Caving...

Court on Friday was brutal. They've changed around the entire courthouse, and there's a whole new section, and the clerk's office is literally a mile's hike from the courtrooms. It was very not-awesome in my 3 inch heels. And it was even MORE not-awesome when I left my blackberry in the courtroom and had to walk all the way back to get it. Open court was still in session, so I tried to walk (more of a limp, really, given my seventeen blisters from the courthouse-that-is-now-longer-than-an-O'Hare-airport-terminal) as quietly and as gracefully up to the front of the courtroom and discreetly look under the front-row bench where I had been sitting. But it wasn't there.

Oh crap.

So I looked in the next row back... didn't see it. I looked around in the aisle... not there. I looked in my bag again, dug around all the way to the bottom of it, but no, no blackberry. I turned around and headed back down the aisle, dejected, and certain that my boss, upon finding out that I lost it, would ALSO lose it. As I turned, I heard someone whisper, "Excuse me, ma'am?"

The bailiff. God bless that man. He may be one-hundred-and-twelve, but he's packing heat, and HE FOUND MY BLACKBERRY. He handed it to me, and I promptly told him he was my hero. He smiled, and I nearly skipped out of the courtroom. With decorum, of course.

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Sometimes my southern heritage comes a-calling...



and the need for a giant baked potato stuffed with cheese, sour cream, roasted chicken, and smothered with barbeque sauce just hits me like a ton of bricks. (A ton of bricks also being directly related to the amount I will weigh upon leaving this place...)

Its called Dixie Bones, and its a tiny little hole in the wall in Woodbridge, VA -- Steven discovered it through his friends at work, and we're totally hooked.

And seriously, who would give up the opportunity to eat in a restaurant where there's a paper mache catfish hanging from the ceiling?



Its a pretty drive there, too -- across the Occoquan River.



Although the bridges sort of remind me of Mothman...


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After a hearty meal, we headed over to Best Buy to browse the TVs. Steven has been researching new televisions for a while now -- our current TV is 19 inches of pure joy, which I originally purchased from Wal-Mart in Lynchburg in early 2000. Dear old TV has served us well, and I hesitated and hesitated when Steven talked about getting a new one. I just wanted to make sure we were getting a good deal, and there was the whole studying-for-the-bar thing, getting in the way of the whole looking-at-tv's thing.

I am here to officially report to you that I caved.



Totally, totally caved. Big time.



This TV is so huge, even Pringles is confused. We got a fantastic deal on it, and it was time to pull the trigger. So we bought it.

And we unpacked it. The box was almost as big as our whole living room.



And, although I had initially hesitated at the idea of enormo-TV in our not-nearly-so-enormo apartment, I have to admit.

This is one very awesome TV.



(Please note that the first thing Steven watched on the TV was Stevie Ray Vaughan. Could it possibly have been anything else? For the record, at 42 inches of high-def, SRV sweats a lot. A whole lot. But you can also see him turn every knob and flick every switch on Number One. It was pretty stinkin cool.)

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In other news, I also pulled the trigger and bought my Log Cabin yarn. With any luck, this will be the basic look of the end result:



I'm liking it.