Divas Do Raleigh

So rather than wait two weeks, I figured I’d go ahead while I had the momentum and recap the fabulous time I had this past weekend with another group of my college girlfriends now. So without further ado, here we go.

This past weekend, I had four more college girlfriends come to visit: Amanda (who MetroBuzz listeners may know as my former roommate & Rooftop Sessions participant), Julia, Allison, and Meagan. Jules & Amanda arrived around 10am on Friday morning, so I left work when they landed and picked them up. We hung around the apartment for a little while before heading to Chick Fil-A for lunch with Jay (it’s cool to like CFA again, right?) and then walking around North Hills for a little while. This time, Amanda did a shot of wheatgrass with me and like a normal person, she thought it tasted like grass. After North Hills, we hit up Crabtree Valley Mall for some shopping. For the second time in a month, I bought new clothes [that weren’t workout clothes]. Well, I had bought mine the night before they arrived because I didn’t know we wouldn’t be going shopping, but Amanda joined me in trying to be trendy, lol. Allison flew in later on Friday afternoon, so upon leaving the mall, we picked her up at the airport. Meagan current resides in Savannah, GA, so she hitched a ride to Raleigh with a friend and arrived shortly after we got home with Allison. And all the Divas were together for the first time in 5 years.

Backstory time. We were nicknamed the Divas by our friend Eddie all the way back during the first few months of our freshman year at Marist College. There was some sort of talent showcase that the Marist Music Department put on – I can’t remember all the details, to be honest – but we had decided to get together and perform the “Cell Block Tango” from Chicago. Afterwards, that nickname stuck. After college, Amanda & I lived together in Astoria, Julia lived with other roommates in Brooklyn, Allison moved to the Chelsea neighborhood in Manhattan, and Meagan stayed in Poughkeepsie to work for the Admissions Department at Marist. As the story goes, when I moved to Raleigh, Amanda moved in with Julia in Brooklyn, Allison became MetroBuzz’s resident expert on online dating, and Meagan took a job in Savannah. And that’s how a bill becomes a law.

On Friday night, the Divas did Downtown Raleigh (sorry, I couldn’t resist and it’s not going to get less cheesy). I stepped outside of my comfort zone on Friday night and wore tight white pants. I generally have to wear loser clothing, but to celebrate completely one month of Pure Barre, I decided to go for it. I took them to my favorite restaurant/bar, The Raleigh Times, for dinner. After dinner, we hung out at The Oxford. They were listening to the live band and I was smiling while listening to them rave over how cheap drinks are in Raleigh. Since I was our DD, I drank responsibly. I can’t say that I ate responsibly (those chicken nachos at 11:30pm are never a good idea), but I did drink responsibly. It was a really, really fun night. We even came across Mario.

On Saturday, we hit up the NC State Fair. I live within walking distance of the State Fair, yet in my 3.5 years in Raleigh, I’ve never actually gone to it. Jay was off from work on Saturday, so he was kind enough to drop us off a little bit closer to the fair to save us time and money on parking. We had only two goals for the day: Eat a lot of fried food and ride the Ferris wheel. We had zero problems accomplishing goal #1 within our first 15 minutes at the fair. Our fried food tally included: Fried pickle spears, fried chicken (which doesn’t really count), ribbon fries, fried mac ‘n’ cheese, and fried Reeses Peanut Butter Cups. Amanda, Meagan, & Julia also bought frozen bananas. I bought the fried Reeses and holy heaven was it amazing. If I ever go back, I’m making a beeline to the fried Reeses booth. Sadly, we were unable to accomplish goal #2. As we stood in the long ass line for the Ferris Wheel, it broke down! Dejected, we picked a different ride to use the ride tickets we’d bought on. We ended up riding one of those swing-type rides that spins around in a circle while lifting you up high in the air. I love carnival/fair rides, but after 3 hours of fried food, they’re a reaaallly bad idea, haha. It was a while before my head stopped hurting and my stomach stopped churning. I think I’m gettin’ old.

Jay picked us up after we’d have enough fair for one year. Allison is a big foodie and a great chef, so she decided to try to help us cancel out some of the grease we’d ingested by making us all Asian salads with tuna for dinner. We hit up Whole Foods on the way back from the fair to get ingredients. Somehow, we managed to eat again that evening and holy crap, was that salad & tuna delicious. [See picture below post.] We sat around watching YouTube videos for a while after dinner, having a great time and wondered whether or not we should even bother going out that evening. However, we had only bought 2 bottles of wine to share among 6 people (including Jay), so once we ran out (which was fairly quickly lol), the decision to go out on the town yet again was made.

On Saturday night, Jay was awesome enough to drive us, so I could drink not as responsibly. We ended up going to one of my other favorite places in Raleigh – a pub called The Flying Saucer. Flying Saucer is where we took everyone for the 2009 pre-Autism Speaks podcast meet-up. It’s where Kolkie got purple foot after dropping a chair on his foot. Love that place. They have these awesome soft pretzels with dips at Flying Saucer, so naturally, we had to order two rounds of them to eat. You know, because we hadn’t eaten enough the first half of the weekend already. Jay came to pick us up around 12:30am and another day was done.

On Sunday, a miracle happened. While at Flying Saucer the previous night, I had been telling the girls about Pure Barre. Meagan is big into fitness like I am and had been dying to try a class. Somehow, I had managed to convince everyone to go with us. I didn’t think anyone but Meagan would be down for going once the beer wore off, lol. I was wrong! We set forth for
Lynwood Grill at noon so I could teach them the way of the pickle chip, then hit up lululemon so Meagan & I could show them the way of the overpriced yet super comfy workout clothes, then headed to a 3pm class at Pure Barre Cary. I was SO excited for them to try it. Last I heard, they are all still sore three days later, hehe. I love that soreness. Anyway, Allison’s flight out was at 5:10pm, so we rushed right over to the airport as soon as class was out. The others were lucky enough to get to shower before their flight/drive home.

It has definitely been a crazy past 5 weeks for Jay and me. My parents were here the weekend of Sept. 14, Team SACS visited the weekend of Sept. 27, we went home to see the fam on Oct. 5, and this past weekend, we had the Divas. It’s been a really fun month and I am so grateful for all of it. Now, I’m ready for a nice, long month of doing nothing until Thanksgiving, haha.

Extra pictures: