July 3, 1999
A Tour of Tallahassee

Written on July 5th, but placed on the webpage in its rightful space because I don’t have the patience to put the entire weekend in one singular entry. I hope you can forgive me. I had a busy but fun weekend and I would like to tell all about it. Please read on to find out more.

Stuart came to Tallahassee today. The beginning of the day was devoted to preparing for his arrival. My mom took his visit as an opportunity to get a lot of stuff done around the house. Mr. Pressure Clean, an interesting Indian man with a strong accent, came and washed the driveway, sidewalk, and porches yesterday. Also, at Wal-Mart, we bought a bunch of new pillow and towels for our visitor. My mom was so happy to get these new things and she had a good excuse to buy them since we were having a guest.

Yesterday I was giving Stu directions to my house from the interstate when he told me that he is somewhat allergic to animals. I hadn’t heard this before! A problem surfaced since he is staying at my house and we have two very active cats. Our house would probably kill anyone with severe allergies because everything is covered with cat fur. Last night my mom and I made my room a “cat free” zone so Stu could sleep in there and not be bothered by the pitter-patter of little paws in the middle of the night. It was annoying when Bob decided he wanted in my room last night, though. At 5 AM I heard some meowing and scratching at the door, but I couldn’t let him in. Let’s hope we can keep them out of the room for the entire time Stu is here (not too easy).

Stu arrived around noon and I was very glad to see him. It has been exactly two weeks since I left Gainesville and I was starting to miss Stu a lot. If you have read previous entries here you would have gathered that because I write about him almost everyday. The biggest problem with Stu coming to Tallahassee is the lack of interesting things to do here! As soon I was sure he was coming this weekend I started thinking about what activities would be fun for the holiday weekend, but I couldn’t come up with much. Since Stu has only been to Tallahassee one other time I decided to take him on a tour of the state capitol buildings this afternoon. It has been a long time since I have been there and I have always liked the Natural History Museum. We went there first and then tried to go to the top of the 22-story main capitol building, but it had already closed for the afternoon. It’s quite a view from the top, but we will have to do that some other time. The old capitol building, located right in front of the new one, is a neat building and we walked through the old State Congress meeting halls and the old governor’s office.

Meghan called my house while Stu and I were touring downtown Tallahassee. My mom told her what we were up to and she just said, “Oh, the interesting stuff!” Unfortunately Meghan is right about Tallahassee being boring. When I think about it, I don’t have any idea how I keep myself occupied in this town! We have great movie theaters, but not much else in the city. If you really want to do something fun you have to go to St. George Island, Panama City, Wakulla Springs, or somewhere else that is farther away.

In the last two days I have been frantically setting up a dinner get together for tonight. Last year when we had one of those it was a lot of fun because everyone had news to share with everyone else. Since Stu was visiting Tallahassee and he had never met any of my high school friends I thought this would be a good opportunity to do that. By the time we left for the restaurant, Rio Bravo since that is a favorite place, we knew that there would be six people there. The guest list read as follows: Jennifer, Kathe, Meghan, Dan, Stuart, and me. I was hoping Jamie, Brianne, Laura, Joe, and some other people would be able to be there too, but they were busy or not available. We had a good time. Dan actually got away with ordering a raspberry margarita (very slick) and we were all had a blast watching that. Granted he is less than a month away from his twenty-first birthday, but he is still underage and the waitress should have checked his age. I don’t think he looks obviously older than twenty-one, but maybe the waitress was just being nice and letting him have a drink. Now Stu has met a few of my friends (he already knew Dan) and he has a better idea where I get my crazy notions from.

I guess I succeeded in not boring Stuart to death today. Tomorrow we are planning to go to the Tom Brown Park fireworks show for the Fourth of July with Jennifer, Ryan, Jamie, and Tim at 6 PM. Before that time I have no idea what we are going to do. We’ll see what happens. Tim McGraw is giving a free concert at the park so I guess we will be there for that too. None of us are big country fans, but I think the concert precedes the fireworks show and it will be an experience for me who has never been to a real concert.