Happy Birthday Chris!!

Chris is 24 today!! You know what that means? He's an entire box of candles old...for the first time, we used every single candle in the box. It filled up the cake. Anyway, he has asked for what my dad calls a "structurally sound" cake for the past couple years, so that's what I made. Chocolate cake, chocolate icing, and some kind of chocolate topping. It's a little overwhelming, but delicious!  

Happy Birthday, Christopher!!

Charley's

Tonight we were invited to a dinner at Charley's, a restaurant downtown on the "waterfront". I know what you're thinking..."there's a waterfront in Farmville??" Well, I'm not actually sure, I didn't see it! The Appomattox River runs right through town and the restaurant is right along the river, but I didn't happen to see it while there. The food was delicious, and the restaurant is considered one of the best in Farmville. We had a fun time and met some good people, but I'm just still surprised at the restaurant's name!

Weekends

Sundays are great days.

This was last weekend, but I enjoyed the same sentiment this week having breakfast with family and friends on Saturday and Sunday. I love being able to sleep in a little bit, get up and spend time enjoying the people you love while wearing sweatpants and relaxing.

Five County Fair

I've never been to a fair before, and heard that one was coming to our area - the Five County Fair. With Lauren in town, we decided to go. It was definitely an experience and we had a lot of fun!

We got to see tons of animals including goats, cows, horses, roosters, sheep, chickens, and turkeys. I guess a few farms in the area sign up to show their animals there.

We got to see prize winning pumpkins, watermelons, gourds, and even the first prize sunflower.

We rode rides and enjoyed the ferris wheel. Chris got this picture of us as we were waiting to be let off the ride.

We even saw a few sights I've never seen before (umm.. deep fried Snickers bars??)

All-in-all we had a wonderful night! It was an interesting experience going to the fair in rural VA!

Adventures in Coaching

One of the many aspects of coaching college ball is recruiting, and it's probably the aspect that I know the least about. You put me on a basketball court with 10 guys and I'm totally in my comfort zone and ready to go. You put me on a phone with a high school player or high school coach who I'm trying to give a spiel about Hampden-Sydney to, and that's a different story. I've been doing a good amount of work with the soccer team so far here, because that's my responsibility as assistant sports information director. But now that I've kind of got that job down for the most part, I'm trying to get more involved with the basketball coaching stuff.
So yesterday I was getting ready to make my first recruiting call of my coaching career. It was to a high school coach in Georgia who has two players that we are looking at, so I call him up, and I get his voicemail. I'm leaving a message just saying who I was, where I'm calling from, we're interested in some of your players, and as I'm leaving my phone number, I start choking on a piece of a granola bar I had eaten about 10 minutes earlier. I had to stop talking, cough a bunch of times, say excuse me and try to finish giving him my phone number even though I could still feel that little bit of granola still in my throat. And then I basically hung up the phone as fast as I could. First ever recruiting call and I start choking on a piece of granola bar. That can't be good, can it?

Greenfront

While Lauren was here, we took her to Greenfront Furniture, a huge furniture store in town. Greenfront basically keeps Farmville afloat - they have 15 warehouses downtown storing and selling everything you can think of. If you want something in leather, you go to warehouse 9, if you want high-end stuff, you go to #3 (not the real numbers, but you get the picture). Anyway, when you enter one warehouse, they give you a labeled walking map of where you can find whatever you could hope for within their warehouses. We ended up taking Lauren to the clearance warehouse for accessories (and some furniture). As you can see - she loved it! There are all sorts of good deals there on mirrors and pictures, down to a vast assortment of unidentifiable objects. She accumulated quite a bit of stuff and got a great deal for all of it.

Game day

In order to get in the mood for the Redskins game yesterday, Lauren, Chris and I went out to kick field goals on the field next to our house. Surprisingly, all three of us got the ball over the crossbeam!

Then we headed back inside to make some Mexican dip for game time. Lauren and Chris chopped in front of the TV while I got the rest of the stuff ready. Look at what pros they are with those knives and chopping boards!

The dip:

And at the end of the day, the Skins won, so all was well in the Stratton household.

Sister time

Taking a leaf out of my mom and her sisters' books, Lauren and I decided to have our own "sisters weekend". She came down to visit yesterday and we had a wonderful time! It was really fun and relaxing and we got to catch up on all the goings-on in our lives. Even Chris had a good time and was good-humored about putting up with our antics.

Today's Farmville Moment - Homicide

So today's Farmville Moment is not a happy one, but I wanted to let everyone know that Chris and I are safe in case you've heard the news. There was a quadruple homicide in our neighborhood on the street behind us. The police caught their suspect earlier this morning, but the story seems pretty gruesome. I figured Farmville would be so much safer and quieter than D.C. but I guess things like this can happen anywhere.

Taking things to a new level

I know some may think it's lame, but I love the Harry Potter series. I've thought they were wonderful ever since I started reading the books in 8th grade when my sister got one for Christmas. I've preordered them as they've come out, read them all multiple times, seen all the movies, and just generally love the books and characters.

Anyway, Chris found this the other day. When I read it, I was kind of shocked. A theme park completely based on the world created in Harry Potter! I think my surprise was just that while I knew the books were immensely popular, I wasn't sure they would turn into timeless classics (i.e. something people would invest millions of dollars in, around which to create a permanent theme park). I mean, that stuff is reserved for superheros and characters like Mickey Mouse, along with the rest of the Disney franchise. While I wouldn't make a trip out of visiting, if I ever found myself nearby, I would definitely check it out.

Who else gets frustrated with wireless internet?

It can't just be me! We bought a brand new router about 3 weeks ago because we lost the antenna on our old one and the signal wasn't very strong anymore. We used to use D-link, who had wonderful customer support and it always worked. This time we bought Linksys because we had heard pretty good things and knew people who had used them in the past. The new router never worked quite right, but I was always able to fiddle with the settings a little bit to make it work a little longer until yesterday. Yesterday the router would connect and then stop working about every 10 minutes. I would have to go unplug it and let it restart and then lo-and-behold, it would work for another 10 minutes and stop again. SO...over the past two days I have spent close to 3 hours on the phone (a total of 4 different calls) going through trouble-shooting, and each time the people from Linksys told me they would be happy to upgrade my firmware for a small fee of $39.99. Anyway, I was not about to get taken advantage of, especially since my router was brand new, so I pitched a verbal fit until they told me how to upgrade my firmware for free on my own. It's been about 15 minutes and so far so good... The thing is, I don't mind paying for service, but when you spend so much money on a product, it should work!! Sorry for the rant, but I was very frustrated with the hoops I just had to jump through to get my product to function properly.

**UPDATE 9/20/09** The router didn't work after upgrading firmware so we took it back and got another one. We bought another Linksys (I don't know why!) and it had problems as well. After they asked me to pay money to upgrade the one I bought that morning, I got fed up with them and returned it for a different brand (netgear). The new one has worked perfectly for 48 hours so far :)

Ashtanga

Chris is out of town at a soccer match tonight so I decided to try to find something to keep myself busy. What I found was an Ashtanga Yoga class on
campus for free, so I decided to go check it out. I thought it was going to be some relaxing stretches and it was not! Let me tell you. It was intense. And it was almost 2 hours long! Apparently this style of yoga is different from other styles in that a lot of emphasis is placed on the "flow" from position to position - so basically there is no rest. I tried to keep up as best I could, but it was probably not a pretty sight. I definitely enjoyed taking a shot at it, though - here's to trying new things!

Have you tried anything new recently?

In action

This was the first weekend I was able to see Chris in action at his new job. There was a soccer tournament this weekend, so I went to watch. It was awesome. He got to sit up on this ridiculously high table and take stats so he could do the game summary later while I stood around and mingled/watched (kind of). H-SC has some pretty decent hecklers, so even though I went by myself, I was entertained for most of the game. I also accidentally made friends with another head coach in the ODAC who was scouting the team for their game Wednesday, but in my defense, I didn't know he was from another school until he got up to leave.

Today's Farmville Moment - Fireworks

We had heard there was a big celebration downtown this weekend to celebrate students being back in town and life in general picking back up again in this small town. When students come back for the year the population practically doubles, so you can imagine the change that makes. We decided to head downtown because we heard there was an 80's cover band, and then fireworks afterwards, and I love fireworks.

So now for today's Farmville moment: As we got close to town, we noticed we were walking by a line of firetrucks. All the sudden, we noticed we (and everyone else in town) were walking about 5 feet away from where the fireworks were going to be shot off. A police officer asked us to kindly walk around the firetruck so we would all be about 3 feet further from the launch site. I started getting nervous, but figured the police had the situation under control. Chris and I walked to the other side of the shopping area and up a big hill just to be safe. This put us about 50-75 feet away from the cordoned off area - still far far closer than I had ever been to legitimate fireworks before, so I thought they may be just a tiny display or something. Anyway, we were sure to be safe because other people were standing way closer. Well, they were regular size fireworks and I screamed like a girl (because I am one) when they started going off. To see where they actually burst, I had to crane my neck at a 90 degree angle and look directly up at the sky. I was trying to duck behind the brick building at the top of the hill when the fireworks started reigning down and as I looked into the crowd I saw people running. Every time a flame came down the group standing below it would panic and scatter. The event was both terrifying and exhilarating at the same time. By the time the display was over, some people were cheering and others were starting a mass exodus from the parking lot. All in all, a good night.

Lunch

I'm making friends at work. Today a professor (apparently renowned on campus for being quite the chef) brought me lunch! It was delicious and much better than what I would have made for myself. I still haven't met many females quite my age, but I am starting to resign myself to the fact that there just may not be many people around here in that category. It's all right though because there is still the benefit of hanging out with somewhat older - and in many cases, wiser - ladies than me.

Flag football

Chris is on an intermural flag football team and last night was their first game. The team is made up primarily of coaches and I had gone to watch hoping that they'd do all right. It started raining near the beginning of the second half, but it didn't matter...they won by mercy rule and the game ended early. After watching the game, I kind of felt bad for the students playing against them. Maybe they shouldn't let coaches who for the most part have all played varsity sports in college play against freshmen halls.

Neighbors Day?

I was given a rose today at work! I am not sure whether this is an actual thing or not, but when I got the flower I was told "Happy Neighbors Day!" I said thank you, but they were in a rush that I didn't have time to ask them about the "holiday". So of course my next step was to google it. I couldn't find much on the subject, but I really appreciated the flower, anyway! Does anyone out there know anything about this day??

Today's Farmville moment

There are many times going through my day when I think, "Wow...this would ONLY happen in Farmville." I think I may start sharing them. But before I do, I want to clarify. I actually like living here quite a bit so far! Hampden-Sydney is wonderful and the people down here are so much nicer than anywhere I've lived before. I don't mind the slightly slower pace of life, either. I can feel good enjoying myself without feeling pressure to aspire, achieve, accomplish at every turn (though it's obviously still in my nature to do those things!). My main point being this:  despite what may sound like complaining in these posts, I'm really not. Honestly, these things just seriously surprise me!

So now today's Farmville moment:  Chris bought me a watch for my birthday. My old watch had fallen off due to a loose clasp somewhere between our apartment, the laundry room, and Leesburg. Anyway, he got me a new one and I was very excited to start wearing it...but it's huge! I need to get a couple of the clasps taken out so it won't fall off when I wear it. After work we set out to get that taken care of. We started out at Belk because I knew they were somewhat like a department store. They sold watches there, so I figured we were set. No. We were not. The sales lady told me someone has to be specially trained to take links out of watches, you know, in case they mess up. Fail. We decided to go to Wal-mart. They also sell watches. But I handed over my watch to the lady behind the jewelry counter and she said no deal; she couldn't do it either. I would have to take my watch to a jewelry store and they could do it for me. Obviously the next thing I asked was whether she could direct me to a jewelry store. And guess what she said! "Sure thing, drive to Richmond or Charlottesville." Can you believe it?! Not a SINGLE place in Farmville that can take a couple links out of my watch. Lame.

Car

We bought a car this weekend! It's a gray Nissan Altima and it drives well! After 5 weeks of sharing a car, we are ready to be a little more mobile again (esp. Chris, who has been the one relying on others for rides).

I'm not going to lie, I have loved carpooling together every morning to work and since I normally go to the grocery on my way home, it forces Chris to come with me, which is also nice. One thing I won't miss, though, is waiting up for Chris to get back from soccer road trips and driving back to campus at night to pick him up.

L'burg

In Leesburg!

This is the first chance I've had to come visit my family in town since we moved in July. I love the town of Leesburg. And I love my family...so it's a win-win situation for me! I am heading back tomorrow morning but even being here for just a day has been very nice. I got to hang out with Lauren, go to TARGET! (if you don't know why I'm so excited about going to Target, then you have never been to Farmville.), spend time with my brother (who also came home from his place up in PA for the weekend), and eat dinner/watch football with my parents. [By the way, GO TRIBE! Way to beat UVA.] All in all it's been a good, albeit short, trip.

Who out there has Monday off for Labor Day?

Buggs Island

One of the first weekends we were down here in Hampden-Sydney, we joined some of the coaches heading down to Buggs Island Lake.

It's nice being close to huge lakes again! We went out on a boat and Chris had his first opportunity to try water skiing. He did okay for his first try but wasn't too successful before the boat broke down and we had to get a tow back to the dock. I really wanted to go but I didn't think I'd be able to hang onto the rope with my shoulder still hurting. While I'm really excited about the cooler weather now, I'm bummed we didn't get to go back to the lake more recently to give waterskiing another shot. Guess I'll have to wait until the next lake-family reunion in the summer.

Basement

We have a creepy basement. Seriously creepy. It is really dark, damp, dirty; it has spiderwebs and spiders, bugs and scary sounds. Anyway, there is really no need to go down there except that our laundry is housed down there. There's no way to get into the basement except by going outside and walking down these steep, narrow, and crumbling stairs! They're so narrow that if you're carrying a standard laundry basket width-ways, you may scrape your knuckles on the wall on the way down. Needless to say - Chris does the laundry and I just fold it once it's back in the house :) I am definitely not looking forward to doing laundry once it snows or ices over.. those stairs are going to be dangerous! But the positive part is, we now have laundry in the house and a place to store a bike if we ever get one (both of which we didn't have at our last home)!

Distinguishing between foods

Do you ever just eat without thinking because the food is there? Even if you're not hungry?

The other day, Chris and I were in the car and I was passing him goldfish as he drove. He would eat one and I would pass him more. After about 5 minutes of this, I passed him a pretzel instead. He didn't notice, so I kept giving him goldfish afterwards again. He had no clue that he had eaten a pretzel! I have to say, pretzels and goldfish taste nothing alike and pretzels are a lot harder than goldfish, but even after I told him he had eaten a pretzel, he didn't realize!

So have you ever eaten something without thinking and realized later it was actually something else? I know Lauren has - and it involves a Christmas tree light that she thought was a piece of candy, but I'll let her tell her own story :)