Now That I'm Relaxed...

Okay okay I hear you geez look I'm blogging happy now?

So where was I. Looks like the last real post was the day after things got official up in this. And here we are almost a month later. Well I'm certainly not going to make any excuses about why I haven't been blogging, because I don't need to. That last month I spent nearly 24/7 with a quite a swell person, and given I had no internet, it was rare that I wanted to trapze over to the library and waste time staring at a computer screen. Instead I spent the time having an absolute blast.

Valentine's day weekend was the first of many trips that were to come. That one was a jaunt down to Pensacola, where her parents house is. I ended up meeting pretty much her entire local extended family, and good fun was had with games like Boggle and Cranium. Her mom is almost as competitve as I am, so we had a good time talking trash all in good fun. The highlight of the trip revolved around the fact that I'd "acquired" her address off the 29B form we had to fill out as a safety precaution before leaving for the weekend, and had a dozen roses delivered to her parents house the night before we were to arrive. As she tells it, her mom told her to go in and look at the dining room table, and seeing the flowers she assumed her dad had gotten them for her mom. Her mom then bragged about there being a card and when she looked at it, she realized it was her name not her mother's on it. I guess a bit of setup is necessary, I've always not been a huge fan of flowers, and had spent the whole week downplaying them, talking about how they die and are pointless and why would anyone want them and whatnot. Yeah well anyway, the inside of the card said "Because I said I'd never get you flowers." Of course I managed to step into the restroom for like fifteen seconds having been dying for the previous hour on the road and missed the entire thing, not knowing it was going to take place so quickly. According to her mom the look on her face was a sight to behold. Speaking of which all you men out there, FTD.com does same day delivery even the day before Valentine's Day, which I was quite impressed by. Quality product too, I didn't have any complaints and I don't think she did either. It was just a day trip down there, as we had the big test to study for the next week.

The following weekend was a bit more of an extensive trip. I finally caved after about a week of poking and prodding and agreed to go to the Founder's Ball for her sorority in Tallahassee at Florida State. By the time I figured out I was going though it was pretty much too late to rent anything semi-formal to wear, so I had to hustle through some last second calls to LA to get my measurements from the tux shop where I'll be renting for my sister's wedding, and then to the suit place here that was about to close in order to get the order in a day in advance. Unfortunately we forgot about the time change on the way down there, so after getting on the road around 3pm we didn't actually arrive at the event until 8:30pm, even though it started at like 7. It ended up working out though, as she got about ten feet into the room before she was swarmed by every person there at once. It's quite a sight, let me tell you. Meanwhile I held her stuff and stood off to the side admiring the wallpaper, before a few of the girls noticed and started introducing themselves. I tried to announce myself as her chauffer or tagalong but it seems that story didn't fly. Good food was eaten along with some delicious cake, and many a picture were taken of the event and its participants. By the end of the night I had a bunch of the names down, after getting a lot of "I've heard SO much about you"s and "oh so THIS is Matt"s. She went out with the girls afterwards, but I retired back to the room knowing the days ahead would be quite lengthy. The next day was filled with various activities like lunch at the Olive Garden where you can never go wrong, as well as a trip to the mall where I made friends with the sig other of another of the girls, and we eventually escaped back to his place to watch some quality television while they raided the Mac counter. Dinner was at a Thai place I think where I downed the biggest plate of fried rice ever, quite good stuff. Again it was an early night for me, and a late night for her, but given she wasn't doing any of the driving (not by choice) that worked out. Oh I almost forgot, they have this lake/pond thing over there that looks really pretty at night, and we did our "gross couple thing" for the day by taking a walk around it and enjoying the scenery. We both agree watching other people do such things is gross, and thus we must take advantage of opportunity to rub it in other people's faces for once. The next day we were supposed to get an early start, but instead a trip to Starbucks to play the ten fingers game (always entertaining) followed by a trip back to campus to see the sights as well as take a bunch more pictures. The coolest thing we did was head over to the stadium, which college football fans who have seen Florida State play will recognize as a major one. Although they had the place pretty locked down, we managed to find an entrance through a chain link fence that was normally closed and locked but what looked like a repair truck had gone through recently at field level. Thus for the first time in my life I went walking out onto field level of a football field, with the towering stadium all around. She said she'd been to a truckload of games and never been down there, so it ended up being pretty neat. We went out to the 50 yard line after some peer pressuring from me and assurances we wouldn't get in trouble, and checked out the 360 view the quarterback gets during a game. Trying to imagine the place sold out full of screaming fans was pretty tough though. After a quick kiss on the 50 just so we could say we had and then a quick stop at the bookstore to pick up some edible supplies for the road and a hat we were on the road again, this time for Gainesville. To complete the rivalry tour we visited her sister at the University of Florida, home of the Gators. This was the only immediate family member I hadn't met yet, and thankfully I wasn't immediately cast aside and we got along pretty well. To continue the eating out trend (more on the result of that later) we headed to TGIF and then Coldstones or one of its variations, before eventually touring the campus and again getting into the stadium at field level so she could spit on her rival's mascot or something. The real bummer of that weekend though was the trip back. We didn't leave Gainesville until 8pm or so Sunday night, with the trip back to Montgomery being 350 miles of which like 200 were on a winding rural highway with a whole lot of nothing to look at. I easily saw more deer that night than the rest of my previous lifespan combined. I'd estimate the number to be about 150, and I'm not exaggerating. I was slowing down constantly every time I saw them up ahead, with those glowing eyes that give us the saying "deer in the headlights." Eventually we got in at about 1am, and then promptly had to be in class by 7. The 500 mile day altogether had me pretty dead. Good times.

Guess I won't do this all at once, will probably cover most of the rest in the next post.

832 Miles Later...

Note to self, that's a long way to drive in one day alone.

Was up at 3:30am yesterday, dropped her off at the airport from 4:30-5am, started driving soon after, stopped at the border of Texas for a bit of a casino break for a couple hours, eventually arrived in San Antonio at 9:30pm. Somewhere around twelve or thirteen hours of actual driving. Then I had to report the next morning at 8. I'm a bit tired. Still unpacking/recuperating, probably will see some lengthy posts soon.

Yeah I'm Horrible

Okay so really I'm going to catch up soon. Reason being I'm graduating from ASBC tomorrow and at some point ending up back at Randolph with nothing much to do. So I'm going to catch up on the last few weeks. What can I say, been busier than average. Apologies to those who care.