A Fun Weekend with Friends and Outdoors

Seneca Rocks

So, this weekend, I hung out with one of my oldest friends for the entirety of Friday night-Sunday evening.  It was great to get out and do some stuff.

Friday night saw us just chilling out, watching Greek (my new favorite old show that I just watched all of on Netflix and am now going through withdrawal over), and talking.

Stuart's Park

Saturday morning, she went to work for a few hours while I slept in a little and then got up and did some proofreading.  I had finished what amounted to almost an entire self-help book by the time she returned and started working on another one that was due that afternoon.  She had noticed that there were some street sales going on on Third Street, namely the local book store, so we headed a couple blocks over for lunch at a little cafe that I had never been to (their chicken quesadillas were amazing) and then book shopping.  This was when I had my little book splurge.

I bought a book on how to grow medicinal herbs and plants (don't let your mind run away with you here) and their healing and medicinal properties.  I've always liked the idea of using essential oils for medicinal purposes, and in all the hype that sometimes surrounds that, it's forgotten that the actual plants that those oils come from can have an even bigger effect.  It's something I've been wanting to learn more about for a while now, something that really started niggling at me last summer when we thought Orion had a tendon problem again (which thankfully just ended up being a really bad abscess that hadn't made it's appearance to the naked eye yet).  When we thought his legs were having troubles again and couldn't immediately get a hold of a vet (one was out of town and one just wasn't answering), my old BO suggested making a tea with comfrey leaves and soaking and wrapping his legs with it.  She happened to have some growing in her garden, and it made me think about starting a little herb garden myself for things like that (not to mention for cooking).

I bought the book Vampire Academy, which just came out as a movie.  I haven't seen it, and I don't really know what kind of reviews it had.  I do usually like vampire books though, and this one seemed to have a different kind of spin than others I have read.  I usually like books better than movies anyway, so I figured why not?  It was on sale.

Then I bought Dances With Dragons, the fifth book in George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series a.k.a. Game of Thrones for those who aren't fanatics about it like I and a lot of other people are.  I finished the fourth book, A Feast for Crows, about six months ago or something like that.  I've been itching to read the fifth one because with the way the fourth and fifth books are written, a lot of my favorite characters didn't make appearances in the fourth book, but they will be in the fifth one.  I've been contemplating buying it on my Kindle so that I instantly have it at my fingertips, but since I have all of the ones before it in paperback, I made myself wait.  I had other books and other things to keep me occupied in the meantime.

Then, we later went to Walmart, where I bought Deliver Us From Evil, which I discussed in my last post.

I've been told I could be part vampire. I'm glow-in-the-dark white, and I burn in sunlight.

After our book spree, we went back to her house, where I finished editing my second gig of the day while she accomplished some stuff off her to do list in the backyard and around the house.  After that was when we went to Walmart to buy groceries for making dinner that night and lunch or dinner the next day.  We spent two hours in that store, and only maybe thirty minutes of that was grocery shopping.  The rest was spent looking at books and movies and music.  We are nerds.

I made my famous (among friends at least) chicken alfredo for dinner, and we had a nice bottle of West Virginia white wine with it.  Then we built a campfire in the fire pit in her back yard and sat around it talking and laughing at stupid stuff and drinking Smirnoffs before finally going back inside to watch Game of Thrones after the fire burned down.

Sunday we woke up super late, since we had stayed up super late watching GoT.  We both dragged our feet and procrastinated getting ready for the day.  I flopped around like a damn fish trying to get off of my makeshift bed on the floor, since I was one arm short of being able to make myself roll over/sit up/do anything at all helpful for myself, before finally somehow getting up (this wouldn't have been anywhere near as dumb or difficult if I hadn't slid down to lie on my back in my sleep - I've been having to sleep sitting up on a ton of pillows to be comfortable and also be able to easily get out of bed in the morning).

After getting ready, we went to her family reunion at Stuart's Park with her sister's family.  I felt slightly awkward at first - but she wanted me to go because she doesn't usually go to this reunion and she felt awkward.  I said yes because a)it was more friend time that I wouldn't be getting much of once I go back to Philippi to work and b)it was at Stuart's Park, which meant the opportunity to hang out at the river.  And we did hang out at the river, which is where all of these lovely pictures came from.  Usually I would be the first one in the water, but with the whole broken bone thing, I didn't think that was a good idea because while usually somewhat graceful in rock hopping across the river, I'm also usually the first one to slip and fall in the water, as has been proven multiple times over the years.  Not exactly conducive to healing a bone, so I had to be content with rock hopping on the shore and finding a good spot to sit at the water's edge and just soak my feet in the river.  Not as fun as the alternative, but it was still a pretty good day.

Best friend's brother-in-law and nephew.

After we left the reunion much later than anticipated, we went back to her house where she made tacos and rice, and we watched more GoT before I had to go home.

All in all, it was a great weekend and has inspired me to do many more outdoor things.  I'm starting a bucket list of things I want to do before summer's end, which includes but is not limited to: hiking the trails behind my new barn, going to Spruce Knob, and hiking to the top of Seneca Rocks.  Also, the second my bone is healed enough for me to drive, I'm getting my license so I can more easily do these things, as well as go everywhere else. lol  My car just needs a little more work, and it will be ready to take me wherever I want to go. :)

But seriously, is this kid not the cutest?