Well I had a mountain hometown weekend. Living in a rural region means several things: first, everywhere you go to get something takes twenty minutes to get there because of mileage not stoplights (if you see a stoplight you are at Walmart or Lowes); second, creativity to find something to do on the weekends without driving more than twenty minutes is a neccessity (Of course this won't be true too much longer because I designed an event schedule for the city I work for!). This weekend I went to Homer and to Sautee (okay so Sautee is closer than 20 minutes but not by much).

Friday night was a trip to Homer in an old chicken house. Yes, I went to a chicken house for fun. The inside of the house was slightly revamped. It was still very apparent that you were in a chicken house. It had the river sand as the floor, which is usually in a chicken house although it lines the house under a bed of mulch and pine bark type mix to catch the litter to be scraped out to give for sale to the pasture owners. The river sand floor was cool. Then the walls were covered in antiques. There was a Hank Williams, Sr poster on the wall. There was old Coca-cola stuff, quilts, tools, bread signs, the Patsy Cline poster was cool because the opener was a newcomer named Lorretta Lynn. She was last on the bill with three other bands before her! Patsy was the headliner though. It was neat. There was a huge stage up front with a small dance floor. There were rough board pews with seared seat numbers. There was a pot luck of dinner for anyone who wanted could donate money to get homemade apple cobbler, hotdogs, bbq or hamburgers, sodas, coffee, cookies & cake. The main draw was the front on the stage. Live bluegrass. Live. Like local guys coming together pickin and grinnin. It was awesome. It was six bucks to get in at the door. No drinkin. No smokin. All family fun, which meant no swearin either. Mr. Irvin owns it and sits at the door to take your money. He also owns the largest carhart distributor in five counties. It was great fun. I didn't even notice the time until an hour and a half into us being there. The music was fabulous. John says that is what we'll be doing for a while on Friday nights. It was the most fun!

Then Saturday night in Sautee, I went to a contra dance. What is a contra dance you ask? Why, it is a sqaure dance. Anyone who tells you different is lying. All we did all night was square dancing like we learned in sixth grade phys ed. It was unbelievable how much fun I had. It was hard work too because there was so much dancing. The music was all live music too which was cool. There were about 130 people there which apparently is a slow night because of the weather. It was awesome. I have to get some real boots though. My boots that I wore are about done as it is, but to dance in them was blisterous. I sweat so much. I have never in my life sweat that much. I must have danced for an hour straight before I sat down. It was cool too because there were couples and just women and kids. One of my dancing partners was ten! She was almost one of the best ones too! There were first nighters like myself all the way to professionals who came dressed for the part. This one guy who was dressed, everytime the music would start he would reinsert the smile. He smiled the entire time the music played to dance. It was so funny. I am guessing he does this on a competition level. It was great fun because they taught you the dance before you danced the dance. But the longer the night went on the less times they went through the dance. So the last dance I did, I only got one shot at a rehearsal and off to the races. Luckily, the sqare dances are a repeated dance and are called out so by about the third time you do it, you get it. Although some of the teenage guys were pushing their coordination! It was the most fun!

Sunday was not nearly as fun. It consisted of me and a movie and the coffee shop. Snow was awesome though. The snow line came down to the north west end of White County and that was it though. It never did push into Habersham. It was 24 when I came to work this morning and is supposed to be 57 by tomorrow. 57? Wierd winter.