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.