West Virginia

Greetings from Wild and Wonderful West Virginia!

This is our second morning in the Wild State and I am wide awake as Hubs attempts to get just a few more minutes of sleep. Apparently, he didn't sleep at all in the hotel's big king bed, while I was literally dead to the world. Poor guy. I hate when I sleep so well and he doesn't.

You see, it started like this.

Wednesday was crazy. A nightmare. A drain.

I had to go to work.
Burn a bunch of DVDs on boyfriend Mac.
Attend a very disappointing meeting that left me frustrated, annoyed and sad.
Run to Target on my lunch break and pick out some sweet treats for the road.
Run home and eat.
Go back to work to sit in front of a computer and copyedit and copyedit and copyedit.
Run to Starbucks for a meeting with my boss and another man, who decided we should sit outside because he was from Ohio and the 55 degree weather was warm to him....
Run back to the office to pack up boyfriend Mac.
Run home.
Clean the house, because Hubs likes to come home to a clean house after vacation, and sometimes, I am just all about pleasing Hubs.
So, I folded our laundry; changed the sheets on the bed; cleaned the bathroom; wiped down all flat surfaces; vacuumed (which I always want to spell with 2 c's and 2 m's) and attended to the Panther.
Then, it was time to run over to MarLar's for Mexican with the family and a chance for Lar to work his magic on boyfriend Mac.
Then, it was off to Kinko's to print off my letter of introduction and letter of recommendation for my Thursday cold-calls.
I decided to try to make up some business cards last minute. So, I did. And printed them out. They looked like CRAP. I nearly cried. Hubs was very annoyed with me. And, I was just exhausted (did I mention that I had been up since 545am and it was 930pm?) and nervous about our trip.
So, we went home.
Packed.
Put all of our stuff in the car.
Got ready for bed.
Slept. Well, actually, I didn't sleep AT ALL. I tossed and turned and thought about what I had to do the next day. I had to walk into places totally unannounced and tell them I wanted a job. Then, I started to think about how unprepared I was. How my resume was still being worked on (by one very sweet lady) and that I didn't have the heart or the nerve to ask her to work faster. Because after all, she was doing me an enormously huge favor.

So, these were the things rolling through my head all night. I was also hyped up from how extremely busy I had been all day. So, when the 5am alarm went off, Hubs and I struggled out of bed to shower and get dressed and pack up the rest of our stuff.

We were officially on the road by 630am after driving all the way to ChikfilA for breakfast just to find out they are not earlybirds.

The car ride was great and pretty uneventful until I asked Hubs if he got his checkbook to which he responded "no." And, I totally freaked out on him demanding to know how we were supposed to put down a deposit on a place to live without a checkbook. When I already knew that we could easily withdraw cash to cover it, but was worn out and scared and trying not to think about what I was about to do, which means I was ready to pick a fight.

After 5 hours and 15 minutes, we pulled up at our hotel. And, things felt much better. It was an absolutely gorgeous day. The sun was warm, much warmer than I had expected. We quickly changed and headed for downtown Lewisburg, a town that I had explored as much as GoogleMaps would allow.

And, it far exceeded my expectations. It is quaint and beautiful and busy! I love the busyness here. It makes such a small town seem just a little bit bigger and much more inviting. There were tons of people on the street and the traffic is insane here. It was a shocking day, but in a good way. It displaced any worries that I had.

We lunched at an adorable cafe, called Stardust. The food was delicious. The atmosphere was relaxed, a little hipster and totally historic with the original storefront still intact.

We literally gulped down lunch as Tammy at the Greenbrier Historical Society had invited us on a tour of Lewisburg and the North House Museum. We quickly ran up the street and joined in on the West Virginia Association of Museums conference, where Tammy greeted us both with big hugs. She and I have been writing emails back and forth since December. She wants so bad for me to work with her at the museum (which she hinted at about 300 times yesterday) and I must say that I'm with her!

We tagged along on the tour for a little over 2 hours before she asked what our plans had been. I told her about my idea to do a few coldcalls to a development corporation and Main Street Program in Ronceverte. Well, she knew the executive director, called him up and Hubs and I were on our way there within 5 minutes.

The meeting went well. They don't really have a budget for another employee, but the director wants all of my information, because he often needs people to do contract work. So, here's hoping some contract work might come my way! He said that if I had known how to conserve tombstones, I could have a job right now. This might mean that I go back to Columbia and learn how to conserve tombstones.....

After that meeting, we ran back to the hotel, fighting the horrible 5 o'clock traffic (who knew that a city of 4,000 people could have such traffic!?) the whole way. We had 10 minutes to freshen up (my hair was a grease pit at this point, although Hubs said that it looked great) and make our way over to the Montwell House that sits on a ridge overlooking Lewisburg. Tammy had invited us to the reception for the WVAM conference.

As soon as I walked through the door, I felt as if I had stepped into a preservation fundraiser in Charleston, South Carolina. These were the bluebloods of Lewisburg. These were the people with the money and the power. To be continued....