Catching Up On Things. ... I promise all of the posts won't be this long!

This is crazy.  If you would have told me in high school/college that I would EVER voluntarily sit down and write just for the sake of writing/sharing thoughts, I would have looked you dead in the eye and called you a liar.  And I would have meant every syllable of the word.  Alas, many things have changed since those "good ol' days" where I was a procrastinating paper-writer and here I am, voluntarily starting to do just that.  [Still today, just thinking about ALL of those papers I'd refused to start writing until 10pm the night before they were due... makes me shutter!  EEK!]

I wanted to start sharing my experiences 1) because who doesn't  have a blog these days? obvioulsy it's trendy and I'd like to think I'm just fashionably late to the virtual party and 2) I have some genuinely funny thoughts and experiences I think other people might enjoy wasting their time reading! :)  I guess we can let you be the judge of that since nobody is forcing you to read this anyway.

I'll try to catch you up to speed on how I got where I currently am today as best I can, but let's just agree that this story starts the day I said "I do" to my best friend.  We'll lovingly refer to him in this blog as Mr. W, since I currently have no idea how to set the privacy on this thing, or if that is even possible.  Mr. W and I were hitched in October of 2010 [and in my humble, yet very biased opinion, it was the single best day of ALL TIME.]  It was a USC Gamecock by-week in Columbia [the only way we were getting married in the fall]and may have been the nicest [weather] day that town has ever seen.  It was a 72 degree fall day [what?? that NEVER happens in Columbia ] and if I think hard enough about it I can still feel the sun on my face while we were taking pictures in front of the church before the ceremony.  **sigh**

me and my sweet dad

making it official with Mr. W!

Mr. W and I met in and were living in Columbia, SC until right before the wedding when Mr. W got a promotion and then we headed off to east TN where he could continue climbing the ladder.   But a little background on me before we get into that is that I was raised on the sandy shores of Myrtle Beach.  And while many in the surrounding area would refer to that dot on the map as the "Redneck Riviera", "Dyrtle Myrtle", so on and so forth, you get the point - most of the "red" stuff is the tourism industry that floods the beach every summer.  I would spend as much of my summer as possible working on that golden tan and enjoying the sound of the waves crashing as I napped under the sun.  And whenever it got too hot, dipping into a nearby hotel pool to cool off to pretend I was on vacation too, was the perfect solution.  To be cliche'; I never knew how good I had it until I didn't have it anymore.  College, and other life circumstances eventually moved me away from the Atlantic coast inland a few hours to Columbia.  Yet even in Columbia, a day-long beach trip was not out of the question if we were feeling the need to have the sand between our toes. 

a typical day in the life of my younger self

 Mr. W has a great job and a great career going for him and his promotion fell right in line with his long-term goals.  His company [we'll refer to it as the Big E], is headquarted in northeast TN so we packed up and moved even farther away from the beaches into the mountains of TN.  

obviously this is taken looking forward, not looking back

We got to TN and let's just say "culture shock" would be the understatement of my lifetime.  Here I am a beach worshipping, sand-between-my-toes FANATIC, looking around and thinking what in the world have I gotten myself into???  Upon first arrival we rented the newest/nicest apartment in the biggest town of the tri-city area.  While the apartment complex itself was very nice, it was situated next to a cow pasture with rolling hills and hay bales - a daily reminder that "we weren't in Kansas anymore, Toto."  [Kansas obviously being my beloved SC.]  Soon after Mr. W and I returned from an AMAZING honeymoon in Mexico (I still dream of being back there and wish that week could have lasted all year) it would turn to fall, and my plans of soaking up rays by the pool would soon be exchanged for thank-you-note writing [from the wedding gifts] and job hunting. 

The first of the year rolled around and I had finally found a place to work at an area community college.  It's a training facility for people that want to learn manufacturing trades (and if you're anything like me, you still don't know what all that entails.)  Quick tutorial: welding, electrical stuff, and a bunch of other fancy-looking machinery that I don't DARE mess with for fear of losing limbs.  

Now, I know what you are thinking.  What in the world are you [the girlie girl who likes stilettos and make-up] doing in a job like that?  A lot of days I ask myself the same thing, but the short story of it is that I work up front coordinating lab schedules and running summer camps [<-- again, are we sure that's a good fit??] amoungst various other things.  There are about 10 full time faculty members where I work and all but one of them is from a closely surrounding area, making me somewhat of a stand-out when it comes to understanding the lingo.  That brings me to within the last year, somewhat anyway, and why I chose to write this blog.  In working with these 'folk', one in particular, I have laughed more times than I can count at how very DIFFERENT accents and little sayings can be: all depending on where you came from.

My plan is to capture and share as many of these "Ron-ism" phrases and stories as possible and to be clear it is NOT meant to be taken as poking fun or laughing at the co-workers expense.  It is just my way of sharing the story of a beach girl 'finding her way' [if you will] in the mountains of NE TN. 

Thanks for reading!