adam and i had a long weekend away. very nice. and now i will give you reviews of three hotels where we stayed. all in the holiday inn chain because that is a part of the intercontinental hotel chain and adam stays in intercontinental hotels when he travels to korea and china and ergo (thanks d.b. for the clarification on that word, ergo now i use it all the time) adam has lots of intercontinental freebie points and so we stayed in three holiday inn hotels ALL FOR FREE this weekend. which makes adam very happy and he was so happy that he let me purchase THREE pairs of shoes as DSW in jacksonville. i will give shoe reviews later. you can’t get it all in one blog entry...
thursday evening we left tallahassee and headed towards raleigh, n.c.(we had to be in raleigh on friday afternoon for brian and michelle’s wedding.) we drove as far as savannah that night and stopped at a holiday inn express. it didn’t make me any smarter (as the advertising promised) but it is a really nice place to stay. very clean. and a free breakfast. i like hampton inns because they are always the same and they have the free breakfast and this holiday inn express reminded me a lot of hampton inns.
then on to raleigh, n.c. for a friday afternoon wedding... we arrived in time to have lunch with meghan greene (like we don’t see her enough in tally) and nicole arbuckle and kate arbuckle who is a snazzy dancer once she decided that she liked me.
the wedding was beautiful. brian is almost finished with his doctoral work for a phd in astrophysics and michelle has her doctorate from yale (yes, that yale) in clinical psychology and teaches at duke. we have so much in common with them. like, uhhhh, well, they use forks and knives and spoons and so do we. other than that, i don’t know why they associate with us. except maybe to make fun of us later.
and speaking of something to make fun of... they asked us to emcee their reception. yes, these super smarties gave ME a MICROPHONE on the most important day of their life. shows you how valuable a phd is for real life common sense.
i was seated next to michelle’s mother at the reception (again, these people need to start using the brains God gave them) and she told me all about the cheese class she is taking in canada (where she lives). yes, a cheese class. i now know so much about how cheese is made. and really people, it is rather interesting the different processes that occur to make all those lovely varieties of cheese. especially since all cheese starts with the same 4 basic ingredients (milk, salt, bacteria, and something called “cultures” which is from the fore-stomach of a cow) and it is the processing that makes it all different in the end. i think it is the ONLY time at a wedding where i heard someone say the words “fore-stomach of a cow”. i figured that a woman who would take a class in cheese to learn exactly how each variety is made would have produced a daughter who went to yale and earned a doctorate from that institution.
since michelle’s mom missed a cheese class (i guess your daughter’s wedding isn’t an excused absence) she has to visit some cheese farms in north carolina this week. good thing she didn’t miss the “cheese test” or the “presentations” they have to make for class (really. they had those for this class).
and maybe because i was interested in the whole cheese process and asked lots of questions that means that my children will do really well at, let’s say, community college.
so after the wedding on friday afternoon and late into friday evening (those phd candidates can PARTY) we stayed at the holiday inn brownstone which was the wedding hotel. and it was right by u.n.c. and just a mile from the wedding. this was an older hotel. refurbished BUT you couldn’t adjust the air or heat. you could only turn on the fan. adam likes to FRREEEEZZZEEE out a hotel room, so he wasn’t really thrilled about this.
saturday morning we woke up fairly early and headed to columbia, s.c. adam had to visit a fish farm for an official visit since he helps them with their shipping of fish overseas. this fish farm is in the middle of NOTHING SOUTH CAROLINA (oh, except there is a nuclear testing facility there too). don’t ask why the official visit, i could tell you but then i would have to drown you in the vat of fertilized fish eggs. so now i also know a lot about fish farming and shipping live fish to china and regulations for such things. which sometimes i get confused with my knowledge about cheese making and end up thinking that you have to oxygenate the cows fore-stomach. but that isn’t so.
then onto jacksonville, florida and to the cool hotel indigo which happens to be less than 2 miles from the shopping area with the APPLE STORE. or as i like to call it HEAVENish. we had dinner with thomas lee at p.f. changs. love it. it was totally worth the 90 minute wait. really. i would have waited HOURS for some orange peel shrimp and lettuce wraps.
we spent the night in the hotel of my dreams. i want my house to look exactly like this hotel. well, i don’t think i need a lobby quite that size, but i do want all the furniture, the carpets, the art work, the HUGE wall photo murals. and the maid service wouldn’t hurt my feelings at all.
woke up late sunday morning and went to the apple store to try out the new mouse. can’t buy one yet (unless i was to buy a smokin’ hot new HUGE mac, but that isn’t happening to a gal who stays in FREE HOTELS and visits fish farms for fun) but i did sing a praise chorus or two because it was sunday morning and because that mouse was sweeeeeet. like Jesus. but not able to save my soul. but nevertheless sweeeeeet.
then i purchased three pairs of shoes at dsw, maggiano’s for lunch (only because we had a gift card, that is a lot of eating out for adam who one year swore off eating out in restaurants as a new year’s resolution) and it was on the road back home to reality.
this was all made possible by kerry corven, babysitter par excellence. and lee shell, babysitter helper par mediocrity (hee hee). i am sure that kerry, who is also a registered mental health counselor for children and teens, did a lot of “play therapy” this weekend with my kids. hope she has diagnosed them all and cured whatever ailed them...
all in all, it wasn’t a trip to the bonnie hunt show in l.a. (like another blogger that i know, and by “know” i mean i read her blog) but a fish farm, three new pairs of shoes from a discount shoe warehouse, and a really cool budget hotel are all a gal like me could hope for... that and a discussion about the fore-stomach of a cow.