What do you do when you live apart from your spouse?  Apparently we go to baseball games.  I imagine Dave gets as antsy in Canton as I do when I’m home alone looking for something to do.  What better way to pass the time than with an American tradition.

Dave has been going to Indians games (I haven’t been with him thus the lack of pictures) and has tickets for several mores games already.  Our neighbor kids play competitive baseball/softball and I’ve been tagging along to some of their games.  They’re already thinking about playing ball in college so we all jumped at the chance to go to watch Ole Miss vs LSU a couple weeks ago.  As Ole Miss alums Bryan and Megan have been to several and with the college ball interest the Williams had already been to a few, but it was my first college baseball game and first time to the University of Mississippi.  It’s no big 10 but it’s alright for an SEC school that’s not UT .

Thankfully the rain blew through quickly and since the Rebels had already won the first game of the night we were hoping they could pull out another win over the Tigers.  At one point we were going to run in for drinks when Jerry insisted no one leave until the “disco” dance…he had missed it at the other games.

Everyone in the crowd joined in on the dance.

At the bottom of the ninth the game was tied 8-8 and into the 10th we went hoping for a win.

We sat infront of the infamous “throw it in the dirt guy”.  No kidding that we were watching the away game on tv the next weekend and could hear him even on TV yelling at the opposing pitchers “throw it in the dirt” with everyone responding “DIRT!”   

Thankfully Zach and Page were looking out for me.  This was them yelling at me as a foul ball came flying into the seats right next to us!  After they saved my life I put the camera down for a bit and payed more attention the last 2 innings.  Ole Miss scored in the 11th ending the game at 9-8. 

I’m thankful for my friends that keep me entertained while Dave is away.  I know he hates to miss the fun here, maybe before too long I’ll be able to tag along to the Indians games.

The following conversation took place on our drive to East Tennessee just outside of Nashville.

“Sir, do you have a legal reason to be going 82mph?”

“No sir”

“I’ll need to see your license…oh do you live in Ohio?”

“No sir we live in Tennessee”

“How long have you lived here?”

“Ummm…6 months?”

(LIAR)

“You know state law is 30 days”

(Oh shoot don’t make me drive mine is OH too and I want a nap…)

“I didn’t know I’m sorry sir.”

“I’ll see your insurance card too and be right back”

“Consider this a warning on your license but you need to get it renewed immediately.  As for your moving violation make sure to slow down.  You can take an online course and it won’t go on your record but read your ticket carefully as you only have 30 days to complete.”

“Yes sir.  I understand sir.”

Here’s the thing…Dave has never had a ticket before in his life.  He’s convinced he could get out of it if he didn’t have the license thing.  The one other time he was pulled over we were on our way  back to school from our first ever house hunting trip.  As soon as I heard the woman cop ask for his license and registration then asked him to step back to her car I knew he woudln’t get a ticket.  I watched through the rear view mirror as he told this woman his life story…talking about how we’re on our way back to school from house hunting…that we were about to graduate and getting married in just a few short weeks….blah blah blah.  She let him off with a sweet warning and off we went.  He’s so lucky.  I turn on the water works and still get called into court for excessive speeds…ugh!  No it’s not fun to get a ticket but can you blame me if I gloated a little when he finally got a after bragging for years that he’s never ever had one?!  Don’t worry he’ll take an online course and it won’t even be on his record.  So lucky…  

We spent 10 whole days in Cincinnati with my family last week. Can you believe it?! 10 days!! It was wonderful. We surprised my dad by coming in on Friday in time for their Dessert & Dancing Party.

The club always has the best dessert.  I tried to steal Chef Jeffery but he wasn’t interested in moving to Memphis.  Something about a room being named after him and a being scared of what my mom would do.

Everyone danced the night away to the band Permanent Tourists from Hilton Head, SC and all of the ladies enjoyed our Firefly.

I even managed to get our boys out on the dance floor (with a little help from our favorite bar tender).  ;-)

I flaunted my super skinny hubby to people we haven’t seen since our wedding and we had a great time.  I’m sure we went to bed sometime before dawn…the last time check I remember was at 3am when we were making sandwiches at home.  Mom & Dad sure know how to throw a party!

When trying to look up direction to the church for the wedding weekend Brenda (MIL) and I realized that google maps wanted to take me 20 minutes of the way. We worked hard at finding the most direct route, changed it on the computer so I could get the step by step directions written out and away I went. We all know how bad I am at directions so I thankfully took Dustin’s GPS with me just in case.

I was driving down the roadwithout any problem and began to slow as my first real turn off was approaching about 20 minutes into my drive. I passed 2 roads as we thought I would and I came up over a hill to my turn off. The turn off was straight down. I didn’t know there were hills like that in OH but seriously like a vertical drop….well it felt that way in Dave’s gigantic truck I was driving by myself. I took the death defying drop in stride as the road flattened out. At this point I’m out in the middle of nowhere. The last house was at the top of the 10,000ft plunge and about 10 minutes away. I check my mileage and realize I should be coming up on my next turn only to look up and realize I’m passing it. I take another plunge downward and turn around in a forbidden driveway at the bottom of the hill. Only after I am halfway through my turn around do I see the old man and his wife stepping away from their little garden to stare at me like they haven’t seen people in years, much less a gigantic Chevy truck. I sped away just as the old man was regripping his garden tool in a defensive move as if I’m going to jump out of the truck and attack them.

I urged the truck to the top of the hill from which I had plummeted and made my turn. It took me about 5 seconds to realize the road I was on was barely a 1 lane dirt/gravel road. Did I mention I was driving Dave’s gigantic truck? I looked back to my left and saw the little old man (who had by this point made his way down to the road pitch fork in hand) staring at me like an alien so I decided to make my escape. Looking back he was probably just thinking I was lost and needed help but when I get slightly lost and see tiny roads in front of me while driving big trucks I panic a little and everything around me looks ominous.

Because I live in the age of cell phones I thought it necessary to call by brother in law at that instant to tell him that I was on a dirt road and if he didn’t hear from me to come looking. I promptly hung up so I could keep both hands on the steering wheel and started to move. The road was scary. The back end of the truck was empty and light so even in my 10mi/hour driving I still felt like I was going to lose control and skid off the road. It wouldn’t have been hard since my tires of this overly large truck were already barley gripping the sides as it was. There were only a couple of small houses and several trailers on this 2 hour…I mean 2 mile drive into nowhere. The sky suddenly got dark, men on their front porch were waiting to come after me with their shot guns, the jeep that tore off in front of me was waiting around the corner to drive me into a ditch and the children playing on the trampoline became children of the corn….and then suddenly as if the nightmare never existed, the sky lightened and a beautiful blacktop road appeared in front of me. I was never so glad to see asphalt in my life.

I now can sympathize with how small town/country people feel when they go to weddings or any event for that matter in an unfamiliar large city. I promise if you ever visit this city girl that I’ll keep you away from alleys and parking garages.

I dug this up out of my half written posts that I had forgotten about.  This one was from March and oddly enough written on St Patty’s day.  I’ll get around to sharing about our fun filled 4th of July weekend eventually, hopefully it won’t take until November

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There are a lot of red heads in this gate area here in Memphis today.  I’m not talking strawberry blond or auburn I mean red red.  I’m counting 9 of about 40 people right now in 5 different families.  That has to defeat some kind of odds. I’ve always loved red headed kids.  I want one…but I don’t think Dave would be happy about that.  They are cute though.

Make that 10 red heads.  Nope 11…seriously I’m starting to feel like a minority here.  I wonder how I would look with red hair?

OK I feel sorry for gate agents sometimes but then others I just want to smack for being mean.  Really, everyone has bad days but there’s no need to get snippy with new travelers that are just asking a question.  Although I did think it was funny that a woman just walked up to the agent and asked when they would be boarding. The agent said 30 minutes before the flight. (Our flight is scheduled for 7:45) the woman politely said “oh ok because it’s 7:15 now.” I thought this particular agent was going to leap across the counter at her Ally McBeal style.  You could tell the images played out in her head.  The poor woman just wanted to make sure she had time to run down and get bottle of water.

2 hours later during my next layover:

I’m sitting here watching a guy that works at a visa counter for USAirways. very few seconds I hear “round trip flight, we’re giving away a round trip flight.”  I feel sorry for the guy. Of the 50 people or so that have walked by him in the last 5 minutes he’s had about 5 look at him and politely smile and 3 stop, all asking for directions. I’ve considered one of these cards to get miles and now would be the time to get one with all their specials.  Do you have one?  What airline? Is it worth it?

Airport Courtesy Notes:

There are special rooms in most bathrooms in airports that allow you to nurse your child. I don’t so much mind the public act as the exposed act where young men are near by that apparently can’t help but gawk. Please at least bring a cover up and everyone else avert your eyes!

If you are a larger person and decide to take a nap on the floor, I ask that you please wear a shirt large enough to cover yourself as you lay on the floor. And please make sure your pants stay up too.

Boarding…until next time.