Atlanta!!!

It has been a bit of a busy week for Chris and I . We were in Philadelphia for the first part of the week. While we were on the plane back from Philly, the Phillies clenched a spot in the World Series. Chris is, of course, super excited about this!! The best news is that the Rays are going to be playing them, so the Phillies will be playing down here in Tampa!!! We are very excited about hosting the World Series!!!

So, Chris and I took a long weekend to Atlanta this weekend, and it was phenomenal. I am ready to move to Atlanta, well, not really....but it is nice!! It turns out that our two favorite artists were both playing in ATlanta the same weekend, so we felt like all of the stars were aligned, and we just had to make the trip up there to see them. So, on Friday morning, we packed up and got on the road for our long trip up I-75! After battling rush hour traffic in Atlanta, which was not pretty, and getting slightly turned around( I know, I know- that is atypical for Chris and I given our keen sense of direction, but it does happen), we checked into our hotel. We quicklky changed and headed up to Alpharetta to see Ryan Adams. We were both super excited and enjoyed the show for the first 45 minutes, until Ryan announced that he was losing his voice, and he would not be able to continue to perform. This was disappointing, although we did get to hear what was quite possibly the most beautiful performance ever, when he sang Wonderwall.

Now, we don't have much luck with Ryan Adams. We went to see him in 2005 in Philly, and he was quite a character, complaining that the AC shouldn't be on, because it detracts from his performance. Mind you, this was mid summer- not a good time to shut off the AC. He also got extremely irritated when people requested songs from him. Finally after a while, he threw down his beer bottle and stormed off the stage saying he couldn't continue to perform for us. So, now that he has sobered up, we figured that he might actually give a complete performance. Not so. This man is odd. He does, however, have an angelic voice, so we won't hold it against him!

The next day we woke up bright and early to the sound of hammers and power drills. Apparently, our hotel was under renovation, and they work early in the morning on SAturdays, so we were up pretty early. We went to a charming little town called Marietta to see a Gone with the Wind museum. The museum was okay, but the town itself was wonderful. We got to walk around the square and enjoyed lunch at a little deli. We made our way back into Atlanta and headed out to dinner and then to see Ray LaMontagne. I am slightly obsessed with Ray, so this was very exciting for me! His show had sold out, so I bought tickets from a guy through craigs list. They were e-tickets, so I was slightly concerned he had sold them to several unsuspecting buyers, and that they wouldn't actually work. They did, however, work, and the show was wonderful! The show was in the "Tabernacle Theater," which is a converted church, so it was a very interesting venue. I am now even more obsessed with Ray, and I am hoping he comes back to the states to tour again soon. He performed my very favorite song, "Trouble." He also played a song called "Jolene," that is quickly becoming my second fav behind Trouble.

The next day we got up early to have lunch at Mary Mac's Tea room, Chris's favorite southern restaurant. It is quite nice. We then headed back to Tampa to make it to the Bucs game by kick off. We stopped in GAinesville along the way to check out the UF campus, which was quite nice! We made it to the Bucs game right after the game started. The game was incredibly dull, but we did get to sneak some peeks of the Rays game across the bridge, and we were thrilled that they beat the Red Sox to advance to the world series!!! :-)

Very exciting stuff!!!

Relief!

So, last night was probably one of the saddest nights for us. We have these frogs that live on our garage that we absolutely adore. Chris, more so than I do. Every night when we get home from work, we immediately check out the garage to see which frogs are out. We have named about 4 of them, but we usually recognize all of them, well, until all of the babies came recently. Now, there are some tiny ones that we don't have names for yet!

Well, anyways, last night, I had to put the garage door up to put something in. As I was going to do that, Chris told me I shouldn't put it up because our very favorite frog was on the door. I insisted that it was okay, because I had done it before and he just took a ride up and then back down when it shut. So, after I put the garbage can in, we went back out so we could make sure that King got back down okay. Well, we ended up watching in horror as the door came down and poor King's left front foot was in the crack between panels. Unfortunately, we saw it happen inslow motion. Chris tried to grab King. I ran to the car to hit the button to put the door back up and open up the crack, but we were both too late. King's foot got stuck in the crack. It was awful. When the door went back up, King quickly hopped down and we saw that his front paw had been cut off, and he wasn't moving. We knew we had to get him out of the garage so he wouldn't suffocate in there, so we approached him to put him in a jar and take him out, but he hopped away. We were both relieved to see him hop off. He didn't look healthy though.

So, I had several dreams about him last night, and in the middle of the night, I couldn't sleep, for fear that I had killed him, so I would get up to look for him in the bushes that he jumped in to- no King.

This morning, the whole drive home, all I kept thinking was, I would like nothing more than to see King on the garage door when we get home. I really didn't think it would happen, as the door crushed him good, but sure enough, he was sitting on our garage when we got in. His paw doesn't look to good, but he looked happy and still managed to stick to the side of the house! What a wonderful homecoming!!! I have learned my lesson and will be more careful with the frogs from now on!

Chris's Birthday

Well, we have had a really eventful past few weeks. Two Saturdays ago, I left work early to go to House of Blues with Chris to see My Morning Jacket- one of Chris's favorite bands. The show was absolutely amazing. We saw them a few years back in PA, and I think this show was even better. There is one song in particular that they played that I am now obsessed with- "Highly Suspicious." I have been playing it constantly on itunes since the show.

This past Friday, Chris's parents came in town to come to our cookout on Saturday. It was so much fun, and it was our first time hosting an event at our house! We had about 20 people over and we have never had some much food in our refrigerator. We are just now able to put stuff in without having to shuffle stuff around for a good 10 minutes before being able to close the door! I made some tasty desserts- Strawberry pie and candy pecans. That was fun. Travis and I also made some amazing fruit salads.

On Saturday evening, we had some evacuees from Key West come stay with us until this morning. Travis got to take them to Disney World with him several days that they were here, so we got to do our civic duty of introducing some new guests to Disney World!

Sunday was the opening day for the Eagles, so Chris and his parents went to a restaurant down the street to watch the game. I had the most wonderful afternoon off. It was my first day off around the house in about 7 months, so I savored every minute of it and watched Moulin Rouge about 3 times- it was great!

On Monday, we took the day off for Chris's birthday. We fed some birds at a lake near our house and then went to lunch at a little rinky dink place called "Jimbo's Pit BBQ," which is about 5 minutes from our house. This restaurant was so shady that they didn't even have restrooms in the buiding- we had to use outhouses. The food was amazing though! We met up with Travis and co. at WDW after that to ride some of our favorite rides- Expedition Everest, Rock n Roller Coaster, Toy Story Mania- and of course no trip to Disney World would be complete without a soft pretzel!

Things have quieted down a bit now, and we are looking forward to my dad coming to visit on Saturday. So, we will have a full house the majority of the month, but we like it! :-)

Looking forward, we have randomly just planned a weekend trip to Atlanta in October to see Ryan Adams, Ray Lamontagne, and take a Gone with the Wind tour. At my husband's expert advice, I waited to purchase the Ray tickets, and he sold out overnight, so we are going to have to find some from a scalper in the next few weeks! Lesson learned- don't ever wait to buy something you really want!

Amos Lee

So, Chris and I have had a busy weekend. On Friday, we got off of work in Tampa at around 8:30 pm and quickly made our way to Orlando for a show. We went to see Amos Lee at the Social, which is quickly becoming one of our favorite places for concerts. The show was wonderful. Unfortunately, I do not have pictures, because I remembered to charge my camera battery, and I remembered to bring my camera, but unfortunately, I did not remember to put the charged battery in the camera. Oh well.

We really enjoyed the show, and he played all of our favorite songs. Chris was pleasantly surprised at how much he liked him live. We did determine that he had the absolute most annoying fan base of any performer that we had ever seen. The first one that caught our attention was leopard print lady. She had a leopard print blouse, purse, koozie for her drink, hair piece, and even leopard print shoes- very nice look. Then, there was the guy who actually asked us to save his space of the floor while he went to get a drink in between acts. The most annoying to me was Big Head Girl who was standing right next to me and thought it appropriate to scream as loud as she could during every song- even the soft acoustic ones. Then there was the group behind us, which consisted of a very loud drunk 30 something guy who thought he could sing Amos Lee's songs better than him. Amos Lee is not a loud man- this guy was, so instead of hearing Amos Lee half of the show, we heard this incredibly loud man singing all of his songs. One of his friends was into taking pictures, but she was too short to take them at eye level, so she just kept holding up her camera the whole time and shooting. Apparently, there were a number of times that she hit Chris in the head with her camera. Despite these people, we did enjoy the show still. After the show, we went to Planet Pizza, which we discovered after we saw Band of Horses there in February. It was a great place to go after a show there.

On Saturday, we volunteered at WaZoo, a fundraiser at the local Tampa Zoo. It was great fun. Chris and I were "beer pourers." We were assigned to Moosehead, and some other beer that I can't remember from Texas. It was fun. We got to take breaks and sample food from all of the local restaurants that had booths there for free.

Now, back to another week of work!

Home!

I just realized I never put pics of our house on our blog. Yes, I do think that right about now, I am looking for any excuse I can to avoid cleaning said house. The one picture of me by the dumpster is from the day we closed on the house and unpacked most of our wedding gifts. Somehow, with all of hte mess and boxes/wrappers being thrown out, we managed to lose Chris's keys. We looked everywhere for them and determined we must have thrown them in the dumpster with the trash. So, we spent about 2 hours in the dark rain with a tiny flashlight fishing for his keys so that we could get back to Tampa. Very exciting. I have never been so relieved as when we found them.

Vacation

Well, Chris and I had a marvelous 10 day vacation earlier this month. It was so nice to actually spend some time together and to see just about all of our friends and family. We kicked off the weekend with Chris's friend- Chuck's wedding in Collegeville, PA. We had a great time there and spent the next day with our friends at a cookout in KOP. That evening, we went to Chris's favorite place- the shore and AC. We were happy to only have lost about $50 over the two days we spent in AC. Well, in addition to the $40 that we spent on a bowl of pasta! We decided to try out a new Italian restaurant, Patsy's, since it reminded us of Maggianos. I found my familiar angel hair with pasta dish listed at $21. I thought it was a bit steep, but worth it on vacation. I asked the waiter if I could have grilled chicken in it, like I get added at Maggianos for a meer $2. He said that could be arranged. The pasta was wonderful, almost as good as Ms. Then, the bill came. They actually charged me $40 for my pasta- apparently the 5 strips of grilled chicken was an additional $20. Needless to say, we will be sticking with M's for now on. :-)

The next day, Chris found a wonderful little cheesesteak place called "The White House." It has been serving cheesesteaks for 60 years. I have never been so proud of my husband as when he polished off an entire 24" cheesesteak there! It was a very impressive feat, and I had my doubts he could do it! I don't think he ate again for the next two days.

After that, it was back to VA on the train for my friend, Kate's wedding! We had a wonderful time there as well! The next day wasn't so wonderful, as we sat in traffic in Williamsburg for about 2 hours frantically trying to get to the Norfolk Airport to make our flight. After 4 phone calls to southwest, we found out that we got extremely lucky, and our flight was actually delayed, so thanks to that, we were still able to make our flight home and get to work the next day!

So, anyways, we are back in sunny Florida now and enjoying being back to a routine! I do miss vacation though!

May

So, it has been an eventful few weeks. I am no longer navigating the rivers of America on the Tom Sawyer rafts in the Magic Kingdom. As I told my dad when he suggested that I relocated to Disneyland to operate the Davy Crockett Canoes, my boating days are forever behind me.

I am now at Disney's Hollywood Studios working in Mickey's of Hollywood, so if you are in Disney World, come find me there! I have been enjoying much nicer schedules, which include 4:30 am wake up times, but that leaves me the entire day free after work. Chris and I have been enjoying our free Sundays at the neighborhood pool and grilling out. Chris has become quite the grill master these days. :-)

This past weekend, I flew up to Virginia for my friend Kate's bridal shower, which was wonderful, as I got to catch up with dear friends. The following morning, Travis and I got up super early to make the drive down to Lakeland from Richmond. The drive was fantastic. There was no traffic, and the weather was beautiful. It didn't hurt that he enjoyed driving, so I just got to be the navigator the entire time. We stopped at a record 5 McDonald's along the way so that I could use the bathroom. Thank goodness he was patient with me.

Travis just got hired at WDW to work in merchandise in Tomorrowland, so he is looking forward to starting there next Tuesday. We are infiltrating the resort. Life is good. I even had a day off on Monday. I bought "Walk the Line." I love that movie. I could sit and watch it all day. In fact, I think I might do that now!

Cracking Down and Getting Stuff Done

OK, so Tara and I finally put our computer desk together last night, I am very excited. Today I loaded up the compy onto the desk and I am quite happy to not be sitting on the ground and potentially popping a disc in my back while on the internet.

So our lawn looks like it's in sad shape, so I am going to lay down some fertilizer today and see what happens.

Now that the desk is up and running, I'm plumb out of excuses as to why I am not studying for the GMAT. But here's an honest one...the pool looks nice in this warm weather today !!!