3 years weekend: a play-by-play

I'm not one to post exactly what I did in a day. In most posts, I'd rather waste my time constructing sentences that have to deal with hating Hello Kitty, talking about some bit of technology, work, or the something like that. But this weekend was so spectacularly awesome, I just thought I'd spread the love by sharing every little detail. Okay, I'll hold back...But just a little. ;)

Thursday evening

Kyle and I had already budgeted and planned for dropping some dough on a serious dinner. We decided on 1620 in West Little Rock. Everything was YUM. And yes, I explicitly use "YUM" as an adjective. We started out with the calamari (okay, which was only 50% YUM), I had braised short ribs, and Kyle had a 14 oz. steak. We even held out for a souffle for dessert - oh, so delicious. It was a weekend started off right, for sure.

Friday

Friday started out in a pretty interesting fashion. Kyle & I had planned on meeting Jen Abrams (of The Hydra Cooler Podcast and Fringe Dwellers Podcast), who was making a trip from Texas to Tennessee. We ended up meeting at a Starbucks near our house. For the most part, it was enjoyable conversation. Until they started to talk about sci fi and I completely tuned them out and started taking pictures with the camera. Pictures (with my own personalized captions) to follow in a post, soon. =)

After our chat with Jen, we headed to get both of our cars' oil changed. That meant me driving to the Toyota dealership where we purchased my Camry, and then we headed over to what I've always called the "Bad Karma Wal-Mart."

No joke. Every time I go into this Wal-Mart, I have a terrible experience. Someone has been shot at this Wal-Mart. Enough said, right? Luckily, this experience was painless. We picked up a few snacks for our road trip, and Kyle got his oil changed. Then a friend of ours picked us up and drove us to the GameStop nearby where they reserved their copies of GOW2. (I have pictures of this experience as well)

Then about an hour later, we headed up to Fayetteville.

Part of our anniversary weekend was an agreement between Kyle and I that I would attempt to catch up on the one billion episodes of Heroes that I still haven't watched. I sat content in the passengers' seat during the short 2.5 hour drive and watched a few episodes. Almost to season 3, folks!

Our hotel was modest and right off the interstate. It was the only hotel in the city with a whirlpool tub, or at least it was the only one I could find after 20 minutes of searching on the internet. We dropped off our luggage, and decided to eat simple and familiar - at a P.F. Chang's in Rogers. Calamari, honey chicken, and wok-seared beef. YUM.

We shopped at a few places before watching the glorious and awesome film, Max Payne.

And by "glorious" and "awesome," I mean "sheer and utter poo." I appreciate Mark Wahlberg's acting chops (he's not hard on the eyes either), and I enjoy a video game action-filled flick, but it wasn't enough to carry me through the movie. I wasn't familiar with the game, so I'm curious to see how the film held up with the video game fans.

But, I have to poke fun at this film. I just have to. Every time I saw Mila Kunis, I almost laughed out loud. And Ludacris? And NELLY FURTADO? Okay, okay, I'll stop now.

Saturday

We lazily slept in until late morning, which was nice. It's nice to not have to worry about the 8 million things we normally have to do on any given Saturday. =)

We met up with Kyle's brother for lunch at a Foghorn's, a wing place that he recommended to us. I'm a wing fan, and they had 50 different sauces to choose from. 50! I settled with sweet lime and Jamaican jerk, Kyle had Oriental and Gold (mustard/barbecue). Sweet lime won. =)

Then we had a personal tour of the University of Arkansas campus. This was my first trip to Fayetteville (ever), and I was excited to see the stadium and campus. We parked and walked around for a bit. We took tons of pictures, walked, and took more pictures. The trees were turning, and the campus was absolutely beautiful. I had no perspective of how big the campus was -- I went to a university that sits on a pretty small-to-average-sized campus, but UofA is huge. And a lot more pretty than I thought it'd be.

After our tour of campus, we went to locally-famous Rick's Bakery to buy some petit fours and chocolate covered strawberries. I had a black and white cookie, which, in retrospect, I should have bought a dozen more of. And yes, you guessed it, they were YUM.

After parting with Tyler, we headed out to another mall (I think NWA mall?) and bought a bunch of new clothes for Kyle. It's nice that I can dress him up now and then. I was proud of him -- he very patient with me as I picked stuff out and rejected stuff and couldn't make up my mind about sweaters and shirts, etc etc etc. =)

After our shopping success, we drove around for a little while, then headed back to the hotel for a short nap. Or what we thought would be a short nap. We were supposed to be at a show on Dickson street (Needtobreathe/Gavin DeGraw) at 7:30. We fell asleep around 5 and didn't wake up until 7, so dinner was out of the question.

The concert was probably the worst experience (for both of us) of the weekend. I'm a live music fan, and Kyle is not, unless the venue includes such headliners as Michael Buble or...Michael Buble. We ended up standing and waiting for a total of 3 hours, only to hear 1 hour of music. Needtobreathe was awesome, but I can't say as much for Gavin DeGraw, unfortunately.

Sunday

Today wasn't quite as lively. We had another late night/morning, so we had lunch as soon as we checked out of the hotel under the advice of Tyler once again -- at Slim's Chicken. They had some amazing chicken tenders, with an awesome Slim's mayonaisse-based sauce. Oh yes, and seasoned fries, and sweet tea please.

We got back to Little Rock early evening and took care of some chores around the house -- yard work, steam cleaning the carpet, unpacking, sweeping, you name it. It was a good productive end to a relaxing, but filling weekend.

The entire time, I kept staring at Kyle and thinking how much it meant to me that we were together, married for 3 years. It's still exciting. He still makes my heart flutter. He still makes me smile, and he still makes me laugh until it hurts. It was nice to hold hands and walk and talk together, just the two of us. It wasn't even as though we were just a 2.5 hour drive away. We were in our own little world that we were discovering, and the only people that mattered were us and each other.

Okay, my mush break is over. You know those silly surveys people forward to each other, and you fill them out just to pass the time? I haven't done one in...years, but thought it'd be a nice re-cap of our trip before I call it a night. =)

"3 years anniversary trip to Fayetteville"

Music listened to: Jennifer Hudson, Needtobreathe, Kina Grannis, Gavin DeGraw, Leona Lewis, Robbie Seay Band, Vampire Weekend

Snacks consumed: Me -- Cheetos, dried mangoes; Kyle -- sour patch kids, dried mangoes

Media consumed: Heroes, Fringe, House, Gossip Girl, Life

Favorite Meal: 1620

New Favorite Smell: Black Amethyst bubble bath from Bath & Body

Wish I Could've Spent a Ton of Money at: Any clothing store Kyle would let me enter, and Sephora =)

Favorite anniversary gift: Kyle's personalized shirt he bought for me online -- pictures in my next post =)

Favorite new snack: Cheetos Puffcorn

Biggest waste of time: Me -- Max Payne, Kyle -- Waiting for Needtobreathe/Gavin DeGraw

Favorite picture: Kyle and I sitting on the stairs of Old Main on the UofA campus

Okay, time for sleepy. Can't wait to edit these pictures and get them posted! =)