Common ground and making it count

I love when I can just sit on my patio and reflect on my week. It's 80* out still and it's almost 8:30 p.m. I know pretty soon I'll feel like I'm melting in the summer heat but I'm currently enjoying it. Actually this weekend I managed to get a bit of a tan/sunburn and enjoy the weather, which was much needed.
I don't even remember what happened throughout the week it feels so long ago. I know I worked and probably wanted to throw things at times. I saw Water for Elephants with some girl friends (gasp! female friends I know!). I stayed late on Thursday for court and got well acquainted with Nashville's juvenile justice system. It appears to be about as effective as Wayne County's system (Detroit specifically). It made me remember how reactive and slow the process is for offenders. It makes me wish there was an understanding about 'proactivity' and why it's good. Lawmakers don't really understand why putting funding into programs to keep kids out of trouble is much less costly in the long wrong.... I mean I didn't go to law school or anything but I've managed to at least figure that part out. It results in a lot of eye rolling on my part.
It feels like last week was forever ago because somehow this weekend it felt like time went in slow motion which is pretty much the best thing ever. Or it's because I got a total of like 8 hours of sleep in two days. My female friend had a guest in town from Louisville so it was determined we would find a means to entertain for the entire weekend and entertain we did. There were many things packed into Friday, Saturday and Sunday, subsequently this week Monday also counted as part of my weekend but I'll get to that later. So...my friend and I met her friend at Dinosaur World in Cave City, KY. This is the 1/2 way point between Louisville and Nashville in case anyone was curious and quite the place to visit. If you haven't been to Dinosaur World you're not missing out on anything unless you want to pay to see giant fiberglass dinosaurs scattered about a field. Some people will pay for that kind of thing, I'm assuming those are the same people that visit this website. PLEASE go to that link, my friend found it in college and it's interactive and uhhh...interesting? Ha anyway, we drive back to Nashville and immediately do sushi (yum!) and then the fun commenced. We ended up downtown pretty late after much deliberation and bar-hopped around. The boys gave me a hard time as per usual and attempted to get piggy back rides from each other. That was a 4 a.m. night. Saturday we managed to pack in Arts and Crafts fairs, the cafe, frisbee, the Parthenon and then drinks on the beach. After some discussion we decided that toilet papering my friends 4x4 backyard and car would be a great idea knowing he was at the bar. Things were going swell and we had just started decorating his yard when he pulled into the driveway. After running down the road and deciding to go back after waiting several minutes we decided to get the car much worse. It looked like this:

Yes we are children. And it was a blast. He knew it was us even though we managed to escape without being seen. Sunday we spent the day getting brunch and recovering from hangovers and sleep deprivation. Most of the day consisted of hanging out in the sun at the park and then by the Percy Priest dam. Sunday night became pretty interesting once returning to Cave City to find that my friend's car had been towed. Ooops. So we spent a large chunk of time looking for it and were finally contacted by the local cops of it's whereabouts. That town is full of some interesting characters. The great length of time spent car hunting resulted in it turning into a late night and decided to not continue to push my sleep deprived body any longer and stay there. And skip work today. I'm lucky my supervisor is awesome. It was the best weekend I've had in forever though.

Not so random aside, it's pretty crazy how perfect strangers can be on such a similar wave length. It's also pretty nice to get to know people that want to get to know you. And to finish each other's sentences without meaning to. I should have pulled out the "jinx you owe me a coke" line a couple of times just to continue the theme of childishly fun activities. There was a lot of smiling going on. It's inspiring.
In weeks to come; hopefully job finding, Krazy fest and hopefully visits from my best friend. Woot!

I hope everyone has a wonderful week, I know I will. <3