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1) New York, here I come!

I’m going to NYC next weekend with two of my girlfriends. We’re getting up early Saturday morning, taking Amtrak into the city, and coming back Sunday night. We’re still deciding on the agenda, but one of the things we’d like to do is see the musical Wicked.

2) My microwave is possessed

I’m not joking. My microwave hates to cook popcorn. Whenever my roommate or myself pops popcorn, the microwave 1) refuses to work for 5-10 min afterward; 2) when it decides to start working again, it emits a high-pitched beep; and 3) the language setting switches from English to French. Does this ever happen with any other food? Never. It would be more understandable if we had one of those specific “popcorn” settings, but we manually punch in the numbers to tell the machine how long we want it to cook. How does the freakin’ microwave know that it’s popcorn? It has to be possessed. That’s the only possible explanation.

3) When I was in Jacksonville last weekend…

It was a pretty relaxing time; something I didn’t know I needed until I got there. I didn’t go online the entire weekend. I ended up having an unexpectedly good conversation last Friday morning that gave me some stuff to think about over the next few days (you know, those general “Where is my life going?” type of questions).

Notable happenings:

I’d forgotten to take decongestant before my flight, so by the time I landed in Jacksonville my ears were very badly clogged. I could hardly hear anything for the first hour or so; luckily I had some of my hearing back by the next day, but it didn’t seem closer to normal until Sunday — and my right ear is still making random crackling sounds.

Tripp and I were sharing a hotel room, and he was nice enough to inform me on Saturday morning that I’d woken him up several times because I was talking in my sleep. I had no idea that I do this, so I was pretty surprised.

Also, my hypothesis that I’d be the palest person in Jacksonville turned out to be pretty true. However, as I’ve told numerous people, I’ve gotten to the point where not being tan doesn’t bother me. I’m not going to suddenly start laying out. I despise sunless tanning lotion (I can usually tell when other people have used it, so I’m sure they can tell the same thing about me…and if that’s the case, what’s the point?). So, yes, I’ve decided to embrace my white skin.

4) This weekend

I’m driving down to Richmond tonight to spend time with my mom and sisters (in celebration of Mother’s Day, of course). Speaking of Richmond, a co-worker who just started working with me a few months back spent a number of years living there, too. It’s actually kind of strange to be able to talk about various landmarks with him — even though northern Virginia/D.C. is only about 100 miles north of Richmond, most of the people I’ve talked to in the past 2.5 years that I’ve lived in this area have never been there. They usually say something like, “Oh, yeah, I’ve driven through Richmond on my way to such-and-such place.” I say, they don’t know what they’re missing.

Happy weekend, everyone!