The Hobbit's Racial

So this past week, I've been in Charlotte, NC visiting my dear friends the Strylowskis whom I've known since birth and are basically my family. We left last Sunday, so most of that day was driving. It was a pretty fun driving day, though, all things considered. We got smoothies in the afternoon, Rachel attacked me with Jesus in the morning, Raich and I watched the pilot of Firefly, we had a pretty good family time because we were all so excited to see our friends. We got to their house that night and just talked and hugged and watched YouTube and hung out until about midnight when Brian had to go to bed in order to wake up for school and work the next day and Stephanie, who had been sick and has never in her life been a late night kind of person, wanted to sleep too. We were all pretty tired from the drive, so we were okay with that and we all went to bed.

The next day was Monday, and Brian had school early and then had work until 7pm, so we basically didn't see him until dinner. I don't really remember what we did all day, except show each other YouTube videos, go to the mall to try and get my computer fixed (that didn't happen), and play Beatles Rock band. Jennifer was also over all day so we spent time with her, and that was very nice. That was actually pretty much all we did. Then Brian came home and Chris showed up and we had a nice dinner and then played more Beatles rock band with Chris and Brian. After Chris and Jennifer and her husband Jared had left and the parents had pretty much gone to bed, we watched the last half of "Boomtown", which was the episode they were on in Doctor Who, and then Stephanie pretty much fell asleep while Brian and I were talking about The Hunger Games, which he'd read recently and we hadn't had a chance to talk about yet. We like to talk about books. We have fairly similar tastes in books, and even when we disagree, we enjoy the debate. That's one of the things I like about talking to Brian, neither of us ever feel like we're attacking the other personally just because we disagree. We're free to pretty much air our opinions, whatever they be, and not have to worry that the other may take it personally. While we were talking, we were trying to make up the air matress, since Stephanie had fallen asleep and Rachel had gone off to get ready for bed. All was going well until some point when Brian accidentally knocked the computer keyboard off the table. It made a kind of loud crashing noise and Stephanie leaped up and stared at the keyboard with this look on her face of just utter terror and shock with slightly homicidal undertones. She started going for the keyboard and it was actually kind of scary, but Brian talked her back into bed and then forcibly closed her eyes and she went back to sleep. Well, really, she had never been awake. Brian sat back down on the floor and I whispered to him, "If someone was going to get up and kill us all in our sleep, I vote Stephanie." Brianna and Brian agreed. We started talking at a normal volume again a few minutes later, and had another small scare when Brian accidentally knocked into the TV cabinent, making another loud noise. We all stopped a stared at Stephanie, but she just rolled over and went back to sleep. A few minutes later, she woke up fully and asked, "Did something really scary just happen?" We all tried not to laugh as I replied, "For us...."

Tuesday, Brian went to school later, but had to stay until around 4pm, and I had an appointment at the Apple store to try to get my computer fixed at 1:15, so we all went to the mall sans Brian, and I talked to someone who didn't fix my computer but gave me a few tips, and then we went to get lunch at this place called The Counter, which is an AMAZING burger joint where you basically build your own burger and they make it for you and it's delicious and amazing! My burger had Jalepeno Jack cheese, grilled onions, grilled pineapple, scallions, tomatoes, and spicy sour cream, and it was incredible! Then we went to Barnes and Noble where I got the new book by Jay and Grant from Ghost Hunters, Macbeth, and the paperback of Paper Towns! Then we went home where Brian already was with his friend Nick and Steph and I ended up being handed PS3 controllers and started fighting against each other in a game I never heard the name of. She was basically playing instead of Nick, and I was playing for Brian. I started out really strong and beat her a few times, but then Nick started giving her tips and she got the better of me. Then we started ignoring them completely, and I was beating her again. Then she beat me a few times. Then I beat her again. I guess we were pretty evenly matched. I was just...a bit more vocal than she was, but that's typical. Nick then stayed for dinner and then all of us kid-like-folk went outside and hung out near the fire, which was lovely. Brian had to be in bed by midnight again, so after Nick left, we chilled until then and then went to sleep.

The next day, Brian got home at 10:30am, which was only about 15 minutes after most of us woke up (Stephanie always wakes up early...always), so we had pretty much the whole day with him. We watched the last two episodes of Doctor Who, s1 while everyone was showering and getting ready, and then we watched "The Christmas Invasion", which was fun. It was really funny hearing all their theories, and their reactions to basically everything Jack-related were hilarious. Then we had lunch, pranked Zack, and had a really fun Skype conversation with Lauren, which was evidently the first time Brian and Stephanie actually talked to Lauren face-to-face. We did the traditional parents-go-out-to-dinner-leaving-kids-at-home-alone-to-be-crazy thing we always do when our familes are together that night, and part of that for us was Brian, Brianna and I going out to get soda while Rachel and Stephanie cooked the pizza that was our dinner, and then us all going out after dinner to Rock River Coffee to get lovely hot drinks so we could come home and take a walk in the cold. It ended up being sort of misty-type rainy, so Stephanie didn't come on the walk with us, but the other four of us had a really nice times walking around their neighborhood in the cold, and we realized that our shadows made us look like The Boxcar Children. Brian kept walking way too fast, so I was trying to keep him with the rest of the group, but I then would try to keep pace with him, and we'd get to far in front so Rachel would flash the flashlight all over the place and we'd stop. It ended up being a pretty good system. We got home and watched The Nightmare Before Christmas, which they'd never seen before and only knew from playing Kingdom Hearts, and then we had our traditional stay-up-really-late-the-night-before-we-leave night because the actual night before we left, we weren't going to be together. This night consisted of our usual crazy shenanigans, resulting in our usual tweetable quotes such as ''Well, first off, the hobbit's racial...'', ''Oh, now we are holding hands. This is not what I wanted.'' and ''That's what you do when you have small hands. You have people throw sticks at you.'' That was fun. We went to bed at about 4am.

Aaaand, I'm going to write about the rest later because I've been writing too long and I want to go watch either Psych or Firefly. Goodnight.

See you soon!
Emily <3

Doctor Who count: 4.11
Firefly count: 1.6