What a Weekend

What a great weekend... although it really feels like I was just at work about fifteen minutes ago... I guess when you have a full weekend it's like that. The only real drawback to having a pleasantly eventful couple of days, I guess.

It really started Thursday, when Erin and I decided on a whim that we were going to go see the Roper Mountain christmas lights. They've outdone themselves this year... this is an annual event here in Greenville. The school district has a science center on a little mountain here on the southeast side of town... it has a planetarium, and a greenhouse, and an amphitheater, and some pioneer studies exhibits, and all kinds of stuff. In the month of December they shut down the educational part of it and put up all these Christmas lights in a huge display. It's amazing... this year they did something a little differently: up until this point, the lights have been a strictly drive-through kind of thing, where you stay in your car and enjoy Christmas music while you drive through and see all these displays... but this year, they have a section of the mountain cordoned off, called "Winter Wonderland", where you can park and walk through these paths with all these Christmas lights all around. Santa Claus has a little spot, where you can go and have your picture taken with him and get some hot chocolate. And they let you stay as long as you want and go around the mountain to see the lights as many times as you like. It was great.

Friday we started the evening with Vietnamese food with a couple of friends. We've found a great little Vietnamese restaurant here in town that has some of the best food EVER. I'm particularly fond of the deep fried spring rolls and stir-fry beef over noodles. YUM. After dinner, we went back to the house, sat around and talked for a while, and got relatively toasted. I introduced one of my friends to Sparks, the alcoholic energy drink. YAY! Then we headed out to the club and danced and drank and talked and shot pool and watched a drag show and made a ton of new friends. Stayed out until three or so, came home and crashed. I was only this much *holds fingers about a half inch apart* hungover the next morning. A glass of water, an ibuprofen and a shower later I was fine.

Then Saturday we met up with another friend and went horseback riding! A few posts ago I talked about empowering myself regardless of my body type and doing the adventurous things I really want to do. A friend read that entry, and suggested visiting a horse farm she new sometime soon. I jumped at the chance, and that's how she and Erin and I ended up on horses Saturday afternoon! We went on a trail ride, and it was really great. My horse was HUGE - his name was Goliath, and he definitely lived up to it - but he was so gentle, and I barely had to even use my reins at all, he knew the trail so well. The farm was out in the middle of nowhere, near Table Rock, and we went through these woods that were solemn and quiet and filled with sunshine. It was a lot of fun, and a REALLY great experience. We're going to try to make it a monthly thing, money allowing. Saturday evening we went to Los Amigos for dinner and then watched a movie before zonking out.

Yesterday we went up to NC and hung out with my cousin Andrew and had the BEST time. We laughed constantly and talked about music and movies and vegetarian cooking. He tried out a new recipe that he'd found for sweet potatoes - sweet potato and red onion salad - it was, ah, a little bizarre. It had a great flavor, but a really strange texture - with the orange sweet potatoes and the red onions together it was slimy but firm and sweet but savory and orange and purple and honestly it reminded me of some kind of dish that you'd find in the Star Trek universe. We had a great laugh over it though. The fruit salad he made was great - apples, bananas, pecans, raisins in cherry yogurt. YUM. I made him laugh REALLY hard at dinner, when between sweet potatoes and fruit salad he got up to get us dessert plates and I said, "Thanks, Dad!" Maybe it was a location joke (you know, you had to be there to really laugh at it), but man, we just couldn't stop laughing. I introduced him to one of our favorite bands, Murder by Death. He played his drums for us, a little, and introduced us to some really good jazz.

All in all, it was a GREAT weekend. I'm a little tired today, and I'm feeling like I might have caught a cold (sore throat and the sniffles), and we didn't do much that was productive, but I don't CARE. We had such a fabulous time... this is why we moved back here. To be near friends and family and spend time with them. I think I've had more fun in the past three months than I had the whole time I was in Indy. It's nice to get reminders like that sometimes - lets you know that you're still on track.

And we already have plans for this weekend too! YAY!!!