Good Night

Very good night.

Got off work today and took my raft out with Anne. We paddled all over Strouds Run. It was so beautiful. We go to see the sunset from the raft on the lake. Just great.
We also saw two creatures that we thought for a moment could be cats. Then we decided they were aquatic mammals. I just looked them up, and they're river otters. We saw otters! and we were like ten feet from them!

Then, I went to the Hannah House and hung out with Dr. George Pickins. He was a prof at my college and my adviser for 2 and a half years. He is leading a work group at Good Works this week. It was so good to catch up. I think he's doing well and all and I told him that life here was good, too. But he's a mentor of mine more than a friend, so really, it was just good to feel like he was proud of me. And even better to hear him say things to that effect. I've been feeling kind of discouraged lately, so it was good to hear someone I trust tell me that I'm on the right track.

Also I ate chocolate chip cookies for dinner.

Yep. It was a good night.

Congratulations

To my friend Julie the med student, who just passed the Boards.
Damn straight Julie.

Big Round Steamy Disapointment.

Do you have a favorite meal? A meal you find so delicious that, given the opportunity, you would eat it once a day every day for years without ceasing?

I do.

A Donatos Mariachi Chicken Pizza.

You can imagine my excitement when I found out months ago that Donatos was moving to Athens. I waited with baited breath until the grand opening today. I drove straight there when I got off work, but the place was totally packed. No spaces in the lot. People parked in places that weren't spaces. Line stretching out the door. I called the number on the letter board thing twice before I left the parking lot and another two times on the way home. Busy.

I gave up. I settled for a Hungry Howie's substitute. I got a medium with chicken, olives, and jalapeños. When I got it home, I discovered that the chicken was cut up chicken finger. It sucked, but I had kind of a crappy day at work and I was feeling really sorry for myself, so I ate half of it alone in the basement.

Yup, feeling really pathetic right now.

These Dreams

I don't often sleep very well, and the good streak of deep sleeps that I had going for about 3 years ended around a year ago.

Sometimes my sleep is bad because I have nightmares. Other times it is bad for no other reason than I've always been a bad sleeper. Last night was more bad sleep, but it was, at least, interesting sleep.

I wasn't sure at first, but now I'm certain that I had several dreams in which a beach-ball-sized chick pea puppet was talking to me...a lot. It wasn't scary or anything, just really vivid.
And that is why I have never, and will likely never need to do illegal drugs.

Day off

Mmmm...I just slept until noon.

Also, this past weekend, Ben and I drove to Virginia to meet our new niece, Josie. She is snuggly like a kitten.

End of an Era

Man. Jenny moved out on Saturday. The house feels super weird. She lived with us for almost 2 years, and it worked out better than I think any of us had hoped it would. But...she got a grown up job and her own apartment a few miles away.

The experience of having a friend live with us was great, and we're looking forward to our friend Amanda moving in to the rooms Jen had rented over the next couple of weeks.

In other news, Ben turned 28 today. I made him a pizza with so many toppings that I think it weighed around 8 pounds. He bought himself a snow plow blade for our Cub Cadet riding mower. We watched the movie Eagle vs. Shark. It was great.

We also went to my family reunion on Saturday in the holler, but that's a post just on its own. It was funny and sad and heart warming. More on that later.

Legit.

So, I heard of 2 occurrences over the past few weeks that I think totally qualify as minor miracles. The first is that a woman I work with had a heart attack in her home, by herself. She was too weak to lift her hand and call 911. She was pretty certain she was going to die when she fell asleep (or passed out) that night. She woke up the next day and went to her doctor who confirmed that she'd had a heart attack. He scheduled an EKG & stress test. She went the next day to a church prayer meeting, where her youth group prayed for her. She goes for the EKG, and it perfectly matches EKGs before the heart attack. There was no damage to her heart whatsoever. Awesome.

The next is, my friends are having a baby. They've been trying to have a kid for years and have used fertility meds to help them conceive. But they totally conceived a kid while they were not taking any such meds. Stellar.

In unrelated news, The Happening is one of the all time worst movies I've ever seen. I'm happy to explain in person why you should not spend money seeing this movie.