all choked up

saturday we decided to do dinner and a movie once again. the weekend prior we saw revolutionary road and this past weekend we saw doubt at the dragonfly theater. both were great movies and i love that you can enjoy a beer or in my case a glass of wine while watching.

anyways, for dinner we headed over to outback steakhouse in blowing rock. there was a 20 minute wait so we decided to sit and eat at the bar. the carolina/maryland game had just gone into overtime, so it was a perfect choice for us. eat, drink and watch. after we had gotten our food there was a little bit of commotion on the other side of aaron. one of the teenage boys also eating at the bar had apparently inhaled a piece of steak. he wasn't choking, but could feel it lodged in his throat. him and his dad went to the bathroom to see if they could dislodge it. 10 minutes went by and aaron decided to check in on them. he came back and said the boy was trying to make himself throw up, thinking that would move the meat. he's talking and breathing fine, just uncomfortable. another 10 minutes go by and our waitress sends a co-worker in to check on them. aaron goes back with him. a few minutes later aaron reports back to us saying he's still trying to vomit, breathing and talking fine but his dad just asked the employee how long it would take an ambulance to get there. which aaron doesn't think is necessary. if the dad is overly-concerned he can easily drive the kid to the emergency room which is pretty much around the corner. a few minutes later a fire truck, ambulance and another medical vehicle pull up in the parking lot, lights blazing and sirens roaring. four technicians head for the bathroom.

"this is a gross misuse of emergency personal and totally unnecessary." aaron tells me. with the situation now under control we decide to pay and head out. when we get our bill our waitress says for being a good samaritan our entire meal was comped. it totally caught us off-guard. we thanked her and told her she didn't need to do that. she insisted. we thanked her and she thanked aaron again for his help.

so there's a fire truck, ambulance and another emergency vehicle sitting in the parking lot and there are about five cars trolling the lot for a parking space. which i thought was odd. if i saw a fire truck with the lights on sitting in front of a restaurant, i'd probably find another place to eat. i just thought that was weird. well when we pulled out of the parking lot, i saw all the technicians leaving the restaurant sans kid. he must have dislodged the food on his own, which aaron predicted would happen.

bumps in fun

saturday we headed up to tazwell, virginia to visit with jill and jerome's family. it wasn't too bad a drive, well, except for the extreme windiness of the last half hour of the two hour trip. i wasn't driving so it didn't really effect me. thank goodness.

i got to ride on the back of jill's harley for the first time. i was a little nervous but that soon subsided once we hit the road. i only rode for half an hour. jill didn't think i'd like riding all the switchbacks on the rest of the trip and she was probably right. we pulled off to get gas and i hopped in the car with aaron for the remainder of the trip. we had a little caravan going. jill and todd w/michelle on their harleys, jerome in his car with jigsaw and aaron and i in our car with bosco and marley.

we first stopped at jill's parents farm. there were four dogs running around so i let bosco and marley roam free. big mistake. marley decided to be a big dog and started barking at hannah (a german shepard puppy) through a screen door. hannah then jumped through the screen and pretty much attacked marley. jill was able to pull hannah off and i grabbed marley and took her to the car. looked her over and saw she had a gash above her tail and a few puncture wounds on her legs. thank goodness that was all. she was definitely shaken up. that cut our trip short at jill's parents. we decided to go ahead and head over to jerome's grandma's cabin, where we were staying for the evening. marley was acting a little gimpy so we wanted her to rest and we needed to get her some meds to prevent any further damage. poor pooch.

we settled into the old, rustic cabin set on jerome's grandma's property. i wish i would have taken photos of the interior. just about any animal you could think of was stuffed and mounted. seriously creepy. there were even cobwebs to add to the ambiance. luckily it was only in the main living area and not in any of the bedrooms. i don't think i could have slept if i knew there was a squirrel or possum staring down on me with their beady little eyes. we got the pups set up and headed over to cuz's for dinner. it's a local hotspot in tazwell. it had the weirdest assortment of food. it was a combination of chinese and barbeque. i saw an an article on the wall that pretty much summed it up, "oriental redneck." it was good, just odd. afterwards, we headed to the cabin. we were able to catch the fireworks from the county fair on our drive back. once at the cabin we had a few drinks, watched some olympics and pretty much turned in.

sunday we headed back over to jill's parents farm. we decided to leave the dogs at the cabin, didn't want to be nursing two dogs in two days. we closed the dogs in our room and opened up the back door so they had access to the deck. most of the pics are from sunday. so you can pretty much see how we spent the day. we returned to pick up the dogs on our way out. we opened the cabin door and bosco was right there. we can't figure out how he got out of the room. jerome's grandma tells us she saw him running around the orchard and heard marley barking away at him from the second story deck. she thought we had come home and let him out. when she didn't see the car, she decided to round him up just in case. apparently bosco had jumped or fallen or something from the deck. luckily he wasn't injured. he must have nine lives. so that's pretty much our weekend in a nutshell. we all had a good time and just had a few bumps in the fun. at least the dogs did. i wouldn't be surprised if we headed back again.

yard sailing

this morning we got up fairly early to hit up a few yard sales in the area. beech mountain was having a community one, so we headed up there first. didn't have too much luck finding anything. it was more like people got a card table, put five things on it and they were ready to sell. i did manage to buy 13 zippers for $3 which was a fairly decent score. other than that, we didn't have much luck at any of the others we checked out. i couldn't believe aaron suggested we hit up yard sales today. i have to drag him to antique shops and thrift stores so i was a bit surprised he wanted to go. it's probably the last time since he didn't find what he was looking for. a small table to put in his bathroom at work. he's dead set against paying $60 for one at walmart, hence the yard sale shopping. maybe i can find something for him when i head to maryland next week. i think a trip to ikea is in order.

made a few more checkbook covers today. it's funny how things get better the more you do them. i'm pretty happy with how these turned out. i'll probably list them tomorrow. i've been trying to do at least five different versions of one thing. and i'm probably making them more difficult than they have to be. oh well. i'm also open for suggestions on what people would like to see in my shop. i like having a little motivation/direction so suggest away. and thanks for all the custom orders and thanks amanda for buying some charms today! i still get all giddy and yell, "i just sold something!" to aaron when it happens. he thinks i'm crazy but i can tell he's happy for me.

art-o-mat

this past weekend aaron and i went to the wedding of the son of aaron's boss. it's weird to go to a wedding when you've only met the groom in passing and you've never met the bride. it was more of a courtesy attendance than anything. we got all dolled up and had a good time nonetheless.

the reception was at the turchin center for the visual arts here in boone. a really nice venue with modern art and exhibits surrounding us. when we entered the lobby i spotted the art-o-mat immediately. i had heard of them but this was the first time i'd actually seen one. what is the art-o-mat? they are "retired cigarette vending machines that have been converted to vend art." unfortunately i didn't have any cash on me to vend some art. but next time i'm in the area, i'll have to give it a go.

surprisingly there are two vending machines located in boone. which is crazy since there are only 82 throughout the whole country. i'm actually considering submitting something for vending. it'd be great to have somebody by your art on a whim!

back from madness

we're back from our disney/spring training/flogging molly jam-packed weekend. i thought i'd be blogging nightly after we returned home from the day/evening activities. unfortunately, we didn't have internet access in our hotel room, or at least free internet. plus i was completely drained to even "blog now post later." hopefully i can update tomorrow before nate and katie arrive. yeah, we're both excited about their arrival. even more photos to come.