Ohhh...Omaha

So, I've been meaning to post about my trip to Omaha, Nebraska for about a month. But this time my lack of posting has been due to myself not allowing myself to waste time posting vs. just not posting. There is a difference.

Why did I not allow myself to post? I was studying for the GRE all summer, but really cramming that last month. And how did I do on the GRE? Well lets start with the fact that I was nearly hyperventilating on the way to the test, had to call Emily to try to calm down. I think that was due to the fact that I hadn't taken any sort-of test in 4 years, spent a lot of time studying this summer, had FOUR HOURS of testing ahead of me and it all cost me $160. But in the end, I did pretty good on my math portion, I was 30 points below my brother, the actual rocket-scientist's, score. But as far as the "verbal," though I was very close to my brother, we both had scores you would not want to write home about. Ever.

(And lets be honest, I am a little ticked that I memorized 300 vocabulary terms and only saw 2 of them on the test. One of them being in the instructions on how to take the test. But lets not start on my rant about how chance determines A LOT of the outcome of the verbal portion of the test.)

This post is supposed to be positive, and it is, starting now.

So Chelsea and myself have always said that one summer we should take a road trip, we are both teachers and have time to do so. But somehow, we've never actually accomplished actually taking a road trip.

Until now. When I was in DFW for Nick's party, we decided that we should visit her sister-in-law whom just got married and moved to Omaha. Andrea is one of those people that you may not have hung out with too much; but you just know that if you were to ever have the opportunity to live in the same town, you would be the best of friends.

So I showed up to Chelsea's on a Wednesday night. We had already thrown around the idea of making shirts for the trip. But we went with using our old Chili Fest shirt (that we wore all 4 years of college), and just dazzling it up. So to not make the other owners of the shirt mad, we iron-sewed and glued the addition to the shirts on. Because, as I told Chelsea and Nick, "we may someday want to go in a different direction with the shirt." But here we are working on those shirts:

And the final product:

And if you can't make out what the "patches" are; they are in the shape of Nebraska with 2010 written on them. We also glued a button on the spot where Omaha is located.

I will be honest and say that I did not have high hopes on this trip to Omaha. I kinda had a vision in my mind of visiting College Station minus the university, the people and the bars. But, I am happy to say I was wrong. Wrong about everything I expected, starting with the drive.

About halfway through Kansas, and then all the way through Nebraska was one of the most gorgeous drives I've had since I rode on a bus through upstate New York. Maybe it's because I am used to all the views of Texas and all the states on the way to Georgia, but I don't think so. The beautiful soft rolling farm hills was just a sight to be seen! None of the picture I took from the car did any of it justice, so I am not even going to try to post them.

Now, I can't help it if I envisioned every one of those hills having a tornado cresting their tops, but steriotypes are a hard thing to break. And maybe I should cut back on watching Tornado Chasers.

What could have been helped is the fact that there are virtually no bathrooms/gas stations through that area. I mean, who can blame us for having to "stretch our legs" (as my mom would call it) through someone's corn field?

But we made it to Andrea and Chris' place. (But not after GPS had us view streets 1 through 120 and every stop light in between, not to mention a detour through an unneccesary neighborhood).

We did eventually make it, no thanks to GPS. And Chris and Andrea were perfect hosts. They made a delicious dinner the first night. We laughed a lot, especially over Chelsea's driving. My favorite quote of her's was while she was talking on the phone while driving, "I need to let you go, I-35 is a bit harder to navigate than one would think."

Once you are in Omaha, there isn't much of a view, but we did take a bit of tour of Chris and Andrea's work, ConAgra Foods, and it is a beautiful "campus." And I say campus because if ConAgra Foods doesn't work out (which is an impossiblity, they have all the best foods you love) they could turn their grounds into a University. And no one would be none the wiser. Here's a couple of the views:

Then, we went to a place called Rock Bottom Brewery. The bigger tables had taps that came through the table for you to re-fill your own beers! Love this place! When will it be in Austin?

After a wonderful dinner that night we went out on the town in Omaha. I am pretty sure every town I touch consequently decides to change the time the bar closes to a later time, if it's not already at two. This was Omaha's innaguraul night of two am closings. Not that we took advantage of that, but still.

And there might have been a moment in the night when Chris and Chelsea went to bed (at three mind you, we spent several hours at their apartment). And Andrea and myself decided to stay up and play the game of Life (the official game of the weekend). Half-way through we decided to walk out on the balcony and we were quite surprized to find a homeless man sleeping on the ground. We yelled and tried to wake him up, but were not concerned enough to go wake him up. Then we topped off the night with watching "Cheaper by the Dozen." I would never watch that movie in any other situation, but that night it seemed like the best thing since sliced bread!

The next morning I had no recollection of the end of previous nights events, until Andrea and I stepped foot onto the porch. She, very non-challantly, said, "look Jenny, the homeless man is still there!"

Which turned out to be a staircase lined in stones. Quite similar, but yet, not at all.

Yeah, ouch.

The rest of the weekend was filled with several more laughs, a lot of relaxation and yet more great food. I did not expect Omaha to be what it turned out to be! I had a great time!

In fact, I had such a great time, I think it was actually a turning point for me. If you read one of my recent blogs about how the seasons always change, you know I was not in the best of places. A fresh break-up will do that to you. But like I said in that blog, winter may always come, but spring is just around the corner. And Omaha was my spring. It was that moment you wake up from the "funk" you are in and you realize, life is out there waiting on you, and it's great!

The best part about life is that it's hiding in little unknown places like Omaha, Nebraska. I may not want to move there (yet), but it serves as a reminder that you might not have a clear end in mind, but you never know what is unexpectedly going to show up around the corner and be a happy surprize!