Our New & Improved Living Room

For quite a while now, I've been meaning to post some pictures of our newly (well, not so new now -it's been a couple of months) decorated living room. It's been an ongoing project for a while and it's finally finished! It was a huge undertaking, since the room is huge and has 12 foot ceilings. But Cy painted the whole thing himself, and it looks great! We decided pretty quickly after moving in that we wanted to paint the living room the same sage green color that we had in our condo, because we really liked the color. Everything came together when I found some Roman shades and matching pillow covers at Pottery Barn that had a pattern with red, green, and yellow in it, to tie all the colors of our living room together. It's finally done at last, and we love it. We think it looks great!

Shocks. . .Pegs. . .LUCKY!

On Saturday, Cy left early with his dad and they came back with a new bicycle for me - a surprise gift from Frank & Andrea! I had been wanting a bicyle for a while - I despise running and was trying to come up with other ways to work out that were not so. . .well, basically just that they weren't running, since I hate it. So I had asked for a bike for Christmas. Imagine my surprise to get the bike early, and not as a Christmas gift!

We got everything all adjusted and I took it for a little spin around the cul-de-sac. Then I ran in the house and changed into some more comfortable clothes (jeans are not particularly great for bicycle riding), and I went for what probably amounted to a 5-mile bicycle ride. It was fantastic - I haven't been on a bike in years, so I didn't realize how much I would enjoy it.

I was pretty sore the next day, but I went for a ride again last night (Monday) and felt a little better. Last night was a great ride too (even though it was cold) because it was twilight and everyone had their Christmas lights and decorations on in full force. I really enjoyed just breezing through the neighborhood taking in all the holiday sights (and getting some exercise at the same time).
Apparently I almost had a mishap though - Cy was out running at the same time I was riding and he told me later that when I rounded the corner at the traffic circle, a dog started frantically chasing me, and then a kid started frantically chasing the dog. Cy was concerned because the dog was going quite fast, and he was afraid the dog was going to get a piece of my back tire and take me down. I, on the other hand, was completely oblivious. I had my headphones on and was just enjoying the ride - I never even saw the dog or the kid. And fortunately, I was not knocked down from behind unexpectedly by a random dog. All in all, a successful bike ride.

Thanksgiving at Uncle Jeff & Aunt Carolyn's House

Last Wednesday, we loaded up the Mini and drove up to see the Bradshaw/Brown clan for the Thanksgiving holiday. We left Wednesday morning and drove to Ellerbe, where we picked up Rachel for school, then met up with my parents to caravan up to Bedford, Virginia to my grandparents' house. It was a long trip, but we made it, and it was great to see everyone. We hadn't seen this part of the family since last Christmas.

For Thanksgiving itself (after watching Rick Astley Rickroll us all at the Macy's Parade), we drove over to my uncle & aunt's house for dinner. It was quite a feast! There were two kinds of dressing, several kinds of cranberries, and all sorts of other things, including a giant turkey leg for Greg. After dinner, we relaxed by playing a couple hours of Guitar Hero in the basement.


The day after Thanksgiving, a bunch of us went to the movie theater, where we split into two groups and watched Twilight and Quantum of Solace. Cy and I went with Rachel and Uncle Jeff to see Twilight (we had already seen Bond). It was pretty cute - kind of cheesy, but fun.
Our whirlwind trip ended on Saturday with another 8 hour car trip so that we could get back to Charleston so I could finish my NaNoWriMo novel and. . .my dreaded term paper. Overall, it was a good Thanksgiving - it was great to see family after such a long time. (And no one set the table on fire this year, which was also a plus.)

NaNoWriMo 2008

Last night at midnight was the deadline of the 10th annual National Novel Writing Month. Although I successfully reached my 50,000 word goal by Nov. 30 in both 2006 and 2007, this year was a bit more difficult. Initially, I decided I wasn't even going to try to participate this year. Between working full time and attending graduate school, I just wasn't sure I could handle it all (plus, if I don't get to read a good 5 novels a week, I start getting cranky). With a term paper looming over my head for a Dec. 3 deadline, I just didn't think NaNoWriMo was doable. Then I talked to about three other people who were doing it, and I found out that this year was the 10th anniversary. Well, with all the hype of it being the 10th anniversary, of course I had least had to give it a shot!

I actually didn't decide to go ahead and go for it until 3 or 4 days into November. On November 1, the start of NaNoWriMo, I had written a couple of thousand words simply out of the desire to procrastinate, as I found noveling far more appealing than working on my term paper (which is what I was supposed to be doing). But a couple of days went by, and school was taking up all my time, so I basically gave up on the novel. It just didn't seem possible.

But then I caught my second wind and came back a few days later with a vengeance (and the desire yet again to procrastinate). Though encouraged to write a sequel about everyone's favorite veggie vampire, Clay, I had been wanting to expand on the short story I had published in the Citadel's literary magazine last year. I had to cut so much already just to publish it in The Shako, and there were so many other side plots I wanted to explore.

I lagged a couple of thousand words behind through most of November, and never really caught up until yesterday, when I forced myself to sit down and churn out the 3,000 words I needed to finish. And it went really well. I reached my goal, and was pleasantly surprised that I made it (I honestly believed this year would be the first year I wouldn't finish).

My "novel" is nowhere near finished, but I'd like to keep working on it. I felt good about some of what I wrote (not all of it, of course - it needs a lot of cleaning up), and I think I could really do something with it (other than relegating it to my growing collection of half-finished novels). Maybe this one will be an Oprah's Book Club pick someday. . .ha!!!

Carissa the Vampire Slayer

Yesterday was our annual Trick-or-Beer at work. Cy and I almost didn't dress up this year, but everyone seemed so disappointed that we weren't dressing up that we managed to pull something together. Cy was a vampire with crazy bright red hair and I was a slayer, complete with stakes and giant wooden sledgehammer. Everyone enjoyed our costumes, and we had a really good time, even though we didn't win the costume contest.

The contest was won by a guy dressed as Beaker from the Muppets, and he was absolutely hilarious and definitely deserved to win. Second place went to three of Cy's work friends, who were dressed as the Brawny paper towel guy, the Charmin toilet paper bear, and Mr. Clean. They were pretty funny also.

We had a lot of fun, and after the costume contest, we roamed the halls of the Baud and raked in a bunch of free treats. :)

Rock Band

A couple of days ago, instead of exchanging our Blockbuster movie for another movie, Cy picked up the game Rock Band 2 for the XBox 360. We had been wanting to try a karaoke game, or something that included singing. We've enjoyed Guitar Hero (all of them) a lot, so we thought Rock Band would be pretty fun.

It turns out though, that the whole point of Rock Band must be more of the collective Rock Band experience (with drums, guitar, and vocals), because using it for just singing wasn't that much fun. The songs were obviously geared more toward the instrumental parts. It's kind of hard to just straight up sing songs by the Beastie Boys, Lit, etc. Needless to say, it got old pretty fast. I mean, you can only sing "Eye of the Tiger" so many times, right?

We're thinking that maybe if we're interested in playing a singing game, something like American Idol Karaoke might be more up our alley. So we'll be trying that next. Long story short, we were not too impressed with Rock Band. We'll just stick to Guitar Hero - it has better songs & graphics.

A Great Date

Last week, I mentioned to Cy that it had been a really long time since he and I had been on a date. I guess after two years, we are getting to be old married people now. :) Or possibly it's just that with our hectic schedule of work, school, working on our house, and deacon training, we are just too exhausted do much on the weekends. But anyway, he said he would plan a date for us for Friday night. I expected a pretty typical date, like dinner and a movie, but Cy really surprised me and went all-out. He basically recreated our first real date, but with some new additions.

On Friday, Cy got off work early but said he would be back at four to pick me up. When he picked me up, he announced that our date had 4 phases and we were heading toward Long Point to commence Phase 1. We parked in front of the CVS at Long Point, so I was very confused at first, but he was just trying to keep me guessing. For Phase 1, he took me to Handpicked and told me to pick out any one item in the store. Of course, I was very overwhelmed. After much deliberation, I settled on a set of leopard-print/tiger's eye necklaces.

After that, it was time for Phase 2. For Phase 2, we headed out to Fonduely Yours on Coleman Blvd. This is where we had dinner on our first date, and we hadn't been back since. From the outside, Fonduely Yours looks like a total dive. The building is run-down and practically hidden in the wild vegetation that's all around it. But the fondue is delicious. They sat us in a secluded booth for two in the back, and we enjoyed a cheddar cheese fondue with carrots, apples, bread, and broccoli; a spicy chicken broth fondue with filet and chicken and a variety of dipping sauces; and milk chocolate dessert fondue with pound cake, marshmallows, pineapples, cherries, and pretzels. It was delicious.

After dinner, we drove over to Station 19 (by the lighthouse) at Sullivan's Island and went for a walk on the beach. On our first date, we went to Isle of Palms after dinner and ended up just sitting on the beach talking until about 3 am. Since we are older now, we only stayed on the beach until about 7:00 or 7:30. :)

Then, we drove home for Phase 4. When I walked in the house, a vase of beautiful roses and two of my favorite Cadbury chocolate candy bars were waiting for me. It was an amazing evening. Cy sure knows how to take a girl on a nice date. :)

Amazon Kindle!!!

Last night, I became the proud owner of an Amazon Kindle. It was hard for me to make the decision to go Kindle at first - like so many bibliophiles, reading is so much more than just. . .well, reading. It's a sensory experience - I love the texture and the smell of a new book, and the crisp feel of the pages. When the Kindle first came out, I scoffed at it because I knew I would lose all of those things. Then my friend Paula showed me her Kindle and it was love at first sight. The E-Ink display makes it much more like an actual book page than a computer screen (for obvious reasons, I would not want to be reading a book on a computer screen after staring at one all day long at work), and the mere convenience factor I think is what finally what won me over. (Plus, let's be honest - I'm basically a computer geek these days, and I'm a sucker for a new electronic gadget. I'll probably even give in to the iPhone craze before too long.) Out of box, the Kindle holds approximately 200 books. You can also add additional memory to hold even more books. When we went to Jamaica this summer, I took an entire bookbag filled with books and stashed a couple more in my suitcase. I read all the books from the bookbag and one of the ones from the suitcase. I took up so much space drag books halfway around the world, and running through the airport (when we missed our flight) with that bookbag on my shoulder may have contributed to my frequent trips to the chiropractor these days.

I mentioned the Kindle to Cy, and he had never heard of it, but he was instantly on board. After growing up a military kid, he is the ultimate anti-pack-rat. Having hoards of books taking over our entire house I think drives him a little bit crazy. I was going to just ask for the Kindle for Christmas, but then I was pleasantly surprised to receive a promotion at work, and Cy (anxious to curb the influx of books into our fairly uncluttered house), insisted that I go ahead and buy the Kindle as a promotion present. Of course, I didn't object. :)

Then there was just the torture of waiting for the Kindle to arrive. I thought it might show up as early as Saturday, leaving me some of the weekend to experiment with it, but alas, it didn't show up until the middle of dinner last night. Of course I was able to get nothing done last night. Forget homework, forget the laundry, forget cleaning the bathroom. I was downloading books and reading like a fiend.

The only drawbacks I have found so far are that it doesn't have a backlight (I assumed it would, since it's electronic, but apparently it can't because of the E-Ink technology. But regular old books don't come with backlights either, so it's not like I'm losing anything, right?), and it's not waterproof. Okay, this last part sounds weird, but one important thing to know about me is that I am a bubble-bath-oholic, and my favorite thing to do is read a book in the bathtub. I have never once dropped a book in the bathtub, and I've been reading in the bathtub for. . .well, probably as long as I have been able to read. . .but since the Kindle was a little pricey, I was afraid to risk it. So (I am such a dork) I invented what I like to refer to as my "Redneck Kindle Cover" - meaning I turned the Kindle on and then stuck it inside a Ziploc Freezer Bag and sealed it up. That way, it at least gave the illusion of being waterproof, and I could still click the Next Page button.
I know, I'm a total dork. But all this to say, my Kindle is amazing and I will probably never get anything productive done now that I have it.

Where in the World Do We Live Anyway?

Okay, so this weekend marked the second Saturday night in a row that we got no sleep due to shenanigans on our street that involved the cops coming. Seriously, what kind of neighborhood do we live in anyway?

So this Saturday night, we're in bed and around 11:30 we hear all these cars thumping loud music right outside our window, and there are lights shining into our bedroom, waking us up. So we look outside and there are 2 trucks and a random car parked in our yard. As we look, hoards of teenagers spill out of these cars and just take off running up the street. What in the world?

After events that occurred later (which I will get to), we deduced that these kids were trying to be inconspicuous by parking throughout the neighborhood and they thought our house would be a good spot because they didn't think we were home. All our lights were off, and unlike everyone else in our neighborhood, we actually park our cars in our garage out of sight.

Anyway. . .so these kids keep coming back and forth from their cars, turning them on and blasting music, and other kids are cruising the neighborhood in their cars blasting music, and there are tons of kids just roaming around, so we decide it couldn't hurt to call the police. Cy calls the police and explains to them that we have random cars on our property and random kids roaming the streets, and they not only get our address wrong, but we get the impression they totally don't care. So we think, at least we tried, and we go back to bed to try to ignore the ruckus and get some sleep.

Well, a few minutes later we hear a car go by, and I look out the window to see a police car cruising on by. They had obviously seen the cars and decided everything was okay. And I think that probably would have been the end of it, but for what happened next. One of the kids, out roaming the streets, sees the cop car and freaks out, and takes off running toward his car (parked in our yard of course). Well the cop see this kid running down the street and whips her car around. The kid hops in his truck and tries to take off, but the cop floors it and parks sideways across the front of his truck, blocking him in. Apparently after this (we couldn't actually see from where we were, but our neighbor across the streets filled us in), the kid gets out of the truck and takes off running. He tries to run behind our house, which is a huge mistake, since we and our neighbor have a fence. So the cop gets out of the car, chases the kid down the street, tackles him, and drags him back to her car.

At this point, the kid makes his next big mistake. He tells the cop that he lives/is hanging out at. . .the house where the cops had to come last weekend (I'll get to that in a minute). The cop says, "Then why are you down here?" and he makes something up, so she drags him up the street and starts banging on the door of this house. Well, these people are no strangers to the cops banging on their door, but they are lucky this time and aren't home. In the middle of this, a second cop shows up. I don't know if at this point they realized the kid was lying, or that he was drunk, but the kid starts yelling at the male cop, and the cop just grabs him, whips his hands behind his back, throws him against the cop car, frisks him, cuffs him, and shoves him inside.

After this, three more cop cars show up. They run the license plates on the cars in our yard. We got the impression that one or more of them might have been stolen. But the female cop ran the plates on one car and said, "I know this kid, you don't want this kid in your neighborhood." Which we of course found very reassuring.

After running the plates, the first cop decides to go up the street and see where all the kids have gone. There is of course some huge party with underage drinking, so they haul some of the kids away and the rest take off running. Well of course now the kids whose cars (stolen or not) are parked in our yard are not about to come back for them, with the cops camped out right there, so the cops call a tow truck to have the cars towed and impounded.

The first truck--the one belonging to the kid who got tackled--is taken away by his very unhappy looking parents. The other two are left in the street surrounded by the cops until at 1 am, the tow trucks finally show up and haul them off. We finally got some sleep around 2 am.

This coming on the heels of last weekend's cop-worthy adventure. So last Saturday night we're asleep and at 1:30 am we get awakened by a loud pounding sound. It is so loud it even wakes Cy up (which is near impossible). Cy goes out in the living room to see if he can find out what's going on, then comes running back to the room and says, "You've got to come see this."

It was of course the house across the street and behind our neighbor's. Fortunately, we had our 10 foot ladder in the middle of the living room since we'd been painting. I climb up the ladder where I have a perfect view of two girls fistfighting and screaming at the top of their lungs. Yes, so there are two girls just attacking and clawing at each other and there are two guys trying to pull them apart. A fifth person is banging on the door - apparently there are more people inside and the fighters are locked out. So the guys pull the girls off each other and everything calms down a bit and then they start clawing at each other again and have to be pulled apart again. With the other person banging on the door the whole time. This cycle repeats itself for quite some time, and then finally someone opens the door and they all go back inside.

But that is not the end of it. We go back to bed, only to hear the banging sound again a few minutes later. And it's like deja vu. We go look and they are back outside, fighting again, locked out again. Eventually they all go back in again and then a few minutes later we hear more banging and look out again and this time it's the cops banging on the door.

After that it all settled down.

Seriously. . .where do we live?! I love our house, but I think I might love it better somewhere else. If this keeps up though, we may just have to move.

Jamaica. . .Yeah Mon

Last Wednesday, we headed out to Jamaica for five days. We had booked a trip at a Sandals in Montego Bay way back in March. We got started early on Wednesday - up at 4:30 am! We were scheduled to fly from Charleston to Atlanta at 7:30 am and then board our flight to Montego Bay at 9:45 am. We got some breakfast at the Charleston airport and boarded the plane, and then the bad news began. There was a bad fog in Atlanta, and they weren't letting any planes land or take off. So we sat on the plane at the gate in Charleston for an hour. We finally made it to Atlanta around 9:30, just in time to sprint to our other plane, which was of course, at the complete opposite end of the airport from where we had landed. After much sprinting and nearly passing out from exhaustion, we arrived at the gate to find that the plane had just left. The next plane was scheduled to leave at 2:45 pm. Needless to say, we were off to a great start. So we roamed around the Atlanta airport for awhile, got some lunch, and settled in at our gate to wait it out. Cy watched an entire movie and I read an entire book. It was almost time to board when one of the other people sitting at the gate with us (who had also missed the earlier plane) receives a cell phone call from her son saying that we were all at the wrong gate - they had switched gates without bothering to let anyone know!!! Sure enough, they finally start flashing some info on the board where we are sitting and it says something about a flight to Vienna! So about 15 of us pack up and start wandering off in search of the new gate which is of course, a fair hike away. So after almost missing our plane a second time, we finally get to the right place, and the plane is delayed!!! We eventually got to board and finally made it to Jamaica around 6 pm Jamaica time (7 pm our time).
When we got to the resort, we encountered our second big disappointment - our resort. It looked nothing like the pictures they used for advertisement. Most importantly, there was no beach! The pictures on the website and the brochure showed a large, beautiful, private beach with sailboats and water sports. In actuality, 95% of the beach had eroded, leaving only a strip of dirty sand a few hundred yards across, no water sports, and heavily populated 24/7 with hoards of rather scary locals. Because, disappointment #3 - the resort not only lacked a beach; it is also in the middle of a very scary part of downtown Montego Bay. Seriously. . .we tried to go for a walk by the water at 7 am our first morning there and a guy walks up to us as soon as we walk out the front door of the hotel and says, "Hey man, want a little smoke?" And we are like, "What? No! And it's 7 o'clock in the morning!" So we keep walking, but a few yards later we see a man who has apparently finished swimming and decides to just strip down and change out of his swim clothes in the middle of the road!!! At that point, we just turned around & went inside, and immediately caught a bus to one of the other Sandals resorts, where there actually was a beach (a really beautiful one), free of nude and/or high locals.


This became the routine for the next few days - have breakfast delivered to the room, eat it out on the balcony, then catch a bus to Sandals Montego Bay. Lie on the beach until lunchtime, then hit up the lunch buffet at the Bayside Restaurant. Around 2:15, we would catch the bus back to Sandals Inn, where we would rest until it was time for dinner. We went to three different restaurants for dinner - the Carlyle (where a local reggae band played while we ate, soon to be followed by an Elvis impersonator, which we did not stick around for), Tokyo Joe's (a Japanese steakhouse where an angry Jamaican chef cooked our food sweating over an open fire), and Cucina Romana, which had delicious Italian food, and where I acquired a billion mosquito bites that I had an allergic reaction to while flying home the next day.


On Saturday, our last full day in Jamaica, we had scheduled a rafting tour on the Martha Brae river. However, when we got up Saturday morning, things quickly went downhill. First, they lost our card with our breakfast order and we never got our breakfast. Then, our front door broke - it wouldn't close or lock, so we couldn't leave our room. Cy tried to explain this to the front desk and they didn't seem to understand. So he eventually just walked down there to yell at them, and while he was there, he was like, could you also please bring us our breakfast? Eventually our breakfast (and later) the maintenance guy showed up. The maintenance guy's solution was to whip out a knife and carve a bigger hole in the door frame so they door would shut. Brilliant. By then we had missed the tour, which they tried to charge us full price for (but Cy would have none of it).

Saturday night was actually the best part of our trip. We went over to Sandals Montego Bay for dinner at Cucina Romana (which was the best food we had all week) and we saw an absolutely gorgeous sunset. So that was a nice end to our rather chaotic trip.


Sunday morning we did some shopping in the airport (they had a reggae CD store and a Jamaica Pirates store!) and then flew home. Apparently we were mere hours ahead of Tropical Storm Fay, which we knew nothing about until our pilot said, "We shouldn't have too much trouble from the tropical storm." It was quite a turbulent ride, and apparently the storm hit Cuba just a couple hours after we flew over Cuba. Even though we had a 4-hour layover in Atlanta before we flew home to Charleston, we were so incredibly happy to be back in the United States. Atlanta Bread Company has never tasted so good. And this will probably be our last trip, because I think poor Cy was scarred for life. Maybe next time we'll just take the days off work but lounge around our own home. :)

Two Year Anniversary

As of Tuesday, August 5, we have been married for two wonderful years!!! I really can't believe it's been that long - time truly does fly when you're having fun! Our anniversary itself was fantastic. We were able to take the day off work and just spend the whole day together. We kicked off our anniversary with presents (for me - Cy's present, a new iPod Nano, has yet to arrive). Cy bought me some beautiful flowers - a mixture of pink roses, pink carnations, and daisies. And he bought me the most beautiful necklace - a circlet made out of sapphires!!!


After presents, we had a nice, relaxing breakfast at IHOP. For lunch, we headed to Chili's and then to the movie theater where we saw the new Mummy movie (great movie). Then, for dinner, Cy had made reservations at our favorite restaurant for special occasions - Oak Steakhouse on Broad Street. We both agree that Oak has the best food we've ever eaten. We each had a 7 oz. filet mignon (I ordered mine with gorgonzola cream sauce; Cy chose the balsamic barbecue sauce) and shared a family-sized side of whipped potatoes. It was amazing. For dessert, we shared a slice of six-layer chocolate cake called "Chocolate Indulgence." It was such a fantastic day!

And it really has been two amazing years. We love each other more now than we did two years ago. And it just keeps getting better. :)

Playing the Critic

I'm going to do a book/movie review to recap my weekend. Because this pretty much was my weekend. 1. Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer - The much anticipated fourth and "final" installment of Stephenie Meyer's teenage vampire romance saga. I say "final" in quotations because I am in no way convinced that this actually was the final book. She left way too many questions unanswered and way too many loose threads that I know she's just dying to come back and explore later on. And tons of new characters that are screaming for more page time. Plus, she's already admitted to working on a fifth book called Midnight Sun, which coincides chronologically with book 1 (but told from Edward's point of view), but for which I am sure we will have to have another midnight party at the bookstores the night of its release. Other than the Harry Potter books, I think Breaking Dawn is the only book to share the honor of the
midnight release party. I went to the last Harry Potter party, and that was more than I could handle. So I opted out of this one - something about the prospect of hundreds of teenage girls dressed up in prom dresses/vampire costumes and gushing over Rob Pattinson kind of turned me off.
Anyway, Amazon was taking way too long to ship my book so I called and reserved a copy at Barnes & Noble, which I picked up promptly when they opened at 9 am on Saturday. Now I will have to figure out what to do with my second copy of the book when it finally turns up later this week. I started reading as soon as I got in the house. And I must say, I was immediately disappointed. I didn't like the direction the main characters were taking. They had lost something of their former selves - I found them flat and forced, not developed, but being manipulated toward the end goal of the book. Also, the first few hundred pages of the book were just plain creepy. And inappropriate. I was actually rather shocked by the inappropriateness, especially considering that the author is allegedly a devout Mormon (assuming she hasn't been excommunicated yet, based on her books).

Okay, so I made it through the first few hundred pages extremely disappointed. It was way more horror novel than cute, fun vampire romance. Then I get to book 2, which is told from Jacob's point of view. So I am dreading it even more, since I've hated Jacob in the past couple of books. It was also very bizarre, since all of the other books were told from Bella's point of view. But I made myself keep reading, and actually, I liked Jacob a lot better in this book. Reading from his point of view actually provided some much-needed comic relief after the gruesomeness of book 1. Plus, there was the part where he got to drive Edward's Aston Martin Vanquish (I gasped out loud when I read the name of the car, since it is only the most fabulous car EVER) that helped redeem it for me.

By the time we got back to Bella in book 3, things had improved drastically and I found myself devouring the remaining pages. SPOILER ALERT: I was so happy that Renesmee turned out to be really sweet, and not a hideous mutant after all, and that Bella was FINALLY a vampire after much screwing around, and it was really cool to meet the vampires from all the covens all over the world. After making it all the way through to the end, I began to understand why the beginning had to happen the way it did - so I guess the end justified the means. And everyone got their happily ever after. Yea! :)

2. The Dark Knight

Okay, so I finally saw Batman Begins for the first time on Friday. It was pretty awesome, so we decided to go see The Dark Knight. It was also pretty awesome. It was way less intense and creepy than I thought it was going to be - I'd heard so much about how "dark" the movie was. I didn't really think it was that much darker than Batman Begins.


Heath Ledger was fantastic as the Joker. Just straight up crazy and kind of hilarious at times. Cy and I have been quoting the Joker saying "Kill. . .the batman" all day. Overall, good movie with crazy stunts and cool technology. Cy and I both really liked it because it was fairly realistic - they explained the technology behind everything. It wasn't just that Batman was magical and could fly, etc. - there were reasonable explanations for everything.

Except for Two-Face. SPOILER ALERT: Two Face was the creepiest part of the movie for me. And the least realistic. I mean, there is no way you could just be walking around shooting people when half of your face was burned off. Plus, it was so disgusting. I am glad that he lasted only the duration of the movie; I couldn't have handled an entire movie looking at his mutilated face. Especially when the other half of his face still looked like Aaron Eckhart.

The second thing that bugged me about the movie (and this bugged me in Batman Begins too) was Christian Bale's bizarro Batman voice. It kept making me want to laugh and I couldn't figure out why. And then all of a sudden it hit me: his Batman voice totally sounds like Rex Kwon Do from Napoleon Dynamite. I could just picture Batman saying: "Nobody wants a roundhouse kick to the face when I'm wearing this bat suit!" And then I couldn't stop laughing when he talked. Kind of ruined it for me a little bit.

Our Fun Weekend with Rachel

This past weekend, we left work around 2:30 on Friday and headed up to Florence to meet my parents and pick up Rachel to come spend the weekend with us. On the way back, we enjoyed some quality music, courtesy of the Jonas Brothers. When we got back to Chucktown, we had some fun playing Guitar Hero. Rachel and I named our band "Chunkemuu" and let me tell you, Chunkemuu Rocks!!! (Guitar Hero told us so)

Cy and I are getting old these days, so we had to go to bed early. We were up and at 'em early the next morning though, for a breakfast feast of eggs, tater tots, and biscuits. After that, we hit up the Chevy body shop to pick up the Mini with its brand new windshield. We then went to Barnes & Noble where they had no good books on Jamaica, and also no decent flavors of tea. So then we went home for some more Guitar Hero (at which Chunkemuu rocked again).

Saturday afternoon was a little more exciting. We got a late lunch at Moe's, then played a round of miniature golf at Blackbeard's Cove. On about half of the holes, you had to spin a wheel before hand and it would tell you something crazy you had to do playing that hole. For example, one time I spun and it said I had to pick someone to be an extra obstacle on the course. So I picked Rachel, who proceeded to lay flat on the ground across the width of the green. But she had spun and it had told her she couldn't talk until she finished playing that hole. So I warned her that with her lying there, I was bound to peg her in the head, and since she couldn't talk, she wouldn't be able to yell at me about it. On another hole, I had to take my first shot with my eyes closed. I did--and got a hole in one!!! On another hole, I had to use the wrong end of my club. So I used it like a pool stick--and got another hole in one!!! It was insanely hot out there, but we had a lot of fun.

On the way back from the golf course, we stopped by Cupcake on Long Point to get some delicious dessert. Rachel and I couldn't decide which flavors to try, so we ended up getting one each and then splitting a third. I had a carrot cake cupcake, Rachel had a red velvet cupcake, and we split a cookies & cream cupcake. They were very tasty.

After we got back, we chilled for a while, then went to see Wes, Kelly, & Noah. Noah was pretty bashful at first, but by the time we left, he said "Bye-bye, Racher!" We had fun kicking the ball with him, even though he kept deliberately kicking it under the car & making Uncle Cy get it back out. Then we took a detour to Wes's office, where he looked at my eyes and officially diagnosed me with some weird eye disease. But I won't get into that.

By then, it was raining, which nixed our plan of burgers for dinner. We hit up Applebee's instead, which was also quite tasty, even though Rachel used up all the napkins blowing her nose and we heard a waitress threatening to kill someone. We took it easy for the rest of the night, all of us just sitting around reading.

Sunday was less eventful. We went to church, where tons of people asked about Dad, which was really nice to know they were thinking about him. After church, we had some leftovers, played a few more crazy-hard songs on Guitar Hero III, and got back on the road to Florence.

The worst part of our weekend occurred after we dropped Rachel off and were heading back to Charleston. We were very excited when we got on I-26 - that meant we were almost home. Unfortunately, we'd been on 26 for about a minute when we suddenly dead-stopped. And I mean dead-stopped. We ended up turning the car completely off for a solid hour. People were out of their cars, hanging out in the road. A little girl who was about a year and a half old kept running over to our car to show us her stuffed bumblebee. We watched about 10 police cars and 5 tow trucks go by. After close to an hour, we too got out of the car to stretch.

Finally, we started moving. Slowly but surely. We found out later that there had been 7 accidents on I-26 in about a ten-mile stretch, with 10 cars involved. The first accident we saw was on our left - a fire truck on its way to one of the accident scenes had flipped over in the median and was being pulled out of the ditch. A mile or so later, we passed a car facing the wrong direction on its nose in the ditch. A mile or so later, we saw a car absolutely demolished down in the ditch on the right side of the road. Another couple of miles after that, we saw a car even more demolished in the ditch on the right side of the road. Several ambulances were there, and one was just pulling out as we passed. Apparently there were 3 more wrecks that had already been cleared by the time we got there, one of them involving an 18-wheeler. The poor Mini has had enough experience with 18-wheelers, so we were glad we didn't have to deal with that. And I was glad that I had thought ahead and grabbed an extra book just in case I finished the one I was reading. I ended up finishing both books before we even made it into Charleston. Too bad we hadn't thought to bring any snacks.

We finally arrived home at aroun 8:15 last night. It had only taken us a little under 4 hours to drive from Florence to Charleston.

The Sweetest Camera Ever

Last week, I became the proud owner of a Canon Digital Rebel XSi. It is 12.2 MP, and I purchased it as part of a kit that included an 18-55 mm lens and a 75-300 mm lens (both with auto focus and manual focus built in), two rechargeable batteries, and some other assorted goodies. Unfortunately, due to Tropical Storm Christobal swirling off our coast, it has been cloudy and raining for the past few days. By Saturday afternoon, it became evident that we were not in fact going to get the 5 inches of rain predicted, so even though it was cloudy, I decided to take my new camera out for a test run at Sunrise Park on James Island. And I have to say, it is the most amazing camera I have ever had in my hands. Below are just a few of the MANY pictures I took (did I mention the kit came with an 8 GB memory card?).

Cy's Near-Death Experience

Last week, left work in the Mini to head out for some lunch. About 5 minutes after he left, he called to tell me that as he was driving down 526, an eighteen-wheeler in front of him lost a tire, which then flew up and shattered the windshield of the Mini. Of course, I was freaking out, and I said, "Are you ok?!" and he responded, "Well, I'm bleeding a little bit, but I think I'm okay." Which of course freaked me out even more. I was picturing him standing on the side of 526 with large pieces of glass sticking out of him and blood gushing everywhere. He was okay though--he just had a few nicks on his hands and arms from the millions of little pieces of glass that were sprayed across the dashboard. He had had to crawl over the seats to exit on the passenger side of the car (so as not to be hit by a car) and had encountered some glass while doing so. He sounded surprisingly calm (typical Cy) but I found out later that he was pretty freaked out about it.


What was bad too was that tons of people at work who were also out at lunch recognized the car and thought we had been in some terrible accident. People were calling, emailing, and coming over to our desks to see what happened. Which was nice to know that they cared and were worried about us. :)

After much drama, Cy was finally able to get the car towed and get a ride back to work. The car has now been in the shop for most of last week, and we got a call from them Friday saying that it would probably be two more weeks before we could get the car back. Apparently there was so much glass inside the car that they were unable to do the repairs. They had to send the car to the Mini maintenance folks to have them do a full maintenance on all the systems, especially the air conditioner, which they said was full of glass. After that, they will send it back to the body shop to replace the windshield. I will try to post some pictures of the car later if I can. It was one of those bizarre freak accidents, and really pretty unbelievable. But the most important thing is that Cy is all in one piece.

Some Interesting Things That I Saw At Jennifer's Wedding

And these are only the ones I was able to get pictures of (like, for example, I don't have a picture of the Amy Winehouse-looking chick with the tattoo that went all the way around her stomach right above her bikini bottom. But such is life).

Exhibit A: I call this "Man with Metal Detector"

Exhibit B: Family Posing for Family Picture (apparently with professional photographer) on Random Old Washed-Up Boat Directly Behind the Wedding Party

Exhibit C: Cowboy Wedding Guest (you can't tell very well from the picture, but he's wearing not just a cowboy hat, but a vest, jeans, and cowboy boots)

Exhibit D: Man in Full Hockey Gear With Surfboards

Exhibit E: Bear with Coconut Bra

Exhibit F: Cy with Bear with Coconut Bra and Bubbles