Fred and Valerie

The Pictures, The Videos, and The Proposal

Some people should not be put in charge of working the front desk of a hotel…

We’re still waiting to see if we’ll have a room for tonight. Let’s hope so, because I hate sleeping in the car.

[We got the room, but I don't think we'll be staying at the Microtel: Southern Pines in the future]

We got back from Las Vegas yesterday afternoon and crashed pretty quickly. There are a lot of stories and news and photos to share, but you’ll have to wait until we get it all together.

We went to the church on the corner this morning and voted in the mid-term elections. I was all ready to see the truncated names issue, but it turns out our little podunk town is tech savvy enough to have touchscreen voting that doesn’t truncate the names. Combine that with HDTV availability and I’m not sure who’s more podunk, Stuarts Draft or Charlottesville.

The trailer for Evan Almighty, the sequel to the popular Bruce Almighty, has finally been released. Evan Almighty was partially filmed in Crozet, which is located between Charlottesville and Stuarts Draft. Some of the views of the mountains that can be seen in the trailer are quite familiar to us.

Another year’s Halloween and another great turnout by children (and the occasional adult) decked out in costumes in exchange for candy. We went kind of light with the candy this year because we joined Mr. & Mrs. B for some karaoke later in the night and ended up with just a few handfuls leftover. Some of the highlights from the evening included:

• A cute little girl dressed up as a unicorn. The outfit had a hood that was the unicorn’s head (and horn) and when Valerie told the girl she could have another piece of candy if she wanted, the girl pulled the hood off so she could get maximum view of the candy selection. Quite hilarious.
• A kid who used a white trash bag to be a ghost.
• A mother, dressed in pajamas (presumably, it was a costume), telling her daughter (who was dressed in an actual costume), “Make sure you get a Twix!” Of course, when the girl didn’t grab a Twix, the mother reached in and got one for herself.
• The realization that the kids who Trick-or-Treated in our neighborhood are very nice. I don’t think I’ve ever heard “Thank you” or “sir” or “mam” so many times as I did last night.
• The realization that we live in one of “those” neighborhoods. You know, the kind that people drive their kids to so they can get the good candy. When we left to join Mr. & Mrs. B for karaoke, I had to slalom through all the parked cars along the roads.
• Stopping, on the way to karaoke, for some people and horses to cross the road. (Yes, we live in the country)
• A deer following us on the side of the road as we drove home from karaoke. Thankfully, it turned back into the forest instead of in front of my car.
• A fox running ahead of us in the other lane after we had passed the deer. I had to slow down in case it cut in front of us (which it did!) and we ended up following it, as it ran down the road, for about half a mile.

All in all, it was a fun and interesting evening.