What a weekend!

I'll just give a quick rundown of the weekend since I've told the story a few times now...

Thursday was the girls' preformal (date party) and the theme was Storybook Couples/Characters. My favorite was India and Houston who came as Calvin and Hobbes!

India's tummy was furry and she kept asking me to pet it, which was kind of hilarious. I also met Houston (her boyfriend) for the first time; he's a really sweet kid and I had fun talking beer and some academics with him. The girls were very well-behaved, but someone's date got way out of control and started a fight with the bouncer! I had to step in at one point, and was apparently pretty scary which is good-- it means word will get around that you don't screw up at an AOII event anymore! The girls are always great, but their dates have ruined stuff for them so many times, it's just not going to happen now that I'm here! The place we went to was called Cypress Pint and Plate. It was pretty good, but definitely on the pricey side-- they charged on average $2-3 more a beer than we do at Palate! $10 for a Hitachino White? Whaaaat? The food was pretty good, though, and the atmosphere was very well constructed. I wouldn't mind going down on a Monday night for their twenty cent wings and buying a couple beers then. After I broke up the fight with the bouncer, I came home and couldn't sleep because I was so wound up/ticked off. I wrote the chapter an e-mail explaining that I knew it wasn't their fault, but they needed to impart to their dates the severity of the punishment should they screw up on Friday at formal.

Friday we were on the Henry Grady River Boat at Stone Mountain for formal and it was AWESOME!! The girls and their dates were the most well behaved Greek organization the security folks could remember, and not only did we get our security deposit back, they actually *wanted* us to come back next year! The weather held out and was perfect-- nary a cloud in the sky and the moon was full and high in the sky, we couldn't have asked for anything better. I wore one of my grandmother's dresses, a really cute vintage number from the '40s. Everyone loved it, and so did I. I'm fairly set on having vintage dresses for my nice events from now on, they fit better and are just so pretty and so well made. They're quite expensive, though, so I'm thinking that it might be easier on my pockets to buy the vintage Vogue patterns and use similar materials.
Above is the view from the riverboat just before sunset of the forest surrounding the mountain.

Today was Susie's bridal shower, which was lots of fun. There was a woman there who is a "grace period" foster mother and I think maybe once Jeremy and I settle in and have our own who's a bit older, I'd like to do it, too. All you do is take in babies who are given up for adoption for the 10-20 day grace period Georgia gives a mother to change her mind so that the adoptive family doesn't have the baby and then get it taken away just as they've gotten it. All told, this woman's had 75!! She had her newest one who was only two weeks old with her, she got passed around and was a little shocked at the number of people there. Everyone was great fun, and my Mancala and Jenga went over well with Susie who loves those games as much as I do :) Her bachelorette party is in a couple weeks, I think, and should be a blast. I'm so excited to get to know Susie better, and Joanna as well-- I think we're all going to be really good friends. And it's appropriate, really, since Emily and I are very close now and met through a mutual friend, that I should be good friends with people I have met through her!

Work tonight was rough for a while, but not too bad-- and I really like working with Peter. If Shale gets in to medical school and heads on up to Philly, I'll probably talk to Jill about picking up Saturdays; they're a good money-making night and Peter and I just get along really well.

I'm so exhausted and have finally wound down enough to fall asleep maybe, so I'll leave you with a picture from my last trip to Florida-- my favorite billboard ever. Heck yeah, Chick'fil'A.

Just wanted to say

Since she's publicly acknowledged it on her blog, I will here...

I just wanted to say that I'm really proud of my friend Emily. She's had a problem with drinking (don't we all love when genetics meet circumstance?) and has decided to quit altogether. I've known a lot of people who have problems with alcohol, or addiction in general, and it's a really brave thing to step up to the plate and admit you need to do it for yourself and your friends.

She's doing her own rewards program in the form of her other, much more tolerable/physically healthier addiction, and I'm starting one from my side.

May 8 will be three weeks, 21 days, and when she makes it there we will go for the Nutella and Organic Banana smoothies at Nectar in Oakhurst! I'm going to figure out other yummy, culinary experiments to fill out every other three week (or so, depending on 'dem dollaz) interval.

I love you, Emmy!

Sunday, rainy Sunday

The weather continues to be February-like here, which means drizzly and in the 40's. Easily my most despised weather pattern ever. Not warm enough to only wear a cardigan or a quarter sleeve shirt, but not cold enough to wear a coat. Bah.

Went to get my nose pierced and Melanie had left to go back to Macon, which nobody told Mark who informed Emily she'd be there later since she took MARTA. When we showed up, the other piercer had come by to grab something and was like, "Oh, you didn't know? She's back in Macon for family stuff." We hung out and talked to Mark for a while, then went to Ru San's and pigged out on sushi-- stuffed myself with leftovers for $10! I like places like that not just because I don't want to spend a billion dollars on food, but because I can leave a $5 tip on $10 and be a) generous, and b) actually help the establishment by eating there and treating the waitstaff proportionally well.

You know, unlike the people who come to see me and spend all their money on food and leave a 10% tip...

Anywhoo, I've been bumming around and trying to start some scrap book pages. It's going slowly, though, because I left a lot more of my stuff in Southaven than I thought I had. My pages aren't super awesome yet, but once I get plenty of stuff and maybe some stencils for letters, they'll be a lot better. I did a couple pages of Jeremy and I parasailing in NC, the first page is us up in the air, the second is the last part where they let us drop in to the ocean. I had some cute little beachy stickers from Target, so there are some fish, shells, a pair of sunglasses, and an inner tube floating around. I picked two different blue patterns, a plainer one for the up-in-the-air shots, and one that looks a little under-the-sea-ish for the second set. I'm waiting on some pictures from Snapfish to get here, and trying to find my ticket for the Terra Cotta Army show, so I'll have a page for that and can start on my Hawaii pages, too. I have to swing by Target, so I'm going to see if I can find some solid colors that would be appropriate for the MotoGP stuff that I have.

That's about all that's happened tonight; Jeremy's had a much more interesting one-- he got to watch the shuttle launch! Though, he has had to sit in traffic for a couple hours. If he's lucky, even though they were done with the launch by 815p, he'll be home at 11p!

Ciao for now!

I continue to mildly dislike Laura Roslin

Roslin being the President of the Colonies. I am, however, quite amused by Baltar trying to explain religion to a centurion (basically pure machine) in an effort to try and get past him.

That's all the BSG I'll torture you with today!

Work was pretty decent tonight; Emily came to see me, which was nice. I wasn't in a very sociable mood, which I'm sure was evident, but for some reason I was totally exhausted. It really was nice to see her, though, and to have a friendly face. I'm excited because Melanie's back in town, so Sunday we're going to go get my nose pierced (which was my birthday present back in the day lol) and I'm so stoked! I also finally got a chance to get Bones back to her! They'd been sitting, lonely, in a Target bag on my door. I had re-watched them a couple times, my favorite episodes, but then I got BSG'd and we all know the end of that story!

Tomorrow, I'm going to do what I'm going to call my Thursday errands from now on because I'm realizing that I'm totally not going to do a darn thing on the days I work. Bank, Target, maybe the grocery store for something to drink, and swing by Palate to pick up the change I left (yes, literally change, but I think it's a couple bucks worth so why not?). And then come home and BSG myself out on SciFi.

I really miss Jeremy these days-- spring and summer is kind of our time, when we'd go for rides and be outside. Jeremy, of course, goes outside most any time of year because he's kinda crazy like that, but I hadn't thought about the fact that there aren't going to be any late night rides through backroads anymore. He sent me a text message tonight, from Ft. Matanzas watching the sunset, a wish you were here sort of thing-- it totally made my day, but made me sad because I won't see him for another month. Another one of those things where I tell myself that we'll have the rest of our lives, but it'd be nice if that could start right now! (Queue the Beach Boys!)

Alright, I'm gonna stop cheesin' you guys out and lock down ON THE FINAL CYLON!! Promise I'll post pictures when I get the nose done this weekend!

Blug

Went and had dinner at Palate with Em, talked wedding, had the cheese plate, had some cake. I'm not feeling too hot, though, and I think it was the wine tasting this afternoon. We had a few heavily tannic wines which always make me feel ill, but I didn't consider spitting them out. The Prosecco was good, though; a sparkling wine from northeastern Italy. Now food keeps showing up on tv and it's making me sick to my stomach... I hope I don't wind up with another fever... I've had more this week than I've had in five years!

Gabrrrrrr

An exhausting and frustrating week here, but I've heard that from people all over the world. We can all hope that next week will be a good one for all-- and why shouldn't it be? It's Thanksgiving!

I finally found my glasses (and my BlackBerry holster), just in time for my AAC meeting, but that was about the only non-frustrating thing for this week! I got lost in the country that God forgot (aka Cobb County) and almost rammed someone (figure of speech, I'm not really the ramming type, though I did almost cry) but dinner with AAC was great. Viki is hilarious, she's about my mother's age and has kids a little younger than me, and Becky is a few years older and reminds me a lot of my neighbor Genece. Lizzy is my age, she just got married a couple of weeks ago and has been dealing with trying to change her last name... herk. That's the one thing I am NOT looking forward to (though at least I'll finally be rid of the Sizemore name... blargh), it just seems to take so much time and energy.

Last night was Palate's 4th Anniversary and mom, her friend(?) David, and I went up and had a glass of wine and some of the bruschetta and the hummus plate. It was nice, and David's pretty cool and had some good pointers about fixing up the car and getting a new spare tire-- apparently he's done a lot of DIY with his car and rebuilt something like 5 engines!

I got home and called Jeremy, then kind of felt like I was going to go to bed since a glass of red wine will do that to a girl, so I put something silly on TV and started dozing off. All of the sudden, this car horn starts blaring and jolts me awake because in this neighborhood, horn honking like that generally means something is wrong. I throw on my coat and run out the back door and Juliet (the girl who lives in the guest house behind our place) is yelling down the driveway to her dad who has hit some kind of button or hit the button and then opened the door, causing the car to spaz out and honk. After that, I couldn't get to sleep, told Casey to go to sleep and he didn't which kept me up even later... today wasn't much better.

I did go to Figo with Emily and Joanna (who owns the cute bunny Bruno of Halloween post fame) and had some delicious ravioli-- Tuscan sausage and apple! I decided why not-- I had a Caesar salad if I didn't really like the ravioli, but the pasta was awesome. We went back to Joanna's and just hung out and played with the bunny (who tried to eat me) and had an amaretto sour.

Anyway, that's about all, nothing terribly interesting. If you are so inclined and not easily put out, my friend Jimmy has started a blog entitled "Crossroads: An Intersection of Faith, (Homo)Sexuality, & Culture" about his journey through his faith and his homosexuality. I find it very interesting, and I think it's wonderful Jimmy is finally comfortable enough to talk about these things. For those of you who don't know, I'm more of an Old Testament kind of gal-- not officially Jewish, but that is where my beliefs most closely lie, and between Jimmy and his friends who are contributing and discussing, I think that we're all learning something about how our faiths and personalities interact with an ever-changing society.

Putterin' 'Puter

My dear friend Emily is having computer issues-- we figure that the answer is to just get a new computer, but I'll put it up in case anyone's a genius or Dell savant.

She's got an "ancient" Dell, I believe an Inspiron, and Windows XP Pro. It's been a little sluggish, so I suggested she install SP3, which Jeremy and I just installed with success. She said she'd never done SP2 because it had killed a lot of computers (HP) at Agnes Scott. She's been trying without success to install SP2 (after my assurances that Dells were made for Windows) for about a week now-- it'll get all the way done installing and then go "fail!"

Any thoughts?

Out on the Town

Group shot
Originally uploaded by SveglioBella

Me, Em, and Susie at the Little Black Dress Party from this past weekend.

All in a week's work

"You would be the one to wear a red dress to a little black dress party!" -Shelley

Went back to Atlanta this weekend to start moving back and had a fairly decent time. I had my substitute teacher orientation on Thursday, which went pretty well. The people were an interesting mix, to be sure. A couple of really rude women-- one a cranky old black lady and one a middle aged white New Jersey woman who thought she was right about EVERYTHING. With the Jersey lady, I kinda felt like I should be rolling my eyes as she griped about the Newark flight being late... There were a few other former teachers, pretty chill people, and then the three people I was sitting with I made friends with.

The first was Liz, who had taught Social Studies in, I think, Middle School for a long time and decided she wanted to change school systems because she and her husband moved to Decatur. She sat right next to me and even though she came off as your average nice, pleasant, generally funny kind of gal, she had a little bit of a wit to her, we made fun of all the training videos together. She was really interested in my Senior Paper topic, turns out she was an Econ major with history minor in college and had studied literature as a side-track (her college curriculum was a little different from what we're used to-- she was probably about 40-45 maybe) so we talked a lot about imperialism and society and the economics of imperialism. It kinda made my day :)

Next up was Victoria, who had moved down from Memphis about a year ago, where she taught and did her graduate work. She worked at one of the worse high schools in Memphis, Sheffield (from Google: "hated it. I think it is a terrible school. The teacher and staff doesn't care about any of their students and i think that is awful.") where 75% of the students qualify for free or reduced lunch. She's a social studies teacher, and she wants to work at Renfroe, our MS, but the principal wants everyone to be gifted certified... but won't pay for it. Yeah. Anyway, she was a lot of fun, we bonded over how awful Memphis is, and when we got to the part about fights in school, she turned to me and said, "In Memphis, it was just weave and press on nails all down the hallway!" Which, let's be honest, is probably true.

Wayne came in late, he'd taken MARTA and the shuttle from the High School pulled away with him running after it. He's a middle aged black man, his son just graduated from Emory and is going to grad school there, too, I think. He was a lot of fun, and we had a great discussion about racial and economic lines, especially in a city like Memphis where so much has happened. He thought the Rhodes BSA's stunt from a few years ago, calling the white lights on the Christmas tree racist, was utter crap-- most educated people do, regardless of race. They also agree that the colored lights on the tree is kinda tacky looking-- good for retail, not for the home. Anyway, he was really cool-- worked for HP, another computer company, and then Cingular --> AT&T and decided he was sick of the corporate world and he wanted to teach.

Friday was errands day, then Saturday was hangin' out with Emily and doing not much day. Went and had my hair cut at the Van Michael salon at the Forum and even though it made me want to cry to spend $60 on the haircut (with Coke and mini facial), it probably is one of the better haircuts I've had in a while. Granted she mostly just cleaned up what I'd done last week, but it does look pretty good. Then we went for nail time, I got a manicure and Em a pedi, and my French manicure is possibly the worst one I've ever had and I do my own nails usually... oh, well.

The Little Black Dress party was fun, there were horribly dressed people, good food (even if it was cold) and good company. I ran in to a friend from Rhodes, and then Em, Susie and I judged people the rest of the night which was actually a lot of fun. We also decided to go in to art thievery, it's a very lucrative business these days.

Sunday, I drove back, and here I am.