Chirky

New Year's Eve 2000, Bianca and I decided late in the afternoon to go out of
town to ring in the New Year. Unsure what to do, we reserved a room in Hot
Springs, AR through Priceline.com, packed our bags, and headed out. We took
Bianca's car, because mine didn't have a heater. We also took a portable stereo
and lots of batteries, because hers didn't have a radio.
This only supports my theory that Bianca and I were SO GHETTO during college.

Along the way, we stopped at every Wal-Mart within visible distance from the
highway to search for sparkling grape juice. But not ANY brand. THE brand. THE
one that is better than them all. THE One that my mother special-ordered twenty
cases of for my wedding. (Thank you, mom!) Several times we had to exit and loop
around until we figured out how to get to the Wal-Mart.

Unfortunately, we could never find it and had to settle for a lesser brand.
We were still in the car by the time midnight rolled around, so we looked at
each other, sleepily, and said, "Happy New Year!" We knew we would celebrate
again when we got there, which was "probably in thirty minutes."

When we finally reached our hotel, it was 2am. Even still, we broke out the
bottle of sparkling juice, popped the confetti poppers we brought, and toasted
each other in our plastic hotel cups.

We woke up in the morning to a closed town. Nobody could understand why we
wanted to get OUT of Dallas for New Year's. We wandered the streets, drove
around the city, and discovered an overlook from a hot spring mountain, part of
the Ouachita Mountain terrain in Arkansas.

The following day we had classes. Determined not to miss them, we each scheduled
a 7am massage from a local masseuse. He was a man, and it was kind of shady, but
thankfully neither of us were harmed.

We quickly hurried out and to the Buckstaff Baths, one of my most favorite (and
inexpensive!) pampering places in the world, where we indulged in a hot spring
soak, a steam bath, Sitz bath, and a needle-point shower�

(Tune in tomorrow for Part Two of Three.)