Where to start!

En route to dumping me off at Nashville airport, we were talking about what a ‘normal’ weekend is for most people.

I’m going to go way out on a limb, and guess that flying into one airport, hang gliding, an evening social hour Friday night, migrating data from one laptop to another laptop, a party Saturday night, and selling everything from an apartment and then cleaning that apartment doesn’t fall into most people’s idea of ‘normal’.

But it just seems so par for the course.

It’s a good thing that neither of us are ‘normal’.  And the combination of both of us is an exponential factoring of ‘not normal’.

Hectic weekend?  You betcha.  Could we do it again?  Sure.  Could we do it every weekend?  No way.

Just doing a hang gliding trip should have maxed out our weekend.  The thrill of doing something that 90% of the population considers insane, the reveling in the sensation, the swapping fish stories.  Add in travel time, meals, etc, and you have a pretty big and exciting weekend.

Oh, what’s behind door number two?  Selling an apartment worth of furniture, then cleaning that apartment and getting out of Dodge.  Yet another way to completely kill a weekend.

But why be boring – do it all!  We’re both eternally grateful that the guy that Colette found to sublet her apartment was not only clean and neat, he was extremely helpful with Craigslist people coming to look at furniture/etc, and he even helped buyers and us cart heavy items down the two flights of stairs.  Totally cool guy, and I’m glad that it worked out so well for all of us.

Two more things checked off the list – hang gliding and ditching the apartment.  A good feeling?  A fantastic feeling.

We spent the weekend with our good friends Sherry and Walter.  They were not only gracious enough to open their home, they hosted a “get out of Dodge” party for us on Saturday night and had all of the usual suspects involved.  No drunken debauchery, no keg stands, no margarita mix on the ceiling.  Just a great, laid back, adult party.  It is so great to know that we can maintain quality friendships regardless of geography, socioeconomics, and stages of life.

It was also great that our friends David and James were able to find babysitters on short notice, and to bring their better half (better looking half for sure) along with them.  We both know that it can’t be easy to sneak away on a Saturday night without the kids, and it means a lot.

It’s emotional watching the girls say good-bye, even though we all know that ‘good-bye’ never is.  There will always be trips through or to Nashville, and we’re always going to be in locations which are prime-time for visitors, but there are still some moist eyes when the time actually comes to part ways.

As Andre Gide once said:

One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.

We haven’t lost sight of the shore yet, but we’re getting pretty close to hoisting the sails.