Man, it’s been a long month! It feels like ages ago that some of my girlfriends from New York came down to visit, but in reality, it was only two weeks ago. Time flies when you have no free time, haha. I want to recap their visit for posterity! 🙂
My friends who came to visit were Amanda and Gar. They visited me and another college roommate, Sara. So, Amanda and Gar arrived at 7:30am on Thursday, September 27. I picked them up, chatted for a bit, then left them to nap while I headed to work. Lucky them, Jay cooked them biscuits and sausage gravy that morning. I’m jealous and only a little bit bitter that no one saved me any. 🙁 I went home for lunch and visited with them; Sara also came by the apartment during her lunch break and we all joked around about things like JC Penny’s. That’s how we roll. After work, we hit up the Fiona Apple concert in Durham. After the concert was over, Sara went back home and Gar went to sleep because she’d been up since 4am. Amanda and I were still super giddy and hyper from the awesome concert, so we stayed up for a while recapping it like school girls and watching Fiona Apple videos on YouTube (yay Apple TV).
The next morning, we lounged around for a while. Amanda cooked us a delicious breakfast of buscuits, eggs, and cheese. Post breakfast, Gar, who just became a certified Pilates instructor, gave me an impromptu class in the middle of the living room floor while Amanda surfed the ‘net and made declarations like, “This looks like fun…NOT!” Jay came home for his lunch break mid-Pilates and 
joined Amanda in the commentator’s box. We finally got our butts in gear Friday afternoon and hit up Crabtree Valley Mall for some shopping, North Hills mall for some smoothies, wheatgrass (they actually LIKED the taste of wheatgrass! EW.), and more shopping, and Harris Teeter for pre-gaming and breakfast supplies. It was a very eventful Friday afternoon, actually.
We decided to go out to eat at Babylon, a restaurant that’s just at the beginning of Downtown Raleigh (I swear to God that I just typed “Downton Ralley” without even thinking). This was the night that I decided to wear a backless, sideless shirt that I’m told is in “fashion” these days. It wasn’t nearly as slutty as I thought it was in my head, but I still was proud at myself for daring to be different for a night.
/Lame tangent. After yet another round of a multiple camera photoshoot that poor Jay had to facilitate, we headed out, only 15 minutes late for our reservations. I do need to give Jay mad props – he dropped us off and picked us up late that night so no one would have to be the designated driver. At times, I have a fantastic, patient husband, haha. 😉
Our night out in Downton Ralley was so much fun. There was a huge thunderstorm while we were eating dinner, which we thought would be a problem, but luckily, the rain cleared up fairly quickly and we were able to walk to our other destinations. We had a really good time at Babylon, but we were unanimously left in disappointment at the food. It was good, but not great and when you eat at a fancy-looking restaurant of a certain price range, you expect great food. We left Babylon to walk into the heart of Downtown, stopping along the way for the requisite Instagram pictures of scenery, cockroaches, and the like. Once we hit Fayetteville Street (one of the main drags or “hubs” of activity), we went to The Oxford for some drinks. There was a band playing and a bartender that looked sorta like a more Americanized version of my friend Clif. The band was actually a lot of fun – they sang mostly covers of Jeff Buckley and Dave Matthews Band type music, but it was enough for us to awkwardly dance to it. We were there for a while and had a blast. When we left The Oxford, we decided to end the night at my fav, the Raleigh Times. After one beer at Raleigh Times, we were ready to go home. Jay came to get us around 1:00am. Naturally, we all got street hot dogs (a big theme of Amanda & Gar’s last visit lol) and Gar and Sara made Jay drive around looking for an open Wendy’s (they closed at 1, so no luck). Have I mentioned that I have a fantastic and patient husband?
It was rainy and cold on Saturday, which was fine by us, because we were all exhausted from going to bed at 2am. Man, I seriously got old. I was wiped out from the night before. That never happened in college. On Saturday morning, it was Gar’s turn to cook breakfast. She made us bacon, eggs and hash browns. It was awesome. Jay had to go to work at 2pm on Saturday, but he hung out with us until he had to leave. I think Saturday day can pretty much be summed up in two words: Breaking Bad. Gar had never seen it, so we marathoned through all of Season 1 and a got a good start into Season 2. Finally, around 5pm we decided it was time to shower and head to Sara’s house for a lovely dinner and lots of Sara’s NY wine. 
Sara made us a GREAT dinner and fabulous desserts – cupcakes and tree bark. After the night before, I was more than happy to volunteer to be DD lol which worked out because Sara ran out of red wine early and I don’t drink white wine. Poor Pookie was still tired from the previous night and fell asleep on the couch. Like the mature adults we are, we got T.J.’s (Sara’s husband) cigarettes and put one in her mouth and posed and took pictures of her sleeping like that. Good times.
On Sunday, technically, it was my turn to cook something for everyone, so naturally I took Amanda and Gar to Bruegger’s Bagels and then to walk around North Hills again, where we got another shot of wheatgrass. When we got back home, we managed to squeeze in another couple of episodes of Breaking Bad before meeting Sara and Jay (who was on his lunch break) at Lynwood Grill for some pickle chips. I took them to the airport after our late lunch. All in all, it was a really fun weekend and I’m so excited that they came to visit us 
again. Oh, so why is this post titled “Team SACS Visit 2K12”? Because we nicknamed ourselves that for our initials way back in the mother-effing day (Sarah, Amanda, Colleen, Sara). Yup, we’re really cool like that. We also spent more than half of our sophomore year of college knitting and watching Sex and the City on DVD in our pajamas. And we used to schedule classes around Unsolved Mysteries so we could all be home to watch it and eat lunch together. Team SACS is so cool. Don’t be jealous.
Anyway, I have another group of college girlfriends, nicknamed the “Divas,” coming to visit today, so it will be another great weekend for me and my liver. I can’t wait. I bet you can’t wait to hear read more boring posts like this one two weeks after they’ve left, too.
[Editor’s Note: Some of these pictures are courtesy of Gar.]
