when we went to sewanee

Well, my weekend has been OK. We left for the volleyball tournament on Thursday MUCH sooner than I had planned – at 1:30 Kristie calls and says to be over there at 3:30. So that gives me two hours to do my CMAX submission, go pick Kevin up from school, and pack. So I pack real quick, walk down to the school to get Kevin (faster than driving, cause the traffic is so bad), come back and do my CMAX submission. The whole time I’m trying to finish it, mom is yelling at me to “go clean up your room before you leave. you need to straighten up this bathroom before you go.”

So I get over there about 20 minutes late and we head to SEWANEE (well I sewanee).

That’s a long trip from Memphis, about five-six hours, I guess. It was hard to tell, since in Jackson we all (I mean the whole team and everybody) had to stop at Chili’s in Jackson and eat and talk for gosh knows how long. We were all trying to watch the Friends episode on this little tiny b/w TV someone had. Rachel and her friends were trying to hold the antenna out the van window trying to get better reception. Finally rachel called catherine and had her give her a play-by-play.

We stopped at a trucker stop so Kristie could go to the bathroom. I didn’t need to go but I didn’t want to stay in the car, so I got out. It was around 10:30… and holy cow was that the freakiest place I’d ever been in. Everybody was so weird in there. As we were leaving Kristie sneezed a couple of times, and this guy goes, “You got a hold of some bad stuff!” And Kristie was like, “…yeah…” and the guy says, “You got a hold of some bad stuff!” again. So we kinda ran out of there.

It was midnight when we got to the motel. We had a suite, but it was really just a bigger motel room. Nothing like the “Claritin” in Gatlinburg.

Saturday we got up and went to the cracker barrel for breakfast. My aunt Na made THREE necklaces (you know, they have all those letter beads and you string ’em together with little coloured beads and beads with pics on ’em to make a necklace), one with all the team’s numbers on it, one with the coaches names, and one with one of the girl’s names and # (long pointless story behind that). *I* made a necklace that said DINGO, with an airplane, a computer, a peace sign and an exclamation point. I’ve worn it proudly since then.

Then we went and watched volleyball. RAT won all their games on Friday (I think 3 all together). In between one of the games we went up to the Sewanee campus. It was so beautiful, like something out a movie. (The high school we played is part of it, and was just as gorgeous. It was part boarding school!) I mean, we had the quaint college town, the large old houses with the porches, stone buildings that looked like cathedrals, the whole ten yards. I bought a Sewanee Track Team shirt. Don’t ask me why. I just really like Sewanee colours – PURPLE!

We ate at a place called the Steakhouse that night. OH MY FREAKIN GOSH. They had this gravy… it was SO GOOD. I finished off my roast beef (which was terrible, more like beef jerky, but with the gravy covering it I didn’t care), mashed potatoes and bread, and then finished what Na didn’t eat. It was so so so so so good.

Next day we got up and got an earlier start. The team won their first game. After that first game we went back to Sewanee for their Crafts fair. There wasn’t much to it, but the Animal Rescue place had a tent, and they were walking around trying to get people to adopt the dogs or kittens they had. I swear, if home hadn’t been such a long way off, I would have adopted this one little terrier puppy in a heart beat. He just made me want to cry! He looked just like Indy when she was a baby! *teary eyed* I don’t think he was a JRT, but he was close enough. I think someone did adopt him, tho. I’m glad for that. That was the most fun I had all weekend, playing with the dogs there. Rachel and I decided to walk down to this coffee store on campus and get hot chocolate. It was a long walk and it had turned really cold that day, so we were happy when the coffee place turned out warm. But eventually it got TOO warm, and it took forEVER. Everyone got tired of waiting on us, and my grandparents and Na went on to eat lunch. My aunt and uncle came and got us, and my uncle shooed me out of the van to where Kristie was waiting on me and took off back to the high school campus. We went down and ate lunch, then went back to the bookstore where I got a pair of Sewanee sweatpants. Yes sir, nothing finer than purple sweatpants.

We went back, and got beat our last two games. We started home as soon as it was over, and drove for ages before finally stopping at a McDonald’s. We got home around 9 Saturday night. Surprisingly enough (seeing as how I didn’t sleep on the ride back, and had to get up early that morning), I stayed up for quite a while after I got home. I watched Friends, looked at a galaxy through Ash’s mom’s telescope (they came out and set it up), and generally made a nuisance of myself all evening.

This trip was so much more laid back than any of the others this year, but there sure were lots of little stupid stories.