Adventure Number 1: Meet me in St. Louieeee!
The company D.H. works for flew the two of us to St Louis for a Cardinals game. They are headquartered in St Louis, and had rented a skybox and invited the out-o-towners to come visit. The trip started out rocky, but ended up being completely fantastic. When we got to the airport at 7:30, we waited in line to check in at the kiosk. Then we waited in line to check our bags, and by the time we got up there (29 minutes before our flight was scheduled to leave), we were told our bags couldn't be checked any less than 30 minutes before the flight, and we'd have to go "stand in that line over there." Yup, the 2-hour-long wait line. There was nothing he could do (except walk us over to one of the other computers and have them check our bags!! But naturally that would've been FAR too much to ask) so we waited in the loooong line and missed our flight, only to be told (by the same guy! Ugh!) That we should get to the airport 1 1/2 hours before our flight. "WE DID!" we kept saying, but they wouldn't listen. So they booked us on a flight for 5:00 that evening. We checked our bags right then (crossing our fingers they wouldn't lose them between now and then) and headed back to my house in Salt Lake, where we pretty much wasted the whole day. D.H. missed the dinner he was invited to, where he would've hob-nobbed with all the big wigs of his company. When we went back to the airport for the 5:00 flight, we had seats far apart from each other because they simply couldn't get us seats together on such short notice. Stupid Delta. I hate them.
Once we got to St Louis, we got our rental car (a Chrysler PT Cruiser!) and made our way to the hotel. We checked in, found the elevators, and located our room, I took two steps inside and stopped short and said, "is this a smoking room??" The bell-hop assured me there were no smoking rooms in the hotel, but someone had DEFINITELY been smoking in that room. I said no, no, no, so down the elevators we went, back to the front desk, and were assigned another room. I can't even tell you how excited we were about this - they put us in a two bedroom suite! It was incredible! It seemed larger than the first floor of my house. We had a huge bathroom with a jetted tub, an entire bedroom with two beds for us to jump on...we were in heaven, especially after our wretched day.
The rest of the trip passed fairly uneventfully; we went to the baseball game, we had drinks with Arch's executive secretary and some of her friends, we did a little shopping, saw the Gateway Arch, and had a lovely time.
Adventure Number 2: Diana and Nic's Wedding
We ventured to Tennessee for my girl Diana's wedding, which also ended up being really fun. I got to see Diana and some other friends from pharmacy school, it was CRAZY hot and humid - ugh - and we drank and danced and partied all weekend. It was particularly nice because the reception was in the hotel, so we didn't have to worry about stumbling home in the middle of the night. Diana was beautiful, and she and Nic seemed so happy. It was a wonderful time. D.H. and I did a little exploring and we found this great antiques store - well, more like a warehouse! It was huge! - and did some shopping. I'm so spoiled - D.H. bought me the most darling little antique pearl and diamond ring. :) Oh! And our rental car was a Chevy HHR. What is it with us and the crappy rental cars??
Adventure Number 3: Las Vegas, Baby!
Blink-182 is doing their reunion tour, so we got tickets to the Vegas show at the Hard Rock Casino. It was so fun! They played lots of old stuff that we remember from high school, and oh! the people watching! There aren't even enough words for how fun the people watching was. I love Vegas, and D.H. had only been there once before, so we did some exploring, some shopping, lots of eating, and we had a great room at the Trump International Hotel (even the bathrobes had "Trump" embroidered on them - it was ridiculous). We considered getting married, but decided we both wanted to live to see our next birthdays, and if we got married without our mothers that probably wouldn't happen. On our way home we stopped in St. George and had a little dinner with Crashley, it was SO nice to finally see her again!
Now the little adventurers are broke, so no more vacations until we go to Pittsburgh for Christmas, and I meet his WHOLE family....eesh!
