west palm beach, fl

so get this - the night of my birthday-plus-one-day i slept on a bed in a west palm beach, florida home belonging to joe and toni who are the parents of my new friend brittany who is from ohio but met me just two weeks ago in new orleans while visiting the willow house gals' circle of friends, all of whom i had also just met through laura who lives there and invited me to stay with them after her brother, my friend from philadelphia, thomas had introduced us to eachother via phone and skype only a few hours before i arrived in new orleans.  so, thanks goes to all of you for the bed consequently offered to me in west palm beach where i had another nice night of sleep, because you all played a roll in that sequence : ).

but it was more than just a bed.  the evening in west palm beach included fun conversation, delightful foods, an entertaining outing with an unexpected outcome, and wii bowling to cap it off.

joe, toni, brittany, john and i went out to eat at two georges.

we were on an outside deck with a canopy and heater.  the overhead heater countered the chill of the evening well. 

i ate dolphin (presumably the fish!);  it was really good.  everyone enjoyed what they ate, so i think this place is a keeper.  of course, i didn't pay the bill, so it's especially easy for me to conclude that.  : )  fun folks, good food, and a nice atmosphere made it a great evening.  plus, the moon was pretty over the intercoastal waterway.

after dinner we went to the movie theater.  our plan was to watch a 9:15pm movie even though that would get us home late.  that was the plan...   joe got us tickets for 'the blind side' which is what we wanted to watch, and also got some candy for us to supplement our experience. 

brittany and i took advantage of a fun photo opp.   like my hairdo?

thinking we were right on time, we went to go find our seats, but as soon as brittany saw the screen she immediately recognized what she saw as being the End of the movie!  what?  we checked our tickets and found out we were an hour early.  whoops! apparently the movie was scheduled for 10:15pm.  we weren't sure how that happened, but didn't want to wait around for an hour and nothing else that was showing at that time was in our interest.   oh well.  so we got the tickets refunded and went home, but not without a bunch of laughing at the whole scenario.  i probably enjoyed that sequence of events more than if we'd actually seen the movie.

back at the house we played wii and then went to bed.

yup, i went to BED - a bed in a house with people who just hours before were complete strangers.  in fact, two weeks earlier they were strangers to the fourth degree! : )   i'm so grateful for the people who have taken me into their homes and made me part of their lives even though i was just a roaming stranger to them beforehand.   i'm thankful to god for taking care of my physical needs and blessing me with the many people who are opening their homes and their hearts to me.  sometimes it's a little awkward at first - as you'd expect walking into a stranger's house as a last-minute guest would be, but usually by the time i leave i'm sad to be saying goodbye.