memories from Raleigh

It wasn't all bad times in Raleigh! I don't want you to think I hated the last three years of my life, because I absolutely did not! I did not go around every day thinking "I hate Raleigh" - it simply was that Raleigh just never felt like home...that's all.

I have some great memories of being in Raleigh. Here are just a few:

Just a month into my arrival in Raleigh I was able to see my recent-alum (Appalachian) play my then future-alum (NCSU) in an awesome football game from the Murphy Center.

For those first few months when I didn't know anyone in Raleigh I was truly living on my own for the first time in my life. I had moved to Boone when Chris was already there, but moving out here was the first thing I ever did completely on my own in my life. I had a lot of firsts that year - mainly figuring out the Wolfline, paying my rent and utilities, etc.

The first year I lived here I had graduate classes almost every night. I worked all day and in the afternoon I would start class. Most nights I wasn't home until 8 or 9pm. I still can't believe I survived that first year of grad school!

For my two years of grad school I took the wolfline to and from school (where I worked, and then went to class). Certain songs and playlists on my iPod still bring me back to that daily trip on the bus.

Since I worked with student-athletes I scored tickets to all the basketball games. Never considering myself a State or Carolina fan before I moved to the triangle it was definitely an experience to go to the State-Carolina basketball game with my Carolina best friend and watch State whip their butts!

A few weeks after Chris moved in we became obscessed with the Wii, but this was during the time that you couldn't get them at any store! We found a seller on ebay in the area, and then drove an hour to meet him in a Bojangles parking lot where we exchanged nearly $300 for the Wii from a complete stranger. I'm still surprised that the guy was legit and the game worked when we got home!

A month after we were married we had a party in Winston to celebrate the fact with our friends and family. Since we were gone a few days we left the air conditioner off so it was close to 90 degrees in the house when we returned. Still we were so excited to open our gifts we insisted on doing it as soon as we got home, instead of waiting until we cooled the place off. We broke out the world's tiniest fan to blow on us as we attempted to open all our wedding gifts on the living room floor!

One Sunday during the first summer Chris and I were married we came home after a weekend away to find that the air conditioner was broken. I considered this an emergency, and called the lease office, but unfortunately, they didn't deem it necessary to send someone out until the next day. It had to be the hottest day ever so Chris and I spent the day at the movies and out to dinner, took freezing showers and slept practically naked with no covers that night with the world's tiniest fan (see above) blowing on us. You think we would have learned and invested in a larger, rotating fan, but we did not.

We went to Red Robin one afternoon simply because we were hungry and it happened to be in the Walmart parking lot where we were about to go shopping. It became our favorite place to go, and even though we equated it with Raleigh at first, we eventually found out it is a national chain - thank goodness!

The gamer and I went to Reptile and Amphibian Day at the museum and I still can't believe I held a snake this big!
Not to be one-upped, the gamer did hold this big nasty roach the following year at Bug Day...

One afternoon, shortly after Chris started at a new job, I came home to find our ceiling leaking in our living room. Rushing upstairs my feet immediately landed on a soaked carpet as I came to find an inch of water in our bathroom because the toilet had busted. Thankfully the lease officed deemed this an emergency and sent someone quickly over. I didn't know Chris's new work number, so I called the main number and that then just pretty much cried to whoever answered that they just had to put me in touch with my husband, who eventually came to the phone and told me I'd have to handle this catastrophe myself. Our carpets were ripped up, parts of our ceiling came down, and we had the largest, noisiest, industrial sized fans placed throughout the damage to help dry out the wood. We were forced to sleep on a blow-up mattress in the office because our bedroom had too much of the floor ripped up and the noise was deafening. We couldn't watch TV or cook because it was just so loud in the house. I looked forward to staying as long as I could at work, and surprisingly we lasted a week like this!
That's the inside of our ceiling with the ceiling removed, which doesn't even do it justice to the damage that the flood did!

One afternoon at Lake Johnson I was literally attacked by about 50 geese when I was trying to be nice and feed them some horrendous Crazy Bread from Little Ceasar's. Let it be known that I have never forgotten their behavior that day and refuse to go back and feed them a thing! I wish I had pictures of this but I was seriously screaming bloody murder and the gamer couldn't get it on camera. He still talks about this event as one of the funniest things he's ever seen happen to me. Just picture these guys and about 40 of their friends swooping down on me as they heard the crumple of the bread bag!!

One Saturday after a trip to Trader Joes I heard a loud noise which I thought was coming from the car. Chris insisted it was another car on the road until we had driven several miles and someone finally motioned to us that we had a flat tire. I panicked because we'd never had to fix one before! We pulled over in a pretty secluded parking lot behind some bushes, but thankfully someone still was able to see us and helped us change the tire! I was so happy for such a good person that day!

My 22nd birthday happened to fall on the eve of the release of the final Harry Potter installment. We drove to the big Walmart and waited in line for nearly an hour just to get the book, and then rushed home to start reading it.

One afternoon while we were at the intersection of Gorman and Avent Ferry muddy water started rushing from the sewers. We managed to be driving through the water just as it started but it ended up being a water main that broke, causing a huge flooding fiasco in the area. I am so glad we only saw the start of that!

And last but not least, Raleigh also saw the evolution of the gamer's wife hair, which went from medium (Aug 06)...
to very long (March 07)...
to super short (Oct 07)...
to crazy curly (current)
The gamer has already determined that new home = new hairstyle, so we might be seeing some short, straight locks in the future!

So those are just a few of our memories in Raleigh...and I sure am going to miss the stability of a home, job and money! The future is a little uncertain it terms of employment and a home right now, but I am certain we'll have tons of new memories to make! And, ultimately I'm glad the gamer has the opportunity to go to med school so if nothing else, it should provide plenty of good blog writing for the next three years!

And the adventures of the ex-gamer (turned student) and former-gamer's wife begin!

Haha. I wish! :-)