The best of intentions.....

I'm really not sure where the past couple of weeks went, but it's been an appallingly long time since I've blogged. My apologies to you who actually check this on a regular basis, as I know I check some of your blogs and go "Geez... she hasn't posted anything new yet??? What's up with that???"

We had preparations for the trip to see Richard's sisters in VA, then the actual trip. I'll try to get some pictures uploaded at some point, but we spent the night in Charlotte on the way up and got to make a pilgrimage to Lowe's Motor Speedway while we were there. Way Kewl!!!! The Richard Petty Driving Experience was there, so there were actual cars on the track. They were very loud. HRL was not amused. I can't imagine how loud 43 of them would be at one time, but I imagine hearing protection would definitely be needed.

(As an aside, Richard encountered an actual cop arresting an actual hooker at the hotel we were staying in near the Charlotte airport. Never saw that happen before....)

From there we visited Hendrick Motorsports, future home of our fave Dale Jr. While widely viewed as "the dark side of the Force" by many in Junior Nation, I was thrilled at the announcement that he's going to join the team next year. Hendrick has without question the best equipment in NASCAR, and besides, every race Junior wins still keeps Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson, his new teammates, out of Victory Lane. :) Hendrick has a nice museum, including 4 Daytona 500 winning cars all lined up in a row, and a car that went through "the big one" in Talladega that was smushed into a smallish ball of sheetmetal, but the roll cage was intact and the driver walked away. Amazing. We scored some actual race-used lugnuts from Casey Mears' Cup car (he's the #25 National Guard car), but we haven't decided how to display them yet. (Yes, we amuse quite easily.)

From there it was off to Roanoke for the visit with Richard's sisters. Sandi has two rather large dogs: Cassie, a 100 lb giant schnauzer, and Magic, a 105 lb "standard" poodle (the "standard" part is up for interpretation). That's a lot of dog. Magic has, without a doubt, the most earnest looking face I've ever seen on a dog. And the face was easy to see considering he came up to my waist. He looked like "Hello, are you all right? Can I get anything for you? Really, are you ok? You can tell me if you're not."

Until I get the pictures uploaded you'll just have to imagine the earnest looking black dog. Needless to say, with the two very large dogs, Oscar spent a lot of time either airborne being carried or in our laps. We were trying to avoid the Dreaded Butt Sniff dog greeting, since Oscar doesn't realize he's a dog and he gets mightily offended if another dog treats him like one. For the most part we were successful.

In other news, Lynne's house closed today. There have been some, ahem, "issues" with the estate, most of which exploded while I was in VA. I think they're temporarily under control, and the lawyer and I are working on a plan to get this whole thing closed down. If you can, please say a little prayer for us over the next couple of weeks that we can convince her mom to cooperate.....

I did console myself by buying a hideous amount of sock yarn. :)