Well, Ok. Our balcony I guess. Apparently, Annabelle was a student in the girls’ school here early in the hotel’s life. She had an affair with a professor and got pregnant and somehow ended up falling off the balcony of our room. Now she can be seen peeking into the windows of the dining room and falling off the balcony. There are several other ghosts on our floor, but we haven’t seen any ourselves, praise be.

We did some shopping today. And quite a bit of eating. Not as much walking as yesterday because we are too sore from yesterday. We walked mostly downhill today and rode the trolleys up the hill. I’ve gotten in some great reading time on our lovely balcony.

We’ve found that the nightlife here is not really for us. All the bars are smoke-filled, and my asthma is having a heyday as it is with all this thin mountain air. So, mostly, we find ourselves in our room by 10.

It’s very disconcerting to me to see all these beautiful Victorian houses with old recliners and junk on the porches and Harley Davidson signs in the windows. All the well-kept homes are bed and breakfasts, or timeshares.

We head home tomorrow. Then, we start planning our 20th anniversary!

I am at the Crescent Hotel in Eureka Springs Arkansas. We got here this afternoon and have already been on a couple of trails and through the shopping district. Our room has a door onto a veranda where I sat and watched a shower roll in over the Ozarks.

I’ve already found the bookstore. Duh.

We hope to be able to renew our vows in some lovely spot while we’re here.

This is incredibly difficult on Mike’s handheld PC, so posting may be spotty, but I will try to post pictures after we get home.

Edited to add: We got the laptop working on the wi-fi in the room. Although it may only work after 10 pm. Maybe I’ll have something to say tomorrow. No promises. I will say this. All the locals raved about the Motley Crue concert shirts we had on. Then they all told us stories about something Motley Crue reminded them of. It made for slow going around the town with all the stories we heard.

My good friend Phoenix recently brought it to my attention that not everyone may know what I mean by “book hangover.” Let me ‘splain. No. Is too long. Let me sum up.

Book hangover feels just like a regular hangover except with less vomiting. You can’t put down that book. You just have a few more chapters to go. It’s so good. You begin calculating how many hours of sleep you could get and trying to guess how long it will take you to finish. Then, you finish the book anyway.

You put your head on the pillow, your eyes are burning from reading so long under your poor beside lamp. Your brain starts going over the book. You fall asleep remembering your favorite parts.

When your alarm goes off the first time, you decide what parts of your morning you can sacrifice for 9 more minutes of sleep. “I’ll wear pants. No need to shave.” When it goes off again, you keep bargaining. “I’ll take a shower after work. I can put my hair up. Nobody will know.”

When you finally open your eyes, you think, “Was the sun always that bright? Coffee! I need caffeine!” When you get vertical, your head spins and begins pounding. You stagger to the bathroom and take a peek in the mirror. “Oh god. Is that what I look like? How will I ever make that head presentable for work?” You do the best you can while leaning against the counter for balance.

Once at work, you sip your coffee and perch carefully on your chair while you tell your co-worker, “Yeah. Hangover. Way too much Dickens last night.”

Stolen from Sweet Memes

1. Go to the Billboard #1 Hits listings (scroll down and you’ll see them separated by decades on the left in the sidebar)
2. Pick the year you turned 18
3. Get yourself nostalgic over the songs of the year
4. Pick 5 songs and write something about how these songs affected you
5. Pass it on to 5 more friends

1989
Which I should preface by pointing out that I don’t remember a lot of songs on this list because I didn’t listen to top 40 pop. My tastes ran to the hair metal.

1. Every Rose Has Its Thorn Li- Poison – This was Poison’s first good ballad. Until we all got soooo tired of hearing it on the radio every 1o seconds. It was so “real” and “heartfelt”. Yeah, poor rock and roll star got dumped by his stripper girlfriend. Whatever.

2. Listen To Your Heart - Roxette – This was the number one song the week I turned 16. Somebody recently remade it and it is my 5-year-old daughter’s favorite song.

3. Like a Prayer – Madonna – WOW. Remember how worked up everybody got about this song? She’s got stigmata! She should be ex-communicated! I went to a Catholic high school.

4. Rock On - Michael Damian – I actually kind of liked this song. It said, “James Dean.”

5. When I See You Smile – Bad English – Confession. I still like this song. A lot.

Who’s up next? It’s really fun!

You know the day isn’t going as planned when you suddenly find yourself belting out Deep In the Heart of Texas a capella to 180 people.

That was me on Tuesday. We had an organizing snafu with our program for the kids, and we had to smash together a program. We put on some little plays. Like, we were reading our lines from the scripts. One of the parts called for Deep in the Heart of Texas, but the girl doing the part didn’t know the song. Before I could even think about it, I jumped in and started singing the song. About halfway through I realized what I was doing and nearly passed out. Yikes! And to top it all off, my kids were in the audience. The are now completely sure their mother is crazy.

Stolen from Tanabata

Rules: Use the 1st letter of your name to answer each of the following.

1. Famous singer/band: ———–Alien Ant Farm
2. 4 letter word: —————– arse
3. Street name: —————— Aspen ave.
4. Color: ————————- aqua
5. Gifts/presents: —————- antiques
6. Vehicle: ———————– Aveo
7. Things in a souvenir shop: —– Always junk.
8. Boy name: ——————– Austin
9. Girl name: ——————— Alyssa
10. Movie title: —————— Alien
11. Drink: ———————— apple juice
12. Occupation: —————— astronaut
13. Flower: ———————- aster
14. Celebrity: ——————– angelina jolie
15. Magazine: ——————– allure
16. U.S. city: ——————– atlanta, georgia
17. Pro sports teams: ———— astros
18. Fruit/vegetable: ————– apple
19. Reason late for work: ——– avalanche
20. Something you throw away: — avocado peels
21. Things you shout: ———— aack!
22. Cartoon character: ———– can’t think of a single one!

It’s actually not for 3 weeks, but Mike bought me my present today. It’s a beautiful Amethyst and diamond ring. It makes me happy. Yay, Mike!

The stars must be out of whack. I’ve seen two movies at the theater in less than a week! I saw Pirates on Memorial Day (being May 28th for those outside of US). And last night a friend took me to see Georgia Rule.

Now, my first thought on reading the blurb for the film was, “Oh, Lindsay Lohan is typecast.” She plays an out of control teen whose mother can’t handle her anymore and takes her to live with her grandma. Grandma is played by Jane Fonda. She’s wonderful. Dermot Mulroney is good, too. And Lindsey didn’t suck. She actually played a likeable character even though she was a delinquent. I loved how they got normal-looking people to play all the other girls in town to play up how striking she is.

It’s a good flick. It has funny parts, but it is by no means a comedy. It has some pretty difficult themes. Fair warning.