St Drivingtines Day

We are on the road as I am writing; I got off work at 2pm and headed home. By the time I got home I realized that I forgot some papers at work that we had to have for the hospital when we got to UNC, I took them in to scan them at work. I knew that Kate wasn’t going to be ready and there was really no reason that we needed to be in any kind of hurry to get on the road.   

Now what you need to realize is that Kate and I have a really bad dynamic when it comes to leaving for trips, I get in a big rush in my head and am ready to go, and she waits till the last minute, back to the story.

Kate finished listening to a book while I emptied the dishwasher, and when she got off she suggested I run back to work and go by the library while she finished a couple of things, and you know what happened next.  I responded poorly and told her she could have done her things any time in the past 6 months (typical guy).  Anyway I ran out and did the errands came home and apologized, it’s not Valentine’s without some kind of disagreement right, and we got on the road around 3:45.

When we left the house Kate asked me if I was feeling sad about leaving our dog Abby?  I’m a man so of course I said no, but I really was, I’m not sure why.  This is not the first time we have left her. We go to Peru every summer, and last April we went to Europe for 3 weeks, to be honest sometimes it seems like Abby is with other people more than us (thanks Rick and Lynn).  I’m not sure if it is just because she has been around a little longer (we have had her almost 3 years) or because she knew we were leaving and really wants to go everywhere with us lately.  My guess is it has something to do with all the emotions around our current circumstance, but we will see her in 4 weeks and she will be fine.

For dinner we stopped at Al’s Cheese steaks cause we had a groupon and got 2 steaks some fries and Birch Beer (my favorite soda in the entire world, and it is hard to get in Florida), Kate is so great she hasn’t been drinking soda so she let me have hers as a second soda, so I drank one before we left the store and 1 and a half more. 

You are wondering what happened to the other half.

Well the cup holders in the minivan rental we got (oh I forgot about the getting the minivan story, why is everything always a story with us) are weird, there is a rubber insert and it makes it hard to get cups out.  Well while we were driving it poked a hole in the side of the Styrofoam cup and when I went to pick it up I got a lap full of birch beer, which is about 6 ounces that I will never get back unless I suck on my shirt later tonight.

The drive has been fairly easy and we are making good time, Kate and I have a weird quirk when we drive, we don’t listen to music.  We find that this is a time we can talk and enjoy each other’s company, and for us trying to talk over the music tends to cause fights because it feels like the other person is yelling.  Kate has suggested many times that we listen to a book on this drive but I feel that is just a way to cheat the music rule, but I am pretty sure I am going to lose out on this battle, so I’m expecting to listen to a book tomorrow when we leave my brothers (he lives in Jacksonville and we thought we would break up the trip by spending the night at his house).

Well we have about 40 minutes left and I haven’t been a very interesting passenger for the last 30 miles so I am going to call it a night, hopefully I can get to the rental car story a little later.  Next stop Chapel Hill!