No, I Haven't Been Ignoring You

It's been a busy couple of days and I guess I've been neglecting my blog a bit.  Whoops!  I guess I should go back to Thursday, where all the fun began.  And trust me, if you make it to the end of this post there is a funny story.  It's only funny now that it's over, however.

Thursday was Patrick's last concert with the UMaine Symphonic Band at Merrill Auditorium in Portland, Maine.  Andrew, who is one of our groomsman was heading down to the concert and he let me tag along.  We decided to make a day of it and hit up the outlets in Freeport.  I think Patrick was happy that Andrew was taking me shopping because it meant he didn't have to go. 

The one place I really wanted to go was the Coach outlet.  I love that place.  It smells so good and you can't beat the deals.  And when I go outlet shopping, I really want to feel like I'm getting a deal.  This is the deal I got:

Isn't it beautiful?  My aunt bought me my first Coach bag at an outlet 3 years ago as a graduation gift.  I love that thing and really haven't bought a purse since.  I figured that I could justify buying it because I haven't been spending money on new handbags for the last 3 years.  And it will practically last forever.

For lunch we grabbed a little Ben and Jerry's.  Yum!  Andrew and I both got the Double Fudge Brownie frozen yogurt.  We're trying to be good.  It was funny because there was an older couple in front of us that just went in, ate a couple free samples and left.  They poor guy manning the counter was so confused.

We hit up a couple of other stores and just walked around and enjoyed the nice weather.  It was definitely the perfect day for it.  We were kind of getting a kick out of the fact that people thought we were a couple.  That and all the teenage girls that were checking Andrew out.  Did I mention he's a real cutie?

Anyway, we finally made it down to Portland.  Andrew thought he knew where the auditorium was, but he really didn't.  Typical.  We drove around for about 45 minutes before we found the place.  We were going to stop at Stonewall Kitchen, but ended up not having the time.  We quickly parked in the nearest parking garage and dashed over to Subway for a quick bite to eat before the concert began.  We met up with a friend at Subway who told us about cheaper parking around the corner.  We decided we had enough time to quickly more the car to save a couple bucks.

Here's where things got interesting.  We got back to the parking garage and the gates were down.  As in, it was closed.  Uh, not good.  There was a car coming out that had a pass key and when the gate went up we went under.  We got into the car and tried to dive to the attendant to pay and get out.  No such luck.  The place is legitimately closed.  I had recalled seeing a security guard hanging out a window a couple of levels up, so we drove to find him.  He turned out to be a little scary, but he was out ticket out.  After interrogating us as to how we got back into the garage, he agreed to let us out if we paid the $25 lock-out fee and the amount due for the time we were parked there, another $5.  Great.  So for $30 we got out.  It's a darn good thing our friend suggested moving the car or we would have gotten back to the garage at 10:30 pm and would have been in big trouble.

Finally, we made it to the hall with about 2 minutes to spare.  Isn't it a pretty place?

And here is Patrick soloing:

Once again, he did an amazing job.  We got to catch up after the concert and chat with his family before Andrew and I had to head back to campus.  It ended up being a long day, but we had tons of fun!