Just another night out in the burbs...

Since we've moved outside the perimeter (OTP) in Atlanta a year ago, we've slowly adapted to suburban life. We eat out less, we run & walk in the evening more often now, we've even found our "shows" on weeknights. (We're big Lost and Numb3rs fans). And as some of you already know, I've even joined the Rotary Club.

The idea came from our realtor & neighbor. She mentioned she was a member and I wanted to find something outside of work to get involved in. DG has Oo-Rah as you all know, and so I thought this would be something I could take part in. Now, when most of my friends hear that I'm in Rotary, their first response is "My parents did that". And, to be fair, I am the youngest member. But I do have a growing contingent of peers in their early thirties. Ok, one other guy, but we're trying to recruit two more!

DG has been wonderful about encouraging me to take part. We were in the local 4th of July parade last summer. We dressed up in dorky hats and gave out all kinds of trinkets as we walked next to our float (a BMW convertible that one of the members lets us use). We hosted two international students this year in our home for a leadership weekend. Ruth was from Scotland and Anna was from Colombia. He even comes with me once a month to the elementary school down the road to teach Character Education to the third grade classes.

But don't go accusing him of going soft on me just yet. He's also made a few loving nick names for my new found hobby. For example, he likes to sing "This is the age of Rotar-ious, the age of Rotar-ious!" to me all the time. He sometimes calls me Rotarus-maximus. And he really enjoys referring to the club as "your Frat" since he thinks I'm trying to reclaim some kind of lost college experience.


All in all, he's been good about letting me drag him into these projects now and again. And a couple of weekends ago (I'm a little late on this post) we went to our first Rotary Governor's Ball. The major attraction for us was a toss up between:
1- getting to see the inside of the nice country club near our house, and
2- going to an open bar party within a mile of our suburban home.

The party was a black tie silent auction to benefit our club's charitable fund. We had a great time and even "won" a few prizes. As we were chatting that evening with our neighbor, the one responsible for helping us find this wonderful community, we realized that that night was the 1 year anniversary of moving into our house. So even if it was an accident, we celebrated our first year in the burbs in style!