June was a very chaotic month for me.  Yet somehow, in the midst of the chaos, I still managed to find quite a few things to love and some of these things helped me get through the month without having even the smallest form of nervous breakdowns, despite wanting to.

Without further ado, here’s the things I loved the most for the month of June.

Hands down, the best event for me, was a visit to my hometown of Siler City, North Carolina to visit my grandparents, my dad, my sisters and other family members.  The weekend we went was their 50th anniversary and while the trip was not without drama (truthfully a visit with my family can’t really occur without a bit of the dramatics), we had a very nice time overall.  We took my grandparents out to breakfast at their favorite restaurant on Saturday morning with my eight year old cousin, T, in tow.  It was just them, T and Steve and I, at this restaurant owned by a distant member of the family once or twice removed or something like that.  Regardless, the food was delicious, down home Southern cooking just the way I like it and the tea was cold and sweet the way we like it as well.  Afterwards, we visited with my great-aunt and uncle (my grandmother’s sister and husband) who own a welding & crane company, have a small short track racing team and a fleet of old school (and one new school) Corvettes in their garage, which is actually bigger than Steve’s shop at work.  The rest of the day we spent with my dad, my grandpa and my cousin, and my brother and sisters, fishing and riding four wheelers out at an aunt’s pond, eating Sir Pizza for dinner (which is hands down one of my favorite pizzas ever!) and hanging out around a fire at my dad’s place out in the country.  On Sunday, we took my brother to buy some “professional” clothes for grown-up interviews and then went out to lunch together at the local seafood restaurant that I remember so clearly from when I was young.  Overall, it was a low-key weekend with its ups and downs but sometimes, it’s nice to come back to a simpler place and enjoy the easy things in life where we don’t spend a lot of money and just enjoy being around each other.  Siler City has changed so much over the years and unfortunately, is going more down hill than I like to see but there are still remnants of the small town USA that I remembered so much about it and part of me loves the nostalgia of just going home and being with family.  And seeing beautiful sights like these always helps too!

My entertainment world has been rather busy this month.

On June 1st, Conan O’Brien took over The Tonight Show and this was a long anticipated event for me.  I had nothing against Jay Leno, he was just a bit dry for my taste.  I love Conan and sometimes found myself staying up way too late to catch him on the Late Show.  Now, I can catch him at 11;30 and the show has yet to disappoint me.  The monologues, the skits (I particularly loved when he visit local stores in his new neighborhood and took over the tram ride at the studios), even the guests.  It’s definitely now my cup of tea and I’m glad they picked him to step into Jay’s shoes (I always thought he deserved it anyway – he’s up there with Jon Stewart for me).

Also on TV this month, True Blood returned and some of you might remember, I featured this show in my very first monthly love post and it gets a second mention here because my obsession has not waned, it has only grown stronger.  I have read the first two books in the series and we are now on the second season and it only gets better.  I find Sookie to be a much more enjoyable human female role model and heroine than the other vampire books (I’m looking at you, Twilight!) and even the side characters in the series are so wonderfully and richly developed that they make almost all the storylines enjoyable (I find Lafayette to be one of the best characters on TV right now and am so glad they brought him back this season instead of having him meet the same fate as his literary equivalent).  This is one of those shows that I gladly look forward to Sunday nights for so I can sit down with some dinner and my blanket and a full uninterrupted hour of vampires and shapeshifters and sex and blood and humor and hot, hot, hot men (Bill, Eric, Jason … need I say more?)

The hands down best movie of the month was The Hangover. You could just see the thought process behind it – let’s take four randomly different guys, bring them all together in Vegas for a bachelor party and give them the greatest night of their lives but the worst hangover ever.  So simple but so very complicated as they spend the entire weekend looking for the groom, whom they have somehow lost (and that was actually one of the more enjoyable moments of the film because I thought that where and how he was lost was going to turn out to be so outlandishly unbelievable that it ruined the movie but in reality, it was so very simple and believable that I thought it tied everything together nicely).  But seriously, there’s tigers and hookers and gambling and drinking and chickens and a baby and Mike Tyson.  And Bradley Cooper.  And Andy, from The Office. And Zack Galfinakis (I don’t know if that’s how he spells his name and don’t care – he’s hysterical in this film).  And did I mention Bradley Cooper? A very HOT Bradley Cooper!  Overall, this was one of those funny, hysterical, quotable movies that will be added to the repertoire and the DVD shelf from now until forever.

And finally, there’s Bejeweled 2, which I’ve played numerous time before but somehow got really, really addicted to this month.  I play it on Facebook as Bejewled Blitz and I swear, that one’s going to give me a heart attack because you have one minute to get the highest score possible and the stress of it all makes me insane sometimes.  I also downloaded the app onto my iPod Touch and have spent numerous nights in bed playing it while I wasn’t tired enough to fall asleep.  I took it with me to the doctor’s office and played it in the waiting room and to North Carolina.  I’ve had to force myself to stop playing.  But it’s so awesome so can you really blame me?

So those were my pleasures for the month of June which were perfectly wonderful because they helped me get through a fairly rough month.  Here’s hoping July is a bit quieter!