Captain D's?

Moving to Dayton has made me realize two things about myself:

• I’m like a shark. I can’t breathe unless I’m moving forward.
• I can’t stand being alone. If I spend an evening without being around people in some form, I go to bed depressed from being starved of human interaction.

This second point has led me to develop an evening habit of sitting out on my porch. My Ethernet cable and power cord for my laptop both reach out there, so I like to set up and watch the cars and people go by. I hope someday to be able to greet everyone who passes by name, but for now I just try to wave. People probably think I’m crazy, or spend the next five minutes trying to figure out where they know me from.

Tonight as I was getting ready to Skype a friend, my neighbor across the street stuck her head out the front door.

“Olivia, do you want your plate back?” she hollered.

-“Oh sure!” I said, and jogged across the street to retrieve the plate I’d delivered the blueberry muffins on weeks ago.

Lois filled me on her last week and invited me in, but I was waiting on a call and had left all my electronics exposed on the porch, so I stayed in the doorway.

“And oh those – what were they? Cookies?”

-“Muffins.”

“Were delicious! I had my neighbor try them first cuz I didn’t know what they was, but then she told me, and  I had one, and oh, mm mm.”

“I’m so glad you liked them, Lois!” I said.

Lois asked if I might be able to give her a ride to church Saturday afternoon, and I told her to check with me on Saturday because I might be out of town.

“Well sometime, if you’re not out of town, maybe would you want to go to Cap’n D or something?” she asked.

“Oh sure! That would be fun!” I said. I haven’t been to a Captain D’s since I was about 12, and all I really remember is grease and making redneck lemonade with lemons and sugar packets.

Lois looked so taken aback that I wanted to hang out with her I had to say it again for..

“That would be great, really,” I said. Then I also invited her over for s’mores on Sunday nights. I hope she comes!

--

I also have some exciting adventures coming up. I'm playing in a 24-hour Ultimate tournament raising money for Boys and Girls Clubs. It's at Ohio State, so I'm excited to see the campus and a little bit of Columbus for the first time, and just to get out of Dayton. I'm also carpooling with a very nice *39-year-old* (for the record I have a new most embarrassing story), and I'm signed up to play two shifts in the wee hours with a volunteer shift in between. I love Ultimate, I love doing crazy things and staying up all night, I love meeting new people and I love awesome fundraisers. So I'm sure I'll have some stories about that one. 

This weekend I'm putting my flannel on and going to a square dance put on by the city. This could be interesting. 

Tuesday morning at work I got an awesome surprise while scrolling through my email. I won two tickets to the Downtown Dayton Revival -- a music festival featuring Train, John Legend, Mat Kearney, Andy Grammer, Rusted Root and a whole bunch of people I never heard of. I really wanted to go, but hadn't gotten around to buying tickets, so now I'm really excited.  

And finally, Sept. 13, I will be taking a brief break from work on a Thursday afternoon to do something that exceeds even my definition of crazy. I'm rappelling down all 26 stories of the Key Bank tower to raise money and awareness for Big Brothers Big Sisters. I've never rappelled before. Now I get that cold-sweat-back-hairs-tingling-stomach-dropping-feeling every time I pass the tower on my way to work and crane my neck around to *try* to see the top of the building. Yikes!