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October led off with me showing up a day early in Tampa, surprising Andrew. The next week, his mom got us tickets to Busch Gardens' Howl-O-Scream. Costumed ghosts, werewolves and slashers, combined with no-wait haunted houses AND roller coasters? Halloween Horror Nights has nothing on Howl-O-Scream. We literally walked right into seven different haunted houses, no two-hour waits.
After a night hanging out with his high-school friends, we headed up to Gainesville for Kat & Sean's LSU party. Kat's dad hosted a Gator football trivia contest and I somehow won. LSU tried their hardest, but the Gators somehow won. It was touch-and-go for awhile there. There was a great turnout, but the keg wasn't (and still hasn't been) tapped.
Eventually, I headed back to West Palm, where I watched the Phillies win the NLCS and the Gators narrowly survive a date with Arkansas. Andrew came back and we met up with Natsuko, who just happened to be coming to FL for a med-school interview the very weekend of our friends' Katie & Colin's wedding. So we all headed up to Vero and met up with Désirée and David, Kat and Sean and Mark S. What a blast! Their wedding was picture-perfect. Colin's smile lit up the church when he saw his bride (who looked absolutely gorgeous) walk down towards him. The reception was marked by overly strong rum & cokes, Gator football, Kahlua cake and bubbles. Afterwards, we headed to the local Gator bar, where we finished watching the nail-biter against Mississippi State. Then, Andrew and I headed to our waterfront hotel on Hutchinson Island to celebrate the 1 year anniversary of our first date!
We had to unexpectedly head BACK to Tampa when I got a call about a job in St. Pete. We came back, I interviewed, and it was time to hit the road again. This time it was to the Northeastern coast, specifically St. Augustine, where we met up with one of my favorite ladies, Courtney. We had a great time kicking back with her and her family in SA. The next morning, we headed up to Jacksonville to experience the madness of Florida/Georgia weekend. We'd gotten tickets last minute from Mark, who passed the tickets to my parents, who in turn passed them on to Katherine (they just happened to be heading up to Gainesville that weekend, thank goodness).
We came, we tailgated, we won. It was tough sitting in the heart of Georgia territory, but totally worth it. 10 yard-line, 8th row, amazing view. Especially of Riley Cooper's one-handed catch in the endzone. We had to deal with idiotic Georgia bitches in front of us, spewing such gems as, "Georgia girls got class," "I wish they'd break Tim Tebow's leg," and "I wonder if that Florida twirler has any teeth." (Now go back and re-read those all with a thick Southern accent to get the right feel. Yeahhhh.) They were rude to us, but I didn't expect much from girls wearing pearls and dresses to a football game. Predictably, they were gone halfway through the 4th quarter.
After the seemingly endless trip back to our car and through downtown traffic, we made it to Emilie's and partied the night away in Jax with her, her best friend Moe and Moe's boyfriend Jim. So much fun. So many great costumes out and about. We then continued our parallelogram-esque journey across the state by driving back to Gainesville to watch Game 4 (let's not discuss it) at Kat & Sean's with the crew.
Back in Tampa now. Hoping to soon have a reason to stay here permanently......
What an amazing couple of weekends. With an amazing person by my side. =)