Thank you so much for the sweet comments! Despite what the pictures portray, the weekend involved a few hiccups. They actually make for a pretty funny and totally random story, so I thought I would share it with you all.
With all the craziness that has been finishing grad school, working full time, and being the support system for a law student, the thought of reserving a hotel room the weekend of graduation slipped my mind. I guess the fact that I always stayed with my
grad school BFF during my monthly trips to NC had me thinking I would just stay with her during our May meeting. Except...our May meeting was replaced with graduation, I would have my husband in tow, and her family would be staying at her apartment. Like I said, it all slipped my mind.
I finally realized that we needed a hotel room when I was down in NC for my April meeting. By this time, all the hotels were booked in the town where I went (woo hoo! past tense!) to school. Now, in case you don't know what it is like in some parts of North Carolina, let me explain. There are a couple major cities, a few smaller cities, and then the country. My school is in a small city, and the surrounding towns don't have hotels.
The next problem was that our neighbors that usually dog sit for us are on a cross country road trip, so they obviously were not available. In a world where money grows on trees, I would have boarded our dog at a local pet hotel, but I was not about to spend upwards of $100 for something in DC. So our next problem was that I had to find a dog friendly hotel.
We ended up getting a room at a motel about 25 miles east of my school. This quaint little town is on the coast, and we used to take day trips out there all the time when we lived in NC, so I was actually pretty excited. I was slightly concerned about the $50 a night price tag, but I chalked it up to small town goodness. And obviously we are poor graduate/law students, so we can't pass up a hotel room priced like that.
We arrive on Saturday afternoon around 12:30, and decide to stop in to the motel to see if we could maybe check in early. They had no problem with this, so I was really happy! At first sight, the motel looks like any other cheap hotel on the side of the highway. Certainly not a Hilton, but for a quick trip it would be fine!
We get to our room and it is also fine. We hang out and rest and watch TV on one of those old ginormous box TVs (I'm being such a flat screen snob, but it was pretty funny). It was 90+ on Saturday, so needless to say, we had the A/C pumping. We then shower, get ready, and head out. We leave the A/C on so that when we return later that night, the room will be nice and cool.
We go to graduation, head back to hotel town, have dinner by the river, pick up Kona, and decide that we should pick up some beer to drink in our room. We end up stopping at a convenience store and I run in to grab a six pack. While inside, I about die of smoke inhalation because all the clerks are smoking behind the register. Classic. As I approach the counter, I also notice that a good quarter of the store is full of wigs. Yes, wigs on those weird head stands. There were also boxes and boxes of hair extensions in plastic. We found the elusive random convenience store/wig shop! Seriously?
When we return to our room around 9 that night, the A/C is off, and the room is hot as hell. (Don't worry, we had left our dog at my professor's house during graduation and dinner, so Kona was not subjected to the lack of A/C in the room). AJ called the front desk and they immediately sent a maintenance man to come look at the A/C. After taking the thing apart, determining he needed to replace it, and leaving to go get the new A/C, he comes back and realizes that maybe we just blew a fuse. Hmm, okay. It took 20 minutes for you to figure that out? So he leaves the room for a few minutes and all of a sudden the A/C kicks back on. Problem solved.
We drink a few beers, watch Ace of Cakes, and try to fall asleep on an innerspring mattress. As I
mentioned a while back, we bought a generic tempurpedic mattress to help our sleepless nights and solve our back problems. I knew that it was a great buy and that I really liked the new mattress, but after sleeping on an innerspring one for the first time since buying the mattress, I was reminded HOW much I LOVE our (generic) tempurpedic. I eventually put in ear plugs, because wouldn't you know, it also happened to be prom night in town. The $50 price tag was also appealing to the high school seniors. Ear plugs drowned out most of the sounds, but I still could hear doors slamming and our guard dog....Kona was not happy about the commotion and basically growled the entire night.
Then, around 4 o'clock AM the A/C stopped working again. I woke AJ up and made him call the front desk. The super helpful lady told us that the maintenance man doesn't come in until 7:30 AM. Oh okay, we will roast in our room until then. I was so pissed that I left the hotel room and began searching for the breaker. I found it by the stairs and flipped the switch. The A/C roared to life back in our hotel room, but by now, we were all awake.
Instead of doing the sensible thing and going back to sleep, we decided that we might as well leave. At 4:15 AM. We pack our bags, load up the car, and head to the front desk to check out. At this point we realize that we have no gas. We asked the super helpful lady at the front desk if she knew where a 24 hour gas station would be, but alas, she pointed us to a town 60 miles away. Riiight, because we could definitely make it there with 1/16th tank of gas. Luckily, we knew not to drive all the way to that town!
Anyway, we drive around town for a while, crying a little bit inside every time we pass a closed gas station. With the light flashing in AJ's face, we determine that the only way out of this mess is to drive the 25 miles back to the city where my school is located because they will have a 24 hour gas station. This is of course out of the way, but the 17 miles we would have had to travel on the country road to head back home were definitely not going to have a 24 hour gas station. We were also doubting that there would be any exits off the highway with a 24 hour gas station. I'm talking country! So detour we took! We finally find an open gas station, fill up, and head back home on a new route. Needless to say, it was a crazy 12 hours!!
Okay, I think that is enough of a snippet. I didn't mean for this post to be a small novel, but really the random things kept piling up. Luckily, AJ and I were good sports and just kept laughing and being delirious!
So we drive back to the city
