10:50 a.m. - 2007-03-25
athens and columbus
I left work early on thursday and drove 3 hours to Columbus. I arrived around 7pm or something at Gabe's apartment where Brooke and Gabe welcomed me along with their pet, Rhoomba. The little circular vaccuum zoomed around the apartment and I couldn't take my eyes off of it. I was amazed by it and very sad that we didn't buy one when it was on Woot. We left the apartment to go and get some eats and while in the car I called my husband to tell him I got here in one piece. The first thing he says to me when he picks up is "I bought a Rhoomba." WHaT?!?!???
He found a really good deal and couldn't pass it up. How very strange and wonderful. Now our upstairs hallways won't look like it snowed kitty litter all of the time.
Brooke, Gabe and i had dinner at this cute little place called Cosi, which is similar to Panera but less busy and a little nicer and with alcohol. The waitress comes over to get our order and....sigh...how can i describe this? Within thirty seconds she exhibited such odd conversational behavior that Brooke and I were holding our menus in front of our faces and snorting and nearly dying of the sometimes-fatal trying not to laugh in someone's face. The conversation will not translate well via blog, but basically she had no idea what was on the menu or what they had in stock or anything (at one point she pointed out the wine list with at least 7 types of wine on it only to come back and tell us they only had White Zin and Merlot "left over". Left over from what? we wondered.) She nearly screeched at one moment in the middle of our ordering and demanded to know if Brooke's bag was a Gucci. I looked over at it, and thought Well, it's a really cute bag but it doesn't look especially like a classic Gucci, but ok. Brooke said no, it wasn't, and the waitress proceeds to inform us that if we go to chinatown in New York we can get really cheap bags...blah blah blah. My favorite part during all of this was watching Brooke. First I could see her politely about to interject (to save us all from the endless information that we already know) that she used to live in New York and that we know all about chinatown but as the girl went on and on, Brooke just resigned and said something softly like "Wow." or "Cool." or something. It was hilarious, like if a waitress came up to George Lucas and wanted to tell him about this cool movie called Star Wars.
At another point in the ordering, she blurted out that our engagement rings are beautiful. (they are) but this proved to be only an avenue through which she could inform us that she is getting her promise ring on Tuesday.
The food was really good but there were a few unexplainable snags like why, at a place where they serve Pinot Grigio (but apparently only if you get there early enough) is your soup served to you in a paper cup? We couldn't get any napkins to save our lives. And at one point this waiter/host type guy who wore a very blingy man-ring on his wedding finger, was observed dancing on top of a table.
We went back to Gabe's and watched NCAA basketball - Pitt lost, boo but OSU won in a last minute victory that I missed because I had to pee at a very inopportune moment.
The next morning i got up sickeningly early and went to Bethany's sister's house and picked up her and naomi who is just as cute as a button.
We went to Athens and visited a fairly pregnant kelly cooke. We had a really nice dinner and some wine and some much needed catch-up time. The next day there was Casa and a visit to the farmer's market and the park.
Naomi is extremely smart, knows her alphabet and most of her numbers, although her counting goes like this 1,2,3,6,9,10. But that's ok. She is barely two. Not even.
She calls me and Kelly, colectively "Jelly" which is pretty great. And she says something over and over again which sounds an awful lot like "Fuck 'em." We are pretty sure she is saying something else but it's hard to say what.
On my way back home i stopped at this place I have often seen from the highway called the Cherokee Outlet and Gift Shoppe. i had to use the restroom and figured it would be a good time to check it out. It turned out to be pretty amazing. I almost bought this bedazzled shirt that said COWGIRL in sparkles across the front. Sweet. They also had a lot of boots, leather jackets, precious moments figurines and actual tarantulas entombed in glass, like as if they were placed in a mold, live, and someone poured melted glass in around them until it hardened. This was actually very educational for me because I could look at it closely without extreme terror. Well, that was enough for me to know that my fears are anything but irrational. Have you seen the pincers on those suckers? Holy crap. There were also a lot of dream catchers and carvings of wolves.
Now I am back. My husband is leaving in 3 hours for Chicago so Tolner and I will be each other's fill-in spouses yet again this week.
