, it's hard to see a huge improvement or transformation. The kitchen is definitely transformed, but the rest of the place is still very dirty and has boxes and junk ALL OVER. It's all just really overwhelming to me. At times I feel like I'm making progress, at other times, I just lay on the bed and stare at the black spots on the ceiling because I'm too overwhelmed to do anything (hmm.... maybe that's why it's taking so long)

* I have way to much junk. I admit it. I should have thrown half of it away and not moved it. I unpack but have no place to put it.

* Dave is still eating BBQ beef from the wedding. I hope he doesn't die of food poisoning. I stopped eating it quite some time ago.

* Nearly every time we drive somewhere together, I fall fast asleep. What is my problem? I still feel tired most of the time, maybe just trying to catch up from the last several insane months. And driving in Warsaw is different - it doesn't take much time at all to get anywhere. Unlike here. So Dave will be talking to me and then look over and I'll be sound asleep. The other day I was dreaming as we pulled into the bank parking lot. At least I try to stay awake when I'm driving, which has been rare and not pleasant (the driving part). Without Lucy, I don't know where I'd be. Probably on my way to North Dakota or some such place.

* You know how I was griping about how we are just expected to know things, like our meter number and such. Well, we had been getting more and more annoyed at our landlord by the day because I would call and she wouldn't call back and we had no way to get our mail. FINALLY, we got a hold of her and she said to call the post office. After a couple days and attempts, we find out that the post office needs to be notified that we have moved into that apartment so they can change the key. And the only time you can get your new key is on Friday. Isn't this interesting information??? HELLOOOOO!!!! Had we known this, we could have called the post office weeks ago and then picked up our key the day after we got into town. But noooooo.... no one tells you these things. So today on the phone as I was talking to someone from the post office, I asked if there's anyway we could get it before Friday because we are waiting on important documents and such. The only thing she could suggest was try to catch the mail carrier. I always have everything closed up, (she had said between 1:30 - 2:30) but randomly at about 12 I saw a mail truck in our neck of the woods. I'm pretty sure I haven't moved that fast since ... I'll get back to you... anyway I went barrelling out the door and across the street and pleaded for mercy and the very nice (gasp - that's been rare so far in our dealings with people around here) lady said, yeah I'll get it for you. So I went back and watched and waited until she finally came, and ah sweet bliss, the mail it was there. Now we just have to wait until Friday.... That story became way longer than I intended.

* A lesson learned this week - high quality vegetable peelers will slice your skin as though it were butter. But it's only my index finger on my right hand, so thankfully, no one I use all the time or anything.

* Dave started school yesterday. Today he was gone all day while I tried to unpack and watch the ceiling and such. It's such an odd feeling being in a completely new place. Today I was all alone and it's just this odd feeling of... I know one person is this city. Just calling up friends and hanging out isn't an option. (So I call my old roommate cause we have free mobile to mobile = ) I'm sure it will improve as time goes on. Transitions are just odd.

* I'm not sure if there was anything else or not. I think I should probably go now and do something productive. Hope you are all having a fabulous week.

another country heard from...

Okay, so I guess it's not another country, it just feels like it. And people do speak another language around here that is very difficult to understand. Anyway, HIIIIIIIII to everyone. So nice to meet on here again. I don't really know where to start. I could post 900 pictures of our fabulous trip, but we don't yet have Internet at the homestead so that will not be happening for awhile. I'm sitting at some random computer lab at some very large campus doing things online while waiting for my hubby to finish whatever he's doing. So I thought, hey what's keeping me from updating my blog? And I could think of nothing. So that's what I decided to do. I can try to give you a few highlights of the last couple weeks. Gatlinburg, TN was amazingly gorgeous. We had a cabin I guess you would call it, but it was more like a really nice house, in the mountains - a hot tub and balcony with a stunning view of the mountains. some fun stuff we did -- went mini golfing at this place where we got to ride up the side of a mountain (or maybe really big hill would be more accurate) in a cable car like thing, and then golf up there and ride down. It was nice and shady and cool and lots of fun. Hey, come to think of it, I don't think we ever added up our score, but he beat me, this I know. We also rode over 2 miles in a much bigger and more secure cable car to this park area. The view was awesome and the car went right by our cabin. After watching it go back and forth all week, we really wanted to ride it. We also spent some time one day in the Smokey Mountains National Park - did a bit of biking and saw a nice waterfalls and pretty scenery. I was expecting more places to be able to see the mountains, but honestly, the best place to see the mountains in Gatlinburg was from our cabin. (or the cable car) We also spent some time in downtown Gatlinburg wandering in and out of shops. Honestly, so much of the stuff was very tacky, glitzy, airbrushed non-sense (I feel so old and mature using that word) but then here and there we would find really nice, tasteful places, you just had to look a little harder. We went to a really nice Thomas Kinkade um... I don't know what you call it - a place that had a bunch of his paintings. Also, we splurged a bit on things that, well, I've been saying - when we get to Baton Rouge, no more ice cream whenever we feel like it - we're eating salad and exercising every day. So yeah, there's good ice cream in Gatlinburg. Also, there are tons of fudge shops. That's something that I see from time to time but never buy. Well I thought to myself (and to Dave) it's our honeymoon, dang it, we're buying fudge. (this is probably hideously boring to some of you, but maybe some of you will find it mildly entertaining) So the idea was to buy 3 little pieces and share it with Dave's aunt and uncle. Well, we got 3 "little" pieces and then the guy says if you buy one more you get another one free. Well what good Mennonite can resist a deal like that? So I said sure and then one of those ended up not being very little and we walked out of there with an obscene amount of fudge, some of which is sitting in a Baton Rouge apartment. And in case you are wondering - maple, choc. peanut butter, coconut (ugh - that one was for Dave), gatlinburg mud (which was a wonderful concoction of vanilla fudge with choc. and carmel), and choc/carmel/cashew were the flavors of choice. Yes, you might have gained 5 pounds just reading that.

From Gatlinburg we headed to Asheville MC to spend a day there. And here were all the amazing views that I was missing in Gatlinburg. Oh my. There's this road where there are lookouts all over the place and it's just awesome views of the mountains all over. took tons of pictures. The next day we went to the Biltmore house which was fun and neat to see and again, have lots of pics. Then we headed to Dave's aunt and uncle's place in Georgia. Some might thing it odd to spend time with family on one's honeymoon and I sorta did myself, until the time came. At this point we were starting to feel like the only humans alive on the universe (other than the ones we were giving our life savings to, of course). And I had been feeling sorta sad about going to Baton Rouge and opening wedding gifts all along without any family around. Well, dave's car with all the wedding gifts had been parked at their place so we ended up hauling them all inside and having a big gift opening party with them. It was so much fun!! wow - what a party. So then we spent the next day driving and arrived in Baton Rouge last night. Wow, it sorta feels like a year ago. I could go on and on about all our adventures and mishaps since being here, but let's see, what are the highlights.... well, we arrived at 10 to a pitch black apartment. The power was supposed to be turned on, but we didn't have any. I called the power company on the way into campus to take care of some things. When I FINALLY talked to someone who could help, she said, oh, you just need to turn on your main breaker. Easy enough. So we got a few groceries, went back to the apartment, and flipped everything we could find with a switch. Still nothing. So I called back. Finally got through to someone and she said, oh, you need to turn on your meter (it's an apartment building, there's meters all over the place!) and gave us a very specific number that belonged only to us, followed by specific instructions of what we were supposed to do. HELLO!! Now you tell me, how in the hiffalump we were supposed to know that??!!?? I mean, this would have been very useful information to have been communicated to us before 10 that evening. Anyway, we got power around 1 I think. I was so fried I could barely function. Dave very very graciously unloaded both cars (which contained a lot!) while I slept. Yeah, what a sweetie. And in the middle of that mess, I was stumbling around the apartments saying... I hafta pee, and do you think we have toilet paper... no, of course not... so he runs to the store to get some... only to find that we did have a little bit in the place. ANYWAY, this is getting very long and boring. We arrived to an apartment that was, um, shall we say, quite filthy and not exactly what we were expecting. I was hoping to be able to get right to unpacking, but I'm about to even start that until certain parts of the place are scrubbed very good and proper. And I refuse to use either of the showers until they are cleaned (and have a shower curtain... ) so yeah, I probably smell really good about now. There's something about someone else's dirt that really grosses me out. In the kitchen for instance, between the stove and counter top, there's too much of a space, and there's tons of crud on both sides. It just grosses me out. So we're hoping to pull out the stove and scrub it down. Yeah, that's what's waiting for us when we get back, which might have something to do with the fact that we're sitting here on the computers. Anyway, I wish some of you could just swing by and help me! = P The places just looks hopeless right now, but I'm sure in a week or 2 it'll look better. Congratulations if you're still reading. Come see us sometime, eh?

I will never doubt again....

In case anyone is still checking this - it's been a crazy week of packing and most of my possessions are out of my house now. Dave is moving things down to Baton Rouge this weekend. We couldn't decide the best way to move everything and some options were way more expensive than others. We ended up renting a cargo van from Enterprise, which was way cheaper than a big moving truck. I must admit, when I saw that van, and saw my pile of stuff, I thought, there is NO WAY even half of that is going to fit in that van. Someone from my church came over to help us who's really good at packing things tight. and can I just say ... WOW!! About half way through we realized we had TONS of space and I ended up taking, in addition to everything that was packed and ready to go, my bookshelf, my beloved office chair, AND, my rather ample sized dresser. I hadn't planned on taking any of that because I assumed there was no room for it. It was just insane how much stuff could be packed in a space that size. So anyway, it's a relief to have that out of the way. Yesterday after the days of packing, the house looked like a tornado went through. So I was finally able to get that back in order and yeah, just waiting for the next round of chaos. Hope you're all doing well! = )

Then there was the day my head exploded and I hacked up a lung...

... so, I'm not feeling so well and decided not to spread the joy to the masses so I'm home from work today. I need to do some computer work from home so I don't go out of my mind. My last day of work is next Friday and that just seems unreal. This is lousy timing - like I have a full day of visits scheduled tomorrow (like a 10 hour day) and I really don't want to have to reschedule them. Anyway, onto cheerier news, last weekend Dave and I went to Iowa to see his family. We had a lot of fun and saw some really nice fireworks. Dave's parents had loaned him a car topper thingy to use for the move and such and so we had that strapped to his car on the way home and had some rather valuable things in it. Well, on Sunday we were crusing down interstate 80 surrounded by traffic of course, and all of a sudden we hear this eerie noise and I turn around and this big luggage carrier is flying through the air and lands in the middle of the interstate with a crash (right in front of an on ramp). This big semi slowed way down and drove around it, as did other vehicles, and then this guy, who appeared to be a mechanic, pulled over right away. He helped Dave drag it off the road and then he worked for probably a half hour at least, strapping it on with his high tech straps. Thank God he was around, don't know what we would have done. And than God the thing didn't fly through someone's windshield or someone didn't crash into it... Of course I was freaking out and thinking about how someone could have been killed and how we can never travel anywhere without catastrophe (last time we drove that stretch, we blew a tire). And Dave is thinking about how wonderful it is that no one was hurt and that the mechanic guy was right where he was at that moment... The topper had been making some annoying noises before if flew off. After it flew off, it was making intolerable noises. There was a loud, but tolerable humming sound on the driver's side, and then there was a very loud, more high pitched grinding sound on my side. It was a metal hook hitting the window wrong. We stopped and tried to put some paper towels inbetween them, but to no avail. The winning solution turned out to be a high tech combination of paper towels, a feminie hygiene product, and electrical tape. Worked like a charm. Anyways, I just wanted to bless your day with that story. I think I'm going to go sleep now. Hope you are all doing fabulously.

This is a title to the post below

Aren't these so very pretty?? They're some crazy daisies that this guy brought over tonight. The picture really doesn't show how bright and fun and pretty they are. very nice!!

View from the Sears Tower

A funky, um, this, at Millennium Park in Chicago.

A fun little shower last Friday night. = )

Dave counting out and carefully measuring jelly beans to see if I ordered enough for the reception. (if we're cheap, I did)

Us in Chicago... I posted this picture because it's a great picture of my cutie pie and because there's a really nice water falls in the background (in case you missed that). It's a dreadfully hideous picture of me, but since turning old and mature, I'm okay with posting the occasional hideous picture of myself. Maybe when I'm forty I will have matured to the point of posting hideous pictures of myself and not having to point out their hideousness. I guess we'll see. So, where should I even begin. Yes, the big birthday thing came and went without too much agony, although there was a little. I remembered this year how frequently the day after my birthday, I feel sorta bummed out, cause the fun and attention is over, but you're still old. ugh. I probably thought about it more because the day after my birthday is Dave's birthday. So the poor guy has to deal with a grouchy woman on his birthday for the rest of his life. So yeah, we had a nice day here in town on my birthday - I went out for lunch with my work ladies to a fun place in town I hadn't been yet. It's more of a bar, but during the day things are pretty tame and I got a nice first sunburn of the season. I took the afternoon off and Dave and I hung out. Only LaRonda will probably truly appreciate this, but Dave found the entire Season 2 of I Love Lucy on DVD for my birthday. It has my all time favorite episode where Lucy hires an English tutor. Doesn't that just take you back to the good old days, LaRonda? Anyway, it's also fun cause there's a bunch I haven't seen in there. Not that we have much time to watch them, but sometimes they come out while we're doing invitations. On the 14th, we went to Chicago. It was nice, although more and more I realize how much I'm not really a city person. It's just so loud and crazy and so many people. But we did have fun. We went out for lunch with some friends of Dave's, went up the Sears Tower, walked through Millennium Park, walked (yes walked) to Navy Pier, and by the time we got there, we didn't have much time to do anything before we had to walk back to the train station. We walked an awful lot that day. Okay, so that was the dreaded birthday weekend, nothing too huge and exciting to report other than that.

I mentioned invitations in the above rambling. Can I just say that choosing to make our own has been one of my biggest regrets in life so far. I shouldn't say that because Jenni designed them and they look really pretty, but the idea was that we would have them done and assembled before Jenni and Rita left. But of course, we ran out of time. They are really difficult to glue. Dave has done nearly all of them that weren't done when they left. We got a big pile done and send and then this week, I was hoping to finish. We then ran out of red paper. So I went to the scrap booking store in town and they had nothing that matched. So Dave and I made a little side trip to Goshen to go to Michaels. Goshen was not in the time allotment for the week, but oh well. I had carefully counted and determined that we needed enough for 18 invitations. So I thought I would play it safe and figured 5 extra. So we got to assembling and addressing the remaining ones and when we were getting to the end, I realized that I had miscounted somehow and we needed about 6 or 7 more. And no more red paper. AND, that also meant we were out of the brown paper as well. So Dave goes to Ft. Wayne to Michaels the next day to get more paper. Because I can't count. And (I just realized that this is a really boring story with an anti-climactic ending) also gets some more brown paper so we can print more of those off. So we're finally hoping to finish this never ending task tonight. We're pretty much there but ran out of pictures and need one, I repeat, one more. Anyway, the moral of the story is, um, I don't know, make your sister stay 2 weeks so she can glue all the invitations. And also have an accurate count, rather than a rough estimate, of how many you actually need. Okay, I'll stop boring you with that.

I have off work tomorrow and I'm thrilled to pieces about that. I'm going to start packing hopefully. That feels sorta strange. Next week is also a 4 day work week and then I only have 2 more weeks there. Yeah, 3 weeks total. I can't believe it. I'm training my replacement now and she's a sweet little thing so that's been sorta fun, and sorta stressful at the same time.

Here's some fun conversations overheard recently. I'm sure you had to be there, but anyhoo...

me: I really like the name Aleah.

him: (looking shocked, troubled, and saying in all sincerity) Will she be black? (as though if she were black, her name would be the greatest of our worries)

person 1 : Is there any place we could go to look for shoes in Goshen?

person 2: No! You can't buy shoes in Goshen!! There's too many Amish. (okay, I'm sure you had to be there for that one)

I know there were more, but it's 1 here and I can't remember them. I hope you're all having a fabulous summer!! Maybe you'll here from me again in a month or so. maybe...

Since you begged....

Okay, so since my 2 fans have been asking for an update - I am dutifully updating tonight, at a very late hour, and ignoring the 200 things on the list. I've had various posts rattling around in my head the last month, but most of those are long gone. So, here's some random pics:


Dave chopping a pepper - the picture doesn't do it justice. We were cooking the other night and let's just say this is all a little new for him. So anyway, I had to laugh when I saw the job he was doing on the pepper. He cut the top out but not the bottom and then started slicing away so it made this huge flower like thing. Anyway, I'm sure you had to be there. What we made turned out quite fabulous. If I was ambitious I would post the recipe for you, but as it is, I'm almost asleep.

Here's some random pics from when Jenni and Rita were here about 3 weeks ago. Wow, time is flying! Thanks so much for all the fabulous help ladies!!

Meeting Hannah! I didn't get many good pictures of her. = (

Rita and Bethany working on wedding invitations.

Jenni working on invitations and Dave working on the address list.

What else can I bore you with? I feel like I don't have much interesting to say - life has been nutty. I'd love to be able to quit my job tomorrow and just do wedding stuff. Dave got a good used bike from the bike shop around here and we went for a nice long ride um... last Saturday. The idea was to keep going... The other thing is that we went from cold to 90 degrees over night. Not ideal biking weather. But we still want to do more of that. Here's some fun quotes that were heard around here recently:

"The Spirit is willing, but the flesh is soft and spongy."

(while biking) "Are those Amish droppings?"

"Um, yes, because around here, the Amish do poo on the road."

Dave: "Just relax, everything that needs to get done, will get done..."

Rachel: "THINGS DON'T GET DONE!! PEOPLE DO THEM!!! NOTHING WILL GET DONE UNLESS WE do it!!!" (sigh... relaxing isn't one of my strong points these days)

Um, well, now that you know I'm alive, can I go to bed now? That wasn't a quote, that's what I'm really saying to you right now in this moment. I'm very tired.

Life or something like it...

Hi all. My sister said to me "Post" so I'm working on being compliant. Life has been a never ending flurry of activity but today has actually been somewhat relaxing at points. I've been getting ready for Jenni and Rita coming on Tues. to help with wedding stuff. And Dave is supposed to be rolling into town tomorrow evening sometime. And today I found a place for him to stay. good timing. Let's see, what else has been going on around here? I have a fun garage sale story for you. Fun for me anyway. I rarely do the garage sale thing - I always like the idea, but end up getting out of bed painfully early on a Saturday morning, just to walk around finding absolutely nothing but piles of junk. But there was this one garage sale advertised in the paper that looked really promising - was selling a lot of household stuff, a vacuum cleaner (I was very interested in that) and misc. wedding stuff. Well, I conned a friend of mine into going with me (with breakfast). It ended up that this particular garage sale was in the midst of a community garage sale so lots of houses were having garage sales and it was impossible to see which sale was that particular one. I was interested in the vacuum cleaner because I have not one and hear they can be quite pricey. So anyway, my friend and I went from house to house and it was getting later and later and I was getting scared that I'd go home empty handed. Finally we made it to this one sale that had enough of the things listed in the add that I thought it was the right one. By this time, it was close to 9, so we were LATE by garage saling standards. So I asked them if this was the place with the vacuum cleaner, thinking for sure that it had sold already. The lady says something to the guy about a vacuum cleaner and he says, oh yeah, the vacuum... and he walked into the garage and came out with a nearly brand new looking vacuum, Dyson brand for those of you who know anything about them. I had never heard of it before yesterday. But anyway, THEY HAD FORGOTTEN TO PUT IT OUT!! It was on hold for me!! whoo hoo. They were asking 35 for it and claimed it was a $600 machine. I asked if he would throw in 2 lamps for 5 instead of 10 and he said sure. So there you have it. = ) A vacuum cleaner and 2 lamps for 40 bucks. And I plugged it in and it works. whoo hooo!!

What else? Here's a random fun story that made my roommate and I laugh until we bawled and our stomachs hurt. It's really not that funny and I'm sure you had to be there, but I'll share it anyway - So I tend to be a pack rat a little. Oh, speaking of which, I was going to tell Rhonda - she mentioned something on her blog about people wanting souvenirs from Madagascar. And I wanted to say that no matter what it is, I love it! Even if it's completely odd or funny looking, I would put in in a box and then every couple years when I'm moving somewhere, I would go through the box, take it out and say, awwwww... that's the cute little widget that Rhonda brought me from Madagascar. I could NEVER part with that. And I'd put it back in the box until next time. So ANYWAY, Friday evening I came across this sweater that I have owned for 10 years and have not worn ONE TIME! It's true. It's this HUGE, bulky, handmade wool sweater. Hand made by no one I know. When I was a teenager, I thought HUGE, bulky, handmade, wool sweaters were SOOOOO cool and it was my dream, fantasy, and truest wish to own one. So one year a lady I babysat for gave me a large sum of money for Christmas and I decided the time had come, I was going to buy the perfect sweater. So I paid a significant amount of money for the thing - close to 100 I think, got it home, and yeah, it's terribly unflattering and um... I just never ever wore it! not once. But I've sure kept it all these years. I was telling Bethany the story and she said, 'Well, at least you got to live your dream, since you dreamed of just owning one and not actually wearing it." And then I modeled it for her and she took pictures which I can guarantee you will never ever see. And we laughed till our stomachs hurt. That's the end of that story. So the real question - do I move the sweater with me to Louisiana?

Another random story - I had been dreading the task of cleaning out the freezer for weeks. It was something that really needed to be done before the company arrives. Bethany had to make this scrapbook page for an Amish friend of hers. She had also been dreading doing that for weeks. She just couldn't pull anything together. So I told her that if she cleaned out the freezer for me, I'd do her scrapbook page. She agreed way too quickly. So she really didn't even have anything to put on the page. So I dutifully begin going through the pictures in my computer that could be printed. And putting those pictures onto a different flash drive to take to Walgreen's to print. By the time I had accomplished this task, she was DONE cleaning out the freezer! Wait a second. So I go plodding to the store, can't pick up the pictures till after midnight, come home... tell her she should at least cook some of my chicken for me so she agreed. Went back to get the pictures and the actual page didn't take long at all. And I thought that was going to be a better story than it turned out being in typed form. Anyway, I lost big time in that little deal.

Another random little ditty that you won't find funny at all, but at the time was very humorous. Dave has been sort of unsure of when he'd get here. For awhile he thought tonight, then we thought it would be later because of the apartment search in Louisiana, then we found an apartment down there so he thought he could come Saturday night, but that ended up not working out because he had too much to do for school. ANYWAY, lots of superfolus information. So anyway, my odd roommate (most of today's stories seem to be about her) was showing me how she put all these really dumb looking stickers all over my calendar. She was explaining them to me and she said... "and I celebrated the day of Dave's arrival with champagne and meats, but he didn't come" it was very very funny. Okay, now that you are all completely bored, I'm going to go. Don't expect to hear much for awhile. It's been lovely chatting.

I found my veil today!!

In an effort to delay the inevitable...

... I decided to post on here. Mainly because I don't want to do anything today other than lay around in my PJs and read and maybe watch all 6 hours hours of Pride and Prejudice or something like that. I'm not at all impressed with the pace of life lately and that's what seems like the most pleasant right now. But I'm sure it's not to be. Actually, the last few weekends I've had a never ending list and today the list doesn't seem quite as long. And I did accomplish something already today. What to know what? I'll tell you. My roommate and I went though the kitchen sorting out what stuff is whose and whose stuff is what and ... well, you get the idea. I've been dreading this for quite some time now. We have been roommates at this point for 4.5 years and haven't marked anything. So all of our stuff has been all mixed up and after awhile, it's not always clear what belongs to who. And then there might be a smidgen of tension when opinions on such things differ. So this has seemed like this HUGE job that I've been dreading. This morning we were talking about it and just decided to start. Well, we got through nearly the whole kitchen. And all in a very amicable manner I might add. It honestly is SO nice to have that done. I've started boxing a lot of my stuff up since we have plenty of stuff. So that way when it's a month before the wedding, that's one less thing I have to stress about. If only I could always be so organized and on top of things.

Okay, for my job, I think most of you know... I travel about from home to home, spreading sunshine and cheer and helping parents with child development information. The other day I found this child development quiz online so I took it. ugh. I got 12 out of 20 correct, and at the bottom of the quiz where words something like "You did NOT do a good job! You need to learn MORE about your child's development!" Yeah, that was just the pick-me-up I was after that day.

And one more random thing - I mentioned in passing on a post awhile back that I find it odd that birdcage is one word, and like Vicky pointed out, cannot is also one word. I just want to know who decides these things. Birdcage for instance - it's an adjective and a noun, both words stand completely alone in a sentence. A blue dress does not become a bluedress, but for some reason, a cage used for birds becomes a birdcage. Can and not are used all the time, but put them together and they come cannot? Why? And THEN I was typing "babysitter" the other day and found to my shock and dismay that "baby sitter" is actually correct. WHAT?? Okay, it's perfectly fine to say the lions were not in a cage, how can this not be, they might eat the birds, but how often do you say... well, the other day when I was sitting on my sitter.... Okay, so I guess sitter could stand alone in a sentence, but you just don't hear it that often. When it comes to the English language, I just need to give up that fantasy I have about things being consistent and MAKING SENSE. Okay, I've rambled about this for far too long.

I have all this stuff to box up now and I just don't feel like it. But I guess I'll stop boring all of you because it's not your fault that I'm feeling unmotivated. Hope you're all having a wonderful weekend!

I spose I should say something...

Hello... Let's see, where to start. I don't feel like I have much to say but I'll try to eek out something. Um... oh, here's something. The other morning at 5:40 or so, I woke up to the house shaking. It was so odd. And you know, when you're half awake, you think maybe you just imagined it. Pretty soon my roommate was up as well and we were both wondering what in the world it was. I didn't sleep much after that and then in the morning we saw on the news that there was an earthquake - yeah, in Indiana. How odd. But something that's even more odd - my roommate was in California not too long ago, and standing on the San Andreas fault, and for some reason, prayed that she would be able to feel an earthquake in her lifetime, you know, not a bad one where people die and stuff, just enough to shake things up a little. And about 2 weeks later... hello. I asked her to please not pray for tornadoes and maybe she could pray about a cheap photographer who takes good pictures. Ummm... what else. I don't sleep well these days. My brain doesn't think it has time to sleep apparently. That gets really old. Um, I don't know what else to bore you with, so until next time...

Yeah, I guess I'm still somewhat alive. Life is crazy and all. I don't have lots of time to write but I thought I'd share some pictures from the recent trip to Atlanta - had a really good time. And I've had random blog posts running rampant in my brain for so long but now most of them have left me for another... I just remember this: Why in the world is birdcage one word? I don't get that. And this: Today as I was driving I saw this couple - he was smoking a pipe and she was smoking a cigarette - and they walked into the local health food store. It just cracked me up. Like I pictured them buying some herbal lung cleanse or something. Okay, here's some pictures.

Just in case you're not sick of pictures of us...

A cute little town close to Dave's aunt and Uncle's where we were staying.

So I don't know if you heard about the tornado that went through downtown Atlanta a couple weeks ago, but here's some buildings with lots of windows blown out.

The coke a cola capital of the world...

CNN building with lots of windows boarded up.

We went to the Georgia Aquarium. With the exception of TONS of people and noise, it was really really fun.

Sea Nettle anyone?

Not to toot my own horn, but I have feelings of fondness for this picture. Something about it makes me happy inside.