Traveling Grace

Seeing everyone at Red Mountain was a blast! I liked what Aaron said one night about family being some of our closest friends. I enjoy (I think there's a much stronger word than that, but I can't think of it now) being around every single person who was there and really missed the ones who weren't.
Our trip back turned into a wild one. A couple of hours into the trip (I was driving), we realized that we were travelling south instead of east. We were involved in each other's presentations of expertise that we didn't do at Red Mountain - Matt talked about how much it costs for pharmaceutical companies to get drugs on the market, Brittany talked about the fourth wall in acting and emoting (?) on camera, broadway, etc., David talked about centralized and decentralized organizations, and I talked about how the MFT field and family therapy is different than traditional psychology therapy. It was all so fascinating and CO did such a poor job of marking their highways, that we ended up going 180 miles out of our way. Yes. 180. I just figured it out on googlemaps.
In Lamar the hwy signs were not clear. Apparently I was supposed to make a left turn somewhere to continue on Hwy 50, but missed it. It looked like the only reason to turn left was to take the Hwy 50 truck route. As we weren't in a truck, we of course did not take that, and that was mistake number 1. No big deal, we thought. At that point it would be quicker to continue on the Hwy south to Springfield and take Hwy 16o north to get back to Hwy 50. Right as we were coming to the area where we would turn off, we hit major construction. The two lane hwy was turned to one lane for I think at least 20 miles, maybe more? I'm not the best estimate with stuff like that. Anyway, after waiting for a very long time for the traffic to come through from the opposite direction, we finally got to go. Right after we started we saw a sign for Hwy 16o South or West pointing to the right, so we figured the turn to go North/East was just down the road a little ways. There was a road to the left at that sign, but it looked like a little neighborhood road. As we drove past that intersection, Matt looked behind us and sure enough that was our turn north, BUT we were in one lane traffic and there was no way to turn around for what seemed like a long time. By the time we were out of construction there were no hwys to turn north on, so we went on to Boise City, OK, then Guymon, and eventually we cut back up into Kansas and made it to Rock where M and B's car was parked. I think we got to Rock around 11. I don't know how long it took M and B to get back to Noble, but the way Hwy 77 curved around (we sure didn't miss any more turns at this point), we didn't get back to Tulsa until around 2. I dropped David off and headed home to my little spot on the couch. So, our trip ended up being about 15 hours. Despite the extra 3-4 hours added on, the trip was a blast.
Besides our presentations of expertise, :) we ate twizlers, we rocked out to Jesus Freak (that was my favorite), some Kirk Franklin, and a little Reliant K. We ate at Dairy Queen for lunch and Subway for supper. Sadly we were in such small towns most of the day that we weren't able to use the McDonald's coupons Nan gave us. When we came to Wellington, KS, and saw the golden arches we were overjoyed. Then we went in and they told us that they didn't serve frappes or smoothies. You've got to be kidding me. I was very disappointed. So, I guess we'll all be using our coupons individually. Thanks anyway Nan, for thinking of us!
Gentry's new roomate moved in right before I left, so they're letting me stay on the couch until tomorrow when I can move into my new place!!! Gentry works and travels a lot so I haven't seen much of her, but she has been such a great roomate. I've really enjoyed getting to know her.
I'll move in tomorrow afternoon, Lord willing. I need to buy a washer and dryer, a couch or futon, a bed, and maybe a dining room table. So basically I need a lot of furniture. I might have found two bar stools for really cheap. I need to see for sure how high the bar is before I buy those though.
Happy almost weekend!