As most of you know, I have just vacated the sweet home of Alabama in favor of a short travel nurse assignment in Sacramento California. What was I thinking?!
No, really, I am quite excited! Since I am here all alone, I figured I could at least let my close friends and family know what it's like and what I'm up to. And it's a good way to post pictures.
How it all began. . .
So Jonathan graduated law school in December, took the Bar Exam, and is awaiting results for his application to the LLM Taxation program at UF Gainesville. In the meantime, we are flexible. This travel assignment came up, and I figured, why not? It would give us some extra cash to maybe take a vacation, buy a car if we need to, or hey! move to Florida! It all happened very fast, and I gave UAB very little notice, but they were gracious to me and allowed me this furlough.
I flew out this morning from Birmingham with a layover in Chicago. I was dreading the layover, but to my utter surprise and pleasure, found a little restaurant in the airport called Potbelly's, which Katy took me to (not the airport one, the downtown one) when I visited her a few years ago. They have amazing sandwiches. So now that lunch was settled, I had a 4 1/2 hour flight to Sacramento. Which was really very very long. And boring. And the book I brought is awful and I must find a replacement soon. But we did in fact land to a sunny 57 degrees, and both of my suitcases were there beside a really cool baggage claim thingy.
With one quick shuttle to the rental car place, I was off in no time in my new Nissan Versa that only has one powerport, which makes charging your cell phone and your Garmin really quite difficult.The hotel is only about 10 minutes away from the airport, and I had a good time exploring a few of the nearby roads. I am excited to report that there is a Cheesecake Factory, Macy's, Walmart, Whole Foods Store, many a Starbucks, Bed Bath and Beyond, Best Buy, Walgreens, and lots of other wonderful stores that I have access to.
I wish I had gotten a picture (but I would've felt like a complete idiot) of the two story WalMart that has a buggy conveyor belt that takes your cart upstairs for you. It was the coolest thing ever! And the tell you to never shop hungry for a reason. I will be back of course because I forgot half of the things I was meaning to get.
So now I'm all settled, see the room?
Tomorrow will be more exploring, and I'm hoping to locate a church (do they have those in California?!). I guess I should probably locate Sutter Memorial as well, since that's where I'll be reporting to bright and early Monday morning.
Love you all, and will keep you posted!
A lot of people I go to church with here have family at the church in Folsom, which is a suburb of Sacto. I've met several of the people from that congregation when they were visiting down here.
ReplyDeleteWhen I lived up there 12 years ago, I went to church in Rancho Cordova, another suburb.
I don't know how many of the places I liked are still there, but at the time, Old Town Sac was really fun to browse, eat, shop, etc. A really good balance of preservation and modernization -- not a tourist trap like a lot of "Old Town [wherever]"s. Rick's Dessert Diner downtown was tasty. I'd be surprised if it's still there, but I remember some excellent meals at a restaurant called "Tapa the World".