cashiers

pronounced cash-ers. it's in western north carolina, and it's beautiful!

first of all, I'd like to tell you that I WAS ON TIME. As you likely know, this is quite uncommon for me. I'm perpetually late. It's a thing. I can't help it. I am only on time if it's REALLY REALLY REALLY important. Which it was. And I was!

see, on thursday night I got a very yucky headache, and it was making me dizzy. thus, driving to ariel's home and sleeping didn't seem like a brillant plan anymore. so I woke up crazy early and drove to her house to get her. and I was there on time.

ariel and I had a ridiculous amount of fun going there--an adventure of spilling sun-dried tomato pesto in my lap while driving, wrong turns, scary drivers, pink skull headscarves, sonic and gabbing. lots and lots of gabbing. we tried to be good and study some, but it didn't work out as well as we'd hoped. we did, however, develop a team name. GO TEAM CARRIELL! we had a lot of fun decorating the place once we finally arrive. it's amazing what you can do with some wrapping paper and ribbon!

friday night we went out to dinner, and something happened that made me FURIOUS. I'm sitting at dinner, talking to this other girl Mandy, and a guy pulls a chair up to our table. This has been happening all night, no biggie. Well, at some point I leaned over to get something out of my purse, and apparently my jeans were sitting a little low. And not only did this guy have the nerve to point it out, he actually stuck out his finger and poked my ass!!! Let me tell you, I do wish I'd actually slapped him in the face. I did slap his hand and chew him out, and he left after that (and after telling me to grow up, which is ridiculous, because he's the one hitting on girls twelve-fifteen years younger than him). other than this incident, we had a most excellent time at dinner--it was scrumptious and the wine was delish! and this little girl danced for us, and we sang happy birthday to "pop" the man at the table next to us with his children and grandchildren. good times.


saturday, tho. saturday was brutal, at least in the am. my tummy wasn't feeling so happy when I woke up (and likely I was just exhausted--from the um, lessee, 4 plus...carry the one...oh yeah, like 14 hours of sleep I'd gotten in the past three nights) but I took some pepto and off we went...to CLIMB. A. FRIGGIN. MOUNTAIN. And by climb, I mean run up at a blindingly speedy pace. About 2/3 of the way up I couldn't handle just stopping for a minute. I needed to sit and rest, or I was going to spew. And there was no Garth to say, "if you're gonna spew, spew into this." So, thank goodness the brilliant Ariel sent the rest of the crowd on their merry way and we sat down and took it slowly. Amazingly we made it to the top, despite having to go up a few sections like this:
that, my friends, is a rock face. it might look lame here, but it was a bit more intense in person, and even worse with an ailing tummy. but getting to the top was soooo worth it. see?

next, after our not-as-miserable, but-still-hard-on-the-knees trek down, we went and had pizza! and walked around in highlands! and saw bridal veil falls!

and came home. because we were tired.and saturday evening was a superb combo of cranium, spring rolls, wine and lingerie. so. much. fun. sunday am we had a quick breakfast, snapped a quick pic and were on our way.

we stopped at the thorpe reservoir

and chugged along--and to make the weekend complete, we listened to "if i was a rich girl," the indigo girls and had olive garden for lunch on the way home. and we got home early-ish. up until this time on sunday, it was a good weekend indeed!