...followed by the grumpiest Monday ever.
I really want to blog about all the cool things I did this weekend and be witty and hilarious (and incorporate pictures!) but I'm feeling very grumpy at the moment. I'll do my best to recount how lovely my weekend was, and maybe that will lift my spirits on this slow, boring torturous first day of the week.
Over the course of this weekend, I participated in basically every stereotypical, required summertime event imaginable. That started Friday night with a trip to see the Lynchburg Hillcats play baseball, aided by a coupon for $5 tickets and the promise of $3 drink specials. Also, we were supposed to get hats.
BUT THE HATS WERE A LIE. The Facebook page promised a "Battle of Virginia" hat giveaway, in which game attendees could choose a Hillcats cap in the colors of either the University of Virginia or Virginia Tech. Now, not being a fan of either of those institutions, I wasn't really that jazzed about it. BUT I WANTED THE FREE HAT I WAS PROMISED.
Katrina and I arrived around 6:40, and I'm 96 percent certain we were among the first 1,000 fans at the game. There were a lot more people there then other times I've been to see the Hillcats, but...I do not think that the team has 1,000 fans at any point. Anywho, we were a little confused at not being handed our chosen hats immediately upon arrival, but found our way to the guest services kiosk where people seemed to be receiving said hats.
"Umm...we'd like our hats?" I said to the man behind the desk, as he stared at us blankly upon approach.
"Are you season ticket holders?" he asked.
"No..." we said, "Is it only for season ticket holders?"
When the man said yes I sort of brusquely muttered, "That was not made clear!" and stormed off in a huff.
I do not think it will affect this man's life at all. I recently did a similar thing to a cashier at Sheetz when I got tired of them never EVER having sprinkle donuts when I came in, and I'm pretty sure I was just mean to an innocent man who has no control over sprinkle donut production. But at least venting my rage about life's little unfairness-es makes me feel a wee bit better.
Long story short, I spent the rest of the game (which was quite a while, four plus hours and 11 innings - the Hillcats lost) eyeing every person in a hat and trying to work up the gumption to ask if they, too, were season ticket holders. I suspect that man just didn't like us.
Also, we saw a skunk.
I will end the blog post for now and come back later in the day to write part two, which will focus on Saturday's race and hopefully involve less vitriol about the unfair denial of hats. At a later date I'll write part three on Sunday, a day on which I went to church (madness), ran two miles then walked five, and also watched Interview With the Vampire. You know you want to read about all of that.
Monday, August 5, 2013
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
I went on a run last night...
And here are some things that happened. Presented without comment, and in list form, because I've found that's the best way to create humor in kind of unfunny situations. Here we go:
1. The first song my Pandora station played was "Here's to Never Growing Up," by the one and only Avril, and it was awesome. All you haters gonna hate.
2. I almost got hit by some cars. The lights were red, I swear! But by the time I started to cross they were green and it was terrifying! But I lived.
3. I saw a groundhog.
4. I saw a state police car on the side road I was on and thought maybe they were going to pull me over for illegal street crossing.
5. I thought about how pretty Forest, Virginia is, because it is really fucking pretty. I love Lexington dearly, but I think this side of the mountains is better.
6. There were some ducks on the side of the road. One white, one brown. They were chowing down on some grass. When I encounter animals I like to run to the other side of the road, but that still felt too close. So I ran through some people's backyard for a while and they probably thought I was a robber and/or murderer.
7. The song "Skyscraper" came on my Pandora near the end of my run, and it was awesome and inspirational. Haters, continue hating.
8. I did not find myself magically 20 pounds thinner. And then I drank a beer and at some chips and queso because it was a hard day, so the effect of the run was likely moot.
1. The first song my Pandora station played was "Here's to Never Growing Up," by the one and only Avril, and it was awesome. All you haters gonna hate.
2. I almost got hit by some cars. The lights were red, I swear! But by the time I started to cross they were green and it was terrifying! But I lived.
3. I saw a groundhog.
4. I saw a state police car on the side road I was on and thought maybe they were going to pull me over for illegal street crossing.
5. I thought about how pretty Forest, Virginia is, because it is really fucking pretty. I love Lexington dearly, but I think this side of the mountains is better.
6. There were some ducks on the side of the road. One white, one brown. They were chowing down on some grass. When I encounter animals I like to run to the other side of the road, but that still felt too close. So I ran through some people's backyard for a while and they probably thought I was a robber and/or murderer.
7. The song "Skyscraper" came on my Pandora near the end of my run, and it was awesome and inspirational. Haters, continue hating.
8. I did not find myself magically 20 pounds thinner. And then I drank a beer and at some chips and queso because it was a hard day, so the effect of the run was likely moot.
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
All of the feels...
This is going to be an emotion-based blog post more than an adventure one, which I think is okay because it's been more than two months and I am not at all famous. I also think some of my regular readers have given up due to my lack of awesomeness and/or fame. (I'm looking at you, Shiri.)
So the reason for the emotion-based blog post is that I'm in one of those phases where I just decide everything is the most stressful thing ever. I used to be like this basically 24/7...in high school I joked that I was likely to die of a heart attack at age 40 because I took everything so seriously. I like to plan, and have a schedule (once, while in Ireland, a friend insisted I stop "cataloging," which is this thing I do while participating an activity I lay out what we'll be doing for the rest of the day: "At 3 we'll go get fish n'chips, then we'll go home and clean up, then we'll go out," etc.).
College helped me calm down a good bit (though the above example is from college) and recognize when I need to plan and be regimented and when I don't. It also actually helped me be slightly less stressed in college, I think, because part of my craziness is that I focus on efficiency. Especially during my junior and senior year, I made a big point of maximizing the time between classes as a chance to get reading done, outline papers, work on other homework, etc., especially vital when I had to spend a good portion of my free time devoting my life to the god that is Greek Life at my college.
But I still carry traces of these tendencies, and when my life doesn't abide, I feel like everything is the worst, even when it's basically the best. I've always been a worrier about the future...I can remember as a fifth grader, realizing that in four years I'd be graduating from eighth grade, and then it'd be only another four years until I graduated from high school, and then all the sudden I'd be 20, then 30, then so old! (This was literally the thought process I went through one night before bed. The next morning I told my dad something like, "Do you realize I will be 16 in only like, four years? That's so soon!" He did not understand where this panic was coming from, needless to say.)
So now I'm at this transient phase of life where I constantly feel like anything could change, and the only way to maintain sanity is to force everyone around me to abide by my plans and schedules and list.
(Weird confession: despite all this Type A stuff, I have never been one to keep a planner and I'm not particularly neat. The former is fine, I find I'm better able to adapt (efficiency!) with my system of ever-changing lists (plus making them was a good activity in English classes - I was not a note taker). But I'm very annoyed with the latter. If I'm going to drive myself crazy with stressing about planning, can't I at least be neat?)
The situation that is largely responsible for this state of constant stressed-outedness is my housing situation, which, as I explained to the always ready to listen to my crazy Hannah Muther last night, is actually totally fine. We finally, FINALLY, sorted out who was moving when and how we're going to handle the room-to-room transition, and we have a (sort-of) plan in place about getting the Internet bill transferred away from the girl moving out.
But it's still a big hassle, and if everyone just let me decide how everyone in my life should do everything, things would be a lot simpler. (Obviously a joke, generally. But I did recently have an acquaintance discuss how she was terrible at planning and logistics freak her out so she just doesn't deal with it. This acquaintance is relevant to the above source of stressed-outedness, and made me think I should pursue a career of dealing with that kind of stuff on behalf of others.)
The other piece of the constant stress is that I'm approaching the point where I'm seriously considering my post-Lynchburg plans, and it is tough stuff to deal with. That's fodder for another post, but it's the main contributor to my constant feeling of transience and general feelings of stress.
All that being said, last night I watched Wall-e and it was the best, and I felt a lot better for about 12 hours before I came into work and had to deal with all this work business that I'd rather not do. Let's all just be robots cleaning up the world and falling in love with other robots.
Sorry for the boring post. I'm going on a run tonight so maybe there'll be some adventure to recount.
So the reason for the emotion-based blog post is that I'm in one of those phases where I just decide everything is the most stressful thing ever. I used to be like this basically 24/7...in high school I joked that I was likely to die of a heart attack at age 40 because I took everything so seriously. I like to plan, and have a schedule (once, while in Ireland, a friend insisted I stop "cataloging," which is this thing I do while participating an activity I lay out what we'll be doing for the rest of the day: "At 3 we'll go get fish n'chips, then we'll go home and clean up, then we'll go out," etc.).
College helped me calm down a good bit (though the above example is from college) and recognize when I need to plan and be regimented and when I don't. It also actually helped me be slightly less stressed in college, I think, because part of my craziness is that I focus on efficiency. Especially during my junior and senior year, I made a big point of maximizing the time between classes as a chance to get reading done, outline papers, work on other homework, etc., especially vital when I had to spend a good portion of my free time devoting my life to the god that is Greek Life at my college.
But I still carry traces of these tendencies, and when my life doesn't abide, I feel like everything is the worst, even when it's basically the best. I've always been a worrier about the future...I can remember as a fifth grader, realizing that in four years I'd be graduating from eighth grade, and then it'd be only another four years until I graduated from high school, and then all the sudden I'd be 20, then 30, then so old! (This was literally the thought process I went through one night before bed. The next morning I told my dad something like, "Do you realize I will be 16 in only like, four years? That's so soon!" He did not understand where this panic was coming from, needless to say.)
So now I'm at this transient phase of life where I constantly feel like anything could change, and the only way to maintain sanity is to force everyone around me to abide by my plans and schedules and list.
(Weird confession: despite all this Type A stuff, I have never been one to keep a planner and I'm not particularly neat. The former is fine, I find I'm better able to adapt (efficiency!) with my system of ever-changing lists (plus making them was a good activity in English classes - I was not a note taker). But I'm very annoyed with the latter. If I'm going to drive myself crazy with stressing about planning, can't I at least be neat?)
The situation that is largely responsible for this state of constant stressed-outedness is my housing situation, which, as I explained to the always ready to listen to my crazy Hannah Muther last night, is actually totally fine. We finally, FINALLY, sorted out who was moving when and how we're going to handle the room-to-room transition, and we have a (sort-of) plan in place about getting the Internet bill transferred away from the girl moving out.
But it's still a big hassle, and if everyone just let me decide how everyone in my life should do everything, things would be a lot simpler. (Obviously a joke, generally. But I did recently have an acquaintance discuss how she was terrible at planning and logistics freak her out so she just doesn't deal with it. This acquaintance is relevant to the above source of stressed-outedness, and made me think I should pursue a career of dealing with that kind of stuff on behalf of others.)
The other piece of the constant stress is that I'm approaching the point where I'm seriously considering my post-Lynchburg plans, and it is tough stuff to deal with. That's fodder for another post, but it's the main contributor to my constant feeling of transience and general feelings of stress.
All that being said, last night I watched Wall-e and it was the best, and I felt a lot better for about 12 hours before I came into work and had to deal with all this work business that I'd rather not do. Let's all just be robots cleaning up the world and falling in love with other robots.
Sorry for the boring post. I'm going on a run tonight so maybe there'll be some adventure to recount.
Sunday, July 28, 2013
The one-day weekend...
Sometimes, due to my need to have stable employment and make the moneys, I have to work Sundays. And it is the worst. I believe I've mentioned this before, but in case you're new to the blog: night cops is the living worst.
Reasons night cops is the worst include the following:
1) I cannot run (or hike) on Sunday afternoon, one of my few guaranteed workout times. The rest of the week I will almost certainly convince myself not to work out after I get home, but on Sundays I have no excuse. EXCEPT WHEN I HAVE TO WORK.
2) I have to be at work until like 10:30 at night (if I leave a little early, honestly) which is just the pits. Then I go home and I'm tired, but I don't want to go straight to bed, because - lame, so instead I usually eat Cheetos or drink a beer or a coke or consume some other unnecessary calories that usually just have the result in keeping me up later than I want to be.
3) I am faced with the choice of either A) taking Friday off, giving me a normal weekend, but no days off at the same time as Barrett and I usually have shit I need to finish Friday morning for the Monday paper that I'd rather not finish on Thursdays, B) taking Monday off, giving myself an every other day kind of weekend, which is okay but just seems silly or C) doing what I did this time around and taking a day the previous weekend, giving myself a three-day weekend (WIN!) followed by a one-day weekend (LOSE.)
But despite all this sucktacular-ness, my one-day weekend went pretty well. I will now regale you with the tale of these adventures, in a post that hopefully sucks less so I don't need to end it with a picture of a teacup pig so you're not mad at me.
Sometimes, my life is a little bit like high school. Example: a certain man companion of mine lives with his parents (totally acceptable....kind of). When those parents go out of town, as they did this weekend, I am a huge advocate of throwing wild parties at their home so we can emulate all the sweet movies about high school I love so dearly ("I got enough cheese and crackers for eight people. You think that's enough?").
The problem, though, is that I do not have a ton of friends here in Lynchburg (curse you, college graduation). And my friends here are pretty cool, but with one of them out of town this week (:( Katrina) our party was destined to be a bit low on the attendance. And of my roommates was working, and the other had whatever activity beautiful people engage in on the weekends (actual situation: she had a softball game).
Long story short: our wild party wound up being Barrett, Alicia and I grilling brats, drinking sangria, watching Batman and Robin and then making an unseemly number of prank phone calls to the opinion editor. (There was also some playing of Call of Duty. We are way cool - and I am way not good at that game.)
It was still a quality evening, especially with the prank calls. Here's how it went down: Alicia and I left dozens of messages in suave, mysterious voices asking to speak to Carlos Danger, which was awesome. Then Barrett left a final message that began: "Hola, me llamo Carlos Danger," and asked if he could help him get in touch with some of his "chicas" who might've called said editor by mistake.
Oh, topical humor.
Anywho, the prank calling was a big high to come down from (see, my life is frequently a lot like high school) but I did my darnedest Saturday via napping, running (IN THE RAIN BECAUSE I AM ONE TOUGH M*****F****** [not sure why I decided to censor. for the children, I guess]), making a sweet-ass salad, buying sandals and seeing The Wolverine! SUCH A DAY!
(Side note: I also bought some white skinny jean capris from TJMaxx. They are pretty much completely see-through and I'm not sure when, how or why I will ever wear them. But they were $16 and I've kind of been imaging all these sweet outfits I could make with white pants before remembering that I still have large thighs. Most importantly, did you notice the $16 price? This is what the sales do to me. It's a problem.)
Closed the weekend off with not one but TWO services at Barrett's church because I am a quality human being and went to hear him sing a song. Then we went to Buffalo Wild Wings, because I was super hungry after all of this Jesus-ing and at basically any given point in my life I would rather be at Buffalo Wild Wings.
(Fact: my fingers kind of smelled like the spicy garlic sauce from my wings for the first couple hours of work. It was the most frustrating and amazing situation ever.)
Instead of a teacup pig, I'll end this post with the muzak, because people like the muzak. I thought, briefly, about uploading the video of Barrett singing his song, but that seemed kind weird and like more work than I wanted to do. So instead, enjoy some Beatles. (Not bugs. The band. Bugs would be weird.)
Reasons night cops is the worst include the following:
1) I cannot run (or hike) on Sunday afternoon, one of my few guaranteed workout times. The rest of the week I will almost certainly convince myself not to work out after I get home, but on Sundays I have no excuse. EXCEPT WHEN I HAVE TO WORK.
2) I have to be at work until like 10:30 at night (if I leave a little early, honestly) which is just the pits. Then I go home and I'm tired, but I don't want to go straight to bed, because - lame, so instead I usually eat Cheetos or drink a beer or a coke or consume some other unnecessary calories that usually just have the result in keeping me up later than I want to be.
3) I am faced with the choice of either A) taking Friday off, giving me a normal weekend, but no days off at the same time as Barrett and I usually have shit I need to finish Friday morning for the Monday paper that I'd rather not finish on Thursdays, B) taking Monday off, giving myself an every other day kind of weekend, which is okay but just seems silly or C) doing what I did this time around and taking a day the previous weekend, giving myself a three-day weekend (WIN!) followed by a one-day weekend (LOSE.)
But despite all this sucktacular-ness, my one-day weekend went pretty well. I will now regale you with the tale of these adventures, in a post that hopefully sucks less so I don't need to end it with a picture of a teacup pig so you're not mad at me.
Sometimes, my life is a little bit like high school. Example: a certain man companion of mine lives with his parents (totally acceptable....kind of). When those parents go out of town, as they did this weekend, I am a huge advocate of throwing wild parties at their home so we can emulate all the sweet movies about high school I love so dearly ("I got enough cheese and crackers for eight people. You think that's enough?").
The problem, though, is that I do not have a ton of friends here in Lynchburg (curse you, college graduation). And my friends here are pretty cool, but with one of them out of town this week (:( Katrina) our party was destined to be a bit low on the attendance. And of my roommates was working, and the other had whatever activity beautiful people engage in on the weekends (actual situation: she had a softball game).
Long story short: our wild party wound up being Barrett, Alicia and I grilling brats, drinking sangria, watching Batman and Robin and then making an unseemly number of prank phone calls to the opinion editor. (There was also some playing of Call of Duty. We are way cool - and I am way not good at that game.)
It was still a quality evening, especially with the prank calls. Here's how it went down: Alicia and I left dozens of messages in suave, mysterious voices asking to speak to Carlos Danger, which was awesome. Then Barrett left a final message that began: "Hola, me llamo Carlos Danger," and asked if he could help him get in touch with some of his "chicas" who might've called said editor by mistake.
Oh, topical humor.
Anywho, the prank calling was a big high to come down from (see, my life is frequently a lot like high school) but I did my darnedest Saturday via napping, running (IN THE RAIN BECAUSE I AM ONE TOUGH M*****F****** [not sure why I decided to censor. for the children, I guess]), making a sweet-ass salad, buying sandals and seeing The Wolverine! SUCH A DAY!
(Side note: I also bought some white skinny jean capris from TJMaxx. They are pretty much completely see-through and I'm not sure when, how or why I will ever wear them. But they were $16 and I've kind of been imaging all these sweet outfits I could make with white pants before remembering that I still have large thighs. Most importantly, did you notice the $16 price? This is what the sales do to me. It's a problem.)
Closed the weekend off with not one but TWO services at Barrett's church because I am a quality human being and went to hear him sing a song. Then we went to Buffalo Wild Wings, because I was super hungry after all of this Jesus-ing and at basically any given point in my life I would rather be at Buffalo Wild Wings.
(Fact: my fingers kind of smelled like the spicy garlic sauce from my wings for the first couple hours of work. It was the most frustrating and amazing situation ever.)
Instead of a teacup pig, I'll end this post with the muzak, because people like the muzak. I thought, briefly, about uploading the video of Barrett singing his song, but that seemed kind weird and like more work than I wanted to do. So instead, enjoy some Beatles. (Not bugs. The band. Bugs would be weird.)
Friday, July 26, 2013
The never-ending cycle of free baseball tickets...
And other adventures from my week.
After camping last weekend, the days have been pretty slow, with not too much going on at work and not many eventful out-of-work adventures to recount. So, in the spirit of an earlier post, I'm going to provide you with a series of vignettes on what I've been up to of late.
1) A few weeks ago, several of us reporters attended News and Advance night at the Lynchburg Hillcats (the local minor league baseball team). It was...not great.
Of course, the camaraderie and beer and pretzels were all much appreciated, but there was an ungodly amount of rain, many a delay and, when baseball was being played, the home team was getting crushed.
The plus side? The promotion that night was "win-win" Wednesday, where a local radio station gives you a free ticket if you buy a ticket to that night's game. Now, despite not technically "buying" our tickets - really they were handed to us by our employers - we still received the free ticket for the next Wednesday game! And at that game, which was this week, we received ANOTHER free ticket! MAGIC.
2) I'm pretty much out of material, and I'm only on number two. Should've planned ahead.
3) OH! Prank calling. There was a lot of it on Thursday, but telling the story seems like a lot of work. . I'm really not in the mood to be hilarious - I probably should've thought of that before I started this not-hilarious blog post. Oh well.
4) To make up for this terribleness, here is a picture of a teacup pig:
After camping last weekend, the days have been pretty slow, with not too much going on at work and not many eventful out-of-work adventures to recount. So, in the spirit of an earlier post, I'm going to provide you with a series of vignettes on what I've been up to of late.
1) A few weeks ago, several of us reporters attended News and Advance night at the Lynchburg Hillcats (the local minor league baseball team). It was...not great.
Of course, the camaraderie and beer and pretzels were all much appreciated, but there was an ungodly amount of rain, many a delay and, when baseball was being played, the home team was getting crushed.
The plus side? The promotion that night was "win-win" Wednesday, where a local radio station gives you a free ticket if you buy a ticket to that night's game. Now, despite not technically "buying" our tickets - really they were handed to us by our employers - we still received the free ticket for the next Wednesday game! And at that game, which was this week, we received ANOTHER free ticket! MAGIC.
2) I'm pretty much out of material, and I'm only on number two. Should've planned ahead.
3) OH! Prank calling. There was a lot of it on Thursday, but telling the story seems like a lot of work. . I'm really not in the mood to be hilarious - I probably should've thought of that before I started this not-hilarious blog post. Oh well.
4) To make up for this terribleness, here is a picture of a teacup pig:
Can't be mad at me now!
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
Mosquitos love me, and other camping adventures...
Once again, I have a real adventure to recount for you readers! Unfortunately, though, neither Barrett nor I brought a camera camping this weekend, which would make for a rather dull retelling (despite my trademark pithiness) with no visual representation.
To alleviate your potential boredom, I've decided to present our weekend via another nontraditional blog structure, a list of highs and lows of my three day weekend.
HIGH: Left work at 5 p.m. Friday, after receiving positive feedback on my intern story, writing a pretty solid Monday business feature and finishing my assignment for one of our special sections.
LOW: Encountered disgusting cows cooling themselves in algae-covered pound on drive to camp. Was disgusted.
HIGH: Got to see campfire at Barrett's camp, which was fun, and then drank with other former counselors, also fun.
LOW: Went to bed late, slept on air mattress and had to deal with vague hangover. Not a great combination.
HIGH: BOATS!!!!!!
LOW: My boat was a tiny kayak, clearly intended for a 10-year-old boy.
HIGH: Kicked Barrett's ass in a boat race!
LOW: Barrett did not try very hard in the boat race.
HIGH: Delicious cookout food, including world's greatest mac n' cheese and a quality cheesecake for desert.
LOW: There was not nearly enough mac n' cheese available.
HIGH: Ate Salerno's for dinner. OM NOM PENNE ALLA VODKA.
LOW: Due to a late lunch, was not super hungry and only ate half of delicious pasta.
HIGH: Made exciting plans for post-dinner hike, with beer to celebrate afterwards.
LOW: Dropped three beers in kitchen, forcing us to delay hike until the next morning so we could clean up spilled beer.
HIGH: Prevented us from hiking through massive thunderstorm by dropping three beers and postponing hike.
LOW: Massive storm.
HIGH: Storm stopped enough for fire, drinking and s'mores.
LOW: Second night on air mattress. Many mosquito bites. Not great for the sleeping.
HIGH: No rain in the morning meant perfect weather for hiking.
LOW: Hiking is super hard and I expected my own death many times.
HIGH: View from the top was sooooo prettyyyyyyy.
LOW: Had to hike down.
HIGH: FINALLY SHOWERED.
LOW: Shower house was not ventilated so sweating started up immediately afterward.
HIGH: Had lunch with my beautiful little little Shaun!
LOW: Returned to Lynchburg and real life.
HIGH: Took Monday off!
LOW: Am now back at work.
To alleviate your potential boredom, I've decided to present our weekend via another nontraditional blog structure, a list of highs and lows of my three day weekend.
HIGH: Left work at 5 p.m. Friday, after receiving positive feedback on my intern story, writing a pretty solid Monday business feature and finishing my assignment for one of our special sections.
LOW: Encountered disgusting cows cooling themselves in algae-covered pound on drive to camp. Was disgusted.
HIGH: Got to see campfire at Barrett's camp, which was fun, and then drank with other former counselors, also fun.
LOW: Went to bed late, slept on air mattress and had to deal with vague hangover. Not a great combination.
HIGH: BOATS!!!!!!
LOW: My boat was a tiny kayak, clearly intended for a 10-year-old boy.
HIGH: Kicked Barrett's ass in a boat race!
LOW: Barrett did not try very hard in the boat race.
HIGH: Delicious cookout food, including world's greatest mac n' cheese and a quality cheesecake for desert.
LOW: There was not nearly enough mac n' cheese available.
HIGH: Ate Salerno's for dinner. OM NOM PENNE ALLA VODKA.
LOW: Due to a late lunch, was not super hungry and only ate half of delicious pasta.
HIGH: Made exciting plans for post-dinner hike, with beer to celebrate afterwards.
LOW: Dropped three beers in kitchen, forcing us to delay hike until the next morning so we could clean up spilled beer.
HIGH: Prevented us from hiking through massive thunderstorm by dropping three beers and postponing hike.
LOW: Massive storm.
HIGH: Storm stopped enough for fire, drinking and s'mores.
LOW: Second night on air mattress. Many mosquito bites. Not great for the sleeping.
HIGH: No rain in the morning meant perfect weather for hiking.
LOW: Hiking is super hard and I expected my own death many times.
HIGH: View from the top was sooooo prettyyyyyyy.
LOW: Had to hike down.
HIGH: FINALLY SHOWERED.
LOW: Shower house was not ventilated so sweating started up immediately afterward.
HIGH: Had lunch with my beautiful little little Shaun!
LOW: Returned to Lynchburg and real life.
HIGH: Took Monday off!
LOW: Am now back at work.
Friday, July 19, 2013
How to survive...
...a week when your entire family goes on vacation without you.
This blog will be my first attempt at a hilarious list-based post, oh-so-popular with the interwebs. But before I get to the list on how to execute the survival alluded to in the title, I need to explain that it isn't quite as maudlin a situation as presented. (I'm about halfway through the explanation, and it's boring. So skip to the list part if you want to be entertained.)
This week, my parents, both brothers and sister-in-law are all at Camp Brosius, what I firmly believe is the happiest place on Earth. I spent many a happy summer week there as a child, and there really are almost no fonder memories I have than of my time at Brosius.
I often describe it to friends as half resort/half camp, because it is a family camp, but that isn't really accurate. It does have some resort-like elements: food prepared by an excellent chef, some fairly classy accommodations, boats at your disposal, daily childcare etc. But it's still very much a "camp," though not the sleeping in tents kind of camp. The classiest housing options are the cottages, but those are the only option with showers directly in your residence. And, to my knowledge, only one of them is air conditioned (it's the reconditioned nursery and was also at one point the camp directors' residence.)
There are still campfires and endless mosquitos and bug juice drinking and jumping off rickety swim t's, all the stuff you associate with a traditional camping experience - you're just with your parents and they kind of like to have real beds to sleep in and to be able to bring babies.
Anywho, although I used to dream about attending Brosius every summer for my entire life (as a little kid I'd brag that I went even before I was born, my mom was pregnant with me the summer of 1989), my last few summers there and only summer as a counselor served to sort of bring Brosius back to reality and the people there as still, you know, people with flaws. The camp is ideally designed for kids between the ages of four and 14, and becomes a little less exciting when you're a teenager who's not that excited to play Spud for the 50th time.
When you're on staff, the summer can seem endless - even though it's a pretty sweet job - especially if you don't really click with the other staffers. (This is fodder for an entry some day on the weird hybrid personality I had that summer, half under the influence of my Indiana upbringing and half slowly being transformed by a year spent in Virginia. For a while I didn't really fit in either place, and that summer was the big illustrator of that.) And although I haven't been there as a young, childless adult, those who have indicate that although it's nice to be able to sit around and boat and drink and play cards, you don't have the added satisfaction that made my parents - and many others - so fall in love with it, that it's a vacation where you don't have to worry about keeping your kids entertained.
So as a young, childless adult, I'm not too bummed out about not being able to swing a week in Wisconsin, either in vacay time or moneys. That being said, I might have given doing such a thing more consideration if I'd know BOTH brothers would be attending with my parents - I'm not used to Andy having much flexibility in his time off and thought at most he'd go up for a couple days.
Still, I'm happy with my decision to prioritize holidays, including my eldest brother's Labor Day party next month - I'll be able to see more of my family and devote slightly less time and money to travel and other expenses.
But I'm still bummed out about the situation, if for no other reason than it's a reminder that I live halfway across the country at a time when my brothers have finally decided to stop living far away (something they had no problem with when they were my age and I was the only child at home) and have the ability to visit home fairly regularly. Granted, if I were living back in that area now I'd have a much harder time seeing many of my school friends, and wouldn't have awesome experiences like last week's boating adventure, but it's still not the best.
In this moderately maudlin mindset, here's a somewhat jocular list about how to survive a week like this one. Enjoy.
1) Start the week out with a major catastrophe - I recommend colliding with a deer - to put everything in perspective.
2) Stress out about how to deal with said catastrophe, but eventually decide to do nothing. That way you'll feel like you're on vacation and free from societal pressures.
3) Give yourself a lot to do at work so you don't find yourself scrolling through your siblings' pictures or thinking about how you aren't even contributing at your job so wouldn't it be better if you were just out sailing with your dad.
4) Abandon impulse control, again to recreate the feeling of vacation. Your roommate wants to go get ice cream at 10 o'clock at night? Do it! You really want Cheetos (also at 10 o'clock at night) and for some reason your boyfriend will not go buy them for you? Buy them yourself - you're the boss of you!
5) Engage in mid-week drinking, in the form of a blistering hot happy hour with delicious sangria (that is allegedly a "special" but still kind of expensive) that is a lot stronger than you expected.
6) Plan a fun weekend activity to celebrate making it through the week, in the form of a camping trip with the Cheeto nazi boyfriend that will hopefully take your mind off the camping option you are missing out on while also giving you a quality taste of the great outdoors.
7) Begin plotting how next year you will plan better so you can use some of your vacation time to go to Wisconsin for part of the week. Intimidate siblings into telling you sooner if they plan to go again.
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