myretroperspective

Before our big day I was supposed to do what every girl does and get all glammed up in her dress to take photos by herself. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I didn't want to take pictures alone. I had no idea what I would do with all of those photos of me by myself in my wedding gown. Besides the obvious choice of creating my own shrine to myself. So I did the only other obvious choice. I made the hubs get all dolled up with me again after the wedding to do a post wedding photo shoot. Well, just a short year and a half later, we have the photos from our photographer. I admit, he takes forever, but it's oh so worth it. After hours of being serious in serious attire, our true side came out.

With temps topping out around 107* today, I wasn’t very interested in doing much of anything.  My patience wears very thin when it’s that hot.  The AC machine is as stressed as I feel, as it could only keep things down to 87 most of the day.  It was still 101 when I took a dip in the pool this evening around 7:45.  That settled me down quite a bit. I guess it’s a good thing that I can talk about yesterday afternoon’s trip, as I don’t want to talk about today.  When I finished the post last night, Emma and I were enjoying our lunch at a nice picnic area.  My plan was to take the Balsam Mountain Road on a loop around the southeastern part of the National Park.  I was not aware that this was an unpaved road once you left the picnic area.  As we took a little walk down the road, I was skeptical as to whether or not my little Ford Focus was up to this challenge.  I think it was a 28 mile drive to the town of Cherokee, and my guide said it would ta...

food june thanks to R- quinoa, black bean chicken burritos Well we're at the midway point in my summer and I'm beyond excited that we get to visit my little sister in Seattle for 5 days including the 4th of July.  It's just the break we need from the heat, the routine, and the long days of summer.  The pace of summer here in Atlanta always reminds of the saying that the days are long but the years are short.  Was it really 2 YEARS ago that we moved back from East Asia? that we were engaged? that we were foreigners in Atlanta? I'll definitely post about Seattle when we get back but I couldn't let the month go by without mentioning our #FOODJUNE experiment. Food June has been lots of fun.  It came about randomly one of the first nights after I was home from my summer assignment (actually the last week of May).  Being away for 3 weeks and with all the travel we did the weeks before, it had been a while since I had been in the kitchen.  So I declared the month ...

dear korea, i love how all of the rice paddies are no longer muddy patches but instead, layers of green. it's a beautiful reminder of where i live. dear hubs, the other night you asked me to list all of the countries that i want to travel to. you finally made me stop and list my top five. you laughed when i had difficulty narrowing it down. but when i asked the same of you, you had equal difficulty. i love that one of our largest things in common is the love and desire to see the world. dear weather man, (because you're the one that makes the weather right?) please make sunshine on saturday so we can go cliff jumping. i'm all for relaxing at home with a movie while there's a typhoon outside, but not two weekends in a row ok? dear koreans,  thank you for finding your slightly used sofa unfit for your apartment and politely setting it outside. it looks great in our living room.

The forecast for today was temps at 100+*, so early on I packed up Emma and my lunch and headed for the mountains.  It turned out to be an excellent decision.  I wanted to visit some areas I hadn’t been to on my trip to the Great Smoky Mountains last week.  My destination was the Balsam Mountain Road in the North Carolina portion of the National Park.  Little did I know that it would involve 225 miles of driving, getting lost (once again), and a real adventure on some roads less traveled. Of course, I couldn’t resist stopping for some more stunning views of the Smokies along the way.  Photos just can’t really capture the magnitude and peacefulness of these old mountains that just roll on and on and on. In order to get to the road I wanted to investigate, I had to slip out of the National Park for a bit and traverse a section of the Blue Ridge Parkway.  Yahoo!  One more thing checked off of my bucket list. What a great name for this parkwa...

I couldn’t pick Emma up yesterday from her stay in the kennel for two reasons.  First, I didn’t get home until after the pick up time, and secondly I wanted her to have a bath, nail clip, and gland expression (what ever the heck that means).  The groomer has Tuesdays off, so I opted for a Wednesday pick up.  She was happy to see me for about 30 seconds until she noticed others in the room.  That’s the way she is.  She’d readily go live with someone else, anyone else.  A Lab she’s not.  I suppose we fit well together since we’re both of a sort of independent nature.  It’s just that my nature has slowed down a bit, and she’s still gung ho no matter what.  Oh well, we headed back to the rig and she collapsed in the bedroom to sleep the afternoon away.  She always comes back exhausted from her stays at the ‘spa’.  She sure smells good, and her hair feels fluffy.  It’s kind of ironic that her stay in the kennel was more expensive ...

After my expensive, quiet motel last night, I decided to pass on having a room service breakfast since it would have cost me about $15.  Instead, I had a sausage McMuffin for $1.06.    I was leaving Lexington by eight in the morning and thought I’d take a little detour on my way back to check out the COE campground where my sister and I have made reservations for the second week in July.  It’s on Buckhorn Lake in Kentucky. “Jack-in-the-Box” agreed with the directions to get there in my COE book, so that was a good thing.  I imagined myself to be my brother-in-law, Stan, driving his motorhome since this is the route that he would take from the north.  Even in my car it was a slow up and down, very curvy, skinny 50+ miles through the mountains of eastern Kentucky.  Occasionally I went as fast as 40 mph, but most of the drive was in the 20-30 mph range.  When I finally found the campground, it was a little less than I expected for a COE park. ...

Yesterday afternoon, I decided to look up a motel to stay in for tonight.  Thankfully, Dennis refreshed my memory about how to go about doing that.  Being the frugal person I am, I told Robyn I was choosing the cheapest place listed ($42) to stay in Lexington, KY.  I’m taking two days to get back to the rig, and Lexington was a distance of about 330 miles.  Before I made the reservation, Robyn suggested that I read the reviews on this particular motel (Microtel).  I certainly don’t have dumb kids.  Here’s what I found: Buddy D. from Elkhorn City, KY – Wouldn't stay again Stayed Jun 2008, 1 day Close Full Review > I should have know before checking in here witnessing a man enter his room with what appeared to be a prostitute. Mind you this was really late at night so it more then likely was. Room was way too much for the room and amenities offered. Would recommend the motel 6 super 8 or even knights inn at this same exit. These are all cheaper cle...

We heard that a new bamboo forest park just opened up on our island so we jumped in the car with our friends Mike and Alissa and went to go check it out. You can see bamboo trees mostly everywhere you go here but it is in sparse bunches that you would have to hike to in order to go through a few feet of them. So we were pleasantly surprised when we found the bamboo forest to be a thick forest of them throughout the entire trail. I don't know what it is about bamboo, but it's like a 'knock in the head' to remind you where you live but at the same time a peaceful and relaxing feeling when you're walking through a large group of them. they also included a ropes course through the trees that the boys got to enjoy. i wore sandals that day but brought my keens along in the car. of course i looked down and thought "oh my sandals will do just fine on the trail" and completely forgot about the course. ah well, just an excuse to go back again. instead i hung out wit...