out like a lion.

_

We've seen some pretty nice days in Nashville this month, but the last few have been frigid. Fortunately we're expecting 75° on Sunday, which is a nice 30-degree warm-up from today. Signs of spring are all around though and that makes me really happy. We went to Sam and Anne's for dinner last night, and there is a lovely tree blooming just outside their window. Around mid-January, I was convinced it would be winter forever.

This morning in the dark of 6:15 a.m., I was driving on the interstate to go to work and at one point I have 0.25 miles to move two lanes to the right for exit 209A. I've talked about this before and it is my least favorite part of the drive. I do not like merging/changing lanes in Nashville. Usually traffic is pretty light this early in the morning, but this morning all the cars in front of me were braking and all the cars behind me were pulling up on them fast, and no one would let me over! I was going to take plan B (also known as exit 209B) but I couldn't get over there either!

I pretended those drivers could hear me and (among other things) thanked them for not letting me exit, then I and continued 2.5 miles to the next exit on the north side of downtown. It was dark. The sun was not yet up and as soon as I took the ramp, I found myself in a mess of an unfamiliar construction zone. So I'm heading up the ramp toward the stop light when I look to the right and—good grief!—there goes a small narrow lane nested between two orange barrels veering south … and I realize I am now in a left-turn-only-so-you-may-only-go-north lane. Great. I continued north until I could turn around and hit 8th Ave. straight into downtown, my typical commute time doubled from 12 to 24 minutes. This is the first time I've had to resort to plan C (which I developed as plan B was passing me by) and (because I'm a leave-the-house-15-minutes-earlier-than-necessary kind of person) I still made it to work on time.


Wedding details … 101 days. I am meeting with a florist on Monday evening! She's going to see if we can put something together that fits in my budget. I was really proud of myself for making an appointment because I am finally doing tangible things.

Now if only we can figure out where to go on our honeymoon. We have free Southwest flights via Rapid Rewards (unfortunately they're under what I call the "Old Covenant" so we can't fly whenever or wherever we want) and they expire in August so we want to use them.