September 28, 2007

Count down to Charlotte

T-minus 13 days

Well, we're only two weeks away from something my mom, aunt, and I have been looking forward to since October 15, 2006 -- our return to the 1.5 mile track at Lowe's Motor Speedway.

I remember getting moderately interested in NASCAR sometime during my junior year in college, and it grew during my senior year. I consider myself a New-Generation, Post-Dale Earnhardt fan. I can't remember watching many races before Dale Sr. died. ANd when I first started to watch, it was merely to have something on the tv for a long stretch of time without having to turn the channel while I played EverQuest on the computer. It was one of those tv programs that I didn't have to actively watch to know what was going on.

In the spring of 2003, I graduated from college and moved into an apartment with my college buddy who was originally from Arkansas and definitely had a bit more red on her neck than I did. Near the end of 2003, she said her dad and brother wanted to go to the Memorial Day weekend race at Charlotte, the 2004 Coca Cola 600, and asked if I wanted to order a ticket too. By this time my interested in NASCAR had risen to the point where actually being at the race would be really cool.

My first NASCAR race was awesome, even though Lowe's poster boy Jimmie Johnson (who is definitely not a favorite of mine even if he is Dale Jr.'s new teammate) won. The dirt, the drit, the grim, the smell, the sweaty-no-shirt-half-drunk rednecks, the overpowering roar of thousands of horses charging around the oval track. It was the best symphony I'd ever been too.

By this time, my mom and grandma had also gotten into watching the races and picking out their favorite drivers. My grandma has been a die-hard Jeff Gordon fan ever since she started watching. He drives the Dupont Chevrolet and her kids were all brought up on Dupont money. Grandpa retired from Dupont after over 40 years of working at the Kinston plant. Even I grew up on Dupont money. Mom worked there for 16 years. But I just don't like Jeff Gordon. Hehe.

In January of 2005, roomie and I went to a new NASCAR event in town. It was called the Fitness 500, and it was really neat. The event was sponsored by WFU Baptist Medical Center. It's main draw was a fitness competition between several teams of NASCAR folks. There were drivers and drivers' wives and crew members and other folks involved. And here is where we first met Carl Edwards. Bre and I were very enamored with the handsome new driver of the #99 Roush Ford. We even got our pictures taken with him and he signed not only our Fitness 500 posters we bought (I lost mine! How sad!), but also signed copies of his Craftsman Truck Series driver sheet from the 2004 season. That's when I picked my favorite driver.

I was tooling around the internet one day in the summer of 2005 and happened upon the Lowe's Motor Speedway site where I happened to learn that Busch series tickets are WAY cheaper than Nextel Cup series tickets. Mom and I went to her first race in October 2005. We just went to the Friday night Busch race (tickets were only $20!), but that got her hooked and before we left that night she said she wanted to do the entire weekend of races. By this time we had learned that our aunt Gloria was a dyed-in-the-wool Dale Junior fan and wanted to go to a race too. So, we all bought tickets for both the Busch and Nextel races for October 2006.

The October 2006 races were our first experience of being immersed in NASCAR for an entire weekend. We drove down to Charlotte on Thursday afternoon, and on the way down surprised Aunt Gloria with a stop at Dale Earnhardt, INC. DEI has the MOST AMAZING gift store I've ever seen. If they could put a #3 or a #8 on something, then they had it for sale. There were dog leashes and collars, tv remotes, glass bottles of fancy water, tire pressure gauges, scrap booking stuff, flags, coasters, earrings, wallets, not to mention t-shirts, hats, jackets, and glasses. We got great pictures of one of the #8 cars parked outside. On Friday morning, we headed off to Roush racing to see Carl related stuff. Roush's gift shop was nice, but had to represent more drivers and so just had standard stuff like shirts, hats, stickers, and lanyards. We stopped by the big Outdoor World, home to the Bass Pro Shop, on Saturday and even saw Kasey Kahne at an event in the big mall's parking lot. Plus, there's tons of stuff to see at the race track. Every driver has a merchandise hauler selling stuff outside the track. Even Ricky Bobby from Talladega Nights had a hauler. On the way back to Winston-Salem, I realized I'd forgotten to stop back by there to pick up a Ricky Bobby shirt...they were just $5!

As soon as tickets for the 2007 Lowes races went on sale, I snapped up four tickets. This year Jamie is coming with us! He started to get interested in NASCAR while we were chatting online, since I usually talked about it on Sundays during races. Then when he flew over in November, he watched all the races with me. Now, he even has his favorite NASCAR websites that he likes to look out regularly. His favorite driver at the moment is Dale Junior (for Christmas last year I bought him a Junior shirt and toboggan), which puts him in Aunt Gloria's good graces. We'll have two Junior fans and two Edwards fans at the race this year. He also likes to pull for the Busch brothers and Juan Pablo Montoya just because it irks me. Hehe.

So, we're looking forward to this year's races. I hope their good. I'm really pulling for Junior to win, though I wouldn't be too bummed out if Carl won. :)

September 25, 2007

Well, I finally did get rid of my cold for all of you who might have been wondering about that. But this morning I woke up with a sty in my eye. Dunno which is worse, a cold or a sty, but at least I can breathe with the sty.

Not much has gone on in the great month of September. Jamie and I enjoyed a very lazy Labor Day. It was nice to have a holiday during my sick time for more lounging in the recliner.

We're gearing up to have my mom and aunt over in a couple of weeks for going to the races at Lowes Motor Speedway in Charlotte. I hope the races are spectacular. It would be the most awesome thing ever if Junior won.

Jamie just built a new computer yesterday. It's up and running a-ok today. I really like Windows Vista. It's very pretty and has all sorts of nifty thingies here and there. Currently Jamie has widgets (little side thingies that are neat) on the right side of the screen. One is a calendar, one shows what the weather is like in town, and one scrolls through pictures in the picture folder. Right now the pictures are just of the sample images that came pre-installed with Vista, but they're all gorgeous!

This weekend I have a rehearsal and a recording session with the orchestra and choir who are performing for the MMF's next CD, a CD of Moravian Christmas music. Moravians are known for how they celebrate Christmas and every so many months I always talk to someone on the phone who wants to know if we have a CD of Moravian Christmas music. We will this Christmas!! And, my name will be listed in the violin section of the liner notes! YAY!

The weather has improved greatly over the past couple of weeks, though it has been in the upper 80s to near 90 degrees for the past few days. The air isn't so hot anymore, just the sun. The mornings and nights have cooled down considerably. I'm hoping for sweater weather soon.

Tomato plant update: There are quite a few green tomatoes on the vine. I even plucked a little red tomato yesterday afternoon and ate it on a sandwich with a fried egg and a slice of cheddar. There's one more little red tomato still left. I don't know if the other greenies will ripen anytime soon. The poor plant got too big for itself and started falling over on itself. Next year I'll have to be vigilant about tying up any branches that look like they'll fall over and bend.

Oh, and if anybody is looking for someone to design a very simple website for a business or for personal reasons, I've recently become a Dreamweaver addict. I looooove designing small websites. I can't do overly fancy stuff, but if you're in need of a "first website" I can certainly help out. And, I'm cheap! :)

August 31, 2007

Ugh. There's not much worse than a summer time head cold. It's hot and miserable outside (though finally the temperature has dropped to the high 80s from the low 100s) and I feel absolutely wretched.

It all started Tuesday morning when I woke up feeling a funny tickle in my throat. There was really no build up to the feeling bad, no little warning headache or anything. In the hour between getting up and sitting down at my desk on Tuesday morning I felt horrible. Needless to say I called in sick on Wednesday morning, and I left work around 2:45pm on Thursday.

Last night around 9:30pm, I climbed in bed to burrow under blankets (I was cold...in August...when it's been 90+ for the past 4 weeks) and mindlessly watch tv. Jamie came up an hour or so later and took my blankets away from me! He said I was too hot and needed to cool down. I was cooooold! Meh. I did have a teeny fever of about 99, but that's more than just a .3 degree fever for me. I'm like my grandpa in that my normal temperature is usually less than 98.7 degrees.

I did stay at work all day today, but didn't scoff in the least bit when the boss lady said I could go anytime I wanted to (it was 4:15pm at the time). I finished up my work on the website and scooted home to dope myself up on more Sudafed.

I've probably had seven doses of Sudafed (the real stuff...the stuff you have to go up to the pharmacy counter and sign for) and I can't tell a difference yet. And for the past two days I've had awful cases of the sneezes...... Ew. So, essentially, I'm suffering from both a stopped up nose and a runny nose. I still don't understand how it can be both at the same time. It's like being a narcaleptic insomniac.

Anyway, at least I have a three day weekend over which to recouperate. Was I the only one who didn't realize Monday was a holiday until Tuesday of this week? We didn't make any plans, but that's probably a good thing since I'm sick. If I'm better by Monday and if the weather is pleasant, a trip to the zoo would be a lot of fun.

Well, the right side of my nose is completely stopped up yet I can feel the snot starting to trickle towards my nostril in a fruitless bid for freedom. Best go lay/sit somewhere to get the stuff to slide over to my left sinus. Meh.

Oh, by the way, Jamie and I now have a lovely black and white poster of the Eiffel Tower (how romantic!) in a black frame on the wall over the yellow chair in our bedroom. I should take a picture sometime. And, I should also take a picture of the Nascar wall going up the staircase. Hehe. I'm such a lil redneck!

August 8, 2007

It's hot. I haven't seen NC this hot for this long in a while. Jamie's about to die. After day 7 of 90+ degrees, I'm about to die too. Everybody is walking around wilted and without energy, just like the poor flowers. Jamie waters ours every day because within just 24 they start looking puny.

Check out our photo album! Our upstairs bathroom and our bedroom are finally picture worthy. I found pictures to go in the bathroom and we finally bought matching bedside (Walmart, just $35 each!) tables for the bedroom. So the bedroom looks mostly finished now. I'd still like to find another picture or two to go in the corner over the chair on Jamie's side of the bed. I'm not a huge fan of plain undecorated walls.

Our bedroom colors right now are very...unique. The curtains are dark navy blue, perfect for blocking out the sun. The little runner rugs beside the bed are sky blue. The comforter on the bed is tan and the sheets are orange. One set of pillowcases (we have four pillows to sleep with) are deep dark red. The cushion in the yellow whicker chair is blue and the the throw pillow is orange. It's a strange color combo, but not all together unpleasant. Some of the furniture is black (the platform bed, the bedside tables, the trunk, and the tv stand) and some of the furniture is wood colored (the dresser and the bookcase).

Tomato update: Added more dirt to the pot and the plant sprung back to life! I now have more little yellow flowers and more little green knobs slowly growing towards red, juicy ripeness. Now, let's just hope the squirrels and chipmunks stay away from my tasties!

July 25, 2007

Last week we spent a lot of time on the road between here and Bethlehem, PA in a Pontiac Vibe (nice little vehicle). It was a working vacation of sorts, perhaps even a working honeymoon. I was sent to Bethlehem by my boss to straighten out the office up there after our assistant director retired. She knew that with my OCD tendencies, I'd have the office neat and orderly in no time. I even got to do one of my favorite things of all time -- buy new office supplies! Our assistant director didn't have much of anything in the way of basic office supplies.

I uploaded some pictures to our Flickr account -- the office after I finished organizing it and our time at the New Market Battlefield in the Shenandoah Valley. We stopped at a local zoo in near Natural Bridge, VA on the way to Bethlehem, but we left the camera in the car. Dumb us. The zoo was MUCH fun. We got to pet camels and goats and llamas, and we came up close and personal with giraffes! Sadly, we didn't buy any food for the animals. There were lots of different animals (kookaburas, zebras, big camels, baby camels, bears, tigers, mountain lions, exotic birds, alligators, little deer, monkeys, etc). Most of the animals were in big cages or big fenced areas so you could get up relatively close to see them. We can't wait to go to the NC zoo now!

We spent four days on the road (4 hours each on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday) and only one day (Wednesday) not traveling. We both agreed that it really wasn't worth all the driving to be somewhere for just one day. Since work was paying for it though, it was nice to be out and about together.

We got back home on Friday afternoon, and on Saturday afternoon my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows arrived! HOORAH! I read it all by mid-afternoon on Sunday. I won't spoil the ending but I was very sad by the deaths of several characters.

This weekend we're going to my mom's to see my family from Oklahoma. Jamie's not too thrilled about the 3 hours there and the 3 hours back riding in the car after all the riding we just did last week. But I'd be disinherited by my dear uncle Duck (his name's Don, but he called himself Don Duck when he was younger because people asked him if he was Donald Duck) who wants to size up my new husband. Hehe.

Tomato Update: My little tomato finally ripened and I ate it. It was very good. However, his brothers and sisters did not survive. Two of them suffered a broken branch and died on the vine. Another fell off prematurely (probably helped by a furry critter) and a third was being happily eaten by a chipmunk the day we left for Bethlehem. Now I just have a tomato plant....just leaves and stems, no tomatoes. Sigh!

June 27, 2007

It took us two more trips to Target to finally spend the rest of our gift card money. After the first trip we still had about $180 left to spend. On the first of two trips this past weekend we bought: an iron leafy wall sconce to go over the head of our bed, orange tea lights to go in the sconce's seven little candle holders, a frame for a really cool watercolor landscape I found to go in our bathroom, a flour sifter, a pair of tongs, a basting brush, and new handsoap pumps for the bathrooms. On the second trip, we bought two more frames for two more watercolor landscapes to go in the bathroom, a nifty soft sided cooler that will fit behind a car seat, a small duffle bag to use as a toiletry bag on trips, and stuff to make chocolate chip cookies.

We also spent our Linens n' Things gift card (just got another one on Saturday) : big round spatula for using in the new electric skillet, a nifty pizza cutter, a cooling rack for baked stuff, a 7" Santok knife by Farberware, and an orange pillow to go in the wicker chair in our room.

We spent the Walmart gift card mostly on groceries, but also bought some new shirts for Jamie, a new shirt for me, and a new cedar birdfeeder that will hopefully last longer against the squirrels than the plastic one we had. The squirrels completely chewed through most of the old plastic feeder. We got $50 Walmart card this weekend. There's not really much else we want (that we can actually buy cheaply at Walmart), so we'll probably put it towards groceries too.

The new crockpot and electric skillet have already been put to the test. Both work fabulously. I used the skillet to brown up 6 pounds of hamburger at once and then we made chili (using some of that hamburger) in the crockpot. YAY!

We also splurged and bought Jamie a new espresso machine from Starbucks. His old Krups machine died in route to NC for the second time (he had shipped it back to WA the day before he was supposed to fly back in January, so we had to ship it back to NC when we flew out to WA a few weeks later). He's had to go since January without a machine, and making several trips to Starbucks for a $4 mocha every week is kinda expensive especially since I usually get something too and the bill is closer to $8 or $10.

By luck, I got some free tickets to the zoo. We've been wanting to go for a long time and now we have no excuse not to go. I hope we can go this weekend, but the weather forecast isn't looking very promising for an outdoor activity. We'll make a decision Saturday morning. Luckily the zoo is only about an hour away!

June 17, 2007

June 17, 2007

Last Sunday we celebrated our wedding reception with the folks back in my hometown. My mom, the ladies of her church, and my grandparents threw us a nice little party. We had about 40 guests, and even my friend Shelly came!

We had cake, peanuts, veggies and dip, crackers and a cheeseball, cheese cubes, M&Ms, little pickles and olives, mini ham and cheese sandwiches, sausage balls, mints, and punch.

And, we got a ton of STUFF! We got:

Lots of kitchen stuff -- gadgets, spoons, baking pans, dish towels, casserole dishes, drinking glasses, tupperware, tablecloth, placemats, roasting pan, trash can, dish detergent, cleaning cloths, colander, cutting board, apron

Two lamps and shades

Two matching vases

An answering machine

$160 in cash

$65 in Walmart Cards

$380 in Target Cards

Plus we got a few checks before and after the party, and a few other gift cards beforehand too. Plus Mom framed a picture of us on our wedding day at the courthouse, a copy of our reception invitation, and a photo of us in our nice party clothes. We're going to hang those in our bedroom.

The party and hanging out with my folks was great, except that I had pulled something in my lower back on Friday afternoon before the party on Sunday and was in a LOT of pain all weekend. The backache took all week to finally ease off. Today isn't so bad.

Yesterday we braved the rain and thunderstorms to spend our $50 Belk's gift card and some of our Target money. Our "booty" from yesterday included:

A crystal egg tray, a 4 cup slanted measuring cup, a big spoon and slotted spoon, a whisk, and a manual can opener from Belks; and 2 pillows, a 300ct sheet set in orange, 2 250ct pillowcases in red, a silicone baking mat, a 40" fan, a 4qt crock pot, a 16" electric skillet, and a fire safe box from Target.

And we STILL have money to burn at Target. I think we've got all the kitchen stuff we have room for at the moment, so we might spend the rest of the gift cards on clothes for Jamie.

I hope to have pictures soon. Mom's going to burn them to a CD if Mema's computer will be nice and let them. We took "wedding" photos in Mema's yard on Saturday. Luckily, we took them before my back had me crying in pain.

Oohh, for the record, we went to IHOP for our one month anniversary and partook in delicious (though horribly bad for us) country fried steak. Jamie got the steak and eggs plate with pancakes and hasbrowns, and I got the regular dinner plate with a salad, mashed potatoes and onion rings. Mmmm so good!