Updates

Sorry, I know it's been a while since I've posted.  I'll try to catch up on everything that's been going on.

This weekend, we went down to Florida to celebrate Marcus's grandfather's 97th(!) birthday.  We flew down late Friday night.  Marcus's dad picked us up from the airport and dropped us off at Marcus's mom's house.  We stayed up talking for a little bit, but soon retired to bed.  Saturday we slept in a little bit, then went to brunch with Marcus's mom and her wife at the restaurant where his sister is working as a hostess.  Then we came back to the house and hung out for a few hours before it was time to go to the party.  Marcus's sister was nice enough to drive all of us to the party (me, Marcus, and his little brother).  The party itself was interesting.  It was nice to see all of his dad's family (we hadn't seen any of them since the wedding), and there were some nice speeches made and cute songs and such.  The food was amazing.  It was also good to see my parents, who came down for the party too.  After the party, we pretty much went back to his mom's house and went right to bed.  Sunday we got up early (for us).  Marcus and his siblings headed to his grandfather's brunch, while my parents came and picked me up to take me to lunch with them and my great-aunt and great-uncle (who my parents were staying with).  We had a nice lunch, then went back to my great-aunt's house and hung out and looked at pictures for a while.  Then my parents took me back to Marcus's mom's house and stopped in to visit for a little while before they left for the airport.  The rest of us hung out for a little longer, and then Marcus's mom took us to the airport.

Our flight was at 6:25 pm, and we were at the airport and through security by a little before 5.  I decided to get Chili's To-Go for dinner, since we had some time.  I ordered, and about 15 minutes later, my food finally came out.  I went back to the gate to sit and eat, opened it up, and noticed that my black bean burger had cheese on it (which it wasn't supposed to).  I took it back, and the manager lady told them to fix it.  I waited for ANOTHER 15-20 minutes before it FINALLY came out.  They offered me a free drink, but I had already bought a bottled water the first time, and I don't drink soda anyway, so I turned it down.  I ran back to the gate and frantically tried to eat before we had to board the plane.  I didn't make it.  Marcus convinced me to box the food back up and bring it on the plane, so I did.  I did NOT appreciate how rushed they made me feel by taking forever with my food!  It seriously would have been faster to go eat in their sit-down restaurant area :-P  But anyway, we made it home fine, and David picked us up from the airport, and we went right back out grocery shopping before Cliff came in around 11.  He had an interview in Atlanta on Monday, so he stayed with us for a couple of nights.

On to Monday.  I had my first training session for the tutoring job on Monday (I had decided to at least try it before making a decision about whether to take the job).  I ate an early lunch (around 11:15) before heading out around noon to get to the center I was training at by 1.  They had told me in the email that the training would be from 1-8 pm, but it turned out that it was actually from 1-9.  This pissed me off, because I had been planning to go to the gym when I got home, since it was supposed to be a gym night, but I didn't get home until after 10 pm, and I was too tired to go to the gym.  I also didn't eat dinner until after I got home, because I completely missed the half-hour break I was supposed to get around 4 pm.  Fail.  Anyway, the tutoring itself looked very different from what I had imagined.  First of all, it was mostly high school kids, who I don't do well with.  Second, when they originally told me that you tutor one-on-one a max of 3 kids at a time, I thought they meant that you have one-on-one sessions with up to 3 different students, one at a time.  Well, apparently what they really meant was that you have 3 students at a time (so 3 sessions of 3 students per night, for a total of 9 different students per night) and they still call it "one-on-one" because you're supposed to focus your attention on each one individually while the other two are doing work.  I felt really uncomfortable with the setup, and when I got home, I debated for a long time over whether to continue with the training.

Tuesday morning, I had to make a decision.  I was supposed to report for training at 1 pm again, so I had to decide by 11 (so I could eat lunch if I did decide to go).  I went back and forth.  Wrote an email declining the position, but couldn't hit send.  Had a long talk with Cliff about it, and another with Marcus when he called to tell me about something else entirely.  Finally, I sent the email, so I will not be taking the tutoring job.  It was a really tough decision, since I could really use the money, but ultimately, I would have been miserable working there.  So now, I need to go to the unemployment office today and make sure that turning down the job won't affect my eligibility to continue collecting unemployment.  Fingers crossed!

So I ended up hanging out with Cliff all day yesterday.  We went to Menchie's and got frozen yogurt for lunch, then came back and just hung out.  We talked a little, and I watched one of my home videos.  When Marcus got home, he and Cliff went to the gym (he hadn't gone on Monday either, so he wanted to make it up.  I'm planning to go on Friday to make it up while Marcus is at his D&D game), and then we all went out to dinner at Copeland's.  Marcus had a $25 gift certificate to Copeland's from restaurant.com, but it required a minimum purchase of $50, which we'd never be able to get to just the two of us.  So Cliff came too, and we had a nice dinner and then walked around Atlantic Station for a while.  I love Atlantic Station!  When we got home, Cliff headed out to drive back to Athens, and Marcus and I watched the end of the Braves game and looked at houses online.  We tried to go to bed early, but it just didn't happen.

So, on the docket for today: I need to go to the bank and deposit a check for Marcus, go to the unemployment office, figure out what to write in my cover letter for this job I want to apply to - and then apply.  When Marcus gets home, we need to go to the gym, come back and eat dinner, and watch Survivor (and probably the end of the Braves game, too).  Then we need to shower and go to SLEEP!

I'm already exhausted...I need a real weekend!

Oy, too much stress!

So much for a relaxing weekend.  Today started off innocently enough.  I got up around 11:30.  Marcus left at 12:30 to go shop with A and some others for the APO section event tomorrow, and I left around the same time to go over to Marsha's.  We hung out at her house for a while, had some yummy waffles, and then decided to go check out a flea market.  It was about 45 minutes away (not too bad), and we ended up spending a couple of hours walking around there.  We got some yummy Italian ices and saw lots of cool stuff!  We got back to her house around 5:30, at which point I looked at my car and saw that I had a flat tire.  So I called AAA, and the guy came out 15 minutes later!  This is the first time I've ever had a AAA person make it out in less than an hour, haha, which was awesome!  He put my spare tire on, and then Marcus showed up.  I had called him to let him know what was going on, because we had a dinner reservation at 7, and when I originally called AAA, they had said the guy would come anytime "between now and 7:17", so Marcus had decided to head over so we could go to dinner straight from Marsha's.  Luckily, we were able to leave her house around 6:30, so we were on time for our reservation!

This week is Restaurant Week for Midtown Atlanta, which means a whole bunch of restaurants have special 3-course menus for $25 or $35 per person.  We had looked through the menus and picked one to go to, it was a restaurant called Steel.  Our dinner was DELICIOUS!  Their regular menu is a bit out of our typical price range, and the $25 3-course menu was a steal of a deal given their normal prices.  We were so full after dinner that we almost couldn't walk back to the car!

Anyway, we headed back to Marsha's after dinner to get my car, which I drove home with no issues.  I'm a little concerned about the spare tire, because I'm supposed to drive to Dunwoody and back tomorrow for Eli's birthday party, and the car place is closed on Sundays, so I can't take it in to get the regular tire fixed until Monday morning, so that's a LOT of driving on the spare.  The AAA guy assured me that it would be fine, that I "could drive on it for a week if I needed to", but that I shouldn't drive over 50 MPH on it.  So I'm now planning to take surface streets tomorrow rather than the highway (which is fine, since they've been doing massive weekend construction on 285 anyway), but I'm still a little concerned about the spare tire holding out :-/

In other exciting (to me, anyway) news, several extended cousins from my mom's generation had a family reunion in Maine a couple of weeks ago.  They are trying to get the WHOLE family back in touch, and to get many more people (including me!) to come to the next reunion in a couple of years!  So they created a facebook group for the family, and I of course went crazy adding people to it, lol.  I'm so excited, I've always wanted to have a family reunion!  And this is on a way bigger scale than I even imagined!

So, now I am exhausted and heading to bed.  Hoping my family in DC and NY (and everywhere in between) holds out okay with the hurricane!