fight2type

Sunday, April 09, 2006

I take back all the mean things I said....

... about Nebraska. I don't know that i have ever really said anything mean about Nebraska, except that i thought it would be boring, but i take it all back. Rica and I were there for a conference last weekend and it was awesome! The day started REALLY early. I had just enough time to kiss the boyfriend goodbye before i was off to the airport. I got there, parked the car, hopped on the shuttle, and walked into the airport to see a long winding line to check in. It looked to be pretty average in wait time, but as approached the end of the line a rent-a-cop stopped me and said told me the line for check in started down stairs. DOWNSTAIRS!!!! IN BAGGAGE CLAIM!!! Needless to say, I missed my flight. Grrrr. So i was supposed to arrive about an hour and half before Rica, but ended up arriving an hour after.

We drove to Lincoln and on the way hit a pretty nasty storm. It only lasted about 5 minutes but it was arguably the hardest rain i've seen combined with tiny hail, lightening, and wind. FUN!!! The conference went pretty well. The people there were fantastic. Friday night we went to dinner at a place called Misty's. It's a local steak house. And it was GREAT. We were pretty tired so we called it a night. Saturday night we went to another local place for dinner. This time an Italian place. It was really good too. Very cute. On the way into the restaurant though, we noticed a Russian store across the street. So after dinner we checked it out. It was awesome! Russian stacking dolls, Russian food! AWESOME!!! When we left there, we noticed a store called Ten Thousand Villages. If you click on the link you can find out more about the store and their cause, but basically it's a Fair Trade store that sells merchandise made by artisans from all over the world. Rica and i were in Heaven. We covered every square inch of the place gushing about how incredible everything was, not to mention how reasonably priced. I ended up walking out with a necklace and bracelet made in Kenya. They are just a bit punkish but totally awesome. If you really look at it, you can see that they were made out of tabs from soda cans. Rica found a necklace that was totally awesome too. It's funny how similar the two of us are, but how polar opposite our tastes are in certain areas. I loved her necklace, and she loved mine, though to be completely honest we would probably never trade. I bought something made out of soda tabs and she bought mother of pearl. It was so her though! i wish i had pictures to post. Maybe later. Each of our finds were so perfect that we had them cut the tags so we could where them out.

After that we did some more shopping at less exotic shops. We hit the standards, Old Navy, Victoria's Secret and a few others. Then we headed back downtown to enjoy a cup of coffee from a local coffee shop. That's right i said LOCAL! it was Fantastic!! We grabbed our coffee and walked out onto porch that wrapped around the front. We sat down ready to have a little quiet reading time (yes i still read!) but we ended up chatting with a semi-retired couple who were just awesome. They told us all about the football obsession in Nebraska, the lack of professional sports teams there, the incredible local cuisine, their kids, the moral decline of America, the importance of real commitment in marriage... i could go on and on. It was so much fun. They were so sweet. We eventually had to go because it was pretty late and we had an early flight but we had a fantastic time.

All in all, I have to say Nebraska impressed me. At least Lincoln anyway. The people were great, the food was super yum, they had local coffee shops, and amazing shopping. Yea Lincoln! As the Quitter pointed out in a comment on my last post, it's been a while since i've posted and there is more to come I swear. I've got at least 2 maybe 3 more posts in my head, i just have to manage to pull them out. For now, SLEEP!

posted at 10:32 PM :: 2 comments