The First Week (more or less)

Wednesday was hot and humid and fairly unpleasant, just like Tuesday, but we managed to get the rest of the truck unpacked after having a nice big breakfast at someplace called “Mama Steves” where Someone explained the finer points of grits making and consumption to Dad and I. Who knew grits were that complicated? After unloading all the boxes, and unpacking as many as we could, Dad and Someone took off with the rental truck to take all the sad empty boxes to a recycling center someplace out near Yorktown. Putting my boyfriend (and a fairly new one at that) and my father in the same truck, alone, for any length of time, was a bit scary but it went off quite well. They apparently had a grand old time looking for this dump place and driving around historic Yorktown. It's good when you father spends several hours alone with your boyfriend and no one comes back in an ice chest. That's all I have to say about that.

After Dad and Someone's little adventure, we all went and had dinner with Someone's mom. Quite a day for compressed relationship milestones, but it went quite well. We stopped at Lions Bridge on the way to her house to see the James River and all the Canadian Geese. Now the James is a serious river. There are a few points where you can't actually see the other side of it. Of course it was still impossibly hot and humid and the air was kind of hazy and misty, but it was a lovely spot. It would be a great place for a romantic picnic at sunset. But possibly not in the middle of the summer heat.



Thursday we went out to the Outer Banks in North Carolina and visited Kitty Hawk and had lunch at a really good Bavarian restaurant and brewery called the Weeping Radish. I will not be suffering for lack of good beer while I am here, that's for sure. The Outer Banks were really neat. It was warm, but not too hot and miserable, we got to see and stand in the Atlantic Ocean, and learned about drive through beer stores called Brew Thrus which I have to say is about the strangest thing I have ever heard of (except for the drive through margarita stands I am told exist in New Orleans).





We got back kind of late, but still had time for a quick trip to the local CostCo for food supplies and a stop at the grocery store, where we ran into Someone's mom, the only other person in the whole state that Dad and I actually knew. Kind of funny coincidence, but it was nice to see her and to meet her boyfriend.

Dad wanted to see Colonial Williamsburg (as did I), so Friday we went dresser shopping down in Newport News or Hampton or someplace that direction, had lunch with Someones mom, huffed the dresser back to my place, and went and walked around CW. Dad seemed quite impressed. It was kind of overcast and damp that day, but it was still a lot of fun to walk down DoG street (see, I'm going native already! DoG St. is how every one refers to Duke of Gloucester Street, the main drag in CW), look at the old buildings, talk to some of the people who work there, and just absorb the place. It's pretty neat. Sort of a Ren Faire version of colonial life in some ways, but it's informative and gives you a new appreciation for how hard it was to live back then. We even got to see them muster the local militia and shot off the canons. That was quite exciting.



After our colonial adventure we all packed ourselves up and Someones mom cooked up dinner. That woman can cook. It was a very nice evening, lots of good food, a little too much wine, and a really good time. The families get along frighteningly well. I'm not really sure what that means, or what I should do with it, but it's nice, and comfortable, and I'm not going to worry about it. Why worry about something that feels so amazingly right?

Dad had an early flight out of Richmond on Saturday, so we got up early and drove to the Waffle House, a chain of rather greasy little restaurants common most of the way between Texas and Virginia. Not the worst food ever, and they make good grits (who knew I would ever become a grit connoisseur, but there it is, I have gone native), and Dad really wanted to go there so we did.

After we dropped Dad off, Someone took me over to Short Pump. Strange, ill-considered name aside, this is a fun little place. There is a big shopping center/mall thing there, with an Apple Store (which Someone loves), so we wandered around a bit and once the shops opened I was able to find some really nice business slacks and a blouse for the first day of classes. We're having pictures taken or some crap and have to show up in proper business attire. Whatever. At least I have proper business attire now. The idea of wearing it in 98 degree heat with 90 percent humidity sounds like a crappy thing to me, but I only have to keep it on till noon or so. Supposedly. The pants are really wonderful. Black with pink pinstripes, very subtle, but enough to not be boring, and they make my ass look amazing so everyone was happy.

After shopping we met up with a couple of Someones friends for lunch and coffee and some general hanging out. It was a lot of fun. S and A are marvelous people with really adorable kids, and they are moving to Yorktown this week, which is right down the road so I hang out with S and the kids when school work starts to make me insane. Nothing like baby toys to get you over insane logic problem related stress.

We eventually got back in to Williamsburg, had a light dinner, and went to the Green Leafe (or just the Leafe) for beers with another of Someone's friends. H was amazing too. This guy really has some wonderful friends, I feel a lot better about being so far away from everyone I know at this point. They have all been so warm and welcoming and genuinely kind people, I'm pretty overwhelmed actually. I'm not sure what I find more comforting, knowing people here, or knowing that Someone cares enough about me to make sure that I have good people around me here. Either way, I'm feeling pretty good about all of this.

Anyhow, Sunday we slept late, finally, and had a fairly leisurely morning just hanging out at the house and watching movies and not doing much of anything. We eventually got ourselves motivated, and Someone took me to the long promised sushi restaurant. Hurray! I am not going to die for lack of sushi. There is good salmon sashimi to be had, and I am a happy kid. No toro on the menu, but I think with some exploring I can track it down someplace. After sushi, we went and met some other friends and former co-workers at a Mexican restaurant and had beers and hung out with them. Goes without saying that these were also wonderful, kind, warm, welcoming people, and one of them came just short of offering me a testing job should I decide that I want or need one.

Being back at work after all this is a bit depressing in some ways. I want to be at home, not holed up in a cold office working on a project I have almost no interest in at this point. At least I get to spend my evenings with Someone, before he gets sent out to California. Ironic thing, that. Here I meet this amazing person who is smart and talented and sweet and kind, do him a favor early on by sending his resume to my boss, and now it looks like he'll be getting a job offer from my current employer. But on the wrong coast. And in the mean time, we get more attached to each other, things fall into place like they were never out of place, our families hit it off, and now he might be making my move in reverse. I'm sad about this, of course, but oddly unconcerned. I'm going to miss him terribly, but we'll both be pretty wrapped up in our work for the next few months so maybe it's just as well we'll be on opposite ends of the country. It'll make the time we do have together that much more precious. And no one will have to watch the other person go insane. At least not all the time.

Besides, New York kind of sucks. It's hot, it smells bad, it makes me cranky and bitchy, and my feet hurt. I honestly don't understand how anyone can deal with the subway here every day. It smells like a sewer, and I come out of there feeling like I need to be decontaminated.