gorgeous days and cool nights

The last few days have been so perfectly beautiful! And when I get my air conditioner fixed in my car things will be really perfect!! I'm taking my car in this Tuesday to have everything fixed. I finally realized that I may as well fix it now and enjoy it because if I ever want to sell this car anywhere in the southeast I'll need a working a/c!
Last night I met up with a couple of friends downtown and we just got ice cream and walked down to the west end. There were a million people out, the sky was that awesome bright blue that happens after the sun has gone down but it's still light, and the air felt not hot but not too cool. It was so nice!! I could have walked for hours!
Lately I've been coming home at a reasonable time (before 11) and I've really just been enjoying my time alone to relax, take a shower, get in bed, and read some good book. My current books that I've been working on are: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, about a little girl growing up in 1912 ish in New York and she's very poor; A Walk in the Woods, which is written about the App Trail and is hilarious!!; and The Things they Carried, a story about people in WW1 and the things that they were carrying with them the whole time. It's nice to finally be making time to read again!
My sister, jessica, pointed out to me that I don't have very many friends. We were discussing the fact that I am very critical of people sometimes, and I think that's a bad thing. I think that is part of why I don't have a lot of good close friends. But I quickly pointed out to her that she doesn't have a lot of friends, either. Then we started justifying why we just don't want to hang out with people who we really don't enjoy. But really, I think I'm in the wrong for being so critical. It is so rare that I meet people and really, really like them. Usually I find something that I think would get on my nerves if I hung out with them for long enough. I really want to work on seeing every person I meet and hang around in the best light and finding whatever there is postive about them! That's been my big resolution since yesterday. I want more friends - good quality friends. I realize that there are going to always be people that I dont' enjoy as much or who I don't click with, but I want to think as highly of everyone else that i can!

For Anna...

We kept our swimsuits on just to take pictures, but you can even tell in the picture that there isn't that much sun out there!

On Tuesday night last week my friend Gwen called and asked if I wanted to go to the beach on Wednesday. Since Tuesday was so gorgeous, and since I actually have a work schedule that is flexible (which I won't have starting in May with school), I decided to go! We left early-ish on Wednesday morning and headed down to Charleston. The sky looked a bit overcast and it was kindof cold, but we kept saying that it would warm up. I mean, it HAD to warm up if we were driving all that way to hit the beach, right?

We pulled into the Chick-fil-A on Folley beach around 11:30, and it was still chilly enough to want a jacket outside. We ate our lunch and headed out to the beach. The beach was beautiful, in that deserted, it's-about-to-rain kind of way. There were four guys in sweats playing football, and there was us in our bikinis, pretending that those goosebumps on our arms and legs were not from the cold. We set out our towels and actually ended up getting maybe 30 minutes of sunlight that was warm enough to let us rest on the beach, but then it just got more and more cold and windy. After an hour and a half (at the most), we wrapped our towels around us and headed to the car.

Our main topic of conversation on the beach (besides the obvious topic of boys) was our weight and how neither of us want to lose weight, necessarily, but just tone up and be more fit all around. Get our "beach bodies" back, if you will. So what did we decide to do when we left the beach? After all that resolution on the beach about getting toned and fit, we promptly headed into downtown Charleston to the candy/gelato store near the market. Gwen bought a half pound of fudge, and I knew I couldn't just watch her eat fudge by herself, so I bought some, too. Then we got gelato. Then we tested out their taffy. What can I say? When you make it all the way to Charleston and don't even get to lie out in the sun you have to make the trip worthwhile somehow!

We ended up having a great trip despite the cool weather. It's always nice to nurture a friendship like that, especially when that friend doesn't mind an afternoon of eating gelato and fudge!

On Saturday, some friends and I went white water rafting with a group called the Venture Crew. Venture Crew is a part of the boy scouts, but is coed. We piled into a church bus (all 8 adults and 3 kids) and headed up to the Natahala. I love rafting!! Honestly, the most nerve-wracking part of the trip, and the time I felt the most unsafe and close to death, was while we were in the bus. The guy driving got lost in the mountains, and I think because of his frustration he was driving even more crazy than usual. Also, we were in the mountains, so every second we were on some kind of turn or switchback. I seriously thought we were all going to die by going off the side of the mountain. When we finally got on the river, even though I fell out of the raft in the first five minutes, I felt no fear of death. :)


Here is a picture of Christi and me on the bus we nicknamed "Heaven Bound." It wasn't as funny at the time.