may days.

Monday night this week Nate surprised me with a date night. As soon as I got home from work, we drove down to Franklin and saw a matinee of The Avengers. It was good, kind of what I expected for an action-packed movie about comic book superheroes, but it was also much funnier than I expected. Just a lot of little quips and nonchalant and witty remarks. My favorite was when someone said, "How did they get them to be their flying monkeys?" Thor: "Monkeys?" Captain America: "I get it. I get the reference."

After the movie we went to dinner at Chuy's. The Monday night special was enchiladas blancas, so that's what I got. Well the menu said it was made with spicy sour cream sauce. Didn't seem too unusual but it was SPICY!!! sour cream sauce. I could only down one of my two enchiladas and I may or may not have chugged more than one glass of water and handfuls of tortilla chips in order to do so. So I wouldn't recommend that dish but Chuy's is usually pretty good otherwise.

Tuesday afternoon my friend Kierston was in Nashville. She is moving here in two weeks! We've known each other since first grade, probably one of my oldest friends. I hadn't seen her in five years (since my sister's wedding) but we caught up and laughed a lot, and it hardly seemed like much time had passed at all. Since my zoo membership is expiring at the end of the month, we took advantage of a "free" trip to the zoo. Not many people are at the zoo on a Tuesday afternoon, but the animals were pretty active. It was fun. I'm trying to decide if I should renew my membership; Nate has two more years before he finishes school, so it's pretty guaranteed we won't leave Nashville before he graduates, not that we have any plans to leave really. You make up the cost of a 2-yr membership in like two visits so it's definitely worth it.

I took Kierston to Baja Burrito for dinner (a local Nashville eatery) and then we went to Sweet Cece's in the Gulch for dessert. Then we went to Centennial Park. This is Kierston in front of the Parthenon. After the park, we went by Starbucks because Nate was working. Then we did a quick drive down lower Broadway and called it a night. We hung out for a bit on Wednesday night before she flew back to Kansas Thursday morning. I'm excited to have another Kansas friend in the city. I'll have to get back into the swing of cooking so we can invite her over.

The blueberries on the bushes in my front yard are getting big and very blue! They are starting to lean so I need to stake them. I have no idea how to tell if they are ripe. These are still pretty firm. July is National Blueberry Month so maybe that's when they'll be ready. I'll have to Google it. There could potentially also be strawberries in our backyard from when I planted them two summers ago, but I didn't box them or anything and Kevin regularly mows over them so I'm not sure they'll come up.

I came across a video on YouTube of kittens riding a Roomba and started thinking how dirty our floors get with cat hair and litter and those Roomba things look pretty nifty. I looked into them, and they are stinkin' expensive! But then … Craiglist! There was a guy selling his that he had only used twice (he didn't need it anymore because he bought a Dyson) and he was asking for just 30% of the retail price. So we used Nate's tip money and bought it from him with a "this thing works" guarantee. (I've watched enough Judge Judy to know that everything is considered "as is" unless you get an agreement in writing; in this case I got him to agree via e-mail, so we're safe.)

But it works great! I'm not exactly sure what its strategy is. It kind of moves around until it runs into a wall or something, not in a back and forth or up and down pattern like I use when I vacuum. We pretty much need to move everything off the floor (including chairs) for it to be most effective. It's easy to empty and does a good job. Pretty good deal. Oh, but the only thing is it scares the beejeezus out of Miles and Otis!

Nate doesn't like me to go to Great Clips (and I agree; I have never left that place and felt pretty which is kind of how you should feel after you get a haircut) but I didn't really know of a good salon in Nashville. But I found the best rated one online, and Nate's former roommate (Joey) is dating a girl (Laura) who cuts hair there. The place is Style Kitchen on 8th Ave. S., and it's priced like your typical salon but they got me in the same day I called for an appointment and they wash and style your hair and spend an hour with you. My hair felt plain and straight and blah so I wanted to go back to shorter hair. So that's what she did and change is fun. Otis looks kind of drugged in this picture haha but I promise he's not. I just grabbed him as a prop so it wouldn't be like "Oh hey, I'm taking a picture of myself!"

I'm glad tomorrow is Friday because I am ready for a weekend to rest. I'm on Day 10 of my 30 days with a heart monitor, and this week I'm on a beta blocker. They're messing around with different medications so all in all I feel pretty awful with side effects/withdrawal symptoms. The metoprolol mostly just makes me nauseated and sleepy because it drops my blood pressure but my heart rate has been back in the high 50s instead of 120s so that's good, and my monitor alarm hasn't gone off like it did almost every day last week due to arrhythmias.

Nate has two test to take tomorrow and then a 10-page paper and a handful of 1-page reading response papers to finish before June 1, and then he's done for the summer! We thought about him maybe taking a class this summer but he has things going on with church and is still working full time and I miss him so he might just take the summer off. He probably is two years (4 semesters) away from getting his M.Div.

We want to go somewhere and take a little vacation to celebrate our first anniversary this summer, but it's hard to figure out when we can get off work and for how long. My work schedule is pretty busy this summer because I have some major August deadlines. I'd love to go to the beach or Appalachians or something, but we also haven't been back to Kansas since Christmas. I am going to see my sister, JR, Mom, and Mark over Memorial Day weekend in Columbia (without Nate unfortunately). Not too excited about a 14-hr roundtrip drive but it'll be good to see the fam.