So Monday, the 26 (of September), my uncle offered to buy me a JMU Homecoming ticket. So we get online on JMUsports.com and low and behold they are all sold out. I saw a couple of overpriced ones on Stubhub and Craig's List, but not being crazy about sitting by myself, I decided that I would simply live JMU Homecoming vicariously through all of my friends.
Fast forward to Wednesday. I'm eating pizza at Giuseppe's after the cross country meet when I get a text from Jim, who asks me if I'll be attending homecoming. I tell him about how I tried to buy a ticket but to no avail. However, Jim had found some homecoming tix and needed some to sit with! I quickly agreed and that was it; I was going to homecoming!
Except I decided to keep it on the down low because I wanted to surprise everyone (a decision that would later come back to kinda bite me in the butt). So Friday after I get off work, I start my trip to Harrisonburg. I talked to Matt Rummel on the way up there and he talked about how sad he was that I wasn't going to be able to make it up to homecoming. In my head, I'm thinking, "Yesssss this is going to work out so well!"
I get to JMU say about 7:30 and I start texting one of my baby Dukes, Erica, while I am still texting Matt, trying to stealthily figure out where I can park on campus. As I am texting both of them, my phone cuts off. I walk from the baseball lot all the way to Showker, where I plug in my phone that I've been trying to restart for the entire walk over and nothing is working.
Here I am, very close to my baby Dukes' dorm (in the treehouses) and I have no way to get in touch with her. What am I to do? I turn around and walk back to my car and head to the Verizon store. Which they moved! It totally was not where it was, the last time I went to it. And strange enough, as soon as I walk into Verizon, I run into people from Dinwiddie. They were up there because their son goes to Bridgewater.
I wait for awhile in Verizon while I am silently freaking out on the inside. You see, no one knows I'm coming to Harrisonburg except Beau and Josh because I was planning on staying at their place. The problem is, I don't have either of their numbers and I don't know what time Beau gets off work.
Finally a lady comes and asks me what's going on with my phone. She looks at me, frowns, and says, "This is the third time I've seen this problem with this phone in the last two days." Umm yeah, that's exactly what I want to hear. She takes it into the back to see if she can get it to power on.
Guess what...it doesn't turn back on. And I'm telling her that I am 3 hours from home, going to a football game the next day and I don't have my ticket or the number of the guy who has my ticket. So she's like, let me set you up with a sales associate if you want to get a new phone tonight. And I am trying not to cry.
So the sales guy comes over and I start explaining to him how I need a phone ASAP. He gives me two options: I can use the upgrade on our account (which is my dad's) and pay $130 for the phone I already have (with a $50 mail-in rebate) or pay $99 and file an insurance claim on my phone and get a replacement mailed to where I am staying in Harrisonburg by 11 AM the next day.
Obviously the smarter decision of the two is to file the insurance claim, so after talking to my mom, my dad, and Jeremy (he was the only person in Harrisonburg whose number I had memorized), I called the insurance people. The first time I called (yes, I said first time), the person would not let me continue because I didn't know the billing address on our account (um, my dad lives in a different state than I do so no, I do not have his address memorized).
So I had to call back with my dad's address and then the insurance lady informed me that A) my phone was still under warranty because it had been less than a year since I got it and B) that there was no way that they could have mailed me a phone by the next day (the Verizon guy said she was lying).
Here I am, stuck again. The Verizon guy (his name was Mike by the way) goes into the back and comes back out with a phone. He tells me that it is his backup phone and tells me to use it this weekend and then ship it back to him. He tells me to come in the next day to file an extended warranty thing to get a new phone the next week.
He programs my number into his phone. Then I finally leave the Verizon (btw it was technically already closed when I left). Luckily, when I turned this phone on, Josh had texted me so I had his number. Jeremy texted me Beau's number so I was semi-connected again.
Then by pure coincidence I had an address book in my car that I bought for Stephanie because she is always losing her phone and losing all her numbers (is this not ironic or what?). Well since Jim is her brother, I had his number. So I called him and filled him in on the situation. I told him that he had jinxed me because I had made fun of him hours earlier about not having a smart phone and here I was in the same boat.
I finally get dinner, get to Beau's, and then Jessica, Josh, Beau, and I head downtown to meet Jeremy for a little while. The next morning, I get up and get all JMU-ed out and head to the store to do some last minute Homecoming shopping. All the while I am texting Patti (her number was in Steph's address book as well - it's convenient when all your friends are related), telling her that I am going to have to live vicariously through you. She was sad because Aunt Patti had mentioned that she thought I was coming to Homecoming.
Then I stalked out P-Lot waiting for Patti and her family to arrive, which I thought they were never going to! But then they finally did and I kinda jumped out and surprised them. Kinda. Patti will tell you that she thought something was up.
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| Patti and I Photo credit: Ben |
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| Tony and I |
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| Matt and I |
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| Matt, me, and Natasha |
After a couple of hours of tailgating, we headed to the stadium, which was very exciting since neither Jim nor I had been to a game in the new stadium! Our seats were way up there but they were awesome. We could see the entire field and the scoreboard. It was like having that view you get to see when you watch NFL on tv!
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| 3/4 of 13 I-know-you-want-to-be-us |
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| Jim and I ready to watch JMU beat the Richmond Spiders! |
The game was awesome! JMU won, of course! It started raining about halfway through the 3rd quarter so Jim and I snuck a couple of rows up so we could be under the awning and stay mostly dry. We stayed for the post game show and went down to the field with the MRDs afterwards to watch the trumpets do their thing.
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| Our view of the game. |
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| View of where Jim and I sat from the student section. MRDs taking the field for postgame show. |
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| The Jumbo Jumbotron! |
Then we headed back to the car, in the rain. Needless to say, we were pretty cold and wet at this point. We grabbed dinner at Sheetz and headed to Matt Rummel's to hang out with him, Natasha, and Tony for a bit. Then we headed to SouthView.
Sunday, I got up and headed to campus where I saw 3 of my baby Dukes (Erica, Josh, and Tricia). I had D-Hall breakfast! Yum! Then I went to Jeremy's where I watched some football and had some taco salad...which was always the highlight of my football seasons in Harrisonburg.
Then I went to Richmond to watch some football with Jim. We ended up going to Buffalo Wild Wings (yes, I was really well fed on this particular Sunday), where we couldn't decided what flavors of wings we wanted to try (there were two new flavors) so we got 24 wings between the two of us! Then we hang out for a bit before I finally headed back to Dinwiddie.
