Weekend in the Country

Last weekend I visited a good friend in North Carolina. It was a very pleasant trip, and I got a little dose of some country living. Actually it wasn’t much different than life in the Chicago suburbs except there were hills, and you have to drive at least a half hour to get anywhere good. My final evening was spent at a true blue country farm located in the middle of nowhere, complete with goats and barn cats and crops and even a scarecrow! It was fabulous.

Anyway, there were a couple of enjoyable observations from my time there. First, the accents weren’t too bad, though they were definitely pretty strong. Incidentally, the most hilarious accents belonged to two young girls I spent some time with; ages 3 and 6 I think. They managed to turn most one syllable words into two syllable words with ease. For example, “off” was “ow-off,” “dog” was “dow-og,” “where” was “way-ere,” etc … It was quite impressive really—I’ve never heard such interesting speech come out of such small people.

The other very important thing I learned is that a barbecue in Chicago is different than a barbecue in NC. Actually, it’s not “a barbecue” there, it’s just “barbecue.” Barbecue consists of barbecue pork only, topped with this weird tomato-based coleslaw on a bun. It was quite delicious except for the coleslaw which I’m never a fan of.

McDonald's Miracle!

So last night in bed, sometime between asleep and awake, I started thinking about upcoming trips to the beach and how I'll want to bring my camera. I brought my old camera to the beach a number of times and just threw it in my beach bag so it ended up getting a bunch of sand in it. I decided I did not want this to happen to my new camera so I resolved to get a case for it; nothing special, just something to protect it a little. I'm pretty sure I contemplated for quite some time on exactly what kind of case I wanted, but I don't remember any of the specifics now. I just remember really hoping that when I actually woke up, I'd remember that I had this thought.

Fast forward to approximately 12:30pm today. I was eating at McDonald's with Emily and another coworker. Emily and I had both purchased Happy Meals and I was bitter because she got a new, cool Kung Foo Panda toy, while I as stuck with a left over Speed Racer toy. This isn't the first time I've been bitter over McDonald's toys. Anyway, my toy was this stupid pouch thing that I really didn't want. I've already gotten several Speed Racer pouches in various sizes. But upon closer inspection of my new one I had an epiphany: my camera would fit perfectly in this pouch. So I got my camera and sure enough, it fit just right. It's like this Speed Racer pouch was made for my camera. You can't tell me that God was not involved in this. I'm not sure what the lesson was. Maybe he, too is concerned about my camera staying sand-free.

Meanwhile the rest of my evening was not such a success. My shopping endeavor this evening was a complete disaster. Then on the way home, I was desperate for a Frosty Float from Wendy's, but when I pulled into the Wendy's by my house it was closed because of a power outage. Seriously? I guess God is not so keen on the Frosty Floats. He clearly hasn't tried one.

Summer!

It's finally kind of summer and I'm excited.

I almost died this weekend jumping into the freezing cold pool. My roommate and I stopped by my mom's to try out the pool, but alas, the heater is not working. So it's freezing cold. Nevertheless, my roommate jumped in. There's this crazy lady there (this is my mother's description. She's not really crazy, just super friendly, but in my family, friendly=crazy.) who swims all the time and she went on and ON about how proud she was of my roommate for jumping in and how excited she was. I thought she may post a photo of Grace on the front door of the clubhouse. Anyway, she got out quickly and that was that. But later as I sat in the sun on the edge of the pool I became very hot and decided it would be funny if I just rolled into the water. This was bad idea as I believe the hypothermia set in instantly. I was in the water for approximately 2 seconds. And that was my first swim of the summer.

Luckily, I made it to Centennial Beach on Sunday. My friend and I jumped in with the goal of at least swimming a short distance to the nearest wall. By the time we got to the wall we weren't too freezing cold so we continued around the pool and had a nice swim.

In other completely unrelated news, I recently read this amazing book called Mama for President: Good Lord, Why not? That's right, Mama from Mama's Family. It was on the free book shelf at work and, I ask you, how can one pass up such a fascinating book. So, Mama came up with an entire campaign plan, with slogans such as "An Old Broad for A New Day." Also, she wants Martha Stewart to be her secretary of defense. Brilliant. I'd vote for her.