11-3

Today the Panthers won their last home game and are now 11-3 for the season! They officially won every game at home this year (since the last two games are on the road) and are going to face the New York Giants next Sunday. It is going to be a huge game and it got moved to prime time - this is so exciting!

I went to visit my friend Meredith this past weekend and we spent lots of time catching up. Of course we watched a bunch of chick flicks as well, but we talked right through one of them and neither of us could figure out what was going on! Since I was gone this past weekend I am going to try to frantically clean my house after work this week in preparation for the arrival of my friend Jennifer and her family from WV. I absolutely cannot wait to see them!

Thursday will be my last official day in the office. We are all going to be working from home full time, and Thursday will be the last day we'll all be in the office together. My home office is a disaster area right now. Patrick and I are converting the third bedroom (that has never been used for anything except to store junk) into my office and the transition is not going as smoothly as I would like. For starters, it's a pretty small room so I've really had to look hard to find the right furniture to fit the space. We are still in search of a chair and ottoman for the corner, but otherwise I think we've found all the furniture. We gotten all the old junk cleared out of the room, but now that I'm bringing home everything from my office it's pretty full and unorganized again! The wall shelves are still sitting on the floor and need to be hung and I cannot seem to find the right cables to set up my printer. I took home all the desktop components for my computer last week and I still don't quite have all of those cords figured out either. I'll be so glad when this project is over and I'm settled again! It is amazing how much junk I have managed to accumulate in my office over the past couple of years though, and so I'm doing some major organizing so this room will have a fresh start.

Cross your fingers for the Panthers to beat the Giants this week! I'm hoping for a Super Bowl win, but taking it one week at a time....

Bobcats Game

Today Patrick called me from work and mentioned that somebody offered us tickets to tonight's Bobcats game. I'm not a huge NBA fan, but seeing a game in person is always a good time, so I thought it would be fun. I'm so glad we went - we were sitting courtside in fourth row seats. It was incredible! (Now I have to mention that a few weekends ago when I was in Asheville Patrick scored floor seats, directly under the goal so these weren't quite the same, but these were still awesome seats!)

The Bobcats were playing Cleveland so we got to see a lot of Lebron James up close and personal which was pretty cool. I know that the NBA is full of outstanding athletes, but he was in a class by himself. But the best part of the game came from who we were sitting with....Richard Marshall (of the Carolina Panthers) was sitting in the seat directly in front of me. Julius Peppers (if you you don't know who he is, you are in desperate need of an NFL wakeup call!) walked right by us to get to his floor seats and we saw Thomas Davis (again of the Carolina Panthers) walk by us to get to his seat too. But the absolute best part of the game came about midway through when.....Ken Lucas walked in and sat directly in front of Richard Marshall. Ken Lucas is my absolute favorite player and I have his jersey. He was sitting two rows from me, directly in front of me. Wow!!

I'm hoping this is a good sign for the game on Monday night. We're going to the Panthers game, and it is going to be a big deal game. First of all, it's Monday night football. Second, we're playing a division game against the Tampa Bay Bucs. Third, we are tied with them at 9-3 for control over our division. Fourth, if we win this game we will be in the lead for our division and looking pretty good to secure a spot in the playoffs. (Right now they have the tiebreaker and therefore lead the NFC South, but only the Giants have a better record than us in the NFC so we're looking pretty good for one of the two wildcard spots.) However, if we win on Monday it will be huge. Or should I say, when we win on Monday?!?!

So I know that was a lot about the Panthers in a post that's supposed to be about the Bobcats, but seeing so many Panthers absolutely made my night! (Oh, and the size of the diamond earrings all the players had, and the diamond watch that Peppers had on were all truly a sight to behold. These guys have some serious taste in jewelry!)

It was an awesome night and now I'm even more excited about Monday night!

The Duke Dream Comes True

I have been a fan of the Duke Blue Devils since the day my family moved to North Carolina. It has always been a dream of mine to see them play a home game in the legendary Cameron Indoor Stadium. I have been fortunate enough to see them play a few times in Charlotte, but I have always dreamed of seeing them play at home. In middle school I discovered the greatest college basketball player of all time - Bobby Hurley. The day after Thanksgiving Patrick and I got to go see Duke play at home (along with our friends Alli and Steve) and I was able to fulfill my other lifelong dream. (If you want to read about the first, see my posts about my devotion to New Kids on the Block!)

The experience was incredible, and I think pictures will tell the story far better than I ever could with words. Now that I have managed to accomplish my two greatest dreams (you can laugh, it's okay!) I'm going to have to come up with some new dreams. Here's hoping it won't take 20 years for these to come true though!

Duke campus

Patrick & I at the infamous Krzyzewskiville


Alli and I can't believe we're here!!


The man, the myth, the legend - Coach K


3 national championships...and counting


The Cameron Crazies in full effect


My favorite player ever


Yes, we stayed until well after the game was done


Here begins my Bobby Hurley quest...


His jersey and the ball from his record setting 1,039th assist

Need I say more?!

The best game of all time

The trophies...there's definitely room for more!

Cameron Indoor Stadium

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope all of you had a wonderful day and got to spend time with family and friends. Patrick and I drove to see his family and then later in the day my mom and sister, Bethany, joined us there for dinner. My mother-in-law, Chris, put together a beautiful dinner with a million different selections for side items. There were so many choices that I was stuffed well before it was time for dessert (my favorite part!) We had a big group this year which was really nice – my family is so small that we never really had big family holidays so I love having a full house. It’s also nice that since our families are so close, Patrick and I usually get to celebrate with both of our families.

Here’s a funny Thanksgiving story for you – so everybody is having a glass of wine before dinner and they offer my mom a glass which she accepts. (I should probably tell you now that my mother rarely, if ever, drinks.) She drinks most of her first glass and everybody is refilling for their second when she proceeds to (LOUDLY) exclaim that she is drunk (and has maybe had most of one glass of wine) and from her seated position at the kitchen table announces that she needs to go sit down and promptly stands up. I was so embarrassed. Fortunately my in-laws are pretty fun and nobody made a big deal about it but my sister and I were laughing (while dying inside at the same time!)

We got to visit with a lot of Patrick’s side of the family and I’m really glad that my sister-in-law Brooke was there. She is so nice and we haven’t gotten to see each in person in a long time (maybe since her wedding????) so I’m really glad that we had a chance to catch up. I hope I can convince Patrick that we need to drive down to Atlanta to visit them sometime soon! The boys were running around and trying to stay out of trouble (they are absolutely precious!) and it was a lot of fun to have them around. There’s just something about a holiday with children that makes it seem even better. All in all it was a great day spent with family and I am very thankful to have each of them in my life.

Weekend in Asheville

This past weekend my friend Lindsay and I went up to Asheville to see the Biltmore Estate and we had a great time! We met up around lunch time on Saturday and headed over to the grounds so that we could grab something to eat in time for our daytime visit of the house. We didn't have lots of time so we got some soup from the bakery on the grounds and promptly decided that we would revisit the bakery after our tour for some of the delicious looking goodies!

After our tour we left the grounds to go eat dinner in downtown Asheville which proved to be an adventure. We kept driving up and down the main street in search of two restaurants recommended to us, and after realizing that we could not find either one we decided to just park and walk around to see what we could find. What was directly in front of us as soon as we parked the car? The restaurant that we had been looking for - it was right in front of us the whole time! I should have known that would be a sign of things to come later in the evening....

After dinner we headed back to the Biltmore grounds for our candlelight tour of the house. I love how every room is completely decorated for Christmas - it is beautiful! No pictures are allowed to be taken inside the house, so we got there early so we could take a bunch of pictures outside first. The front lawn had a huge Christmas tree with a circle of smaller Christmas trees around it with speakers and Christmas music playing only loud enough to hear once you made it over to that part of the lawn. Since I am completely unfamiliar with how to use my camera (I only recently entered the digital age!) Lindsay was showing me what all the different settings on my camera could do. I ended up with some really funny looking pictures but I think I'm finally starting to get the hang of when I need to use what setting to get a better looking picture. I definitely have a lot to learn!

After we were done taking pictures outside, it was time for us to enter the house for our tour. Pretty simple, right? So this is where I have my dumb moment for the day. (Yes, dumber than not seeing a restaurant right in front of my face!) I put our tickets in the inner pocket of my jacket (since I had gloves and a hat in my regular pockets) and made a big production about how our tickets would be safe there. When we were walking back up the drive towards the house, I noticed some folded paper on the ground (our tickets are printed out on an 8x10 piece of paper by the way, which I had folded to fit into my "secret" pocket) but didn't think much about it and kept on walking. While we were waiting by our Nutcracker friend to enter the house, I reached in my pocket for the tickets to find that it was empty. No tickets!

At this point we had covered a lot of ground taking lots of pictures and so it would seem hopeless. However, I remembered the folded paper that I had seen on the drive about 30 minutes prior - it had to be our tickets! Now why I didn't look at the paper the first time I saw it on the ground or why I remembered that I had glanced down and seen it at that moment is beyond me, but I took off in a sprint down the long drive to see if by some miracle the paper was still there. It was still there and it was our tickets. I don't know if Lindsay was more surprised that I managed to lose or tickets or subsequently find them, but since this story had a happy ending it was pretty funny! (We were also planning to come back to the estate on Sunday to tour the winery and farm, and had our tickets actually been lost, we would not have been able to re-enter the property so our Sunday plans would have been ruined as well.) We made it to the doors of the house right on time for our entry (there is timed entry during the peak season) and got to see the ballerinas perform in the winter garden before touring the rest of the house.

The following morning we ate breakfast and then were off to the Biltmore grounds again. The whole weekend I kept misplacing things (my keys, my hat, my gloves, my sunglasses...pretty much everything which isn't really like me) so when the kid working the register gave me back my change and I knew it was wrong I doubted myself for awhile before politely asking if I could have my correct change. He kept telling me I was wrong and I was almost ready to break out a calculator for him until he finally realized that he was counting it wrong and corrected the problem. He almost had me convinced that I was wrong until logic kicked it and I realized that if my total ended in .19 and I gave him .25 there was no way I should end up with 90 cents in change in my pocket!

We started the day off with a tour of the River Bend Farm and then did a tour and wine tasting at the winery. I had never been down to the farm area of the estate and it was beautiful. We also got to see some baby animals (and a one month old cow which for some reason I thought was a goat - go figure!)

I'm so glad that Lindsay and I got to not only see this absolutely gorgeous place, but got to spend some time together as well. We're going through a very similar situation right now (very different causes, but both with the same outcome) so it was especially good timing to get to hang out in person. We only live 3 hours apart, but we definitely don't get to see each other as often as I would like so I'm really glad that we got to have such a fun weekend together!

Catching Up...

I'm starting to realize that I'm not very good about keeping this blog up to date. I have things I mean to write in here, and then I forget or get busy with something else and before I know it a week or two have gone by! Last Friday was a really great day. It was the last day our headquarters in Raleigh was open and it was such a great, positive send off for everybody there.

The day started off with a great breakfast (you really can't beat the chicken minis from Chick-fil-A and doughnuts!) and then we broke into teams for a scavenger hunt. The two girls that put the scavenger hunt together did an awesome job. Our office was in a mixed use shopping center so most of the items we needed to collect were from the various stores and restaurants there. It was so detailed - we needed to get things like an item a store was going to throw away (a restaurant gave us a bathroom stall latch that was broken!), find out who was on the cover of some obscure video game, print a wedding registry, find out what the sandwich special was at Harris Teeter, count the number of parking spaces beside JC Penney, take a picture of the entire team on one treadmill at the gym, find the brand of shampoo that was $67.49 (available at a hair salon and yes, this does exist!), and the list just keeps going. We had a blast and my team ended up winning!

All throughout the day there was a silent auction going on for a lot of the fixed assets in the office and I was involved in several written bidding wars. I ended up with three paintings from the office (for a very reasonable price!) and so I'm excited that there will be a piece of our old office at home with me in my new office when I make the switch to working from home full time in January. There were also trivia games to see how much we knew about each other and our company history and fun facts. (One question was what do Melanie and Alli have hanging on their office wall. A huge Carolina Panthers flag of course!) We also got to guess who the employee was in the baby pictures that were brought in and play a few other games before it was time to leave.

I'm really glad that the last day in the office was such a fun one. It was a fitting way for a company that was based on "working to live, not living to work" to close its doors. I will certainly miss all of these incredible people, but I know that the future is bright for each of these talented individuals.

On Sunday Patrick and I went to the Carolina Panthers game. We played the Detroit Lions (who are terrible!) but they gave us a scare early on when they took an early lead. Of course the Panthers came back and defeated them and now the team is 8-2. The hard part of the schedule is coming up and we face our division rivals, the Atlanta Falcons, on Sunday so now is the time to really show everybody what Panthers football is all about. For having such a good record so far, nobody really ever pays attention to the Panthers which makes it a fun team to cheer for - you really want to see the underdog succeed!

Earlier tonight Patrick and I went to the hospital to visit a friend of mine who just had a baby. This was an experience unlike any other - I got to hold a tiny, precious, perfect 2 day old infant. I could have watched her sleep all night! I'm really glad that Patrick got to come too, but he was too scared to hold the baby. He said his rule is that if it can't support its own head, he refuses to touch it. He looked genuinely frightened at the idea of holding the baby. She was such a beautiful baby (and I usually don't think babies are all that cute.) Maybe one day he'll change his mind about babies....but until that time I will continue to spoil my pets which they don't seem to mind one bit!

Tomorrow I'm heading to Asheville to spend the weekend with my dear friend Lindsay. I'm really looking forward to it. I'm going to remember my camera (I hope!) so I should have some pictures to post when I get back. Lindsay and I have known each other for years, and became especially close when we were in graduate school, bonding over ex-boyfriend woes and studying all hours of the day and night for the CPA exam. We seem to always go through major life events at the same time (engagements, job changes, death of a pet, the list goes on!) so it's really nice to be able to share these things together. I can't wait to see her tomorrow and for all the fun things we have planned!

So You Think You Can Dance

Last night was a lot of fun! I'm hooked on the show "So You Think You Can Dance" (I guess I wish that I had been that talented back in my dancing days) so when we heard that the tour was making a stop in Charlotte a group of us decided to make it a girl's night out to see them live. They are even better in person than on the show! There were 6 of us total that went (my sisters and myself, and my friends Alli, Tracey, and Rebecca.) They performed most of my favorite dances from the show, and I really enjoyed the hip hop routines best. Why wasn't I blessed with such an amzing gift?!

We went to dinner first and then headed over to Bobcats Arena for the show. Here are a couple pictures from the show:

All in all it was a very fun night. I'm so glad my sisters were able to make the drive to Charlotte because I really miss having them around all the time! It was also good to be able to have a stress free evening because Friday is going to be a pretty hard day. It's the last day our Raleigh headquarters is going to be open to we're all heading to Raleigh for a farewell celebration day. I'm looking forward to seeing everybody but not looking forward to it really being over....