ETA: For some reason, this blog post got deleted. (Perhaps the server had to be set back. Who knows.) Thanks be to the Livejournal syndicated feed, which still had it up, so I was able to copy and paste it back over here.

This weekend, starting on Thursday, has been phenomenal, for a myriad of reasons. Let me attempt to quantify them in chronological order:

Thursday, June 26, 2008

It’d been a long week already. I hadn’t been sleeping well, and I spent most of the previous day feeling hung over (without the benefit of having been drunk the night before) as a result. I didn’t expect much more for Thursday. Fate, however, had different plans for my day.

My boss had made lunch plans with our team for Thursday, so at 11:20, we headed out the door to go to Mez, a trendy new Mexican restaurant in Durham. While we were there, she presented each of us with a small bonus, as a token of her thanks and appreciation for how hard we’ve been working with such an understaffed team for the last few months. Then, she handed me my congratulatory one-year anniversary plaque (Wednesday, July 2nd will mark my official one-year anniversary with the company). So nice! “Open it!” she tells me, excitedly. “I want to see what it looks like!” “Oh, that’s right,” says my co-worker, AK. “You haven’t been here a year yet, so you don’t have one.” We all giggled. Fun times.

My one-year anniversary Certificate of Appreciation from work

Then, later that afternoon, my boss pulled me into her office. My promotion that we’ve all been pushing hard for (the one that would make official the position I’ve been filling for the past 6? 8? months) was finally approved, as was a very substantial raise. The raise was more than I was willing to wish for, and far more than I was expecting. I was high on glee the rest of the afternoon and couldn’t wait to rush home to call my friends and family and let them know that it finally happened.

Friday, June 27, 2008

Friday evening, my parents came into town for a visit. They’d spent a few days in Asheville, NC to celebrate their anniversary, and then they came down here for the weekend to round out their vacation. After they got settled in at the hotel, we went to Starbucks and caught up. I showed mom some of the stuff I’d been working on, such as the blue-grey handspun, and she showed me her newest sock (so pretty! Maybe she’ll post a picture of it soon.)

Blue-grey handspun singles of Louet Northern Lights #18 Icy Winter

Mom also presented me with some yummy gifts. First, I got to pick one of three colorways of hand-dyed fiber from Pagewood Farms. Each set was 4 oz. of merino/yak, and 4 oz. of merino/tencel. All were variations on shades of green – one was really teal/turquoisey, another was a pale almost seafoam green, and then there was the one that appealed to me the most (though they were all lovely), the yellowy-orangey green pair. So so so pretty. I can’t wait to spin it up! She also gave me a box of cards from Schaefer Yarns. I’m a pack-rat when it comes to stationery and cards, and I’ve been collecting since I was in third or fourth grade (yeah, I have a lot of stationery now). So this combines the best of both worlds - yarn and stationery!

Hand-dyed fiber from Pagewood Farms (merino/yak and merino/tencel) and cards from Schaefer Yarn

As a final gift, Mom and Dad presented me with an absolutely huge box of chocolates from my all-time favorite chocolate shop in Asheville, The Chocolate Fetish. I make a point of stopping at this shop and picking up some truffles every time I’m anywhere near Asheville (as do my parents and friends). I haven’t yet eaten any of it. I just open the box and inhale. They’re almost too good to eat. (Yes, they’re that good. I highly recommend the Champagne, Blossom, and Wine & Roses. They’re my favorites. My friends really like the Dragon’s Kiss, which is dark chocolate with a hint of wasabi.)

Truffles from The Chocolate Fetish in Asheville, NC

Then we went and had yummy pizza and beer at Brixx (their new pear and gorgonzola pizza is seriously divine), followed by super-yummy ice cream from Maggie Moo’s (which is, in case you were wondering, far superior to Cold Stone, Marble Slab, or any other ice creamery out there).

Saturday, June 28, 2008

Mom had asked me if I had any major plans for the weekend or if there was anything in particular I wanted to do while they were there. I told her I wanted to go car shopping. With my new raise, I decided it was finally time to retire Lucy (my ‘93 Honda Civic, the one I’ve been driving since I was 16), and upgrade to something new. The company I work for is part of the Ford Partnership Program, so I qualified for lower pricing on a variety of Ford family vehicles, including Mazdas and Volvos. I had done a little research and decided to look at the Mazda3 5-door hatchback.

I seriously had no intention of actually purchasing anything this weekend. I am not a person who makes rash decisions, especially not life-altering ones. I don’t make job or career changes easily, and I don’t make big-ticket purchases without first investigating, hemming and hawing, and procrastinating for long, long periods of time. I’m more of a duct-tape kinda girl. My mantra is, If it’s not broken, don’t fix it. If it is broken, either live with it or do a quick-fix and live with it. That’s why my couch is old and all ripped up, I have cheap-ass bookshelves, I’m still using the dishes my mom gave me when I got my first apartment (hand-me-downs from her college years), and I’m still driving the same car I got for my 16th birthday.

But, I knew the car I wanted, and after test driving it, I was sure it was the right car. And my parents were there offering advice and support, and they offered me a great price on it and pretty great financing to boot. They offered me 4.9% (after a bit of haggling), which is better than I could have gotten through the credit union I bank at. I probably could have gotten a better rate had I co-signed with my parents, but it does so much more for your credit score if you take it on yourself (and I would eventually like to buy a house one day down the road…) So, I signed on the dotted line. (Or actually, I signed on what seemed like several dozen dotted lines…)

So what did I get? I got a brand-new 2008 Mazda3 Grand Sport 5-door hatchback in Metropolitan Gray Mica.

It’s super. It’s the Grand Sport model, which comes fully-loaded, with a 2.3L engine (lots of hp and torque for a compact-sized car), leather interior with heated front seats, a 6-CD changer with mp3-capable stereo system and Bose 7-speaker audio system, complete with an auxiliary jack for my iPod, ambient climate control, auto-rain-sensing windshield wipers, a security system with remote entry, and a moonroof (I’ve wanted one for years). It’s being driven down from Virginia as we speak (there were no Grand Sport models available in the area), and I ought to have it tomorrow afternoon. I’m so excited! In the meantime, they’re letting me drive a base-model 3 around town until my car is available. I love it, but I love mine more. I can tell the difference in the engine and the handling. Mine is so much better (which I guess makes sense, since it was several thousand more expensive).

Anyway, I’ll be sure and post pictures of the new car once it arrives. In the meantime, want to help me pick out a name for it? The Honda was Lucy. (And to give you an idea of the types of names I usually pick for my material possessions, a list of all my electronics and their names can be found in this post from a year ago, towards the bottom.) Leave your suggestions in the comments – Lizzie’s new baby needs a name!

Anyway, back to the goings-on on Saturday. After a grueling afternoon of haggling, filling out paperwork, and signing on hundreds upon hundreds of dotted lines (okay, I exaggerate, but still… a lot of lines), the ‘rents and I went into Chapel Hill to have dinner with my friends. I love my parents, and I’d love them regardless, but I think it is so extremely cool that my parents like my friends and my friends like them. We all met up and went to Lime & Basil, this tiny little Vietnamese place with really great pho. We all had fun catching up, and my parents were happy to see my friends again – it’d been a while since their last visit.

Sunday, June 29, 2008

Sunday morning we went out for a late brunch at the fabulous Irregardless Cafe, where we had lots of eggs mixed with lots of yummy things like seafood and asparagus and cheese, and then we splurged and had one of the most scrumptious desserts I’ve had in a long time – double chocolate bread pudding served with ice cream and topped with chocolate sauce. I about died. I’d never been to this place, though I’d heard all about it, so it was really nice to have an excuse to get out and actually see the city I live in (and have for several years).

That evening, we went to a gospel choir concert in Durham. The whole reason my parents initially planned this trip was because the gospel choir they sing in – the Huntsville chapter of the One Human Family (OHF) gospel choir – was attending this 10-year reunion event in the triangle this weekend. They were planning on killing two birds with one stone – see all their choir friends from around the country and visit me. Then the reunion became a full-fledged workshop, and they decided to sit it out, spend time with me during the weekend, and go to the final concert on Sunday instead.

We had a blast, and it was so neat to meet all of Mom and Dad’s choir friends. The concert was phenomenal – everyone looked like they were having so much fun up there on stage.

I even took a couple of short video clips from the concert. If I can get permission to share them here, I will sometime later this week. Apologies for the super-lengthy post, but hopefully it was worth it to read about so much wonderful, positive stuff!