farewell savannah!

we're outta savannah and into HOTlanta! the move went GREAT, we have very great friends. Angela was especially amazing, she basically single-handedly cleaned our entire apartment, and helped me out with packing and stuff, for two and a half days. I don't think we would've gotten it done without her.

So now we're at Sam & Nicole's place just south of Atlanta, our stuff is in a POD for the month, and starting Monday, Chris and I start figuring out what our lives are going to look like in the ATL.

We're tired.

sleepless night

Well... I don't know the best way to "tell" this story. It probably won't be eloquent. I'm rather sleep-deprived. Last night, just as I was finally dozing off to sleep, around 12:30am, I hear what I thought was a gunshot outside our bedroom window. It freaked me out, but Chris wasn't sure it was actually a gunshot, plus we can't see out our bedroom windows anyways, so we just tried to go back to sleep. Then just as I was falling BACK to sleep, we heard a bunch of gunshots all at once (I think I counted ten) right outside. This time we were sure of what we heard, so Chris called the police, and was told that a call had already been made and police were on their way. The strange thing was that we didn't hear anyone talking outside (back behind our apartment is a seedy bar, and we usually hear people out there until all hours of the night, so you'd think if someone was shot outside, people would be making some noise). Chris said "probably someone shot into the air." Within a couple of minutes, there were cop cars EVERYWHERE, and the whole block by our apartment was blocked off. Chris managed to get enough of a glimpse out the window to see cops running around everywhere, see someone put into an ambulance, and then see a police officer inspecting the ground about 15 feet from our bedroom window. Of course at this time we really couldn't sleep, and we were half expecting a police officer to ring the doorbell to see if we knew anything.

After a while of trying to look out windows to see what was happening, we realized we really need to try and get some sleep. Chris had to be up at 5:30am to open the coffee shop, and I had a 90 minute drive and a 12 hour work day ahead of me the next morning. So, of course, it took us a long time to finally fall back to sleep, and I was just barely falling asleep AGAIN when we heard knocking, at 2:30am. We're used to people ringing the doorbell if they need to get us, because the door to our apartment is inside of another locked door, and if anyone knocks on that door, we can't hear it. So Chris opens our door to investigate the noise, and is surprised to see a cop standing there, asking if we heard anything. Chris told him what we knew (gunshot at 12:30, lotsa shots at 12:50, the end). And the officer left. So needless to say, we didn't exactly get any sleep.

This morning I did a google news search for the incident and found this article, which tells me that a man was murdered outside our apartment. Just a little scary. Needless to say, we're REALLY happy to be leaving ghetto downtown Savannah in under three weeks.

Computer in a Coma, and a Life Update

Yesterday my computer decided to quit working. I think the hard-drive died. It came as quite a shock. For those of you that don't know, basically everything I do requires that machine. I am a freelance designer, which requires the computer. I manage a business for our PEZ documentary, where all the records are kept on that machine. And I am a graphic design & web design teacher, and when I'm not at the school I need to check emails from students and grade assignments for the online class I teach. So I'm going through a bit of withdrawal today.

We still have Chris's computer to check emails and do a LITTLE bit of necessary work, but, well, Chris's computer sucks. It doesn't have all my software on it. And while I actually have a work laptop that I could, in theory, work on, that one started acting funny a week ago and I need to take it in to work to have the tech guys look at it, because right now I can only boot it up in safe mode. So I'm kind of being forced to do less on the computer and more in the real world for a while. It's probably a blessing in disguise, but right now I'm expecting to start displaying symptoms of withdrawal... like the shakes, or nausea.

What this DOES mean is that I have no excuse NOT to start packing up our home while I'm computer-less. Why would I start packing up my home, you ask? Well... we've officially decided to move to Atlanta. In three weeks. It's a really long story with lots of pieces to it, but the short version is that Chris and I really feel this is where the Lord is leading us, and so we have made the decision to step out in faith and follow, trusting that the Lord will put together the pieces in His timing. The middle of June is when my classes end for the quarter, so at that time we're going to move up the the Atlanta area and start looking for apartments, finalize jobs, etc. Chris's brother and our new sister-in-law have offered to let us stay in their apartment for a month while they're out of town, so we're taking them up on it. It's going to be a crazy ride, but we're looking forward to it all. We're just really ready to get out of Savannah, and we feel that now is the time. As things become more finalized, I'll post updates. For now I don't want to start talking about things we haven't confirmed. But that's what we know.

St. Patrick's Day in Savannah

Saturday was, of course, St. Patrick's Day. And Savannah has a pretty huge parade in the morning, then an even larger drunken party at night. We went to the former. The weather was nice, and the parade was hard to navigate through, but we walked through pretty much the whole parade route. Chris took lots of photos, so I put a few up on my flickr page. Check 'em out.

my favorite month of the year? perhaps!

I think this may be my favorite month of every year. March is a great month anyways... in the south it's when everything is blooming and green and the temperature is nice ... and on top of that, THIS week is just filled with random fake holidays - some of my favorite fake holidays at that! Let us start with Wednesday, 3.14, which is Pi Day... the day you eat pie and act like a dork by wishing people a happy Pi Day and no one knows what you're talking about. This is immediately followed by 3.15, the day Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 BC (you know, "Beware the Ides of March!") ... finally, we have 3.17, Saint Patrick's Day, the day you're suppose to wear green and talk about the "Luck o' the Irish" and eat shamrock cookies. This is especially a fun day in Savannah, because they have a huge St. Patrick's Day parade, everything closes down, and everyone hangs out outside and drinks too much and wears silly green attire. The fountains have all be "greened" with food coloring, there will be much bagpipes and celtic music everywhere... I love Irish stuff, I don't know why. But for some reason I've always loved St. Patricks Day. It's just so random. This year it falls on a Saturday, so there will be more hooplah than usual, because people will come in from all over for the celebration. I'm glad I already live downtown and don't have to fight traffic to go to anything. Chris and I will probably just walk around and check things out. Some people will camp out in the squares to get prime spots for the parade.

And this, dear friends, is why I love mid-march. The End.

Epilogue: did I mention I love the end of March because it's Chris and My anniversary? This year we'll be in PORTLAND, OREGON for our anniversary, which is really stellar. Last year we went to NYC. Much enjoyment, indeed!

Fall Back!

Well, I decided it was my civic duty last spring to post a Spring Forward reminder, so I figured I should do the same for all you peeps relying on me to remind you when it's time to Fall Back. And Saturday night it is! We get 2am TWICE on Saturday night, and an extra hour of glorious sleeps.

I, for one, will be most greatful for the extra hour of glorious sleeps, because this weekend is the beginning of the busiest 10 days of my year (at least), and the beginning of the Savannah Film Festival, which Chris and I will going to all week. If you haven't been following along and you don't know why we're going to the film festival and why it matters, it's because we've made a movie and it will be playing at the film festival, which means we get fancy all-access passes and can go to all the shows and panel discussions. Rockin fun times. Then my only brother is gettin' hitched during the closing weekend of the festival, so we'll be missing out on the last two days of the festival because we're going down to south Florida for the wedding. It'll be exciting! I'm looking forward to seeing all my family that's making the trek down for the wedding.

Okay, too many things to do, I've done my update and warned you of the time change, so I'm off to be productive.

The Case of the Missing Wheel

While Chris is galavanting all over New England for the PEZ movie, I had my own adventure Tuesday morning in Savannah, when I left my apartment to drive 90 minutes to work only to discover that my car only had 3 wheels. The other one was stolen and replaced with an old car battery which propped the car up. (yes, the whole wheel. Rim & tire. This seems to be a common question). The last thing I had stolen from me in Savannah was a bike tire off my bike, so obviously the criminals that prowl my street like rubber. And of course this would happen the first time ever that Chris has gone out of town without me since before we were married. And while everyone else I know in this town is out of the state for vacation. (This all sounds oddly familiar, because the last time I was left all alone without Chris or anyone else I knew in town, my water tank exploded on the road and I came down with an terrible stomach flu and could hardly get out of bed, let alone take care of myself).

At any rate, I spent Tuesday morning talking to police, buying lugnuts to fasten the spare doughnut to the car (thanks to some friendly officers who took me to the car supply place and put the wheel on for me), hunting down a rim that fit my car (two junkyards later), and finally waiting at Sam's for an hour to have the rim and a new tire put on the car (I was the first person TO Sam's but somehow at least 3 cars were serviced before mine... I even overheard someone telling the girl working the counter that I should have been in front of these other people). So I was massively late to work, but luckily made it in time to teach my classes. And I didn't even break down in tears. Being the big sissy I am, that's saying something. I did, however, wake Chris up to whine to him and call both my parents more than once during this whole mess.

Unfortunately, at the moment I can't say I learned anything from this ordeal, other than I should never let my husband leave the state without me.

As for Chris, he's in New Jersey today, and will be in Connecticut, New York City, and Washington DC tomorrow, and hopefully will be on his way home to me Friday. He's got all kinds of exciting stuff happening, which he'll be talking about at Making of PEZheads - The Movie when he gets a breather.

back in savannah

Well, we're back in Savannah, after almost a full week of visiting family in Florida. We haven't been down to visit our parents since we moved to Savannah, so we figured we had to get down there (and good that we did, with all that was going on with Chris's mom). Anyways, we had a very busy long week, with a LOT of traveling (with $3 gas!!!) So I just had to map out our trek. You'll find that numbered below.

1. We started out last Wednesday night, driving the 8 hours to Fort Myers (where my family lives) but made a short pitstop in Gainesville to have dinner with a couple friends to break up the drive a little.


2. We spent two days in Fort Myers, hanging out with my family.


3. Drove to Lakeland Saturday, where Chris's family lives


4. Sunday we made a short trek back to Fort Meade to visit Chris's grandparents


5. Tuesday we headed out, stopping in Orlando to meet my sister-in-law's boyfriend


6. After killing a couple hours in Orlando, we made our way up to Jacksonville, where we had dinner with my brother and his girlfriend, then drove the rest of the way home to Savannah.

Yes, we had a busy but productive week.

And now that I'm back, I have a cold. blah. go figure.