Yet Another Awesome-Weekend Recap, Part 2

Cheryl and I woke up early on Saturday morning because I wanted to get down to Renton and vote before spending the day with my family. We drove down there and got into the parking lot at 8:45, but it was already packed. Apparently there was a mob of people waiting outside at 8 a.m., so they opened early and I headed to the back of an already-long line. Most people were just getting their absentee ballots, but there was also an option to vote early using the touch-screen electronic machines and that's what I chose to do. Why King County only had seven of them available is beyond me and I ended up waiting about an hour and a half before being able to cast my vote, but it was worth the wait.

After that, we headed back up to Redmond to hang with my fam for the day. Initially we had plans to go to the Pacific Science Center, but everyone was a little luke warm on that and we instead decided to head over to U-Village for a little shopping. I liked that idea better. Check out the hoodie I found at Fireworks, of all places...



Too perfect! Cheryl and I got a little early Christmas shopping done and then we all headed over to The Ave for some lunch. As I used to work on The Ave, I was excited to visit one of my favorite restaurants, a little Vietnamese place called Thanh Vi. I ate there very frequently when I worked at The Dawg Den because the food is great, it's cheap and the people there are as nice as they come. They would always greet me by name and, despite not visiting them for several years, when I walked in, they were like, "Oooh! It's been so long!" They freaking remembered me!!! Not only that, but they asked Cheryl if she was still teaching—and that's just based on the fact that I talked about her and she had been in one other time. Amazing! The food was even better than I remembered and it was so cool that they remembered me. I certainly won't let two years pass until my next visit!

We headed home after lunch and chilled out for a bit before Horia's big Halloween party. At about 6:30, Cheryl, Meg and I began getting ready. Cheryl and I were a cute gnome couple and Meg was a gypsy.



We went to the party and it was a blast! It was great to see everybody and there were some awesome costumes. Horia made an awesome Ninja Turtles costume so, fittingly, Caroline decided to dress up as April O'Neil. I didn't get a picture of Brent, who went all-out with his Ghostbusters costume, but Sonia dressed up as Amy Winehouse and, in my opinion, had the best costume of the whole party. The funny thing is that she said she had everything necessary in her closet!




Things got a pretty crazy right as we were leaving. As we left, our car was stopped at the entrance to Horia's apartment complex by Redmond Police Officers...armed with machine guns. Turns out they were looking for "a man with a gun." Well, it was someone at Horia's party. One of his friends was dressed in all camouflage with a machine gun of his own. A neighbor saw him, got worried and called the police. It could have been really scary, but it turns out that everything ended well. No one got in trouble or got hurt, so that was a relief.

After an awesome breakfast Sunday morning, I flew back to North Carolina. On the first leg of the flight, I was a little worried when the woman sitting next to me moved her barf bag to the front of the pocket and said, "I hope I don't get sick!" She then proceeded to take some dramamine, eat a Snickers bar and talk my ear off. I had a layover in Detroit and the next leg was shorter and quieter.