Well, i'm behind on this damn thing again. so i'll do a little backtracking and get some things out from a few days ago. might even do two entries today...lol...

saturday was a beautiful day. still just a tad chilly for my tastes but damn, we're getting there for sure. hubby worked until 2. we were trying to decide what to do for our last afternoon of freedom before daddy in law came home when he noticed that his formula 1 race was on bright and early sunday morning. he groaned at the thought of getting up at the buttcrack of dawn on his only day off that he has to sleep in. and of course, daddy in law's plane wouldn't even be in until 11:45 that night.

we'd been meaning to go to the cable company and return two of our cable boxes in exchange for a dvr. for those not familiar with what a dvr is, it's the cable company's version of tivo. you can record shows to view later, or pause live tv.

so i suggested we just go and do that. that way, he'd be able to record his race to watch later the next day and still get to sleep in. he wasn't too hip on it at first, he doesn't like to leave the house to do things he has to do, but i told him, since the place was across town, it'd be a nice saturday afternoon drive. so we adjusted our attitudes and took off.

the street we had to take we live right off of. but it's also about 15-20 miles long. as we drove, we reminisced about the first time we took that road that far. it was the first street in charlotte i drove on. a traffic laden congested nightmare, as many of the roads are here. i was driving our car, and mark was following me in the u-haul truck. not an easy feat for the narrow, crammed roads. we went right around rush hour too, making it even more difficult to drive. and it didn't help that we had no idea of exactly where the u-haul place was at, or how far it was. we had to pull off several times and discuss it, mark getting frustrated and cranky because we hadn't found it yet.

it's funny too, because as we drove that same road saturday, we remarked on how back then, it seemed like we'd driven forever. it is a good deal down the road, but when you don't know where things are at, it takes an eternity. the eternity of the unknown.

we had also thought back then that we must have seen a good half the city. how wrong we were. that one road only accounts for maybe a quarter.

and perhaps the funniest of all is that, not knowing the area back then, we didn't know there was a place closer to us and easier to access.

we finally arrive at the cable place and do our thing. by switching our two boxes for just that one, we ended up saving about $10 on our bill.

sitting next door was a cuban restaurant so we decided to pop in real quick and have a beer. i should have known, because the only way i can ever get the man to the mall is to bribe him with a beer. "come on honey, go to the mall with me and i'll buy you a beer at the fox sports lounge." and bam! he's there.

we enjoyed the restaurant although a little pricey on their food. but as we checked out the menu(for future reference)everything looked really good. it was a new place, the murals on the walls still not finished. and the cubans who worked there had even worse english than the mexicans working the restaurant right across the street from our home. mark tried a cuban beer, (brewed in puerto rico, of course). it wasn't very good so he had to have a dos equis to even everything up.

as we started for home, since we were already on that side of town, we decided to head over to the russian market. it, of course, is called abc international market, right next door to a hispanic international market. i can't help but chuckle at that. the oriental market strings the same international tag on themselves as does the indian market and the middle eastern market. i think of international as including items from all over the world. apparently it just means that if it's in america, then it's international even if the items come from just one part of the world.

so mark picked himself up a few bottles of baltica beer. very thick, 5.8 % alcohol beer. i insisted we buy some frozen perogis. i eye them everytime i go in there. i love perogis but don't like the thought of making them myself.

we took a nice drive home through the north side of town, veering off our usual path. one of our museums is on that street and even though the homes are older and most of the residents poor, it's a lovely section of town. but that's kind of the way charlotte is. i've heard people describe it as dirty and filled with strip malls(i can't figure out what the hell city they've visited, because it's anything but), but even the industrial sections have nice big lush trees surrounding it. when you go uptown, you hardly ever see a homeless person. even back home in my small town, the homeless dotted the streets of downtown, slumping in this doorway or that one. That's not so here. At least that's not been my experience.

since it was late, we ordered food from where he works. now i'm a sucker for deli food, i have to tell you. and if i had my choice, i'd eat deli everyday. i can't for the life of me figure out why, and my only guess would be that we never had a decent deli where i grew up, and of course, we seldom went out to eat anyhow. mom would just try to "recreate" it at home, always buying the sliced ham or turkey from the grocery store, throwing us some wonder bread and saying "there you go"

the best thing about eating there is that mark gets a really good discount. what would normally cost us around $25, only costs us about $6. hell you can't feed a family on fast food for that, not even using wendy's value menu(tho that is close).

we ended the day at the charlotte international airport waiting for duane to get off the plane. i have t to tell you, i used to love going to the airport. you got to cruise the stores and sit in a bar for a drink or grab some food while waiting for your loved ones. you see the most interesting people in the airport also, and not just the passengers. it fullfilled my people watching obsession to no end. and best of all, you got to see the planes take off and land, wondering if that's the one your party is on. there's nothing better than standing at the gate waiting for a glimpse of whoever you're picking up. and if you're flying yourself, you come off the plane scanning the crowd for your ride.

but now everything's changed. there is no more joy in going to the airport for me. now non-ticketed people can't get past the ticket counters. all we can do is just wait by the luggage carousels to meet our parties. they did stick some "Bistro" restaurant next to luggage for us unticketed people, but what a pathetic replacement. it's no longer an adventure for me, only a chore. another freedom that's bit the dust.

with duane in tow, we drove him through jack in the box since he hadn't eaten since the morning...not a good thing for a diabetic. then we promptly dropped him off at home and crashed hard in our bed.

all in all, it was a pretty good day...and I didn't even have to use my a.k.