it was a funny little spark

~portastatic

so, good news. today I feel the best I have in two whole weeks. let's hope I get a call today saying "nope, not crohn's" and then good results from thursday's dye drinking, shall we?

I didn't have a chance to tell you on Friday (and the story below should explain why) but I got this INCREDIBLE package from tonya, Matt's sister-in-law, in the morning. It had sundry goodies and totally made my AM. Vintage aprons, tea towels and rubber gloves, oh my! And some potpourri in vintage hankies and pictures of tinka and hans, tonya and george's cute kitties. Adorable, no?

I cannot decide if I like the strawberries or the rooster better. I think rooster, but then the strawberries are so dadgum cute! Now all I need is a tiara!

overall the weekend was pretty hilarious, and I had a good time even though it got off to a rough start. Y'see, Friday I was at work until just a skosh before 8pm (not on purpose!) and though it's awesome that I get to take those two extra hours and not have to use PTO for two of my appointment hours on thursday, staying until 8 on a Friday blows.

thankfully Matt did something he doesn't usually do and planned our evening since my day had been craptacular. we had (non-spicy) sushi and watched national treasure, and then stayed up for a long long time trying to decide which pictures I should submit. we decided I need to do five of these six. it was a hard call, but these are probably 1)most unlike others that will be submitted and 2)don't require you to "really look at it" to see what's good. he kept having to remind me that my pictures don't seem novel to me 'cause I took 'em (case in point the daisies from underneath). I've had all these printed and they'll likely arrive wednesday--when I'll mount them all and then make the final call of which to take out.

thanks mucho for all of your input, by the way!

saturday was brunch at bob evan's, where I'd never been before, and which is an unusual thing since Matt usually has AM soccer games. and then he earned some serious points by taking me to a place in hillsborough near his school where I took all these pretty pictures. it kept alarming him that I wanted to stand in the middle of the road to take some of these. I do wish the hay bale had been closer to the mailboxes, but that's okay...

and then it was to kara and sean's for sean's birthday party (their last party was where we met--six months ago in a week!). some highlights...
-we played beer pong and matt was on a team with a pregnant woman (don't worry, he did all the drinking for her!)
-my teammate and I heel-clicked every time we sunk a ball (and by we I mean me.)
-we played flip cup--and some of the drunkards insisted on labeling the teams "poles" and "holes." classy. and, I must admit, hilarious.
-matt and I closed down the party. we were the last people there, and it was only 1215. granted, we got there 2 hours later than a lot of people, but people started leaving about two hours before we did, so it all evens out. we are hardcore, I tell you!
-I told some baaaaaaaad jokes--about the chemist who wants to be a gravedigger, the man who hears voices in a bar, elephants in a cherry tree and my personal fave, the little red ball. Someone should stop me!

oh, and the pictures from the party? yeah, not taken by me. taken by drunken boys of various parts of their anatomy. joy. hence me not sharing them.

sunday was busy too--church (and the choir sang), lunch with Matt and his sister Kat after picking her up at the airport, youth group and a church bbq and talent show (and the choir sang at it too). I met an older couple, some of the Sullivan's friends, who had lived in ft smith and who had NO IDEA how old I was--people really guess I'm anywhere from 17 to 32. It's crazy! Matt has the same problem, and we both talked about how gray hair and wrinkles won't be such a terrible thing. ha!

I spent some time last night painting as well, but so far I'm not very happy with it. But that's okay, it's just paint, and I used panels instead of real canvas, so that's cool too. And I got to talk to Katie while I painted, and I liked that too!

and gobi and hazel were cute. per usual. see?

i might...

have crohn's disease.
-or-
have a peptic ulcer.
-or-
still be recovering from a stomach virus that has caused a thickening of the ileum at the end of my small intestine.

so next week I get to do this and this. I am told it will not be as bad as the CT scan last week. I hope they are correct.

In the meantime, me and the zantac will continue to be good buddies. Please do hope for it to just be that stomach virus thing. It's eleven days later and I'm still having symptoms (and have a low-grade fever) but that doesn't mean it couldn't've been a virus, they just like to see those symptoms go away after a week she says, and of all the possibilities, that's definitely the best.

yee-haw. and also, yikes.

picture pages, picture pages, open up your picture pages...

it's that time of year again. and do you remember mortimer ichabod marker? right. so, I'm entering the work photo contest again. there are five categories and I get to enter five pictures (but I can enter more than one per category)--the categories are people, landscapes, nature, architecture and miscellaneous.

so, here are my contenders. please cast your votes. and I appreciate your help! on, and I'm planning on ordering these kids on saturday...so respond by friday if you can! and, if you think there's one here that I should've put in the running, do let me know, please!

1. 2.
3. 4.
5. 6.
7. 8.
9. 10.
11. 12.
13. 14.
15. 16.
17. 18.
19. 20.
21. 22.
23.

and of course, the ones with my name on it won't have my name on it. :)

jack nicholson, gorillas, lemons, toes

and those, my friends, are haunting. *

so, we kind of ate our way through tulsa. well, sort of. I mean, there was talk of actually visiting all of the various food-oriented businesses of note. but then we talked about how there will be future trips (!) and that kinda blew the whole must-go-everywhere mentality out the window. No, it defenestrated that mentality. :D

so, the sum up:

saturday-
-uneventful flights, thank goodness!
-we got there, got my luggage and went to lunch at big al's with cody and jessica--the newlyweds! I also gave them their wedding present, and I think they liked it. :)
-stopped by my mom's and hung out for a little bit. met coca and cola who are the new and adorable kitties (who I failed to get a picture of) and played with gracie
-went to the wondefulness that is hobby lobby, followed by a bee-double ee-double-are-you-in. silly oklahoma and their liquor weirdness.
-had a weber's rootbeer. matt commented on how it's interesting that the seemingly standard colors for rootbeer are brown and orange. it's true, you know.
-went to my granny's to shower in standing water (plumbing problems=ick. I could give you a whole post on this nonsense, but suffice it to say, it was a problem of sorts the whole weekend and we ended up showering at my mother's on sunday)
-went out to dinner at the deelish spaghetti warehouse with syd, tom, kari, mike, stephanie and natalie
-went to the pour house with syd, tom, heather, brian, roger and melissa (the last three I only kinda sorta know, I met the guys at caravan when I was out with jackie, but it was awkward to say the least). tom used to work at this bar, and there's a drink named after him that he insisted I buy. :) the drinks are really really strong though (I almost said "stiff" but I think that would make a dirty pun) so beware!

and here are some faboo pictures!

sunday:
-brunch with my granny at first watch
-a visit to my granddaddy--I brought him a porter peach. man they're yummy!
-a trip to ace hardware followed by yardwork at my mom's while I washed the dog. matt volunteered to do this. because it needed to be done and he knew he was easily able to do it. have I told y'all I think he's fantastic? I surely do.
-showers followed by a trip to the center of the universe. which was not quite as neat as I remember, but still pretty cool. although I now realize we didn't do the two-person part of it, oh well. we took all sorts of fun pictures there. and I learned that harvo-dearest doesn't grasp the concept of including the background. but we did get one like I wanted, so that's good. matt and harvey also refused to walk unless the sign said "walk"--which means they stood in the middle of the street! silly boys.
-dinner at the one, the only--Zio's Italian Kitchen--which is just Zio's for people not in the know. I had NO IDEA they had locations in six states--and tonya, there's one in colorado springs!
-and then, for the culmination of the evening, we played a faboo game--apples to apples. matt and I are both going to buy it for each other. so. much. fun. and per usual, my mom kicked our butts. but we had so so much fun playing. you need this game. and you can see you to play here, but the gist is that you have nouns and there are adjectives that everyone plays a noun to--such as the title words for haunting.*

monday:
-matt and I had sonic for breakfast
-we went on a fruitless search for postcards
-we took an arby's roast beef sandwich and a jamocha shake to my granddaddy--and he really wanted a picture of the two of us! it was super sweet. :)
-bought purses from gordmans (people like my green one so much that I got them their own!)
-had mazzio's with the fam for our lunch and took some pictures with anna. too cute, huh?
-went to the airport and on our merry way back to raleigh.