My grandfather (who I affectionately refer to as Granddaddy) is turning 95 next week, and every time I talk to him on the phone, he asks when he’s going to see me again. Considering I haven’t seen him in over five years and Dan has never met him, we decided to make a pit stop in North Carolina for a couple of days before making our annual trip to New Orleans to visit my parents.

On Thursday, May 3rd, Dan and I woke up at the crack of dawn in order to get to the rental car office by 8 am. When we arrived, we were greeted with a beautiful, brand new, 2012 Toyota Camry with only 1200 miles on it. (The above photo was taken after a few hours of driving.)

The trip from New York to North Carolina only took us 11 hours, including the three pit stops we made to eat, pee, and gas up. Our goal was to make it to our hotel before 10 pm, so that we would have time to drop off our stuff before going to the midnight premiere of The Avengers.

We were way ahead of schedule when we rolled into town around 8. We checked into the hotel, went to Outback Steakhouse for dinner, and still made it to the movie with plenty of time to spare.

My review of the Avengers: Five stars. If you haven’t seen it, stop reading and go. Right now.

After the movie, we didn’t get back to the hotel until almost 3, and then we had to be up the next morning around 10, which resulted in us not getting a lot of sleep. I think the excitement of being on vacation pulled us through, though, because we were right on time when we got to Granddaddy’s house at noon on Friday.

My grandfather is, by far, one of the most fascinating people I’ve ever met. He was a professional baseball scout for years, as well as a coach and an athlete. He was inducted into the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame, and even has his own Wikipedia page. His own Wikipedia page!

We spent a few hours with my Granddaddy and step-grandma, talking and reminiscing, catching up and exchanging photos. Even though my grandfather’s health is starting to decline, he’s still sharp as a tack. He can remember every detail of everything that’s happened over the last 50+ years – every event, every person he’s met, where he met them, what he ate for breakfast on a Friday in 1943, even the baseball stats of some of the first players he scouted. Are you impressed yet? You should be. My grandfather is amazing.

Because of his age and the fact that we live so far away, it was incredibly sad having to say goodbye. It’s hard to accept the fact that I may never see him again, but I’m so glad we took the opportunity to visit when we did.

After we left his house, we trekked across town to have dinner with my sister, whom I also haven’t seen in a very, very long time. We keep in touch on Facebook, but it was still exciting to see her and her kids again. Can you see the resemblance?

By the time we left my sister’s house and got back to our hotel, it was late and we had to be up early the next morning to catch our flight to New Orleans.

To be continued…

I’m a little late in posting about Mother’s Day this year, but I guess that’s all right since we celebrated early. On Saturday, my sister, her husband, my nephew, and I all drove into the city to meet up with my brother and my mom, who flew in from out of town. My mom planned the trip weeks ago in order to attend my brother’s art show, so the fact that it fell on Mother’s Day weekend was an added bonus. Even though I just saw my parents last weekend when we visited them in New Orleans (a post about that is coming soon), it was still nice to spend a day in the city with (most of) my family.

Above is a photo of my mother and I with my nephew at Carnegie Deli on Saturday.

Today, I’m wishing a very happy, belated mother’s day to all the mothers, grandmothers, step-mothers, mother-in-laws, and moms-to-be in my life! I hope you all had a terrific weekend.

Creed used to be my favorite band. When I was a moody pre-teen, I would listen to Creed’s albums on repeat and wallow in my own imaginary despair. I could relate to their songs in a way I could never relate to the Backstreet Boys or N’Sync. And yet, my parents would never take me to one of their concerts. It just so happened that whenever they came to town, they would be performing on a weeknight or on a day that I was busy, and I never had the opportunity to see them perform. When the band broke up in 2004, I gave up any hope of ever seeing them in concert. So you can imagine my excitement when I heard that they would be reuniting for a new album, and performing at a local venue. As soon as I heard the announcement on the radio, I bought two tickets and cleared my schedule for April 26th.

A friend and I went to the concert this Thursday, and it was really a dream come true. I haven’t listened to Creed in years, and yet, I still remembered every word in every song. My 24-year-old self thought the show was pretty cool, but my 12-year-old self was in heaven. The show brought me back to my junior high days, and gave my friend and I an excuse to reminisce.

If you ever have the chance to see an old favorite in concert, I highly recommend it.

Remember when we cut our cable, and gave up TV in favor of Netflix and Hulu?

We lived that way until last July, right up until we moved. However, once we were in the house, we went right back to watching TV, since my in-laws already had cable. Now, we’re addicted to too many shows, and our DVR is always full.

Once in awhile, we’ll still watch movies on Netflix. When we can’t find anything to watch on the hundreds of channels we have, including HBO and Showtime, Netflix is our backup plan.

We almost never use Hulu anymore, and when we do, we generally watch their free content. It just doesn’t make sense for us to keep paying their subscription fee, even if it is only $8/month.

Today, I logged in to Hulu for the first time in months and sadly hit the Cancel Subscription link. I don’t know why, but it feels a little bit like breaking up with an old friend. I’ve never had any complaints about their service and it suited our needs perfectly in the city; unfortunately, we just don’t need it anymore.

Now, how should I spend that extra $8 a month?

A friend of mine is an amazing set designer and occasionally works on Broadway shows. And once in awhile, she’ll get tickets to a show so she can see her work in action.

This past Wednesday, she invited me to go see the new musical Nice Work If You Can Get It, starring Matthew Broderick and Kelli O’Hara.

While I’m a huge fan of musicals, I don’t usually have wads of extra cash lying around, so it’s not often that I can get tickets. Seeing this show was a real treat, and it gave me a chance to visit the city again for the first time since December.

3-word review: It was amazing!

It felt great to be back in Manhattan, pounding the pavement and standing under the lights in Times Square, even if it was only for a couple of hours. I do have another trip to the city planned for May; hopefully, that one will be a little longer and I’ll get to see more of the city that I miss.

Dan was offered a spot in the Ink Fusion Tattoo Festival at C2E2, and of course, he accepted. Because of this, our trip was more of a workation than a vacation, but we still had a great time.

Thursday morning, we got up early, drove to the airport, couldn’t find parking, rode the AirTrain, argued with United’s ticket agents, waited for our flight, boarded, and landed in Chicago about a half an hour ahead of schedule. We checked into our hotel, then took a cab to the convention center so we could start setting up our booth.

Friday was the first actual day of the convention, and we got there early to finish setting up before the show opened to the public. We felt very privileged to have access to a nearly empty convention hall.

But it wasn’t empty for long.

Soon, the doors opened and the place was swarming with every kind of nerd or geek you can imagine. Over the course of the weekend, we saw Jedis and monsters, storm troopers and S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, Marvel heroes and DC villains, henchmen and ghostbusters. We were continuously impressed with all the costumes, and kept stopping people for pictures when they walked past our booth.

I even got to meet R2D2, and “run” through the Death Star.

I watched a couple of games of Quidditch,

paid Katie Cook $5 to paint me a custom mini-portrait of my dogs,

and even met Noah Hathaway, who played Atreyu in The Neverending Story.

While every part of our trip was awesome in it’s own way, the highlight for me was meeting Jhonen Vasquez and attending his panel. I’ve never been a big fan of graphic novels, but I absolutely love JTHM and Squee. If you’re into comics and dark humor, I recommend you check them out.

Another highlight of the trip was getting to meet and spend several days with some of the nicest and most talented tattoo artists I’ve ever met. The Ink Fusion crew was amazing, and immediately welcomed us newcomers into their group. We had a great time hanging out with them at the convention, and going out to dinner with them every night. A seriously huge shoutout to Mike Bianco, Scott Blair, Josh Bodwell, Marc Draven, Drewski Elish, Chris 51, Jessica Fronk L’Heureux, Christian Hansler, Billy Haughton, Carl Huggins, Blake Karchner, Asa Larson, Jay Leigh, Jakub Nadrowski, Shannon Ritchie, Brian Stringer, Eric Vie, and Jerry Watelski.

Dan and I both feel very blessed and fortunate to be able to attend events like this. I’m so proud of my husband for working as hard as he does, and have really enjoyed seeing his career take off. We’re hoping to be back at C2E2 next year, and hopefully attend a few other conventions before then.

We’re here on day 4 of our five day vacation, and this morning, I was up at the crack of dawn. I don’t know if I can’t sleep because of excitement, or because I’m still on New York time, but either way, I’m awake.

I’m realizing more and more lately that I am, in fact, a morning person. I don’t know when this happened because 3 years ago, in college, I was most definitely a night person. Now, I find I’m most productive in the morning. I like to wake up with the sun and write, clean, organize, read, or just sit with a hot cup of tea before anyone else wakes up. As an introvert, I like spending a few minutes each day feeling like I’m the only person alive in the whole world.

And then I crawl back into bed right before my husband wakes up, and I remember why I used to hate waking up early.

A full post about our trip to Chicago will be coming soon. In the meantime, leave a comment and tell me how you’ve been spending your weekend.

On Tuesday, the biggest app for iPhone became available on Android devices! My new obsession with Instagram is right up there on par with my love for Pinterest.

You can view all of my Instagram photos online at instagrid.me/maypoko, or follow me on Twitter for updates.

A note for Android users: When I first downloaded Instagram, the default settings prevented me from using all the features of the program. If you’re having this same problem, you can fix it by going to your profile tab, clicking on the three dots, choosing Camera Settings, then checking the box to Use Instagram’s Advanced Camera.

Are you on Instagram? Post your username in the comments so I can follow you. 

Some of our favorite options were upwards of $50 per square foot, and with approximately 30 square feet of countertop space, we were looking at a minimum investment of $1500.

Only one problem: we didn’t have $1500 to spend on new countertops. I started doing some research and came across this Rust-Oleum Countertop Transformation kit for $250. That’s more like it.

After reading all the rave reviews for this product, we decided to go for it. I was a bit skeptical, but I figured, even if the kit doesn’t work, we have to replace our countertops anyway so we might as well try.

Here’s a complete breakdown of how we took our kitchen counters from this:

to this:

Step 1: Go shopping

The kit wasn’t available in our local store, and I didn’t want to pay for shipping, so I traveled about an hour and a half to a Lowes where the kit was in stock. It was $250 (as advertised) and the few additional supplies it required brought my total to $320.

Step 2: Clear the counters, fill in cracks and gaps

The kit recommends filling in any cracks and gaps in your countertop with epoxy putty. This is assuming you have a laminate countertop. We don’t, so we bought cement filler instead.

Didn't work.

Bad idea. The stuff we bought was thick and lumpy, and didn’t serve our purpose. After letting it dry for a couple of days, we sanded it off and were back down to our original countertops.

Step 3: Protect your kitchen

This should really be the first step, but we didn’t plan ahead so it was at this point in the process that we realized we should cover everything around the countertops with plastic sheeting. We just used three $2 plastic drop cloths and a roll of painter’s tape.

Step 4: Sand and grout

Since the Quikrete didn’t work the way we hoped, we still had gaps and cracks to contend with. This time, we decided to try grout. We bought a bucket, slathered the grout on with a trowel, and let it sit for a few hours before sanding. We did this twice to get a nice, smooth finish. See above.

Step 5: Tar and feather

Here’s where we actually started to use the kit. I won’t go into too much detail because you can watch a video about it on the Rust-Oleum website, but we essentially tarred and feathered our counters. Or, rather, tarred and stoned. By which I mean we threw granite chips around our kitchen and hoped we covered our counters.

Step 6: Wait, then clean up

It took just over 12 hours for the adhesive base coat to dry. Once it was ready to go, we vacuumed up all the extra chips and started sanding. Again, this is all covered in the instructional video that comes with the kit.

Step 7: Top coat

After making sure we cleaned up all sanding dust, we were ready to apply our top laminate coat. A couple of thin layers and, voila! We had new counters!

Step 8: Wait

The kit recommends waiting 48 hours before lightly using the counters, then a week before resuming full use.

While waiting for the top coat to cure, we pulled off the painter’s tape and found this:

That’s the edge of our countertop, where it meets our tile backsplash. Despite our best efforts, the painter’s tape didn’t work and some of the adhesive base coat got underneath.

Step 9: Finish edges

To fix our edging problem, we sanded the tiles to remove anything that got on them. We then applied a line of black caulk all the way around the edge, which essentially hid any inconsistencies.

Once this was done, we declared our counters officially finished.

We’ve been using our counters for over a week now, and so far, I have no complaints. They look and feel like a real, granite countertop, and hold up well to normal abuse.

Now, if only we had new cabinet doors… wait, isn’t there a kit for that, too?

What do you think of our new countertops? Would you ever use a kit like this in your kitchen?