Em Not in KS, Part I

My Nashville weekend was a whirlwind, but not a blur. I must have run the entire spectrum of emotions within Friday alone (but then again, if you are awake at 3:30 am and don't go to bed until midnight, you have a lot of time in which to do this). Happily, this began with the stressful negative stuff that comes from being tired and traveling, and it ended with the elation that is the natural result of being done with something.

True to form, I didn't give my interview much thought until about two hours before, so caught up was I in everything else. This includes Thursday evening, when I was supposed to fly to Nashville, but volunteered to take the next available flight when money was thrown at me in encouragement. My roommate was scheduled for the 6:30 flight anyway: why shouldn't I go?

This left me at the KC airport around dinnertime, with no one on the way to pick me up for hours. In a last-ditch effort for a companion with whom to kill time, I called Barbie.

Barbie has been the Dorm Director at my summer job as long as I have worked there. She recently fell in love with D$'s best friend and moved to Kansas City, though I have not seen all that much of her in the month or so she's been living in the midwest. [Don't worry, I'll be saying more about my summer job, D$, and all the rest as time goes on.. if you have specific questions, feel free to leave them, though!]

In the end, she and her boyfriend came to get me. We all went out to dinner, and then they drove me back to the butterfly apartment. I now have a good handful of Southwest credit and am free to plan spring break.

My roommate was insisting on leaving at 4:15 the next morning, so I dutifully set my alarm for 3:44 and woke up at 3:30. The flight was uneventful, thankfully, and when we arrived, John was there to pick me up. I was cranky and strange, though a bit better once I'd had breakfast (a sweet 101-year-old diner in Nashville called ...

Alright. I have to take a tangent. I just forgot the name of the restaurant, so I began to enlist Google to help me figure it out. I started fooling around with Google Maps, and the next thing I knew, I was clicking forward from the Google mapped location of Johnny's apartment, walking along the Nashville streets like it was a Myst game. In this way I "walked" right up to the restaurant so I could read the front of the building. It is called Varallo's.

Technology these days... wow.

Anyway, I was even better after I got to nap from about 10:30 to noon. This is when I promptly began to worry about my interview, and feel unprepared. Upon meeting up with my friend Dean, I made him practice interview me, rather than have a really decent conversation. I fretted and asked for tips and read articles about the current political and economic state of Japan.

But, as it was wont to do, the interview was pretty smooth. While I never quite feel satisfied with these things, I also know that I gave a pretty good interview, and that the judgments made on me in those 20 minutes of reckoning were probably positive ones. As a result, the next blog I start up might be "MiriNihonDe" or something like that.

And, just like that, I could begin to really enjoy my Nashville afternoon.