Team Savoy

Earlier this month, D and I took a trip to Florida. He had a convention in Orlando, so I flew into Tampa to visit my friend Jenn for a few days while he sat in a convention center and learned about computer stuff. I had a great time in Tampa, it was nice to catch up with her and I got to spend some quality time with her son. I am now a pro at peeling off crayon wrappers and also learned that Blue from Blue’s Clues is actually a girl. Who knew?

We also spent a day at the beach which gave me my first sunburn - I mean, tan- of the summer. And don’t even try to lecture me about wearing sunblock. Trust me, I use plenty of sunblock. Some of us (me) will burn no matter how much SPF we are wearing, unless we spend the entire time at the beach camped out in the shade (which I have done before). Others of us (my husband) select their sun “protection” (I’m using quotes because can you really consider SPF 5 to be protection?) based on which one smells like coconut. But, I digress.  

On Thursday, I rented a car and headed to Orlando. D had secured a ticket for me to the big party that is always held on the last night of this convention. Most of Universal Studios was shut down for the party and everything was free. Food, drinks, rides, games. It’s a crazy experience to walk around a theme park and have people standing on every corner handing out chips, M&Ms, cotton candy, and turkey legs for free when normally each of the aforementioned items would run you about $8. D and his friend Tim took full advantage of every beer stand we passed. I think it improved their hand-eye coordination.

The next day, we headed to D’s parents’ house in North Ft. Myers. Highlights of our visit included a round of golf for D and his dad, a shopping trip for me and D’s mom, a fiercely competitive card game with two of D’s neices, an almost dance performance by his other niece (how about now, Kelley? ), a golf cart ride, a trip to the pool (aka sunburn #2), and dinner at D’s sister’s house. Unfortunately, I have no pictures of any of these highlights because for some reason I stopped taking pictures after Thursday. So, instead I will leave you with a picture of us on the golf cart during last year’s trip.

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It’s finally that time of year again! This Saturday was opening weekend for the Urbana Farmer’s Market. It’s about the only thing that can get us out of bed at a reasonable hour on a Saturday. And after months of cold, snowy, rainy, icy, depressing weather, it was great to stroll around with our coffee in hand, taking in all the market has to offer.

Our first stop was the C-U Herb Society’s sale inside Lincoln Square.

Then, it was onto the market.

In addition to produce, you can also find meat & poultry

plus crafts…

and entertainment.

I’ll be honest, though. This is what I really came for:

Ah, kettle corn. How I’ve missed your sweet and salty goodness.

I was sleeping soundly early Friday morning until about 4:30 a.m. when I woke up and realized the bed was shaking, as if D was trembling uncontrollably next to me. So, I sat up and looked over at him at about the same time he sat up and looked at me. I put my hand on his leg and he put his hand on my arm and we were both looking at each other like, “Are you okay? No, are you okay?” Then, I realized our semi-empty water glasses on the nightstand were rattling. “What is that?” I asked. D answered, “I think it’s just a train…” before stumbling out of bed to look out our bathroom window. Which would have made more sense if you could actually see the train tracks from there. Or any other window in the house.

Anyway, he comes back and says, “Yeah, it’s just a train…” Which sort of made sense since we could hear the familiar horn of a train in the distance. I jokingly replied, “Are you sure it wasn’t an earthquake or something?” Instead, we dismissed it as nothing and went back to sleep. Because when was the last time we had an earthquake here? Tornados, maybe. But, not earthquakes. Besides, aren’t dogs supposed to be really in tune to stuff like that? Ours pretty much snored through the whole thing.

The next morning, D was looking through the local papers online and found that all the main articles were about the earthquake that shook central Illinois. Huh. Who knew? Thanks a lot for the heads up, Emma.

So, I made a trip to Schnucks today to pick up some allergy medicine because all of this fabulous fresh air makes me sneeze. When I left, I drove through the Pages For All Ages parking lot. As I began to slow down for the stop sign at the crosswalk, I noticed an older gentleman using one of those walkers with wheels making his way to the entrance. By the time I reached a complete stop, he had shuffled about halfway through. It was at that very moment that someone nearby honked their horn, which caused the older gentleman to halt his progress and look up at me as if to say, “Are you kidding me?” Meanwhile, the people in the van on the other side of the crosswalk looked at me with total disgust for being so rude. I tried to make a variety of hand motions while mouthing, “That wasn’t me! It wasn’t me! Not my horn!” However, I don’t think anyone understood and I felt like a total jackass even though I hadn’t done anything except try to get some sinus and allergy relief for the day.

On Saturday we took a drive over to Bloomington so D could buy some wood for the desk he is building. It’s a good thing the back seat folds down in my awesome Chevy Cavalier or we would have had to throw the wood on top of the car and one-arm it the whole way home. In your face, BMW.

After leaving the wood store, we met up with Christa & Kent for lunch at the restaurant formerly known as Delgado’s. It was great to see them since it had been a few months and those two are always good for a laugh. We’ll definitely have to meet up again sometime soon, maybe after the release of the Aerosmith edition of Guitar Hero! After lunch, we checked out the new (to me, anyway) Shoppes at College Hills. I’m glad to see they have done something with that area since it was pretty vacant when I was at ISU.

I would also like to brag that in a fit of spring cleaning, I eliminated 3 garbage bags full of clothes from my closet yesterday. Seeing all that empty closet space makes me want to go shopping. I wonder what Christian would think of my remaining wardrobe…

Team Savoy’s blog has been on hiatus for awhile because, well… we’ve been too lazy to post anything. I’ve been reading a lot more blogs lately and find myself wishing I could post some entries of my own. Since our old site was originally designed for wedding purposes, we needed to give it a facelift. I hope you enjoy the new look, we picked it in the hopes that it will help bring spring to Illinois. Seriously. Enough already with the cold!

On a random note, today is Good Friday and on the way back to my office after lunch I saw a guy wearing a robe and a crown of thorns with (hopefully fake) blood trickling down his face, carrying a large wooden cross down Neil Street. Now there’s something you don’t see every day.