this weekend was long overdue.

i’m actually kind of surprised i made it 5 months without going to boone.

brett and i left charleston around 1:30 on friday, which was a little later than we’d hoped. i needed to get my oil changed and my tires rotated so that set me back about an hour. and $60. stupid cars and their stupid maintenance.

anyway, we made pretty good time, getting into boone right around dinner time. it was move-in weekend, which means dinner time in boone == gridlocked. nightmare, nightmare! lucky for us, we made it to the cabin without too much of a hassle, got cleaned up, and decided it would be best to eat dinner in banner elk that night. seven devils is about 15-20 minutes from boone, so this was just easier. boone can wait ’til saturday.

and it ended up being like… the best dinner of my LIFE. we went to the hearthstone tavern and grille. if you ever take a trip to the mountains, GO THERE. you will *not* regret it. it’s a little pricey ($20+ a plate), but it is so worth it. you should really get a reservation, but since brett and i don’t really plan these kinds of things, we walked in not knowing what to expect, and definitely underdressed. which meant we sat at the bar and ate… which actually worked out perfectly because they had the football game playing and a guy in the corner singing and playing guitar. it was awesome.

he ordered fried chicken with mashed taters and okra (amazing). i had the blackened chicken alfredo. it was THE best alfredo i’ve ever had in my life. i had no idea alfredo could be that good. i don’t even really *like* alfredo that much anymore, to be honest, but i had one of my weird cravings. so now, i will never be able to eat alfredo at any other restaurant as long as i live.

and the whole night, this older man sat next to us, and he was HILARIOUS. i love listening to old guys tell stories… this one was no different. he bought brett and i each a double shot of jack daniel’s, so that made him even more awesome. i gave him a big hug before we left and actually, i’m kind of bummed that i might not ever see him again!

we went back to the cabin and drank beer and watched ESPN, which led to a long, drawn out discussion (dude, brett can talk about football for HOURS. and HOURS. it’s ridiculous. he studies it like it’s his JOB) about whether or not brett favre is a turd or not. i don’t think he’s a turd–just indecisive. and brett doesn’t really think he’s a turd, per se… he just disagrees with him making long, drawn out decisions without acknowledging the effects they have on his team, and he went on and on, with more reasons, and i love it when he talks football, because i learn a lot, and he gets to talk about football. and i really think he should’ve gone into sportscasting instead of computers. seriously. dude’s a natural.

that about sums up that night. and the whole weekend.

i got to see a lot of good friends i hadn’t seen in FAR too long. i got my fix of fries and nachos at macado’s (not exactly crossfit friendly, WHATEVER, it’s been 5 months). we got to go to hebron (we still went even though it rained, and now i will never climb slippery boulders again), and we got to go to fan fest. the weather cleared up just in time for ASU’s scrimmage. brett literally watched the radar on his droid the entire time we were at macado’s. he said he had to make sure the storm was “tapering” so it wouldn’t be raining during the football game. and sure enough, it tapered. i’ve never seen someone so obsessed with a weather radar for an entire hour.

and now it’s wednesday and i’m already ready for another weekend. yesterday was my 8th day of crossfit. i’ll post 7, 8, and 9 after tonight’s workout. which might *actually* kill me. 6 rounds of 3 rope climbs and kettlebell push jerks sounds like it could easily be simplified to just… 2 rounds of 3 rope climbs followed by whitney falling to her death. or taking a kettlebell to the face.

i already almost broke my thumb last night when i got it squeezed between a weight and the hook it goes on. my GOD that hurt. it’s nice and purple now.

plus, i haven’t climbed anything since i took that pole dancing class, but something tells me that was a lot easier than a rope.

let me start out by saying that… my weirdness is not random. at all. my mom is weird. my dad is weird. my weirdness was, unavoidably, inherited. and i can never thank my parents enough.

HOWEVER, they still catch me off guard from time to time.

i received an e-mail from my dad this morning. its only contents were “IFP.” obviously, having no idea, i called and asked him what the hell “IFP” meant.

me: dad, what is IFP?
dad: welllllllllllllll you know BRB… and you know LOL… and you don’t know IFP?
me: yes, dad
dad: it means…. Index Finger Pinky! i made it up!
me: wow
dad: you know, you really should use it!

awesome.

on a side note, i’ve been absent from the blogosphere lately. not really on purpose. since brett and i moved into the new apartment, i’ve found that having a separate room for the computers has significantly minimized my time spent staring at my laptop… it’s SO fantastic. although, my addiction to my droid, online scrabble, and TBS sitcoms keep me entirely occupied, and probably just as useless.

i’ve also been a bit of a traveler lately. home for my birthday, hilton head with brett, annapolis/DC for work, vegas for work DEFCON!!!

doing more, writing less. there is such a thing as technology overload, and until last month, i think i was just about there.

to make up for the hiatus, here are happy fun pictures from the last month.

i made cake balls last night. cake balls that turned into more of… cake lumps. brett and i went the lazy route for dinner and made a freschetta pizza, and in doing so, i decided to direct all my extra energy into creating these… things. these lumps of gooey, unhealthy, awesomeness.

mine look nothing like the ones over at bakerella, and mine appear to be… bleeding, but they still taste good, according to coworkers.

ingredients:

• 1 box of red velvet cake mix (which requires 3 eggs and 1/3 cup vegetable oil)
• 2 packs of almond chocolate bark
• 2 8oz blocks of cream cheese

this was like… the easiest baking experience of my life.

1. beat eggs, vegetable oil, water, and cake mix in bowl
2. pour mixture into pan
3. cook at 350 degrees for 35 minutes
4. transfer cake to bowl and mash cake into tiny bits (this was especially fun, and i mashed the cake while we watched awakenings, awesome!!!)
5. mix with 16oz of cream cheese (if you want a ridiculous arm workout, try doing this while cream cheese is still cold)
6. roll into tiny balls (i happened to get 63 out of 1 box of cake mix)
7. place balls on baking sheet and freeze for 30 minutes
8. melt chocolate bark in microwave for 2 minutes, stir, melt again if necessary (do not use ziploc/glad plastic tupperware containers, they burn/melt/smoke, TRUST ME)
9. dunk frozen balls in chocolate and place on sheet to harden

seriously. i didn’t even break anything until this morning (don’t keep glass casserole dishes on top of refrigerators! refrigerators will throw them at you and they will shatter into millions of tiny bits!)!

also, i didn’t realize that if you do decide to use red velvet cake (i just thought it looked prettier), you will end up with red dye… everywhere. especially when you roll the cake mix into balls. my hands, and subsequently my arms and mouth, looked like i had just finished slaughtering a pig. and your cake balls will… bleed. there was a little bit last night after i let them harden in the pan, but when i woke up this morning there was even MORE red dye. but, that might just be my sloppy technique–yours might not even look like lumps, either.

in the end, they were a win in the office, AND a win at home when i realized i had just enough chocolate left to smother the fresh strawberries i bought yesterday. i don’t know how i went almost 24 years without ever trying chocolate covered strawberries, but… they are about to become a new staple in my “diet”. that consists of freschetta pizza and cake balls. strawberries are fruit, so it’s cool.

we managed to get the curtains up, and we survived to talk about it. actually, the entire moving process over these last 2 weeks has gone really smoothly.

it’s been over a year and i still can’t believe how easy things have been between the two of us. granted, we have our stupid little arguments. really. stupid. but i actually like that, because for the first time *ever*, i’m in a relationship where we CAN argue. i hate confrontation, and i hate arguing, i really do… but in my past relationships, i didn’t even have the balls to argue or get mad at the other person. so unless they started it, i’d hold everything in for weeks and let it simmer (because i kept talking myself down and out of whatever it was i felt) until i just exploded. with brett? everything is out in the open. it is… wow, SUCH a good feeling. it just amazes me.

this was not supposed to be a post about my love life, but i know a lot of times, when a couple gets involved in home projects that require cooperation, one or the other blows up and wants to shove a screwdriver into his/her own eye socket, and i am ever so thankful that this did not happen. or even cross my mind.

my initial intentions were to post pictures of the new curtains. we kind of forgot to throw them in the dryer before we hung them so they are still a wrinkled mess. but those wrinkled messes are keeping us from having to set the A/C at 67 degrees just to get the apartment to sit at 71 for an extended period of time. i will deal with the wrinkles.

wrinkles…

…more wrinkles

yep. you guessed it. more wrinkles…

we also went and got a “cheap” rug from wal-mart for the living room. i say “cheap” because it is seriously like the cheapest 5′x8′ rug we could find. the ones at target were just out of the question. we went halvesies on a $60 brown one and called it a day.

notice the wrinkles in the background?

so, that’s it for now. the only things left on the to-do list are to find a bookshelf to put in the empty spot in the living room by the window, and to hang the dart board. the dart board that weighs like 20-some odd pounds. the dart board that we’re going to attempt to hang when we JUST figured out how to get curtains to stay up.

…yikes.

tuesday night, brett and i *finally* got everything unpacked and settled into the new apartment. no more giant cardboard boxes stacked to the ceiling. no more plastic bags strewn about. no more random crap everywhere.

it’s a good feeling.

we both decided we wanted to make this apartment look more like a home than a dorm room. granted, the other apartment looked nice, too. this one just looks more… sophisticated. like, we actually bought ART.

we did not plan on buying ART, but after we walked into bed, bath & beyond, we got sucked in. i warned him that this always happens to me. i went in to buy 2 seat cushions for the kitchen table, and we ended up with a $240 bill between the 2 of us. seriously, that store is dangerous. as soon as we saw the paintings and cute framed artwork, we were like kids in a candy store. I WANT THAT ONE! no THAT one! OMG I HAVE TO HAVE THAT ONE!!! SHIIIINNNYYY!

we got a lot of *stuff*, but we were mostly excited about this one. it just makes the living room feel warm and cozy.

we also got carried away at wal-mart. brett and i have separate bathrooms at the new place, so he was able to buy all new things for his bathroom. his looks classy. mine… well, mine looks like a unicorn exploded.

his.

mine.

then we found the aisle with the decorative balls. it seems like every apartment and/or house we go in, some table or shelf contains a set of these balls. and they always look really neat. so, brett was like YEA LET’S GET THE BALLS! obviously, i responded with, THAT’S WHAT SHE SAID! and then we bought the balls.

here are our balls. we are very proud of them.

and, of course, our obligatory appalachian state insignia. and my creepy loki.

i can’t leave out creepy thor.

they’ll never find me here!

crap, she found me!

it’s coming along nicely. next step? curtains. i will save this potential catastrophe for another day. there will be beer and power tools involved–i can hardly wait!

B: when i go to africa, i’m just gonna get a disposable camera to take pictures with.

W: that works…

B: yea… the only thing is, after i get them developed, i’m gonna have to scan them all and upload them to get them onto my computer

W: no, brett. no. they give them to you on these things called CDs now. they used to give them to you in just prints, or on floppy disks if you were really lucky. but now they have CDs, and they’re awesome. technology is awesome!

B: really? oh, ok. i didn’t know they did that now.

this made my day on saturday. i guess if you haven’t used anything other than a digital camera in the last 10 years, you wouldn’t know that they can put the pictures on CDs for you. i love the fact that he thought they still made obtaining digital copies of your photos so difficult after all this time. i don’t even know if my scanner works anymore.

i filled up my digital camera while i was in australia back in 2000, and was forced to use disposable cameras after the first few days. my memory card, which was like 5 times the size of an SD card (with less than 1/8 of the space) only held so many photos, and i had no way to offload them. i still have the film from all of the cameras. does film even last that long, or could i potentially take it to a CVS and get reprints? back then, i got them all put on floppy disks (which i still have), and you can imagine the quality of 30 photos that had to be made to fit in 1.44MB of space. they look pretty awful. and they’re SO SMALL.

i was 15 (and stupid) and didn’t get reprints, so when i used ALL the pictures i took and butchered them to put in my scrapbook, i had no WHOLE photos left afterward.

i wonder if the photo technician is going to look at me like i’m nuts when i bring in 12 strips of film from 10 years ago. most of which are blurry or unfocused. and may or may not contain a camel.

brett and i are heading up to NC this weekend. seven devils, to be specific. we both miss the high country, and would like to get the hell out of charleston (the low country) for another weekend before he goes to africa. yes, i said africa. i wanted to go, too, but evidently they (our project managers) frown upon small females going to marine corps bases in third world countries to test computer systems. HUGE BUMMER. i’d really like to play with the hyenas.

anyway, this cabin is, HANDS DOWN, one of my favorite places on earth. brett’s parents own it and rent it out online. i will provide the link to it (with their permission, of course) AFTER this weekend. when we’re already back in south carolina. for obvious reasons.

i love it because it’s in the mountains. that is where i belong. in the mountains. why? let me show you.

this is why.

THIS is why.

this gives me goosebumps.

i even miss this. somehow, by the grace of god, charleston got snow this winter, but nothing close to this.

when i get sick of doing information security, which will hopefully be a long way off, i want to retreat back to the mountains. i want to live in a cabin. with blankets, hot chocolate, loki, thor, steak, an abundance of sweatpants, my handsome best friend, and a mountain of coors light. and my laptop, assuming web development is even necessary in 40 years. and assuming we even have laptops in 40 years. i really don’t even want to think about what earth will be like in 40 years.

i’m getting way off topic and i’m almost scaring myself, so i just want to say… i’m super excited about this weekend. we’re bringing food and beer with us so we don’t have to spend much money while we’re up there. he drives an escalade, which isn’t exactly wallet-friendly. the only other thing i will be willing to spend money on is macado’s, which is ALWAYS acceptable. always.

all photos (except the cabin pictures) are by my friend, leander. you can find more of his photography here. hi, leander!

after a nice dinner at bushido last night, brett and i decided to catch a movie. we went to see edge of darkness, which turned out to be the worst decision we could’ve made for the evening.

not because it was valentine’s day and the movie theater was jam packed. no. it was jam packed, but i only waited in line for 2 minutes–the amount of time it took him to find a parking spot and meet me at the door.

the reason it was the worst decision we could’ve made was the couple sitting behind us in the theater. i have NEVER been so ticked off during a movie in my life. i’ve had some rude pieces of trash sitting near me before–the ones who talk through the entire movie, like it’s meant to be discussed out loud and there aren’t 50 other people trying to pay attention. i think everyone has had that experience at least once. eventually, they get tired of being shushed and they shut up.

this couple behind us, however–not the case. it was a young black couple. in my experience, black people tend to be louder in the theater. i’m not racist. there are stereotypes for a reason. the woman was running her mouth a mile a minute, he was running his mouth a mile a minute, and the movie had just gotten to the point where if you don’t pay attention, you are going to miss the entire point of the movie.

i did not pay $18 to miss the entire point of the movie. after about a half hour of this crap, i got up and walked over to them.

me: “can you please stop talking? you’ve already ruined half of the movie.”
him: “do what? man, fuck you.”
me: “IT’S A MOVIE. SHUT UP.”
him: “yo, FUCK YOU!”

clearly, he didn’t have much of an argument. brett got ticked off because the guy was slinging words at me. i told him to stay seated and refrain from punching him in the face.

normally, people would have a little respect for the rest of the audience and they would shut up, or at least be kind of quiet. them? they got louder. obviously, that was their intention. seriously, who does that? my blood was boiling. brett was about to have a meltdown. we got up and left for the bar with about 30-40 minutes left to go in the movie.

if anyone else has seen edge of darkness, don’t tell me how it ends. one good thing did come from it all, though, and that is this picture. he calls it my “family photo”.

my new pet came in the mail yesterday. FINALLY. he does absolutely nothing, and is so not worth the $20 i paid, but i couldn’t resist. i believe i’ve made it quite obvious that i’m addicted to twitter (and every other form of social networking). and now i will tote him all over the globe. wherever i go, he will be there. and i will snap a photo.

except for at work, because if i bring my iPhone in here they might kill my first born. well, probably not. but i would most likely lose my badge. perhaps a limb. definitely my iPhone.

i did actually bring him to work, though. i must stay prepared for a potential adventure.

so i will take pictures of him everywhere except for work. all his adventures can be seen here. i am contemplating naming him something other than ollie, but it says that on the box he came in, so i might be stuck with it.

if you have a request for a specific stupid-plastic-bird adventure, tell me! this is assuming it does not involve boobs. or nudity of any kind.

if you’ve never heard of them, athenaeum is a 90s alternative rock band from greensboro. their songs have been on the radio since i was old enough to care about it. i never really fiddled with the radio until i was like 11. but they’ve been one of my favorite bands ever since then. i think it’s partly because their music reminds me of the 90s and being little, hanging out with my best friends all day every day without a care in the world. i put them in the same category as matchbox 20, wallflowers, semisonic, third eye blind, etc. you get the idea.

this was my 6th (i think?) time seeing them. it was the first time, however, i’ve been able to see them since being of a legal drinking age. beer makes concerts so much more fun.

i also love them because their music is flipping awesome and it just makes you feel good. i usually can’t listen to certain music when i’m in a certain mood. like sometimes i can only stand to listen to metal (rob zombie and i are close friends), or sometimes i only want to listen to country, and other times when i’m feeling gangster, i put “baby by me” on repeat. like i did yesterday for nearly half the drive to charlotte.

but athenaeum is that band that you can just pop in the CD player/iWhatever anytime and it won’t matter if you’re angry, sad, depressed, or ready to go clubbing. because after that you’ll just want to start singing. it’s like a curse. i tried so hard last night to just listen for once… and not chime in. i’m sure mark kano does not need me screaming the lyrics back in his face (i was right smack in front, like a foot from him, i know he heard me), but no such luck. the words just have to come out.

i took a few pictures with my phone. they look like crap, but, it is, after all, still a phone.

my buddy richard met me at amos’ southend where they played. i wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to make it or not and was pretty sure i was going to the show by myself last night, but he came through! and it was a lot of fun. concerts are way more fun with other people, although by the end of the night, i was in my own little world, anyway.

i also ran into rachel, a looong time friend of mine. she and i went to middle school and high school together, and girl scouts, and have been avid athenaeum fans together. i had a feeling she might be there last night, and i was right. i looked in front of me and there she was with her boyfriend, so, awesome surprise! the four of us had fun. until she got hot and nauseous and had to go sit elsewhere. that was not so fun.

and for my retard moment of the night–the girls at the tanning bed i go to make jewelry and sell it at the counter. i think they’re in high school but they raise it for some soccer thing and i was like, hmm, it’s really pretty, i will buy something. so last week i bought a reeeally cute black necklace for $8. i love it. seriously. it matches these earrings i have perfectly.

anyway, i was standing there last night, watching, listening to mark kano and mike garrigan serenade me, when i felt what seemed to be 3583297 bugs crawling down my shirt. it was not bugs–it was beads. the necklace randomly just broke. and started falling everywhere. little tiny beads were falling down my shirt, my bra, my jacket, and almost my pants. thank god the music was loud or it would’ve been an obnoxious 20 seconds listening to 52980532 beads rolling all over a cement floor.

so, goodbye, cute necklace. i only got to wear you twice. well, one and a half times. didn’t quite make it through last night. maybe i can convince the girls at the tanning bed to make me another one.

i finally broke away from my mom’s cell phone plan. i am a brand spanking new iPhone owner, and i love it. this is the first apple product i’ve ever owned and i could not be happier with my purchase.

first of all, i bought the 3G because it dropped $99 in price. i was able to get it for $99 flat by making my contract a family plan. this means i have 2 phone numbers, 550 anytime minutes on each line, and unlimited data/text messaging on my main line for $110.00/month. because i got the family plan, i got $400 off of the iPhone because technically i added it to the second line. except my second line will just sit in my room and never be touched unless i somehow go over my 550 anytime minutes. since i can’t use my phone at work or even have it turned on, this leaves me with a 4 hour window to screw that up. if i go over 550 minutes (20 hours per week, 4 weeks per month), it means i have somehow mastered time travel and i must be a freaking magician.

i don’t think i’ve put the damn thing down since buying it. which is a good and a bad thing. on the good side, i’m never bored. on the bad side, i have a hard time paying attention to anything or anyone else and i get nothing done.

i took screenshots of the apps i got so far. if i’m missing anything, someone inform me. they’re like crack.

i finally took pictures of my apartment. click here to view them.

i’m all moved into my new apartment. well, almost. my bedroom set and washer/dryer comes tomorrow and i really hope they come earlier rather than later. update: home depot just called me and said they would be here between 1 and 5 tomorrow when originally i was told between 10 and 2. that pisses me off because i won’t get them until friday or next week now.

i told adam i’d go to the military ball with him and it’s tomorrow night at 5 and it takes 3 and a half hours to get to fort bragg from charleston. i have this feeling i’m going to be late after the movers put my bedroom set together, but i’m already planning on wearing my dress in the car on the way there so that should save me a little bit of time.

this is the bedroom set i got…

except it’s in an espresso finish so it’s more this color. i freaking love it.

this is the view of my living room/kitchen if you’re standing in the middle of my living room. i need to get better pictures because i’ve cleaned up a bit and put pictures and paintings up since the day this picture was taken. i’m going to wait until my bed gets here so i can take pictures of the whole apartment. that’s my dad and my stepmom in the picture.

the kitchen is my favorite so far. i picked out all red, stainless steel appliances, a red clock, red cookware, and red plates and bowls. my mom bought me a set of 8 wine glasses that will look really nice. and i can’t forget my collection of jack daniel’s bottles on top of the fridge.

the living room will look better once i get something to put in the corner you can’t see in the photo. right now it’s holding all my extra computer crap and it’s a mess. i don’t really have anywhere to store anything yet since i’m waiting to unpack the rest of the mess when my dresser gets here. you walk into the apartment and everything looks somewhat established and then you hit the hallway and peek in the bedroom and i look like a crazy pack rat. there are still boxes and trash bags full of clothes everywhere.

i found wal-mart FINALLY (it’s hidden in the damn woods) and got a great deal on a TV. i bought this yesterday and this morning at 9 AM, the cable guy finally came. i am now being serenaded by 42 inches of keith anderson.

my new neighbors are awesome. the guy across the hall is a big navy dude from queens, new york and i know exactly where i’ll be running should anything scary happen to me. i met about 12 other kids that live around here last night because they invited me to a party in one of the other buildings. i learned a new drinking game and i also learned that new neighbors are very generous with their whiskey. and everything, actually. they already took me out on their bikes and they’re taking me fishing sometime this week assuming it stops being nasty and cold outside.

so things are starting to feel a bit more normal. my face has slowly stopped breaking out (stress ruined it the last 2 weeks) and i’m getting in somewhat of a routine. i’ve also been eating better. i cooked spaghetti with meat sauce last night and i’ve been eating mangoes and cereal for breakfast. oh! and i made beer brats and red beans and rice and salad the day before yesterday. i just have to keep this up.

one of the neighbors (the one who took me out on his bike yesterday) works from 3-8 AM and works other really weird hours. because of the party at his place last night, he wasn’t going to get any sleep before he went to work. he asked if he could sleep on my couch so i said of course. evidently, he took that as an open invitation to plant his butt on my couch anytime. so he got off work at 8 AM, came BACK to my apartment, and sat on my couch and read cosmo and complained about me not being awake. i rolled around in my blanket and complained about how he was sitting on my couch jabbering while i was trying to sleep. and then the cable guy showed up and… i still didn’t get to sleep. now that my new TV is set up and i finally have internet, i don’t think i’ll ever sleep again.

i’m sitting at our gate at the airport in OKC waiting to board the plane. i almost missed boarding the plane due to blogging so i had to finish writing this post on campus.

our trip to oklahoma city was… eventful. to say the least. the first night was spent partying in the hotel with everyone. the other half of the group missed their connection flight so they did not get to oklahoma city until around 11PM. while they were driving from the tulsa airport, the rest of the guys and i did some exploring and ate dinner at the bricktown brewery and wandered around downtown. they are very proud of their heritage in oklahoma. metal buffaloes are everywhere. literally.

the first and most important thing i learned about oklahoma city–the wind never stops blowing. it can be sunny and warm, but when that wind sweeps in, your body temperature drops about 15 degrees instantly. not really, but it feels that way. i’m the genius who forgot to pack a coat.

on friday, kim, anna, and i took a cab to the mall. i will never take a cab again for as long as i can go without getting one. they are so expensive–it was $17 and $15 back. the whole purpose of going to the mall was to get a suit jacket since i left mine at adam’s by mistake. his roommate mailed my jacket and skirt but i think they got lost in the mail. they never arrived at my apartment. so i spent $35 on a jacket to go with the pants i brought. i ended up liking my new jacket more than my other one, which was nice. i’m glad i didn’t end up wasting $35 on part of a suit i’d only wear for 2 nights of a conference.

that night was spent partying in the hotel with everyone. i’m starting to notice a trend. the guys and anna made a trip to the liquor store. they had trouble getting a cab back so a 5 minute trip ended up taking about 2 hours. we hung out at the hotel for a while and then got prettied up to go out to dinner. we ate at the spaghetti warehouse which was a damn good dinner for a damn good price. that’s one thing we all noticed about OKC. everyplace we went to eat had fantastic service. our waiters and waitresses were all been incredibly nice and nothing we ordered got screwed up. even at IHOP! that’s almost unheard of for a group of 13 people.

we were planning on going out after dinner but everyplace we wanted to go had a pretty steep cover and not everyone wanted to pay that much to go out. we ended up hanging out downstairs at the hotel bar and i met a group of guys from texas that bought me a few drinks. we all sat and talked until the bar closed. i thought the rest of my group had gone to bed but it turns out they were all upstairs in the other room laughing hysterically at pretty much nothing. i went up and joined them just in time to get a ton of ridiculous pictures before the night was over.

on the last day of the conference, we all woke up bright and early. i had my paper presentation at 8:30AM so it was rough running on 4 hours of sleep. that was my fault–oh well. my presentation went really well and everyone complimented me afterward which was nice. AITP held another luncheon for us and gave us cheesecake for dessert. i ate more of the cheesecake than i did of the main meal. too many vegetables.

my friend chris lined up a brewery tour that afternoon of a local brewery that just opened up–COOP Ale Works. it’s a small brewery but it was very impressive. they planned it for 3 years before opening it up and they are 100% green. i tried samples of 3 different beers. my favorite was their DNR Belgian Style Golden Ale. not because it was 10%, but because it was 10% and unbelievably delicious. i can honestly say it’s the first and only beer i’ve drank that i truly enjoyed drinking. maybe it’s the cinnamon, but it is amazing. you can follow them on Twitter!

after the brewery tour, we went back to the hotel and got back in our suits to go to the AITP banquet that night. the dinner was the best food they’d provided the entire conference. so good that i ate my plate and denny’s plate. they had the awards ceremony and lots and lots and LOTS of talking about… not a whole lot. it was a nice banquet, but everyone could have stood for it to be a lot shorter. at one point, one of the wireless mics in another room was turned on and caused this horrible, teeth-clenching screeching sound for about 10 minutes at which point a lot of people decided that was enough for them for the night.

the banquet ended around 9 and everyone headed back to the hotel. i have to wait until everyone else empties their cameras that i, due to the chaos that night, completely filled up. i have so much video (3 cameras worth) that i can’t really do anything with but it will be fun to look back on. there are also a lot more pictures that i am looking forward to seeing–specifically ones of me posing with various metal animals/objects in bricktown. giant buffaloes, penguins, guitars… i can’t wait. the only thing that i can say disappointed me about this trip was not being able to spend more time in texas.