a prayer in memphis

first of all, sorry for being so quiet last week. the whole seven days were kind of insane. a lot happened, but nothing worth talking about. once things get into motion, i'll get you up-to-date on some changes around here.
in the meantime, here's what went down this weekend.

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i have been looking forward to september 22 since my departure in july. one of my best girls got married in memphis this weekend. i was so looking forward to the mississippi air, the southern accent, and the good food. but true to our luck, things didn't go quite according to schedule.
you see, we had planned to leave nebraska after work on friday with an ETA in memphis at about noon on saturday [overnight in stl]. we wanted to do all the memphis things - pottery barn outlet. las tortugas. sun studio. walk by the river. pregame with some friends. and it was all looking good until midnight on friday.
our car stopped moving forward on i270 just before we had planned to exit and call it a night. one cab ride later, we found ourselves in a hotel in panic mode. C thought it was probably just the battery and things would be fine. he got up early saturday morning and changed the battery with cars zooming by on 270 [who knew he was so handy!], fired up the engine, and felt a sense of relief. for about thirty seconds. the power steering was gone. 
crap.
so, we took the car to the nearest shop while they figured things out. here's what we were greeted with.

yeah. tears.
when they said it was going to be an hour before they knew if they could even fix it, we knew we had to get out. 
all C wanted to do was watch college game day and all i wanted to do was get to memphis.
so we tried to find the nearest restaurant/bar. nothing. 
but we did find a gas station. at 11:00 am, C bought a half pint of jack/sixteen ounces of coke zero, i bought some fatty potato chips and we sat on the curb at QT. i suppose those are the moments that we will remember for a long time. i suppose we will laugh about this one day and cherish that time on the curb.

to make a long story somewhat short, i will fast forward to 3:30 in the afternoon. thanks to some incredibly kind and caring people, we were memphis bound in a loaner car. we had a defunct idler pulley in hand and stress building up in every cell of our bodies. 
we didn't get there in time for the wedding, but we did make it the reception [with tears and an immediate sense of relief as we crossed into tennessee].
i forgot my memory card for my camera [yeah, it wasn't a pretty sight when i realized i would only have iphone pictures of this adventure], so i didn't get nearly as many images as i had hoped. 

we took the trolley to the art gallery reception.

 it was so lovely to catch up with these wonderful people. 

oh how i miss them!

oh how i wish i could carry them in my pocket wherever i go!

 this was the view from our hotel room that we spent forty waking minutes in. 

on sunday morning we got up bright and early to get back on the road north. 
we stopped at miss cordelias to get breakfast and remember the beauty of harbor town.

and then we traveled across the street to the mighty mississippi for some fresh air. 
we talked about our bad luck and how things were bound to change soon. 

and then to symbolize the whole adventure and truly throw our bad luck away, we tossed the dang idler pulley into the river. i alley-ooped it to chris, who took a running throw into the gosh darn water. so long luck. thanks for making things interesting, but you won't get us down. 

 congratulations jordan and brendan!

yours is a wedding we won't forget anytime soon!

thank you, memphis, for your unwavering love. i never thought i would miss you as much as i do. you will always hold a very special place in my heart. we will be back soon!