so i realized that these blog posts just ended suddenly, but it was for good reason. day 63 was my last day of work. (and then day 64 would be driving back to o-town so laura could drop me off on her way to racine, wi for the last tournament)
um, let's see.... on day 63 we had rain delays, so i ran out and slid in puddles with 2 of the office interns whose names i don't remember.
that night, laura, hil-dawg, and this one girl (who i think is a lot of fun but whose name i don't remember anymore) went to dinner with the boys, then went to laura's and my room and watched youtube vids for like 3 hours before the front desk guy called and said we were being too loud. oops.
also, the night before that, the boys banged on me and laura's door at 3 a.m.
we weren't happy.
it was a fun summer, but i'm glad to be home. when i got back, i hung out for a few days before my family left for vacay.
now we're back and i'm excited to go back to UNL!!!!
one last time, gute nacht!
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Saturday, July 31, 2010
day 62
longest day of my life.
games ran from 9 to 5. we planned on leaving the hotel at 630, but hil-dawg overslept, so we all just chilled in the lobby til 7 when she graced us with her presence. in her defense though, she uses her phone as an alarm clock, but her phone has gone insane and stopped working properly meaning her alarm didn't go off.
anywhoo, when we got to the fields, we set stuff up and then i joined morgan (a kick-it sponsorship intern) under the jif tent. my duties for the day were to work jif. soooooo boring. morgan is cool though, so that helped. we both almost fell asleep multiple times throughout the 8+ hours of games. ugh.
i also had to help out with juicy juice for a little while, but that was even more boring because i didn't have anyone helping me to keep me company. at one point, laura and i had to go around fixing goals and i overheard a mom say, "there goes the jif girl"
WHAT?! just because i spent my morning passing out peanut butter doesn't mean i'm the face of the company! goodness! and then while i was working the juicy juice tent, some guy asked me if juicy juice and jif had the same owners. i said no i didn't think so and i asked him why he asked. he said that he saw me working jif earlier and so he figured that since i was working juicy juice now too that they're owned by the same company....?
really people? did my official kick-it polo not clue you in that i don't work for jif? like why did i get a reputation as the jif girl just because i sat under the tent that had jif samples? had i been wearing a jif polo, i could understand their confusion. but i very obviously work for kick-it since i match all of the 14 other kick-it employees at this event.
AND even if i worked for jif, i still have a name! and that name is shannon, not "jif girl"! ahhh.
anyway, nothing super fun happened today. just the usual complainer parents and hyperactive kids.
when we finally cleaned up and left the site around 6, i was sooooo tired. but the day wasn't over yet. we showered and went to hil-dawgs room to post scores, then ended up watching youtube videos for like an hour. finally we went to dinner at a mexican restaurant in vail village at like 9, had some laughs, and came back. (but laura stayed behind bc she was worn out).
chris and i were twinsies tonight. i saw him wearing a blue shirt and jeans, so when i went to change, i purposely put on a blue shirt and jeans. haha and then we sat next to each other all night just as any twins would.
now i'm back at the hotel, it's almost midnight, and i'm still tired. so i'm off to bed!
nighty night!
games ran from 9 to 5. we planned on leaving the hotel at 630, but hil-dawg overslept, so we all just chilled in the lobby til 7 when she graced us with her presence. in her defense though, she uses her phone as an alarm clock, but her phone has gone insane and stopped working properly meaning her alarm didn't go off.
anywhoo, when we got to the fields, we set stuff up and then i joined morgan (a kick-it sponsorship intern) under the jif tent. my duties for the day were to work jif. soooooo boring. morgan is cool though, so that helped. we both almost fell asleep multiple times throughout the 8+ hours of games. ugh.
i also had to help out with juicy juice for a little while, but that was even more boring because i didn't have anyone helping me to keep me company. at one point, laura and i had to go around fixing goals and i overheard a mom say, "there goes the jif girl"
WHAT?! just because i spent my morning passing out peanut butter doesn't mean i'm the face of the company! goodness! and then while i was working the juicy juice tent, some guy asked me if juicy juice and jif had the same owners. i said no i didn't think so and i asked him why he asked. he said that he saw me working jif earlier and so he figured that since i was working juicy juice now too that they're owned by the same company....?
really people? did my official kick-it polo not clue you in that i don't work for jif? like why did i get a reputation as the jif girl just because i sat under the tent that had jif samples? had i been wearing a jif polo, i could understand their confusion. but i very obviously work for kick-it since i match all of the 14 other kick-it employees at this event.
AND even if i worked for jif, i still have a name! and that name is shannon, not "jif girl"! ahhh.
anyway, nothing super fun happened today. just the usual complainer parents and hyperactive kids.
when we finally cleaned up and left the site around 6, i was sooooo tired. but the day wasn't over yet. we showered and went to hil-dawgs room to post scores, then ended up watching youtube videos for like an hour. finally we went to dinner at a mexican restaurant in vail village at like 9, had some laughs, and came back. (but laura stayed behind bc she was worn out).
chris and i were twinsies tonight. i saw him wearing a blue shirt and jeans, so when i went to change, i purposely put on a blue shirt and jeans. haha and then we sat next to each other all night just as any twins would.
now i'm back at the hotel, it's almost midnight, and i'm still tired. so i'm off to bed!
nighty night!
Friday, July 30, 2010
day 61
we got to the fields around 8, set up, ran check-in, games started at 1, games ended at 4, we put stuff away and whatnot, we were very rudely spoken to in the parking lot, and we came back to the hotel. not a TON of excitement in that time span....except that we almost tipped a gator like 3 times between me, chris, sean, laura, and hil-dawg. not surprising. AND sean and i were nearly attacked by a bird. i don't want to go into detail....it's too sensitive of a topic.
when we got back to the hotel, we showered and got ready to go, then we took some sponsors out to dinner. laura and i were laughing almost the entire time (which is ok, since we were on the opposite end of the table from the important people). the reason we were laughing? dave, on of the people from the office who are helping with this tournament, is an even bigger d-bag than cole was. i cannot even begin to describe this guy....he has no censor when he's talking, he can't tell the difference between debt and investment (long story), and he tried to tell us that he went to a women's studies class at his sister's school and that they talked about menstruation the entire time. isn't women's studies like a historical class? i don't really know, but i think dave just wanted to make a funny story. only it wasn't funny at all, and i think everyone gagged on their dinner when he talked about menstruation while people were eating. plus, he was talking about hooking up with every girl in the room, from our waitress to the other customers to the sponsors we were hosting......like, he was soooooo inappropriately cocky. laura and i were hysterical - we kept making eye contact while dave was telling his super duper, extremely loud stories and as soon as i looked at laura i knew we were thinking the same thing. hahaha i had a hard time holding in my laughter while this dude was talking. oy. i wish i could describe it better, but you'd just have to meet him. this will be a long weekend if i have to spend much time with him.
anywhoo, after the extremely offensive dinner, we came back to the hotel (with hil-dawg as our guide.....we took the scenic route) and now laura and i are just chillin in the hotel room. only tonight, we're literally "chillin" - our room is freezing.
tomorrow games go from 9 to 5, and we have to get to the fields at 630! ah! another looonnnngg dayyyy.....
good night!
when we got back to the hotel, we showered and got ready to go, then we took some sponsors out to dinner. laura and i were laughing almost the entire time (which is ok, since we were on the opposite end of the table from the important people). the reason we were laughing? dave, on of the people from the office who are helping with this tournament, is an even bigger d-bag than cole was. i cannot even begin to describe this guy....he has no censor when he's talking, he can't tell the difference between debt and investment (long story), and he tried to tell us that he went to a women's studies class at his sister's school and that they talked about menstruation the entire time. isn't women's studies like a historical class? i don't really know, but i think dave just wanted to make a funny story. only it wasn't funny at all, and i think everyone gagged on their dinner when he talked about menstruation while people were eating. plus, he was talking about hooking up with every girl in the room, from our waitress to the other customers to the sponsors we were hosting......like, he was soooooo inappropriately cocky. laura and i were hysterical - we kept making eye contact while dave was telling his super duper, extremely loud stories and as soon as i looked at laura i knew we were thinking the same thing. hahaha i had a hard time holding in my laughter while this dude was talking. oy. i wish i could describe it better, but you'd just have to meet him. this will be a long weekend if i have to spend much time with him.
anywhoo, after the extremely offensive dinner, we came back to the hotel (with hil-dawg as our guide.....we took the scenic route) and now laura and i are just chillin in the hotel room. only tonight, we're literally "chillin" - our room is freezing.
tomorrow games go from 9 to 5, and we have to get to the fields at 630! ah! another looonnnngg dayyyy.....
good night!
Thursday, July 29, 2010
day 60
today was super long for some reason. i swear i have no concept of time anymore. i don't know what day it is either. dah.
we left for the fields at 8, painted and set up goals, then we came back to the hotel and took naps. after that, laura and i went back to the fields to work out (event director hil-dawg didn't join us because her phone was broken hahaha - liar)
immediately when we got there it started pouring rain. ice cold, wet, uncomfortable rain. but we worked out anyway, and after a while it let up. we also got to kick a soccer ball around a bit and do some shooting - that felt so good!
after that we came back, showered, and then got picked up by mr. eric peyton!!!! it was so nice to see him!! we just wandered around vail village and lionshead (and we even drove to avon to see eric's TINY apartment! haha it's like smaller than my dorm room from last year) and we just hung out until his friend, mark, got there (mark was visiting vail this weekend too and he came from denver via greyhound). laura got tired at like 9 so we dropped her off on our way to pick up mark. we were starving at this point so we started walking around finding places to eat. that's the problem with vail. everything closes so early! and the places that were still open were 21 and over, so we had to search for a long time before we finally found a pizza place that wasn't carding so we could eat din din. (haha i've never wanted a fake i.d. until tonight. i was sooooo hungry!)
we ate and chatted for a while, then the boys walked me back to my hotel/lodge on their way back to eric's car. the road we were on was on the back side of the lodge, which is the direction that me and laura's first floor room faces. i saw a window that looked like ours - open window (no ac in the hotel and no window screens. scary? yes.), fan in the exact same position, curtains just how we had them, etc. - so eric and i climbed up this muddy hill thing and i was going to scare laura by climbing in through the window. i got to the window and looked in, only to realize that it wasn't my room!!!!! bahahahaha i'm SOOOO glad i checked before just climbing in! how awkward would that have been?! the room was all dark, so i couldn't really see anything except for the crack of light under the door to the hallway - but i knew the room wasn't mine because the door was on the wrong side of the wall. my room's layout was the reverse of that room. WHEW! i think i saved myself from a trip to the police station. haha
as soon as eric and i realized that the room wasn't mine, we ran down the hill (i actually slid down it, seeing as i was wearing toms and had no traction) and decided to just be normal and use the front doors. so now i'm back in my room, hoping that nobody makes the same mistake i did and just waltzes in through my window.....
i know vail isn't exactly full of crime, but would it really hurt to give the rooms window screens? like, i just think that would be logical. especially since we're on the ground floor. oh well. i guess it's convenient in case of a fire....?
tomorrow we finish setting stuff up and games start at noon! it'll probably be another long day!!
later gators
we left for the fields at 8, painted and set up goals, then we came back to the hotel and took naps. after that, laura and i went back to the fields to work out (event director hil-dawg didn't join us because her phone was broken hahaha - liar)
immediately when we got there it started pouring rain. ice cold, wet, uncomfortable rain. but we worked out anyway, and after a while it let up. we also got to kick a soccer ball around a bit and do some shooting - that felt so good!
after that we came back, showered, and then got picked up by mr. eric peyton!!!! it was so nice to see him!! we just wandered around vail village and lionshead (and we even drove to avon to see eric's TINY apartment! haha it's like smaller than my dorm room from last year) and we just hung out until his friend, mark, got there (mark was visiting vail this weekend too and he came from denver via greyhound). laura got tired at like 9 so we dropped her off on our way to pick up mark. we were starving at this point so we started walking around finding places to eat. that's the problem with vail. everything closes so early! and the places that were still open were 21 and over, so we had to search for a long time before we finally found a pizza place that wasn't carding so we could eat din din. (haha i've never wanted a fake i.d. until tonight. i was sooooo hungry!)
we ate and chatted for a while, then the boys walked me back to my hotel/lodge on their way back to eric's car. the road we were on was on the back side of the lodge, which is the direction that me and laura's first floor room faces. i saw a window that looked like ours - open window (no ac in the hotel and no window screens. scary? yes.), fan in the exact same position, curtains just how we had them, etc. - so eric and i climbed up this muddy hill thing and i was going to scare laura by climbing in through the window. i got to the window and looked in, only to realize that it wasn't my room!!!!! bahahahaha i'm SOOOO glad i checked before just climbing in! how awkward would that have been?! the room was all dark, so i couldn't really see anything except for the crack of light under the door to the hallway - but i knew the room wasn't mine because the door was on the wrong side of the wall. my room's layout was the reverse of that room. WHEW! i think i saved myself from a trip to the police station. haha
as soon as eric and i realized that the room wasn't mine, we ran down the hill (i actually slid down it, seeing as i was wearing toms and had no traction) and decided to just be normal and use the front doors. so now i'm back in my room, hoping that nobody makes the same mistake i did and just waltzes in through my window.....
i know vail isn't exactly full of crime, but would it really hurt to give the rooms window screens? like, i just think that would be logical. especially since we're on the ground floor. oh well. i guess it's convenient in case of a fire....?
tomorrow we finish setting stuff up and games start at noon! it'll probably be another long day!!
later gators
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
day 59
we got up, worked out, and left for vail.
the drive really wasn't too bad - no wasps in the truck, no brake failures, etc. i really can't complain. when we got to our hotel/lodge thing, our room was already ready, so we checked in and were lucky enough to get a first floor room! i don't know why, but i was so excited about that. how convenient. =]
after we got all settled in, i had a fantastic phone chat with miss jordan grubaugh! ahh it was so nice to catch up with her and talk about life.
it was a long phone chat though, so by the time i got back to the room, laura told me she thought i had died. haha oopsie ;]
from there we left to explore vail a little bit. it wasn't the same being here without george and stuff, but it was still verrrr nice. we checked out the ugliest shoe shop i've ever witnessed, and we wandered through another few shops before we went to dinner at pazzo's - the best pizza place everrr. yum. =]
then we ran back to the hotel because it had started to rain freezing cold rain, and neither of us had jackets with us. when we got back, the boys were here so we hung out with them for a bit and watched part of the mls allstars v man-u game. i can sum it up in 1 word: EMBARRASSING. man-u played half of their second string players and still dominated us. i only watched until like the 40th minute because i couldn't stand to watch that disgrace any longer. man-u scored a goal in the 36th SECOND. that's right - i didn't say MINUTE, i said SECOND. wow. don't even get me started....
then me and laura and chris and sean went to the grocery store and got food for breakfast the next few days since our hotel's breakfast isn't free (those jerks) and now laura and i are just chillin like villains in our very large, first floor room. =]
i'm super tired though, so that's all for now!
gute nacht!
the drive really wasn't too bad - no wasps in the truck, no brake failures, etc. i really can't complain. when we got to our hotel/lodge thing, our room was already ready, so we checked in and were lucky enough to get a first floor room! i don't know why, but i was so excited about that. how convenient. =]
after we got all settled in, i had a fantastic phone chat with miss jordan grubaugh! ahh it was so nice to catch up with her and talk about life.
it was a long phone chat though, so by the time i got back to the room, laura told me she thought i had died. haha oopsie ;]
from there we left to explore vail a little bit. it wasn't the same being here without george and stuff, but it was still verrrr nice. we checked out the ugliest shoe shop i've ever witnessed, and we wandered through another few shops before we went to dinner at pazzo's - the best pizza place everrr. yum. =]
then we ran back to the hotel because it had started to rain freezing cold rain, and neither of us had jackets with us. when we got back, the boys were here so we hung out with them for a bit and watched part of the mls allstars v man-u game. i can sum it up in 1 word: EMBARRASSING. man-u played half of their second string players and still dominated us. i only watched until like the 40th minute because i couldn't stand to watch that disgrace any longer. man-u scored a goal in the 36th SECOND. that's right - i didn't say MINUTE, i said SECOND. wow. don't even get me started....
then me and laura and chris and sean went to the grocery store and got food for breakfast the next few days since our hotel's breakfast isn't free (those jerks) and now laura and i are just chillin like villains in our very large, first floor room. =]
i'm super tired though, so that's all for now!
gute nacht!
day 58
today started off pretty slow. we found out that we don't need to be to vail until thursday, not wednesday like we originally thought. so we're staying in denver another night and we will drive to vail tomorrow.
this morning we got up for breakfast, then we just laid around all morning like total lazy bums. around 1 or 2, we went to the office to drop off some broken stuff that we don't need and that just gets in our way all the time. while there, we shot some hoops in the warehouse and chatted with hil-dawg and bryce. then we left the office and just came back to the hotel for a bit (and watched a tv show about little people) before we left for stephen's house. the other road crew that's in vail with us, chris and sean, are staying at stephen's so laura and i went over there to hang out/grill out with them and stephen. it was sooo much fun! those boys are hilarious. we watched a bit more of our tv show about the little people (it's called "the little couple" and it's addicting) for a little bit, ate bbq chicken and some steak kabobs, and chatted about life. after dinner, someone whipped out the jumbo marshmallows. it started out friendly, just throwing them around and throwing them into the ceiling fan so they'd shoot off in random directions.....but then one thing led to another and before we knew it we were running all over the house and chucking massive mallows at each other as hard as we could. like, we were leaving welts on each other. haha we were all sweating and breathing hard and running and screaming and hiding and sneaking and......ah it was so fun! by the end, our huge fluffy marshmallows had turned as hard as rocks. i think we just beat most of the air out of them. i still have some red marks on myself. haha but it was totally worth it. =]
after we called a truce, we went to cold stone and met a little 4 year old boy named miles. i'm not a huge fan of kids, but i honestly wanted to steal this one. he was sooooo cute and super friendly! we probably talked to him and his mom for a solid 15 minutes. and i wasn't even annoyed! THAT'S how adorable this little boy was. i hope i have a kid like that someday..
when we got back, we all just sat around and talked. laura and i started interrogating sean about his life and it evolved into a would you rather sort of thing. burger king or mcdonald's? chocolate or vanilla? fly or drive? ocean or mountains? etc. soon chris joined us and we interrogated him for a bit, started into the would you rather questions again, and before we knew it, 3 hours had gone by and laura and i were deleriously tired. so we had to say goodnight to the boys and go back to our hotel. now we're getting ready for bed and my phone is all cracked out and keeps deleting things and acting weird so...that stinks.
tomorrow we head to vail!
gute nacht!
this morning we got up for breakfast, then we just laid around all morning like total lazy bums. around 1 or 2, we went to the office to drop off some broken stuff that we don't need and that just gets in our way all the time. while there, we shot some hoops in the warehouse and chatted with hil-dawg and bryce. then we left the office and just came back to the hotel for a bit (and watched a tv show about little people) before we left for stephen's house. the other road crew that's in vail with us, chris and sean, are staying at stephen's so laura and i went over there to hang out/grill out with them and stephen. it was sooo much fun! those boys are hilarious. we watched a bit more of our tv show about the little people (it's called "the little couple" and it's addicting) for a little bit, ate bbq chicken and some steak kabobs, and chatted about life. after dinner, someone whipped out the jumbo marshmallows. it started out friendly, just throwing them around and throwing them into the ceiling fan so they'd shoot off in random directions.....but then one thing led to another and before we knew it we were running all over the house and chucking massive mallows at each other as hard as we could. like, we were leaving welts on each other. haha we were all sweating and breathing hard and running and screaming and hiding and sneaking and......ah it was so fun! by the end, our huge fluffy marshmallows had turned as hard as rocks. i think we just beat most of the air out of them. i still have some red marks on myself. haha but it was totally worth it. =]
after we called a truce, we went to cold stone and met a little 4 year old boy named miles. i'm not a huge fan of kids, but i honestly wanted to steal this one. he was sooooo cute and super friendly! we probably talked to him and his mom for a solid 15 minutes. and i wasn't even annoyed! THAT'S how adorable this little boy was. i hope i have a kid like that someday..
when we got back, we all just sat around and talked. laura and i started interrogating sean about his life and it evolved into a would you rather sort of thing. burger king or mcdonald's? chocolate or vanilla? fly or drive? ocean or mountains? etc. soon chris joined us and we interrogated him for a bit, started into the would you rather questions again, and before we knew it, 3 hours had gone by and laura and i were deleriously tired. so we had to say goodnight to the boys and go back to our hotel. now we're getting ready for bed and my phone is all cracked out and keeps deleting things and acting weird so...that stinks.
tomorrow we head to vail!
gute nacht!
Monday, July 26, 2010
day 57
today i got up early and ate with the fam fam before they all went off to work. then i ran and packed up my stuff, had an early lunch with my momma, and left for laura's house.
we ended up rollin out around noon. not a lot of excitement, we just.....drove.
at one point, after stopping for gas, we realized there was a wasp in our truck! ahh! we started freaking out, laura decided to drive in 2 lanes on the interstate, and we kept losing sight of it and then it would pop up again out of nowhere. scary! finally, i whacked that little booger out my open window and we were safe! it took a lot of tries though. that wasp was a tricky little feller..
also, laura lost the charger for her gps, so we went cruisin through the backroads of denver and eventually found our hotel thanks to our killer instincts (ie, a mixture of my phone, an atlas, and the google maps directions barb looked up and texted to us). ;]
minor details.
tomorrow we'll most likely continue on toward vail! woop woop!
goooooood night!
we ended up rollin out around noon. not a lot of excitement, we just.....drove.
at one point, after stopping for gas, we realized there was a wasp in our truck! ahh! we started freaking out, laura decided to drive in 2 lanes on the interstate, and we kept losing sight of it and then it would pop up again out of nowhere. scary! finally, i whacked that little booger out my open window and we were safe! it took a lot of tries though. that wasp was a tricky little feller..
also, laura lost the charger for her gps, so we went cruisin through the backroads of denver and eventually found our hotel thanks to our killer instincts (ie, a mixture of my phone, an atlas, and the google maps directions barb looked up and texted to us). ;]
minor details.
tomorrow we'll most likely continue on toward vail! woop woop!
goooooood night!
Sunday, July 25, 2010
day 56
championship sunday..
um things went well. beautiful weather - absolutely perfect. otherwise, not much to report.
cleanup, however, took like 4 hours. i don't know why though, because as we were packing up it didn't seem like it was taking forever but then i would look at my watch and it would just be so much later than i expected. i've made the executive decision to blame our extremely slow packing up job on event-director cole, based on the fact that he's the worst event director we've had.
anywhoo, we finally rolled out of des moines around six, then i met up with the fam in minden while laura drove the truck to her casa. we get to stay at home tonight and then we leave for vail tomorrow morning. vail will be my last tourney! i'm excited to be done, but i'm also surprised that it came so soon!
ah. anyway, this wasn't a very exciting post. i think i've been getting pretty lazy on my posting. maybe i'll spice it up with more stories next week since it'll be my final week of blogging.....
eh, we'll see. ;]
gute nacht!
um things went well. beautiful weather - absolutely perfect. otherwise, not much to report.
cleanup, however, took like 4 hours. i don't know why though, because as we were packing up it didn't seem like it was taking forever but then i would look at my watch and it would just be so much later than i expected. i've made the executive decision to blame our extremely slow packing up job on event-director cole, based on the fact that he's the worst event director we've had.
anywhoo, we finally rolled out of des moines around six, then i met up with the fam in minden while laura drove the truck to her casa. we get to stay at home tonight and then we leave for vail tomorrow morning. vail will be my last tourney! i'm excited to be done, but i'm also surprised that it came so soon!
ah. anyway, this wasn't a very exciting post. i think i've been getting pretty lazy on my posting. maybe i'll spice it up with more stories next week since it'll be my final week of blogging.....
eh, we'll see. ;]
gute nacht!
Saturday, July 24, 2010
day 55
super saturday.
we got to the fields, set stuff up (cole was no help), and then we had a somewhat busy morning checking people in and things like that but after the initial rush it turned into a regular old saturday. we chilled out under the tent, laura updated scores, and i fell asleep in the chair again. it was mostly cloudy and there was a bit of wind, but luckily no rain. it was kind of a nice change from our hot sunny tournaments. today was almost chilly at some points.
while we all hung out, cole told us some sweet life stories. and yes, that is sarcasm, because his stories weren't sweet at all. they were actually pretty dumb. and he kept telling us the same ones over and over and over again. i would rather have banged my head into the table than listen to his stories one more time.
then around lunchtime, my lovely little big sister christy came to visit me!!!!!!! it was soooo nice to see her and have her there to hang out all afternoon! we just chatted and hung out until she had to leave, then i walked her to her car. on my way back to hq, one of the field maintenance guys chatted my ear off for FORTY MINUTES. no joke. i literally checked my watch and timed it. he was just being friendly, but i actually had work to do because by that time we could start taking some stuff down. oy.
when we finally got back to the hotel, i helped cole enter results which was pointless because we ended up not being able to upload them to the internet anyway. ugh.
then we went to dinner at chili's. i don't think i've ever eaten there before and i was pleasantly surprised! it was actually pretty good!
after dinner, cole bought me and laura some stuff to make up for being such a hassle last night (muahahahaha) and then we came back to the hotel and i talked to schmabriel for a little while on ze phone.
now we're gettin ready for bed. tomorrow is championship sunday! night!
we got to the fields, set stuff up (cole was no help), and then we had a somewhat busy morning checking people in and things like that but after the initial rush it turned into a regular old saturday. we chilled out under the tent, laura updated scores, and i fell asleep in the chair again. it was mostly cloudy and there was a bit of wind, but luckily no rain. it was kind of a nice change from our hot sunny tournaments. today was almost chilly at some points.
while we all hung out, cole told us some sweet life stories. and yes, that is sarcasm, because his stories weren't sweet at all. they were actually pretty dumb. and he kept telling us the same ones over and over and over again. i would rather have banged my head into the table than listen to his stories one more time.
then around lunchtime, my lovely little big sister christy came to visit me!!!!!!! it was soooo nice to see her and have her there to hang out all afternoon! we just chatted and hung out until she had to leave, then i walked her to her car. on my way back to hq, one of the field maintenance guys chatted my ear off for FORTY MINUTES. no joke. i literally checked my watch and timed it. he was just being friendly, but i actually had work to do because by that time we could start taking some stuff down. oy.
when we finally got back to the hotel, i helped cole enter results which was pointless because we ended up not being able to upload them to the internet anyway. ugh.
then we went to dinner at chili's. i don't think i've ever eaten there before and i was pleasantly surprised! it was actually pretty good!
after dinner, cole bought me and laura some stuff to make up for being such a hassle last night (muahahahaha) and then we came back to the hotel and i talked to schmabriel for a little while on ze phone.
now we're gettin ready for bed. tomorrow is championship sunday! night!
Friday, July 23, 2010
day 54
today was pretty longgggg.....
after breakfast we went to the fields to set up schtuff. it was about 150 degrees out, plus humidity. it was sooooo hot! i had sweat running down my shins. MY SHINS. yeah, that happens.
our volunteer dudes are superb though. they set up goals for us! seriously, i love des moines. well, technically it's ankeny. but really. that's like one in the same. =]
after a nice long day at the fields, laura and i showered and left for check-in. that went pretty well, as usual. then we went to panera for dinner and treated ourselves to some ice cream for dessert. yum =]
you may be wondering where our event director was for all of this? yeah, our event director is a tool. he didn't fly in until tonight. his flight was supposed to land at 940, and he made us drive a half hour each way to pick him up. then his flight was delayed because of bad weather, so he wanted us to just hang out near the airport and wait for him to land. uh, no. we came back to the hotel and hung out, then when he called to say he finally landed in des moines, we had to get out of our comfy beds to go get him. and the cherry on top of this happy sundae was that on the drive back to the hotel, he sat there and complained about HIS life! ha! he sat around in air-conditioned airports all day! what is so hard about that? oh, but he was hung over from partying the night before. whose fault is that?! the whole reason he arrived 2 days late was because of a last minute event director switch and supposedly he couldn't find a flight to des moines until tonight. we suggested flying into omaha and then renting a car and driving the 2 hours to des moines. apparently that was too inconvenient for him. so laura and i did all of the hard work (setting up) today while he partied it up with his buddy in texas for 2 days. then he has the nerve to make us pick him up at the airport at midnight? at least we made him ride in the middle seat. but we're still nowhere near being even.
he better not expect smiles when we see him in the morning.
that is all.
good night.
after breakfast we went to the fields to set up schtuff. it was about 150 degrees out, plus humidity. it was sooooo hot! i had sweat running down my shins. MY SHINS. yeah, that happens.
our volunteer dudes are superb though. they set up goals for us! seriously, i love des moines. well, technically it's ankeny. but really. that's like one in the same. =]
after a nice long day at the fields, laura and i showered and left for check-in. that went pretty well, as usual. then we went to panera for dinner and treated ourselves to some ice cream for dessert. yum =]
you may be wondering where our event director was for all of this? yeah, our event director is a tool. he didn't fly in until tonight. his flight was supposed to land at 940, and he made us drive a half hour each way to pick him up. then his flight was delayed because of bad weather, so he wanted us to just hang out near the airport and wait for him to land. uh, no. we came back to the hotel and hung out, then when he called to say he finally landed in des moines, we had to get out of our comfy beds to go get him. and the cherry on top of this happy sundae was that on the drive back to the hotel, he sat there and complained about HIS life! ha! he sat around in air-conditioned airports all day! what is so hard about that? oh, but he was hung over from partying the night before. whose fault is that?! the whole reason he arrived 2 days late was because of a last minute event director switch and supposedly he couldn't find a flight to des moines until tonight. we suggested flying into omaha and then renting a car and driving the 2 hours to des moines. apparently that was too inconvenient for him. so laura and i did all of the hard work (setting up) today while he partied it up with his buddy in texas for 2 days. then he has the nerve to make us pick him up at the airport at midnight? at least we made him ride in the middle seat. but we're still nowhere near being even.
he better not expect smiles when we see him in the morning.
that is all.
good night.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
day 53
this morning we got up, had breakfast, and went to the fields to set up goals. apparently they were going to mow today so we couldn't put up the goals yet. so we came back to the hotel, watched some gilmore girls, then went back to kick a soccer ball around. it was so windy and our soccer balls were flat (plus our ball pump is broken) so we gave up on that pretty quickly. at that point i went for a run while laura hung out/made some phone calls. then we came back to the hotel and i showered. we pretty much just hung out for awhile, then laura's nieces (haylee and kamryn) and her sissy carrie stopped by and hung out - swam in the hotel pool and such. her nieces are adorable!! =] after that, laura and i just lay around some more (we're really good at that) and then she went to work out around 6, which is when miss SHELBY JACOBS came to pick me up!! ahhhh!!!!! it was soooo great to see her! we went to a farmer's market and grabbed dinner (which included a monster-sized monster cookie thing - like a square foot of monster cookie!), then we went to an iowa cubs baseball game, and after that we went to her casa for some choco milk and more monster cookie.....and then we went for a little adventure.. we went to a river/lake/park thing (idk the name of it) and we played on the playground for a bit before going off to the little peninsula thingy to explore. it was sooo pretty! the moon was all bright and the water was all calm......so of course we took some very scenic photos haha and after that we drove into this creepy little neighborhood thing that's hard to explain but just so we're all clear - it's CREEPY. then shelb took me back to mah hotel.
a super fun, hot and sticky, adventurous, midwestern summer night with one of my greatest friends? priceless.
haha so the majority of this post was one giant paragraph....maybe even one giant run-on sentence...i'm sorry if it's hard to follow.
but i'm too tired to figure out if it's readable or not! gute nacht!
a super fun, hot and sticky, adventurous, midwestern summer night with one of my greatest friends? priceless.
haha so the majority of this post was one giant paragraph....maybe even one giant run-on sentence...i'm sorry if it's hard to follow.
but i'm too tired to figure out if it's readable or not! gute nacht!
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
day 52
we woke up for breakfast, then went back to bed until noon.
we drove to des moines, worked out, and now we're ready for bed.
not a very exciting day..
however, the fields are already painted for us for this tournament so can i just get a giant HOO-RAH for the people of ankeny?! they saved us about, oh, 3.5 hours of work!!!!
later gators!
we drove to des moines, worked out, and now we're ready for bed.
not a very exciting day..
however, the fields are already painted for us for this tournament so can i just get a giant HOO-RAH for the people of ankeny?! they saved us about, oh, 3.5 hours of work!!!!
later gators!
day 51
we went to six flags!!!!!!!
we got up, ate breakfast, went back to bed, woke up again, and left with shelly and her brotha. it was great weather and tons of fun! the raging bull and the superman rides were my favorite. the batman "thrill" ride was a close second though (bahahaha kidding! it was lame - except for the awesome neck-snapping corners that we flew through about eight thousand times)
then that evening we got to see the maine perform! their music is good in my opinion, although their lyrics are a bit sketch sometimes. i've seen them live twice now, and i must say that they are AWFUL performers! their stage presence is barely there and they don't even seem to be having fun. haha but we'll look at the glass as being half full because at the end of the day, i still enjoy their music. =]
after six flags we went to a mcdonalds that was located OVER THE INTERSTATE. soooo cool! apparently they're "everywhere in chicago" according to shelly but laura and i were still amazed!
um then we went to the o'hare airport...on accident....before shelly dropped us off at our hotel. it was a good day.
the best part? I GOT A $5 WONDER WOMAN CAPE AT SIX FLAGS!!!!!!!! AHH!!! my life = complete.
gute nacht!
we got up, ate breakfast, went back to bed, woke up again, and left with shelly and her brotha. it was great weather and tons of fun! the raging bull and the superman rides were my favorite. the batman "thrill" ride was a close second though (bahahaha kidding! it was lame - except for the awesome neck-snapping corners that we flew through about eight thousand times)
then that evening we got to see the maine perform! their music is good in my opinion, although their lyrics are a bit sketch sometimes. i've seen them live twice now, and i must say that they are AWFUL performers! their stage presence is barely there and they don't even seem to be having fun. haha but we'll look at the glass as being half full because at the end of the day, i still enjoy their music. =]
after six flags we went to a mcdonalds that was located OVER THE INTERSTATE. soooo cool! apparently they're "everywhere in chicago" according to shelly but laura and i were still amazed!
um then we went to the o'hare airport...on accident....before shelly dropped us off at our hotel. it was a good day.
the best part? I GOT A $5 WONDER WOMAN CAPE AT SIX FLAGS!!!!!!!! AHH!!! my life = complete.
gute nacht!
Monday, July 19, 2010
day 50
this morning, we got up and had breakfast, then we went to the beach on lake michigan! after spending a couple hours laying out (the water was FREEZING!!) we decided to go shopping.
one problem: WE DRIVE A MASSIVE TRUCK.
ah getting that thing through downtown chicago was a nightmare!! we didn't mean to actually go downtown - we were just going to go park a little ways away from it - but that was a FAIL.
so after that adrenaline rush of a ride, we parked in the ghetto and then took the train into downtown. we met up with laura's friend "shelly", then shopped and wandered and saw a giant eyeball.....and laura lost her camera...
we also got to watch a scene for transformers 3 be filmed because they're filming it in chi town i guess. i've never seen the movies, but i was still kind of excited about that haha
after walking back to a store to get laura's camera, we took the train back to our hood, then located our truck (which wasn't stolen OR towed - whew!)
it was a fun day, but i'm beat. we're gonna work out in a little bit and then it's off to bed for me!
six flags tomorrow!!!!
one problem: WE DRIVE A MASSIVE TRUCK.
ah getting that thing through downtown chicago was a nightmare!! we didn't mean to actually go downtown - we were just going to go park a little ways away from it - but that was a FAIL.
so after that adrenaline rush of a ride, we parked in the ghetto and then took the train into downtown. we met up with laura's friend "shelly", then shopped and wandered and saw a giant eyeball.....and laura lost her camera...
we also got to watch a scene for transformers 3 be filmed because they're filming it in chi town i guess. i've never seen the movies, but i was still kind of excited about that haha
after walking back to a store to get laura's camera, we took the train back to our hood, then located our truck (which wasn't stolen OR towed - whew!)
it was a fun day, but i'm beat. we're gonna work out in a little bit and then it's off to bed for me!
six flags tomorrow!!!!
Sunday, July 18, 2010
day 49
championship sundayyyyyyyy
yesterday's worst complainers ended up winning their bracket. only because they complained their way into another team just flat-out leaving the tournament. i really had to bite my tongue when we handed them their championship medals. ugh.
anyway, so we packed everything up as usual. except bryce showed laura and i like 50 new tricks that would've made our summer 10x easier had we known them from the beginning!!!!! ahh.
oh, and my new 40-something-year-old friend named francisco or something crazy like that (he was originally from mexico) helped me tear down goals and carry them to the truck. i'll admit, he was kind of a creep. haha i told him i was seventeen and that i had a boyfriend of over 2 years so that he knew for a fact that he had no chance. little lies can come in handy sometimes, ya know?
after we were all packed up, we all went back to bryce's room and cleaned up, then i fell asleep while laura and bryce drove to the detroit hard rock cafe to get some schtuff. when they got back, laura and i left for chicagooooo!!!!! on our way out of detroit, we experienced some strange things. first of all, it started raining cats & dogs......but it was completely SUNNY. like, i have no idea where those water-balloon-sized raindrops were coming from. but they were drowning our truck, soo.....
and also, we passed the sign for 11 mile road liiiike 50 times. and i would just like to point out that 11 mile road and 8 mile road are 14 miles apart?! this made no sense to me. but i clocked it. haha and THEN to make matters worse, about an hour outside of detroit, I SAW ANOTHER SIGN FOR 11 MILE ROAD!!!!!!! ahhh!! i swear, i thought we were driving in the largest circle ever. hahaha we were chuckling about that one for a while.
anywhoo....once we finally arrived at our hotel in chicago, they were overbooked (yeah, i guess hotels do that now?) so laura went crazy on the front desk guy and got like a discount and stuff. she's a tough cookie (and a racist: she told the concierge that he was there to serve her. yeah, he's black). i just shriveled into the corner and smiled. haha
while we were waiting for our room to be ready, a couple of the hotel employees just rolled by on a fully sized pool table. no big deal.
AND there's a rug hanging on the wall in the lobby. huh?
typical.
tomorrow we explore chicago!
gute nacht!
yesterday's worst complainers ended up winning their bracket. only because they complained their way into another team just flat-out leaving the tournament. i really had to bite my tongue when we handed them their championship medals. ugh.
anyway, so we packed everything up as usual. except bryce showed laura and i like 50 new tricks that would've made our summer 10x easier had we known them from the beginning!!!!! ahh.
oh, and my new 40-something-year-old friend named francisco or something crazy like that (he was originally from mexico) helped me tear down goals and carry them to the truck. i'll admit, he was kind of a creep. haha i told him i was seventeen and that i had a boyfriend of over 2 years so that he knew for a fact that he had no chance. little lies can come in handy sometimes, ya know?
after we were all packed up, we all went back to bryce's room and cleaned up, then i fell asleep while laura and bryce drove to the detroit hard rock cafe to get some schtuff. when they got back, laura and i left for chicagooooo!!!!! on our way out of detroit, we experienced some strange things. first of all, it started raining cats & dogs......but it was completely SUNNY. like, i have no idea where those water-balloon-sized raindrops were coming from. but they were drowning our truck, soo.....
and also, we passed the sign for 11 mile road liiiike 50 times. and i would just like to point out that 11 mile road and 8 mile road are 14 miles apart?! this made no sense to me. but i clocked it. haha and THEN to make matters worse, about an hour outside of detroit, I SAW ANOTHER SIGN FOR 11 MILE ROAD!!!!!!! ahhh!! i swear, i thought we were driving in the largest circle ever. hahaha we were chuckling about that one for a while.
anywhoo....once we finally arrived at our hotel in chicago, they were overbooked (yeah, i guess hotels do that now?) so laura went crazy on the front desk guy and got like a discount and stuff. she's a tough cookie (and a racist: she told the concierge that he was there to serve her. yeah, he's black). i just shriveled into the corner and smiled. haha
while we were waiting for our room to be ready, a couple of the hotel employees just rolled by on a fully sized pool table. no big deal.
AND there's a rug hanging on the wall in the lobby. huh?
typical.
tomorrow we explore chicago!
gute nacht!
Saturday, July 17, 2010
day 48
today was long and hot.
we had like twice as many complaints as we've ever had at a tourney. and today was just pool play! makes me worried for tomorrow....
but otherwise it was a pretty ok day. before all the unnecessary complaining happened, i basically just sat around in hq drinking gatorades. i even called miss gabriel and was able to chat with her for a while while i was "working" haha
i enjoy getting paid to do nothing. =]
later on, however, all of a sudden we had a bunch of parents complaining about teams who were "cheating" by playing in such and such an age group blah blah blah yada yada yada......and it's frustrating because when teams register, we go by the honor system. if they say they have no select players, we're obviously not going to do a background check to make sure they aren't lying. so when teams start losing to teams who are just flat-out better, the losers' parents all of a sudden get in our faces about how unfair it all is.
but the complaints about older kids playing down or younger kids playing up or whatever it may be, are completely avoidable. when teams register, the people in our home office will call all of the teams in an age division and verify that it's ok if a team plays up/down. then when that team starts winning, the parents (who agreed to it in the first place) all of a sudden want to yell at us about it? it got to the point where laura, bryce, and i just started telling parents to deal with it. it's supposed to be a fun tourney, no the freaking junior world cup. if a team loses, the parents should be glad that their kids will improve by playing tough competition. but instead the parents try to live through their kids and they become obsessed with winning. ugh. people can be soo....obnoxious.
this one mom was telling laura and i how this "cheating" team kept winning and how if we don't disqualify that team, we're promoting the art of cheating (or something stupid like that). i just wanted to tell the mom to set a better example for her kids and just have a good attitude whether they win or lose, and teach them that they can't just whine and complain when things don't go their way. oh it was so so so so so annoying. she said the same sentence like over and over and over again and every time she said it i was like "uh yes we've established your opinion on that. let's move on, psycho."
i didn't actually say that, but it definitely crossed my mind a time or two.
as you can see, i feel very strongly about it. haha no i actually am not too torn up about this. i mean, we can't please everyone. besides, there are more important things in life. i just needed to get that out of my system. so now that i just vented to all of the people that read this......
anyway, the rest of the day was pretty good. we tried to enter scores online (bryce and laura tried, i fell asleep) but it wouldn't work, so we went and grabbed dinner at subway (or "subways" as bryce calls it) then came back to the hotel, laura and i watched like a zillion episodes of ncis, then we worked out, and now we're just chillin like villains in our hotel room.
oh, but while we worked out, we were all jumpy and skeptical of anyone that came out into the parking lot. haha i think we were just hung up on the ncis episodes we had just watched. our fight-or-flight responses were still kicked in.
the first guy, though, was a total creep. hahaha and laura and i let him know it! he was tryin to chat with us and when we just completely shot him down, he tried to act halfway normal and ask us if we knew which hotel this was. i was like "uh yeah it's a la quinta, like it says on that sign that's RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU." hah, idiot.
anywhoo, i'm verrrrrr tired, so i'm gonna end here. but i think that's basically everything that happened today..
night!
we had like twice as many complaints as we've ever had at a tourney. and today was just pool play! makes me worried for tomorrow....
but otherwise it was a pretty ok day. before all the unnecessary complaining happened, i basically just sat around in hq drinking gatorades. i even called miss gabriel and was able to chat with her for a while while i was "working" haha
i enjoy getting paid to do nothing. =]
later on, however, all of a sudden we had a bunch of parents complaining about teams who were "cheating" by playing in such and such an age group blah blah blah yada yada yada......and it's frustrating because when teams register, we go by the honor system. if they say they have no select players, we're obviously not going to do a background check to make sure they aren't lying. so when teams start losing to teams who are just flat-out better, the losers' parents all of a sudden get in our faces about how unfair it all is.
but the complaints about older kids playing down or younger kids playing up or whatever it may be, are completely avoidable. when teams register, the people in our home office will call all of the teams in an age division and verify that it's ok if a team plays up/down. then when that team starts winning, the parents (who agreed to it in the first place) all of a sudden want to yell at us about it? it got to the point where laura, bryce, and i just started telling parents to deal with it. it's supposed to be a fun tourney, no the freaking junior world cup. if a team loses, the parents should be glad that their kids will improve by playing tough competition. but instead the parents try to live through their kids and they become obsessed with winning. ugh. people can be soo....obnoxious.
this one mom was telling laura and i how this "cheating" team kept winning and how if we don't disqualify that team, we're promoting the art of cheating (or something stupid like that). i just wanted to tell the mom to set a better example for her kids and just have a good attitude whether they win or lose, and teach them that they can't just whine and complain when things don't go their way. oh it was so so so so so annoying. she said the same sentence like over and over and over again and every time she said it i was like "uh yes we've established your opinion on that. let's move on, psycho."
i didn't actually say that, but it definitely crossed my mind a time or two.
as you can see, i feel very strongly about it. haha no i actually am not too torn up about this. i mean, we can't please everyone. besides, there are more important things in life. i just needed to get that out of my system. so now that i just vented to all of the people that read this......
anyway, the rest of the day was pretty good. we tried to enter scores online (bryce and laura tried, i fell asleep) but it wouldn't work, so we went and grabbed dinner at subway (or "subways" as bryce calls it) then came back to the hotel, laura and i watched like a zillion episodes of ncis, then we worked out, and now we're just chillin like villains in our hotel room.
oh, but while we worked out, we were all jumpy and skeptical of anyone that came out into the parking lot. haha i think we were just hung up on the ncis episodes we had just watched. our fight-or-flight responses were still kicked in.
the first guy, though, was a total creep. hahaha and laura and i let him know it! he was tryin to chat with us and when we just completely shot him down, he tried to act halfway normal and ask us if we knew which hotel this was. i was like "uh yeah it's a la quinta, like it says on that sign that's RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU." hah, idiot.
anywhoo, i'm verrrrrr tired, so i'm gonna end here. but i think that's basically everything that happened today..
night!
Friday, July 16, 2010
day 47
today we painted the fields and set everything up. there were only 3 of us - me, laura, and event-director-bryce.
bryce is a pretty cool dude. he's got a super relaxed, whatever attitude and when he's the "boss" at a tournament, i like that very much. less work for me.
so anyway, we set up the fields and i think it was the fastest we've ever done it - and there were only 3 of us!! so that was nice.
after setting up, we came back to the hotel and napped/showered and then went to check-in at sports authority. pretty boring.....except for the lady who kept saying "youf large" and "youf medium" and "youf" this and "youf" that (she meant "youth" just to clarify). haha i enjoyed that a lot. =]
after that we had to go to the fields again to pay our security guard who is like a stereotypical huge black guy with a shirt and matching hat that say SECURITY in huge letters. when we got to the fields, there were these guys playing on them and they MOVED OUR GOALS!!!!!!! ahhh!! we were sooo annoyed because those things are awful to set up. ugh.
after all that, we went to a mexican restaraunt to eat dinner. when we pulled in, we were like "this place looks ghetto" but we took a chance on it and went inside and WOW it was soo good! the food was great and the atmosphere was super duper. it said "HOLA AMIGOS" in huge letters on the wall for goodness sake. how could you not like this place?
now we're back at the hotel...i'm tired..and we leave at 7 for the fields tomorrow.
that's about it i think.........
nighty night!
bryce is a pretty cool dude. he's got a super relaxed, whatever attitude and when he's the "boss" at a tournament, i like that very much. less work for me.
so anyway, we set up the fields and i think it was the fastest we've ever done it - and there were only 3 of us!! so that was nice.
after setting up, we came back to the hotel and napped/showered and then went to check-in at sports authority. pretty boring.....except for the lady who kept saying "youf large" and "youf medium" and "youf" this and "youf" that (she meant "youth" just to clarify). haha i enjoyed that a lot. =]
after that we had to go to the fields again to pay our security guard who is like a stereotypical huge black guy with a shirt and matching hat that say SECURITY in huge letters. when we got to the fields, there were these guys playing on them and they MOVED OUR GOALS!!!!!!! ahhh!! we were sooo annoyed because those things are awful to set up. ugh.
after all that, we went to a mexican restaraunt to eat dinner. when we pulled in, we were like "this place looks ghetto" but we took a chance on it and went inside and WOW it was soo good! the food was great and the atmosphere was super duper. it said "HOLA AMIGOS" in huge letters on the wall for goodness sake. how could you not like this place?
now we're back at the hotel...i'm tired..and we leave at 7 for the fields tomorrow.
that's about it i think.........
nighty night!
Thursday, July 15, 2010
day 46
today we woke up and left our ghetto hotel, then drove to detroit.
now we're still not in the nicest neighborhood, but it's definitely better than yesterday's hood spot.
i can't really think of any excitement that happened...we just drove.
tomorrow we paint the fields and set up! gute nacht!
now we're still not in the nicest neighborhood, but it's definitely better than yesterday's hood spot.
i can't really think of any excitement that happened...we just drove.
tomorrow we paint the fields and set up! gute nacht!
day 45
we drove allllll day....
we stayed just outside of chicago, in a place where there were constant sirens and there were cops at literally every street corner. and we were 2 of like, 5 white people that we saw. laura and i brought allll of our stuff inside so that nothing would get stolen, and we pretty much hid in our room all night.
to quote a sign at our hotel: "if you like to smoke, please go to one of our another hotel"
and another one said: "we appreciate your Co-Operation" (i guess it's hyphenated now)
so.....that's that. haha
we stayed just outside of chicago, in a place where there were constant sirens and there were cops at literally every street corner. and we were 2 of like, 5 white people that we saw. laura and i brought allll of our stuff inside so that nothing would get stolen, and we pretty much hid in our room all night.
to quote a sign at our hotel: "if you like to smoke, please go to one of our another hotel"
and another one said: "we appreciate your Co-Operation" (i guess it's hyphenated now)
so.....that's that. haha
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
day 44
so....
sunday night i stayed in lincoln at jordan's! woop woop! and then monday morning i met up with miss anna white and chatted with her for a couple of hours, which was so great! then i went to campus to take a nap at the library for a little while, and around 230 when kat williamsen got out of class, i met up with her and we chatted for an hour or so, which was also really nice!
after that i stopped in to say helloooo (technically, goodbye) to mr alex kolbo before heading home. when i got home, i had din din with the fam, then skateboarded with emily miller and kayla moore (woooooo hoooo!!!!) for a bit. after that, i went for a run and then just kind of hung around the house and went to bed.
today (tuesday) i went to verizon to fix my phone, i ran at the wabash, then i started a bucket list adventure with kayla moore and katie bazzell (aka saltballs). we got through a few things, but that's an adventure that will need to be continued..and will probably include emily miller when it is!
after that my fam and i went to the school board meeting where some parents of elementary school kids presented an idea for treynor to start a soccer program. once again, mr. elwood is a total slimeball jerk. but anywhoo, it went pretty well and i'm excited to hear the final decision.
after that we went to creighton stadium to watch the usa women's national team play sweden! it ended in a 1-1 tie. it was so much fun to watch though!
and now i'm home..doing laundry and little things like that. tomorrow we hit the road for detroit!!
sunday night i stayed in lincoln at jordan's! woop woop! and then monday morning i met up with miss anna white and chatted with her for a couple of hours, which was so great! then i went to campus to take a nap at the library for a little while, and around 230 when kat williamsen got out of class, i met up with her and we chatted for an hour or so, which was also really nice!
after that i stopped in to say helloooo (technically, goodbye) to mr alex kolbo before heading home. when i got home, i had din din with the fam, then skateboarded with emily miller and kayla moore (woooooo hoooo!!!!) for a bit. after that, i went for a run and then just kind of hung around the house and went to bed.
today (tuesday) i went to verizon to fix my phone, i ran at the wabash, then i started a bucket list adventure with kayla moore and katie bazzell (aka saltballs). we got through a few things, but that's an adventure that will need to be continued..and will probably include emily miller when it is!
after that my fam and i went to the school board meeting where some parents of elementary school kids presented an idea for treynor to start a soccer program. once again, mr. elwood is a total slimeball jerk. but anywhoo, it went pretty well and i'm excited to hear the final decision.
after that we went to creighton stadium to watch the usa women's national team play sweden! it ended in a 1-1 tie. it was so much fun to watch though!
and now i'm home..doing laundry and little things like that. tomorrow we hit the road for detroit!!
Sunday, July 11, 2010
day 42
CHAMPIONSHIP SUNDAYYYYY!!!!!!!!
things went smoothly. we were outta there in time for the second half of the world cup finals. CAN I GET A WOOP WOOP FOR SPAIN ANYONE?!?!?!?!!!!!
anyway, the volunteer with a pool also informed us about her $8000 stereo system that she's got in her car. i'm oh-so-thrilled to have that information logged away in my brain forever. thanks pool girl.
um....oh! george's team won!! i'll give them props for keeping me and laura's legacy going strong. however, they're the smurfettes? the name kind of tarnished our legacy a bit. but i'm gonna look at the glass as being half full. regardless of their team name, they won.
AND an added bonus is that george's nickname is papa smurf. and he's rockin a new blue bucket hat. if this were facebook, i would "like" that.
after the tourney and schtuff, i skateboarded around L town for a bit, chatted on the phone with schmabriel, sat on a rock near a creek, then proceeded to run right through this creek in a state of excitement because while i was on my rock, liz marsh and jen webers rode by on their bikes!! i was sooooo surprised!!!! ahhh it was so good to see them! =]
after that little surprise rendezvous, i met up with mr. alex kolbo and we got nuvibe (yum) and went to see toy story 3 (in 3D of course) and it was soooooooooo good!
excuse my run-on sentence.
now i'm having a SPENDY with jordan grubauch =] and then tomorrow i get to see anna white AND kat williamsen!! it's gonna be a good day.
shout out to everyone whose name i name-dropped in this post.....and to everyone whose name i didn't mention :D
later gators!
things went smoothly. we were outta there in time for the second half of the world cup finals. CAN I GET A WOOP WOOP FOR SPAIN ANYONE?!?!?!?!!!!!
anyway, the volunteer with a pool also informed us about her $8000 stereo system that she's got in her car. i'm oh-so-thrilled to have that information logged away in my brain forever. thanks pool girl.
um....oh! george's team won!! i'll give them props for keeping me and laura's legacy going strong. however, they're the smurfettes? the name kind of tarnished our legacy a bit. but i'm gonna look at the glass as being half full. regardless of their team name, they won.
AND an added bonus is that george's nickname is papa smurf. and he's rockin a new blue bucket hat. if this were facebook, i would "like" that.
after the tourney and schtuff, i skateboarded around L town for a bit, chatted on the phone with schmabriel, sat on a rock near a creek, then proceeded to run right through this creek in a state of excitement because while i was on my rock, liz marsh and jen webers rode by on their bikes!! i was sooooo surprised!!!! ahhh it was so good to see them! =]
after that little surprise rendezvous, i met up with mr. alex kolbo and we got nuvibe (yum) and went to see toy story 3 (in 3D of course) and it was soooooooooo good!
excuse my run-on sentence.
now i'm having a SPENDY with jordan grubauch =] and then tomorrow i get to see anna white AND kat williamsen!! it's gonna be a good day.
shout out to everyone whose name i name-dropped in this post.....and to everyone whose name i didn't mention :D
later gators!
Saturday, July 10, 2010
day 41
ran the tourney.
BARB helped! she's our new favorite volunteer.
......barb 4 president...4 lyfe....
um and alexander the great (aka alex kolbo - it's his street name) came to the fields to visit! that was a very pleasant surprise!!!! =]
anywhoo today went smoothly..not too much excitement. i fell asleep in my chair at hq. no big deal.
then din din at olive garden. haha i didn't attempt to eat $27 worth of food this time. um our waiter was flirting with barb and giving her like a bottle's worth of free-sample wine. and he was very prompt. a good fellow.
after din din i ran on a bike trail, then hung out with bryan for a bit. now i'm trying to sleep but i can't because it's thunderstorming out and i LOVE thunderstorms!!!! ahhh!
plus i realized that i almost forgot to blog. but obviously i didn't completely forget because here i am, blogging! =]
welllllll, zat is all!! ima go watch this t-storm now. gute nacht!!
BARB helped! she's our new favorite volunteer.
......barb 4 president...4 lyfe....
um and alexander the great (aka alex kolbo - it's his street name) came to the fields to visit! that was a very pleasant surprise!!!! =]
anywhoo today went smoothly..not too much excitement. i fell asleep in my chair at hq. no big deal.
then din din at olive garden. haha i didn't attempt to eat $27 worth of food this time. um our waiter was flirting with barb and giving her like a bottle's worth of free-sample wine. and he was very prompt. a good fellow.
after din din i ran on a bike trail, then hung out with bryan for a bit. now i'm trying to sleep but i can't because it's thunderstorming out and i LOVE thunderstorms!!!! ahhh!
plus i realized that i almost forgot to blog. but obviously i didn't completely forget because here i am, blogging! =]
welllllll, zat is all!! ima go watch this t-storm now. gute nacht!!
Friday, July 9, 2010
day 40
alright yall
today we set up and painted the fields. the volunteers we had were really helpful and all....but they kept talking to laura and i like we had never done a tournament before. they were giving us the most obvious pointers. haha we were just like "oh, ok. thanks." but really we were thinking "uhh yeah duh."
anyway, one of the volunteers has a pool. she told us about this stupid pool ALL day. finally, when she was telling us she had a pool for like the 40th time, laura goes "oh, you have a pool?" hahahahahaha i almost shot gatorade out of my nose. i tried to play it off like it was just a sneeze though. i don't think it worked very well.
then, while unloading tables, laura jammed her thumb. wimp.
we were done around 4-ish in the afternoon, so we came back to the hotel for like 10 min before the jif delivery guy finally called to say he was here to drop off the jif (he was supposed to come around noon). soooo we went back to the fields, unloaded jif, and then came back to the hotel again to shower and schtuff before dinner. we ate at ruby tuesdays and we had the best waitress EVER! shout out to the one and only alyssa bergman!! =]
at dinner, i also ran into deidre bergman, ericka bergman, and melissa petersen! so that was a pleasant surprise! :)
after din din, i went to hang out with jordan grubaugh - we watched a softball game and chatted about life. haha she's awful at keeping book though so.....that's that.
um after the game, i went to e-mart's house to visit him, ash-hole, and t-mart. i also met a guy named harvey (he plays football with e-mart and t-mart) so yay for new friends :] haha
and nowwwww i'm back at the room, ready for bed. gotta get up at 6 in the mornin! oy!
today we set up and painted the fields. the volunteers we had were really helpful and all....but they kept talking to laura and i like we had never done a tournament before. they were giving us the most obvious pointers. haha we were just like "oh, ok. thanks." but really we were thinking "uhh yeah duh."
anyway, one of the volunteers has a pool. she told us about this stupid pool ALL day. finally, when she was telling us she had a pool for like the 40th time, laura goes "oh, you have a pool?" hahahahahaha i almost shot gatorade out of my nose. i tried to play it off like it was just a sneeze though. i don't think it worked very well.
then, while unloading tables, laura jammed her thumb. wimp.
we were done around 4-ish in the afternoon, so we came back to the hotel for like 10 min before the jif delivery guy finally called to say he was here to drop off the jif (he was supposed to come around noon). soooo we went back to the fields, unloaded jif, and then came back to the hotel again to shower and schtuff before dinner. we ate at ruby tuesdays and we had the best waitress EVER! shout out to the one and only alyssa bergman!! =]
at dinner, i also ran into deidre bergman, ericka bergman, and melissa petersen! so that was a pleasant surprise! :)
after din din, i went to hang out with jordan grubaugh - we watched a softball game and chatted about life. haha she's awful at keeping book though so.....that's that.
um after the game, i went to e-mart's house to visit him, ash-hole, and t-mart. i also met a guy named harvey (he plays football with e-mart and t-mart) so yay for new friends :] haha
and nowwwww i'm back at the room, ready for bed. gotta get up at 6 in the mornin! oy!
Thursday, July 8, 2010
day 39
sooooooooooo.....
as laura said, we've been home since tuesday (june 29) afternoon. we just couldn't say anything til friday when she went to surprise kyle.
basically, i was home for just over a week and i hung out with friends and familia.....had bunches of fun and....now we're back on the road. kind of. haha this weekend's tourney is in lincoln, so we're still close to home. tomorrow we'll set up the fields and paint the fields and all that jazz. so that's about it for now! sorry for the lack of details over the past week!
nighty night!
as laura said, we've been home since tuesday (june 29) afternoon. we just couldn't say anything til friday when she went to surprise kyle.
basically, i was home for just over a week and i hung out with friends and familia.....had bunches of fun and....now we're back on the road. kind of. haha this weekend's tourney is in lincoln, so we're still close to home. tomorrow we'll set up the fields and paint the fields and all that jazz. so that's about it for now! sorry for the lack of details over the past week!
nighty night!
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Day 34
Soooo the reason that we haven't been writing in this blog for a couple of days is because I went to Rapid City to surprise Kyle for his 21st birthday which was today! I told him I had a tournament in Las Vegas this weekend (which we were supposed to but after some great negotiating skills we got out of it) but really we've been off of work since Tuesday afternoon which is when we got home from Bettendorf. So let me fill you up to speed on what went on these last couple of days. After we got home from the Ohio weekend, I dropped Shan off at her house and then went to my own house. It felt so weird to be home again. On the way home we had received information about a possible truck switch. As in we would switch from Ryder to Penske and have to switch out EVERYTHING from one truck to the other and repack it all. As you might have guessed, me and Shannon complained about it for majority of the way home to each other. However, Wednesday morning we received more information that we did NOT have to switch out trucks!!! But that we did have to fix our generators. I called at least 30 places on Wednesday and that is not exaggerated one bit. All the places wanted to charge a $30 estimate fee. Me, being the money saving genius that I am, influenced my boss on what a waste of money it would be to have to go through with their 3 estimate policy. I found one place in Treynor that would estimate for free. Yet, that still wasn't good enough for the company. It is now Sunday and I still have not gotten the ok from the head honchos to start ordering parts. Apparently it doesn't matter that 2 out of our 3 generators are broken. Or that we have a tournament this coming weekend that we need them for. Or that this is holiday weekend so no places are going to be open till Tuesday. Or that it takes at least 3 days for the parts to come in plus another day or two for the labor to occur. So yeah, hopefully we won't have to inflate that stupid soccer ball inflatable for this weekend since we won't have any generators to use. Anyways, I flew out of Omaha on Friday morning and got to Rapid City in the afternoon. I basically just bonded with his parents until he got home from work. He was speechless when he saw me sitting in his kitchen. It was awesome!!!!! We just hung around his house Friday night and watched She's out of my league. It was predictable but comical. Then Saturday we went cliff jumping at Dakota Point which is in the Black Hills. It was the first time I've ever gone cliff jumping and it was soooooo much fun. I got a HUGE rush off of it. We just did the small one (25 feet) but next time I'm hoping to go to the 40 ft one. Before I went, I wanted to go off the 90 ft but after seeing it, there is no way I will do it. Not because of the height but because you have to jump out at least 7 feet from the cliff in order to not hit the rocks at the bottom. NO thank you! I'll stick with the ones that I can just walk off of. The rest of the day, we ran errands and worked out, watched another movie (The Crazies), and called it a night. This morning, we got up and went to church. It was awesome since I hadn't gone this whole summer because of work. Kyle wasn't too happy about it but oh well ;) Then we went to brunch at the Country Club with his grandparents and just hung around the house until his family all came over. I got to meet two of his cousins and an aunt and uncle. Food was delicious and Fay (his madre) made this excellent peanut buster dessert. SOOOOOO GOOD! That's about all the main exciting points that you have missed so Ky wouldn't have any idea about me coming. I fly back home tomorrow and then we have Lincoln this weekend. I'm not too sure what Shan has been doing without me, but I'm sure she's been loving being at home.
-Laura
-Laura
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
day 30
we stayed the night at laura's friend's house in bettendorf (i have no idea how that's spelled, so i made it up)
her friend (whose name is ann) has the coolest dad EVER.
when we got up in the morning, we had breakfast and then......
you guessed it!
WE DROVE!
her friend (whose name is ann) has the coolest dad EVER.
when we got up in the morning, we had breakfast and then......
you guessed it!
WE DROVE!
day 29
i woke up early(ish) and ran. then....
we drove.
we gotta swing through indianapolis ril quick and SEE MISS GABRIEL AGAIN!!!!!!!!!! woop woop!!
then we drove some more.
and we drove and drove and drove and drove and drove.
we pretty much just kept driving......
and driving and driving and driving and driving...
i think you get the idea.
we drove.
we gotta swing through indianapolis ril quick and SEE MISS GABRIEL AGAIN!!!!!!!!!! woop woop!!
then we drove some more.
and we drove and drove and drove and drove and drove.
we pretty much just kept driving......
and driving and driving and driving and driving...
i think you get the idea.
day 28
we pretty much had another regular day at the tourney!
it was championship sunday, and it ran pretty smoothly..
the only thing that really went wrong was that our stupid inflatables could NOT stay up!!!! it was windy, but not like insane hurricane-ey winds or something like that, so idk what the deal was. that dang soccer ball one was being impossible. i wanted to set it over at the corner of the soccer complex for a little "time out". we kept trying to stake it to the ground in different ways, but it wasn't working. by noon, we were having to run and set it back up every like, 10 minutes. it kept falling on people, which was awkward because it fell slowly enough that only oblivious people should be getting caught in it. whatevs..
[i have a feeling that i'm going to stab that thing with some scissors by the end of the summer]
anywhoo, after the tourney we packed up...same old, same old.
the group of guys that we were PAYING to help us pack up weren't doing squat, so that was frustrating. but then out of nowhere the wind picked up and we could see huge scary storm clouds rolling in, and all of a sudden those lazy guys were up on their feet packing stuff up faster than gangsta rap.
all in all, we were done cleaning up from the tourney pretty early. that was nice. then we went back to the hotel and slept for a verrrry long time. when we woke up, we went to dinner (laura, stefan, and i) at an irish place. not surprising, since everything in this area is irish. i got fish and chips, because that's just what needs to happen in irish-ville.
after dinner it started raining uncontrollably, so the three of us decided to end our tri-date right and we all watched a movie. i dozed in and out of it and laura definitely passed out after the first 7 minutes, but stefan was a trooper and he watched all of it. haha i'm sure it was a fantastic movie though....the parts i remember watching were just dandy.
so after the movie ended, stefan went to his room and laura and i went to bed.
shazam.
oh, ps - i realized during our tri-date that stefan's name is spelled "stefan" and not "stephen" so....i apologize for the confusion that i'm sure all of our readers have suffered over the past few days. but i'm not going back into our old posts to fix it so......y'all can deal. =]
it was championship sunday, and it ran pretty smoothly..
the only thing that really went wrong was that our stupid inflatables could NOT stay up!!!! it was windy, but not like insane hurricane-ey winds or something like that, so idk what the deal was. that dang soccer ball one was being impossible. i wanted to set it over at the corner of the soccer complex for a little "time out". we kept trying to stake it to the ground in different ways, but it wasn't working. by noon, we were having to run and set it back up every like, 10 minutes. it kept falling on people, which was awkward because it fell slowly enough that only oblivious people should be getting caught in it. whatevs..
[i have a feeling that i'm going to stab that thing with some scissors by the end of the summer]
anywhoo, after the tourney we packed up...same old, same old.
the group of guys that we were PAYING to help us pack up weren't doing squat, so that was frustrating. but then out of nowhere the wind picked up and we could see huge scary storm clouds rolling in, and all of a sudden those lazy guys were up on their feet packing stuff up faster than gangsta rap.
all in all, we were done cleaning up from the tourney pretty early. that was nice. then we went back to the hotel and slept for a verrrry long time. when we woke up, we went to dinner (laura, stefan, and i) at an irish place. not surprising, since everything in this area is irish. i got fish and chips, because that's just what needs to happen in irish-ville.
after dinner it started raining uncontrollably, so the three of us decided to end our tri-date right and we all watched a movie. i dozed in and out of it and laura definitely passed out after the first 7 minutes, but stefan was a trooper and he watched all of it. haha i'm sure it was a fantastic movie though....the parts i remember watching were just dandy.
so after the movie ended, stefan went to his room and laura and i went to bed.
shazam.
oh, ps - i realized during our tri-date that stefan's name is spelled "stefan" and not "stephen" so....i apologize for the confusion that i'm sure all of our readers have suffered over the past few days. but i'm not going back into our old posts to fix it so......y'all can deal. =]
Saturday, June 26, 2010
day 27
we had to get up earrrrrrrrly. :(
we left for the fields at 530, then when we got there we set things up and just kind of got ready to go. then the tourney started. things went well, we had refs for all of the fields (ref coordinator dan, aka demon dan, isn't working this tourney), etc.
basically we just sat around in hq for most of the day. we had to go do little things, like record scores and fix goals, but nothing major. one annoying thing was that our stupid upper 90 inflatable kept blowing over, so we had to go keep fixing it and re-staking it to the ground. ugh.
but overall it wasn't bad. last round of games started at 130 so we were done by 2 and ready to roll around 245, meaning we didn't have to miss much of the usa vs ghana game. (in hindsight, it probably would've been better to miss that game anyway)
after we watched the game, i chatted with miss gabriel on ze phone while i juggled a soccer ball and just wandered around the hotel. meanwhile, laura slept like a rock.
around 6 we showered and got ready to go, then stephen, laura, and i went to the columbus crew soccer game vs dc united. woop woop! it was fun - crew won 2-0 (although their first goal was kind of iffy - stephen and i saw a handball, as did the dc players) - and then it rained during our drive back to the hotel. now i'm just chillin in the room, gonna watch a movie and fall asleep....
we get to sleep in until 630 tomorrow! ...... :(
haha
gute nacht!
we left for the fields at 530, then when we got there we set things up and just kind of got ready to go. then the tourney started. things went well, we had refs for all of the fields (ref coordinator dan, aka demon dan, isn't working this tourney), etc.
basically we just sat around in hq for most of the day. we had to go do little things, like record scores and fix goals, but nothing major. one annoying thing was that our stupid upper 90 inflatable kept blowing over, so we had to go keep fixing it and re-staking it to the ground. ugh.
but overall it wasn't bad. last round of games started at 130 so we were done by 2 and ready to roll around 245, meaning we didn't have to miss much of the usa vs ghana game. (in hindsight, it probably would've been better to miss that game anyway)
after we watched the game, i chatted with miss gabriel on ze phone while i juggled a soccer ball and just wandered around the hotel. meanwhile, laura slept like a rock.
around 6 we showered and got ready to go, then stephen, laura, and i went to the columbus crew soccer game vs dc united. woop woop! it was fun - crew won 2-0 (although their first goal was kind of iffy - stephen and i saw a handball, as did the dc players) - and then it rained during our drive back to the hotel. now i'm just chillin in the room, gonna watch a movie and fall asleep....
we get to sleep in until 630 tomorrow! ...... :(
haha
gute nacht!
Friday, June 25, 2010
day 26
um..
so we set up the goals and unloaded stuff/laid stuff out and.....it was a long day.
then we showered and went to check-in at sport's authority, where over 10 people asked us where things were in the store and what prices for things were. and every time we had to explain to them that WE DON'T WORK HERE (hence the blue polos that say "kick-it 3v3 soccer" on them)
wowza.
after check-in we went to pf chang's for din din. it was very good, but it was freezing inside the restaraunt.
now we're back at the hotel, ready for bed. long day tomorrow! rollin out at 530! AHH!
nighty night!
so we set up the goals and unloaded stuff/laid stuff out and.....it was a long day.
then we showered and went to check-in at sport's authority, where over 10 people asked us where things were in the store and what prices for things were. and every time we had to explain to them that WE DON'T WORK HERE (hence the blue polos that say "kick-it 3v3 soccer" on them)
wowza.
after check-in we went to pf chang's for din din. it was very good, but it was freezing inside the restaraunt.
now we're back at the hotel, ready for bed. long day tomorrow! rollin out at 530! AHH!
nighty night!
Thursday, June 24, 2010
day 25
we got up, had breakfast, went to the fields, unloaded juicy juice, painted the field lines, went grocery shopping, and then.....
laura, stephen, and i had a DATE NIGHT!!!! haha we made tacos in me and laura's room and then we watched like 3 episodes of NCIS. tomorrow night we might have another date at the movie theater next to our hotel. haha but more details on that later..
after stephen left, laura and i fell asleep on the couch (we barely fit, but whatever)
then we woke up long enough for laura to go from the couch to her bed, where she went back to sleep. so i went for a 65 minute run and then jumped in our hotel pool (fully clothed) when i got back. the run was amazing - there were lightning bugs everywhere and it was cool and humid.... a perfect summer night =]
when i got back to the room, laura was finally conscious. i showered, then we watched chelsea lately.
now it's time for bed! we have a lot to do at the fields tomorrow!!!
laura, stephen, and i had a DATE NIGHT!!!! haha we made tacos in me and laura's room and then we watched like 3 episodes of NCIS. tomorrow night we might have another date at the movie theater next to our hotel. haha but more details on that later..
after stephen left, laura and i fell asleep on the couch (we barely fit, but whatever)
then we woke up long enough for laura to go from the couch to her bed, where she went back to sleep. so i went for a 65 minute run and then jumped in our hotel pool (fully clothed) when i got back. the run was amazing - there were lightning bugs everywhere and it was cool and humid.... a perfect summer night =]
when i got back to the room, laura was finally conscious. i showered, then we watched chelsea lately.
now it's time for bed! we have a lot to do at the fields tomorrow!!!
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
day 24
we drove thru the night last night. at a gas station, laura and i had just finished filling up with gas and were just sitting in the truck thinking about how we really should clean off the bug-covered windshield, when these 2 guys who must've been psychic just randomly climbed up and started to clean our windshield. haha laura and i were LOVIN it! so we gave them some free kick-it shirts before we went our separate ways. they were going to california....i almost jumped in their uhaul. but, for laura's sake, i restrained myself.
otherwise nothing too exciting happened during our drive. it was pretty rough to stay awake at one point, but when i took the wheel around 330, the sky started to brighten around 4 or 5 and soon i was watching the sunrise, jammin to jack's mannequin and SO JAZZED TO VISIT GABRIEL!!!! so i didn't feel all too tired. laura fell asleep at a stoplight though, so....
but anyway, when we got to indianapolis, laura pretty much passed out on the couch at the house gabriel is living at and i was too excited to sleep so i went to gabriel's work site and volunteered for the rest of the day helping out with the kiddos. it was pretty fun! then gabe showed me around the community center thing (which is like the central place for her summer project), introduced me to some people, etc. laura finally woke up at like 4 in the afternoon. then she went to a cafe to get on the internet while me and gabe went for a run. that was sweet cause we could catch up on life while we ran. =]
after that i showered and we all went to a potluck at the community center before laura and i hit the road to drive the rest of the way to columbus.
the drive was pretty uneventful as far as i know. i drove, then slept.
now we're at our hotel (which is sweeeeeeet btw) and tomorrow we paint the fields! gute nacht!
otherwise nothing too exciting happened during our drive. it was pretty rough to stay awake at one point, but when i took the wheel around 330, the sky started to brighten around 4 or 5 and soon i was watching the sunrise, jammin to jack's mannequin and SO JAZZED TO VISIT GABRIEL!!!! so i didn't feel all too tired. laura fell asleep at a stoplight though, so....
but anyway, when we got to indianapolis, laura pretty much passed out on the couch at the house gabriel is living at and i was too excited to sleep so i went to gabriel's work site and volunteered for the rest of the day helping out with the kiddos. it was pretty fun! then gabe showed me around the community center thing (which is like the central place for her summer project), introduced me to some people, etc. laura finally woke up at like 4 in the afternoon. then she went to a cafe to get on the internet while me and gabe went for a run. that was sweet cause we could catch up on life while we ran. =]
after that i showered and we all went to a potluck at the community center before laura and i hit the road to drive the rest of the way to columbus.
the drive was pretty uneventful as far as i know. i drove, then slept.
now we're at our hotel (which is sweeeeeeet btw) and tomorrow we paint the fields! gute nacht!
day 21-23
Ref coordinator dan is awful at his job. As if we didn’t already know. But for the first round of games this morning, we were already short EIGHT refs! So all of us road crew and both event directors had to grab a whistle and go ref fields. I’ve decided that reffing is not for me. I kept forgetting I was the ref and I would just be watching the game when all of a sudden some parents would yell at me “that was a foul!” or the two teams would be like “who’s ball is it?” and I would honestly not have a clue. So I did what I do best and I made up an answer. Let’s just say some parents/players didn’t really like that. Haha oops. I wonder how they could take me seriously when I was wearing my bright red sunglasses with stars on the lenses.
So it was a long day. I didn’t get to have lunch until like 4 in the afternoon and I didn’t get to reapply my sunscreen so my nose got very burnt. Boo.
After the tourney finally ended, we packed up and headed out. I’m gonna miss hilary. She wins best event director ever in my book. She’s soooo much fun!! While the boys and laura were packing up the trucks, hil-dawg and I went to “take trash to the dumpsters” which translates into: we went drag racing in the golf carts and almost crashed into Rachel and sarah…twice.
When we got back to the trucks, we found chris and sean throwing cans of sparkling juicy juice as high as they could and then watching them explode when they hit the ground. So hil-dawg, Stephen, laura, and I joined in. so much fun!
After that, laura and I peaced out because we were going to drive through the night so we could be home by Monday morning. We drove through torrential downpour and even hail (but I had no idea it hailed since I was sleeping like a corpse….per usual) so we didn’t get home til 6 in the morning.
I basically slept all day Monday, woke up at 4 pm and ran, then went to o-town to check out christy’s potential wedding dresses with Christy and Nicole. Nicole and I decided we want to wear turtleneck bridesmaids dresses. Who wouldn’t?
Then came home, had din din with the fam, played some soccer with them, some bananagrams, and went to bed. But surprisingly I couldn’t fall asleep. I finally fell asleep around 5 a.m. and slept in until 10, when I had to get up for our Tuesday morning conference call, which I took from the convenience of my own couch while watching world cup games.
Then I watched dirty dancing, and I finally left the couch around 1 to go meet bryan in Omaha to watch the argentina/Greece and Nigeria/korea games. After that I went to schmabriel’s casa to dig around her attic for some stuff to bring to her when I visit her on our way to Columbus!!!!!!
I am sooooo excited!! Laura and I are driving thru the night to Indianapolis and we’ll get to spend the whole day there! Woop woop!!
Anyway, when I finally got home, I got my hair trimmed for the first time in 14 months! Then din din with the fam, more soccer with them, and then I met up with laura for our middle of the night drive. That’s what we’re doing now, so I apologize for any weird capitalization since I’m typing this on Microsoft word.
Anywhoo, we’ll be driving allllll night so………
Later gators!
So it was a long day. I didn’t get to have lunch until like 4 in the afternoon and I didn’t get to reapply my sunscreen so my nose got very burnt. Boo.
After the tourney finally ended, we packed up and headed out. I’m gonna miss hilary. She wins best event director ever in my book. She’s soooo much fun!! While the boys and laura were packing up the trucks, hil-dawg and I went to “take trash to the dumpsters” which translates into: we went drag racing in the golf carts and almost crashed into Rachel and sarah…twice.
When we got back to the trucks, we found chris and sean throwing cans of sparkling juicy juice as high as they could and then watching them explode when they hit the ground. So hil-dawg, Stephen, laura, and I joined in. so much fun!
After that, laura and I peaced out because we were going to drive through the night so we could be home by Monday morning. We drove through torrential downpour and even hail (but I had no idea it hailed since I was sleeping like a corpse….per usual) so we didn’t get home til 6 in the morning.
I basically slept all day Monday, woke up at 4 pm and ran, then went to o-town to check out christy’s potential wedding dresses with Christy and Nicole. Nicole and I decided we want to wear turtleneck bridesmaids dresses. Who wouldn’t?
Then came home, had din din with the fam, played some soccer with them, some bananagrams, and went to bed. But surprisingly I couldn’t fall asleep. I finally fell asleep around 5 a.m. and slept in until 10, when I had to get up for our Tuesday morning conference call, which I took from the convenience of my own couch while watching world cup games.
Then I watched dirty dancing, and I finally left the couch around 1 to go meet bryan in Omaha to watch the argentina/Greece and Nigeria/korea games. After that I went to schmabriel’s casa to dig around her attic for some stuff to bring to her when I visit her on our way to Columbus!!!!!!
I am sooooo excited!! Laura and I are driving thru the night to Indianapolis and we’ll get to spend the whole day there! Woop woop!!
Anyway, when I finally got home, I got my hair trimmed for the first time in 14 months! Then din din with the fam, more soccer with them, and then I met up with laura for our middle of the night drive. That’s what we’re doing now, so I apologize for any weird capitalization since I’m typing this on Microsoft word.
Anywhoo, we’ll be driving allllll night so………
Later gators!
Saturday, June 19, 2010
day 20
we got up earrrrly.
when we got to the fields, we set up and did some last minute things, then the tournament started. it was pretty boring for the most part because since this tourney is like 15 min from the home office, we had a bunch of extra help. ie, we had too many people working (plus volunteers, which we also had a TON of)
so basically i drove golf carts around all day and watched the kettle corn guy stir his kettle corn.
the only issue with the tournament was that referee-coordinator-dan is awful at his job, so we always had 2 or 3 fields without refs on them. not only that, but the fields were running way behind schedule bc of the fact that teams had to wait around for refs. AND ref-coordinator-dan kept stealing all our food. he tried to be stealthy about it, but let's face it - when you're 73 years old, stealthy isn't exactly possible. every time he came to steal something, he would hobble away as fast as he could. like that makes him any less obvious.
he didn't just steal food either. he also stole our walkie-talkies and he kept taking our golf carts. kick-it already pays him a ton of money to do a job that he doesn't do well so whyyyyy does he think he needs to steal stuff on top of that?! oy.
after the games ended, we packed up what needed to be packed up, took one more joy ride in the golf carts while event coordinator hilary yelled at ref coordinator dan for being awful at his job, then we came back to the hotel to enter all of the day's results online. that took FOREVER.
then we went to din din, laughed a lot (i won't go into detail on what we were laughing about, i don't think it needs to be repeated. ever.), came back to the hotel, laughed some more, and now it's bedtime. laura got us all sick so i'm extra tired.
gute nacht!
when we got to the fields, we set up and did some last minute things, then the tournament started. it was pretty boring for the most part because since this tourney is like 15 min from the home office, we had a bunch of extra help. ie, we had too many people working (plus volunteers, which we also had a TON of)
so basically i drove golf carts around all day and watched the kettle corn guy stir his kettle corn.
the only issue with the tournament was that referee-coordinator-dan is awful at his job, so we always had 2 or 3 fields without refs on them. not only that, but the fields were running way behind schedule bc of the fact that teams had to wait around for refs. AND ref-coordinator-dan kept stealing all our food. he tried to be stealthy about it, but let's face it - when you're 73 years old, stealthy isn't exactly possible. every time he came to steal something, he would hobble away as fast as he could. like that makes him any less obvious.
he didn't just steal food either. he also stole our walkie-talkies and he kept taking our golf carts. kick-it already pays him a ton of money to do a job that he doesn't do well so whyyyyy does he think he needs to steal stuff on top of that?! oy.
after the games ended, we packed up what needed to be packed up, took one more joy ride in the golf carts while event coordinator hilary yelled at ref coordinator dan for being awful at his job, then we came back to the hotel to enter all of the day's results online. that took FOREVER.
then we went to din din, laughed a lot (i won't go into detail on what we were laughing about, i don't think it needs to be repeated. ever.), came back to the hotel, laughed some more, and now it's bedtime. laura got us all sick so i'm extra tired.
gute nacht!
Friday, June 18, 2010
day 19
got up and watched the u.s. tie slovakia. they should've won though!!!!!! ugh! don't even get me started....
after that laura and i had to go to the home office and drop off some t-shirts/pick up some magnet decals for our truck. the only problem being that the magnets didn't cling to our truck. at all. it was actually kind of funny watching rich (our boss) jump up to put the magnet on, only to have it fall down again. especially the first time, because he took a running start ;] hahaha and these aren't little fridge magnets - they're about 4 feet long and 3 feet wide. so that only added to the madness.
from there we went to the fields to finish setting up for tomorrow. we had to lay out our massive inflatables and tent frames and tables and unload five tons of juicy juice.....etc. only it wasn't as bad as last time because we had golf carts =) those were fun. we went off-roading, cutting cookies in the gravel parking lots and speeding through huge muddy puddles. even our event directors were doing it! lots o' fun. my favorite part was watching chris and sean load the back of their cart up with goals, then try to race me around the parking lot, only to have the goals fly off the back of their cart. ha! idiots....
after we were done at the fields, everyone left and i stuck around to run while laura went to bike at the hotel. then she picked me up, i showered, and we went to check-in at sport's authority.
check-in was great. wanna know why?! because event director hilary took 4 extra-strength aleve. you're only supposed to take 1 every 8-12 hours, and no more than 3 in a 24 hour period. yeah, she took FOUR in a matter of 20 minutes. let's just say she was a little loopy after that. when everyone was like "why on earth did you take FOUR of them?!" her response was "i took 4 before the half marathon and i was fine!" at which point someone said "yeah, because you probably didn't even remember anything after that!"
we were just cracking up the rest of the night. i thought laura was going to pee her pants when she was pretending to hold hands with a mannequin in the section by our check-in tables, which resulted in her breaking it's arm off. i took the arm and put it up my sleeve, which made all of us laugh even harder. then, to top it all off, one of the sport's authority workers walked by and, seeing the mannequin's arm in place of my own, said "oh, do you need a hand?" HAHAHA
when we left sport's authority, we went to dinner at macaroni grill. when rachel (another person on kick-it staff) spilled her water, high-as-a-kite-hilary was on the phone and she started freaking out to the person she was talking to, saying "oh my gosh! rachel just spilled her water." {the person on the other end said something} "no, everyone's staring... we're at a macaroni grill, not like a chile's or something!" haha after that, our waiter brought rachel out a new water, this time in a kiddie cup with a lid. haha what a clever guy.
so anywhoo.....today was pretty fun. i'm a little sunburnt though. :(
and it's bedtime! gute nacht!
after that laura and i had to go to the home office and drop off some t-shirts/pick up some magnet decals for our truck. the only problem being that the magnets didn't cling to our truck. at all. it was actually kind of funny watching rich (our boss) jump up to put the magnet on, only to have it fall down again. especially the first time, because he took a running start ;] hahaha and these aren't little fridge magnets - they're about 4 feet long and 3 feet wide. so that only added to the madness.
from there we went to the fields to finish setting up for tomorrow. we had to lay out our massive inflatables and tent frames and tables and unload five tons of juicy juice.....etc. only it wasn't as bad as last time because we had golf carts =) those were fun. we went off-roading, cutting cookies in the gravel parking lots and speeding through huge muddy puddles. even our event directors were doing it! lots o' fun. my favorite part was watching chris and sean load the back of their cart up with goals, then try to race me around the parking lot, only to have the goals fly off the back of their cart. ha! idiots....
after we were done at the fields, everyone left and i stuck around to run while laura went to bike at the hotel. then she picked me up, i showered, and we went to check-in at sport's authority.
check-in was great. wanna know why?! because event director hilary took 4 extra-strength aleve. you're only supposed to take 1 every 8-12 hours, and no more than 3 in a 24 hour period. yeah, she took FOUR in a matter of 20 minutes. let's just say she was a little loopy after that. when everyone was like "why on earth did you take FOUR of them?!" her response was "i took 4 before the half marathon and i was fine!" at which point someone said "yeah, because you probably didn't even remember anything after that!"
we were just cracking up the rest of the night. i thought laura was going to pee her pants when she was pretending to hold hands with a mannequin in the section by our check-in tables, which resulted in her breaking it's arm off. i took the arm and put it up my sleeve, which made all of us laugh even harder. then, to top it all off, one of the sport's authority workers walked by and, seeing the mannequin's arm in place of my own, said "oh, do you need a hand?" HAHAHA
when we left sport's authority, we went to dinner at macaroni grill. when rachel (another person on kick-it staff) spilled her water, high-as-a-kite-hilary was on the phone and she started freaking out to the person she was talking to, saying "oh my gosh! rachel just spilled her water." {the person on the other end said something} "no, everyone's staring... we're at a macaroni grill, not like a chile's or something!" haha after that, our waiter brought rachel out a new water, this time in a kiddie cup with a lid. haha what a clever guy.
so anywhoo.....today was pretty fun. i'm a little sunburnt though. :(
and it's bedtime! gute nacht!
Thursday, June 17, 2010
day 18
got up. watched soccer.
went to the fields (after realizing we were out of gas - ahem* thanks to CHRIS AND SEAN)
painted fields, the volunteers set up goals, went to pick up the tourney t-shirts (once again, thanks a lot, CHRIS AND SEAN)
came back to the hotel, napped for 3 HOURS.
worked out, watched the lakers beat the celtics (booo!)
showered, now ready for bed.
that is about it.
wait, no it's not. while we were painting fields, assistant event director stephen tried to throw a stake to event director hilary and it landed on the ground. hilary went to pick it up and couldn't find it. laura helped her look while stephen and i looked at each other like "wow those guys are idiots"
after watching laura and hilary struggle, i went to look too. stephen helped out soon after.
i have now concluded that the stake must have vanished into thin air. we looked for a good 40 minutes - first just walking and looking, then taking off our shoes and feeling around, then squatting and using our hands, then hands and knees, and finally we were down to our knees and elbows just crawling around looking for this stupid stake! after the first 10 minutes, it wasn't even about finding that stake anymore. it was about keeping our dignity. well, that was a fail. eventually, we HAD to give up. but i have a feeling that at some point during the tournament you'll see one of us at that field, casually searching for that darn stake. i know for me, it's gonna nag at the back of my mind until one of us finds it.
oy. but i think that was all the excitement for the day.
also, i hate sneezing.
good night!
went to the fields (after realizing we were out of gas - ahem* thanks to CHRIS AND SEAN)
painted fields, the volunteers set up goals, went to pick up the tourney t-shirts (once again, thanks a lot, CHRIS AND SEAN)
came back to the hotel, napped for 3 HOURS.
worked out, watched the lakers beat the celtics (booo!)
showered, now ready for bed.
that is about it.
wait, no it's not. while we were painting fields, assistant event director stephen tried to throw a stake to event director hilary and it landed on the ground. hilary went to pick it up and couldn't find it. laura helped her look while stephen and i looked at each other like "wow those guys are idiots"
after watching laura and hilary struggle, i went to look too. stephen helped out soon after.
i have now concluded that the stake must have vanished into thin air. we looked for a good 40 minutes - first just walking and looking, then taking off our shoes and feeling around, then squatting and using our hands, then hands and knees, and finally we were down to our knees and elbows just crawling around looking for this stupid stake! after the first 10 minutes, it wasn't even about finding that stake anymore. it was about keeping our dignity. well, that was a fail. eventually, we HAD to give up. but i have a feeling that at some point during the tournament you'll see one of us at that field, casually searching for that darn stake. i know for me, it's gonna nag at the back of my mind until one of us finds it.
oy. but i think that was all the excitement for the day.
also, i hate sneezing.
good night!
day 17
lazy day. it was fantastic. laura and i got up early to watch world cup games, i skyped with bryan, laura and i watched more world cup games, then we switched hotels and got groceries...
after that we had to go pick up the other road crew for this denver tourney bc their truck needed a new tire and whatnot and it wouldn't be done til morning. so laura and i were crammed in the front seat of our truck with chris and sean. the four of us, shoulder to shoulder, suffering from a mad case of butt sweat. the boys made fun of laura's driving (and for good reason), then laura and i serenaded them with some top notch sing-alongs to seether and all american rejects. those boys are lucky to have us.
when we got back, we just sat around some more, and then finally went to work out.
then i skyped with trav before i showered and went to bed.
easy peasy.
the real work starts in the morning!
after that we had to go pick up the other road crew for this denver tourney bc their truck needed a new tire and whatnot and it wouldn't be done til morning. so laura and i were crammed in the front seat of our truck with chris and sean. the four of us, shoulder to shoulder, suffering from a mad case of butt sweat. the boys made fun of laura's driving (and for good reason), then laura and i serenaded them with some top notch sing-alongs to seether and all american rejects. those boys are lucky to have us.
when we got back, we just sat around some more, and then finally went to work out.
then i skyped with trav before i showered and went to bed.
easy peasy.
the real work starts in the morning!
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
day 16
sooooooooo.
i love worldcup. ;]
today we had to be into the home office at 9 to do some stuff. as laura and i guessed, it was pretty pointless. we sorted some parts in the warehouse, kicked a soccer ball around with the warehouse guy, laid out our inflatables (which were soaked with rain water from last weekend), and somehow managed to get them back into the truck (they probably weigh like 300 lbs when they're rolled up. no joke.)
and that was all. oh but while we waited for rich (our "boss") to give him the inventory of medals we counted, we walked by the conference room like 20 times to see if he was out of meetings yet. awkward. haha we tried to make it casual, but we were definitely just creepin on by the conference room, completely obvious.
when we FINALLY got out of there around 2, we came back to our hotel and napped for like an hour and a half. then we went to a park to work out.
wowza.
we should've seen it coming (the park was called "martin luther king park") but when we got to the park, laura and i were the only white people in sight. like, i honestly think we did our workout in the projects. sooooo ghetto.
but we survived! no gun shots [no caps were busted] and nobody threatened to "cut" us.
a successful trip through the hood. yay =]
after that we came to back to the hotel, showered, laura spilled rice all over our sink, and we left for BOULDER!!!!!!!
we walked around and looked at the creeps and street performers for a bit, then we went to bj's to have a PAZOOKIE (a giant cookie that might be a taste - or like 4000 calories - of heaven)
after that we made a sign that said "miss you" on one side and "boulder suckaz!" on the other [guess which side was my idea ;D haha] and we went around to some hippies and took photos with them, holding up the sign.
when we finally left boulder, we had to fill up with gas. since the gas station itself was closed, laura just squatted under our truck and peed. i'm not even kidding. i just sat in the truck and pretended to have some very important business to do on mah cell phone.
now we're back at the hotel, ready for a good night's sleep - we have 3 soccer games to watch tomorrow!
i love worldcup. ;]
night yall!!
Monday, June 14, 2010
Days 14 & 15 - Laura's Perspective
Day 13 Recap
Remember how I said I was going to take a shower to get warm? Pretty sure I would have been better off taking a shower outside. Appartenly our hotel doesn't believe in water heaters. Oh and we were given these laminated name tags to wear at events. Let me tell you.... driving around a golf cart with my precious name tag made me feel pretty high up. I loved it.
Day 14 - Greeley, CO
So Sunday morning I wake up, pack all my belongings out of the terrible hotel, meet up with Stefan (previous road crew member, now is Team Services Assistant) and waited for Hil to call and give us the scoop. Turns out, the city of Greeley wouldn't let us play because it rained all night and was still raining off and on that morning. We went to the fields to clean everything up and once again, our volunteers were absolutely amazing. Everything was cleaned up and repacked in the truck within half an hour. Another benefit of being the road crew is that I barely have to clean up. Basically everybody goes up and cleans up all the belongings and then I just get to tell them what I want loaded in the truck and in what order. It's awesome. After everything was packed up, the staff and I went to Centerra for some lunch. We were able to catch the whole Germany vs. Australia game. Germany dominated Australia. I'm talking, a 4 to nothing sweep. After that, I drove to Stefan's and stayed there for the night since it was close to the airport. Those boys' mamas' raised them right because I felt like I was receiving royal honor. They made me dinner, made up my bed, let me be in control of the remote, let me choose what temperature the house would be all night so I would get some good sleep. Yep, I definitely got spoiled.
Day 15- Denver
Today I had to go into the office to lay out my inflatables because they were still drenched in the rain water. We had just turned them over to dry out the bottom part and then it started downpouring. So much for letting me air out. I also had to switch a couple more parts out but this time it wasn't so bad because I actually had someone in the warehouse with me, informing me of where the parts were located. Finally! So remember how I locked my keys in the truck? Well apparently I wasn't supposed to call Ryder ( even though the person in charge of the trucks told me to) because they are going to send the company an obscene amount of a bill. Well today I went in to Rich's office (he's our tour manager) to turn in my expense report. He was looking it over and made a comment on how I found pretty cheap hotel rooms. I replied, "Yay, I thought I'd try to save you guys some money for that Ryder bill." Kind of sarcastic. Kind of serious. He didn't say anything for the next three minutes. Those three minutes were the longest ones of my life. I thought maybe it'd been too soon to make a joke about that Ryder bill. Little did I know, he was still looking over my expense report and after he got done, he finally realized what I said and laughed. But those three minutes were absolute torture! I kept thinking of ways to apologize for my comment. It was miserable. After being at the office, I went to get Shan. It was lovely to have her back, but she made me move all my luggage out of the front seat. She's so needy. =] And the rest you already know because Shan already blogged about it. Tomorrow, our blogs will finally be just one blog with two minds behind it.
-Laura
Remember how I said I was going to take a shower to get warm? Pretty sure I would have been better off taking a shower outside. Appartenly our hotel doesn't believe in water heaters. Oh and we were given these laminated name tags to wear at events. Let me tell you.... driving around a golf cart with my precious name tag made me feel pretty high up. I loved it.
Day 14 - Greeley, CO
So Sunday morning I wake up, pack all my belongings out of the terrible hotel, meet up with Stefan (previous road crew member, now is Team Services Assistant) and waited for Hil to call and give us the scoop. Turns out, the city of Greeley wouldn't let us play because it rained all night and was still raining off and on that morning. We went to the fields to clean everything up and once again, our volunteers were absolutely amazing. Everything was cleaned up and repacked in the truck within half an hour. Another benefit of being the road crew is that I barely have to clean up. Basically everybody goes up and cleans up all the belongings and then I just get to tell them what I want loaded in the truck and in what order. It's awesome. After everything was packed up, the staff and I went to Centerra for some lunch. We were able to catch the whole Germany vs. Australia game. Germany dominated Australia. I'm talking, a 4 to nothing sweep. After that, I drove to Stefan's and stayed there for the night since it was close to the airport. Those boys' mamas' raised them right because I felt like I was receiving royal honor. They made me dinner, made up my bed, let me be in control of the remote, let me choose what temperature the house would be all night so I would get some good sleep. Yep, I definitely got spoiled.
Day 15- Denver
Today I had to go into the office to lay out my inflatables because they were still drenched in the rain water. We had just turned them over to dry out the bottom part and then it started downpouring. So much for letting me air out. I also had to switch a couple more parts out but this time it wasn't so bad because I actually had someone in the warehouse with me, informing me of where the parts were located. Finally! So remember how I locked my keys in the truck? Well apparently I wasn't supposed to call Ryder ( even though the person in charge of the trucks told me to) because they are going to send the company an obscene amount of a bill. Well today I went in to Rich's office (he's our tour manager) to turn in my expense report. He was looking it over and made a comment on how I found pretty cheap hotel rooms. I replied, "Yay, I thought I'd try to save you guys some money for that Ryder bill." Kind of sarcastic. Kind of serious. He didn't say anything for the next three minutes. Those three minutes were the longest ones of my life. I thought maybe it'd been too soon to make a joke about that Ryder bill. Little did I know, he was still looking over my expense report and after he got done, he finally realized what I said and laughed. But those three minutes were absolute torture! I kept thinking of ways to apologize for my comment. It was miserable. After being at the office, I went to get Shan. It was lovely to have her back, but she made me move all my luggage out of the front seat. She's so needy. =] And the rest you already know because Shan already blogged about it. Tomorrow, our blogs will finally be just one blog with two minds behind it.
-Laura
day 15/shannon's summer project day 10 (last day)
i got up at like 630 this morning fully intending to run. instead i longboarded to the beach and watched the waves roll in as i reflected on the week. i didn't wanna leave at all :(
when i got back to the bahia i showered and packed, because sthefany was giving rides to the airport and i was in the group that left at 8. (which ended up being 815....oops)
i said bye bye to kelsey (crap-face) and then we left for the airport.
nothing exciting really happened then. i flew to denver, grabbed my stuff, then laura picked me up in our massive truck. haha that part was kinda weird. the airport people were just like whyyyyyy is a truck picking this lady up from the airport?
then laura and i came to stephen's house (he was a road crew member last summer) to do laundry/nap alllllll afternoon. stephen's roommate made us dinner, and now i we're getting ready to leave for our hotel. we'll probably work out when we get there but otherwise that's about it. i'll update if anything interesting happens between now and when we go to bed.
word.
day 14/shannon's summer project day 9
my last full day on project :(
i skipped my run this morning on account of i neeeeeeeded sleep.
i finally got up and went to our morning session. we did worship and then a prayer journey thing. there were a bunch of stations set up all dealing with prayer/quiet time schtuff/etc. kinda hard to explain but it was sweet. i felt really good afterwards.
then kali was baptized in mission bay, which was really cool to watch.
after that, i went to the beach with janelle and nichole to lay out. [we had all afternoon free] it was supposed to be peaceful buuuut it wasn't because there were flies everywhere, and about 15 min after we got there, the people next to us got attacked by seagulls. they had a couple of styrofoam boxes with tacos in them, and one seagull swooped down and pecked the box open before the people could do anything about it, then before we knew it, there were like six million seagulls flocking the beach by us. me and nichole and janelle just started to freak out and crack up because we thought for sure we'd get pooped on. ahahahaha it was hilarious. but no one got crapped on so that was good news. ;]
after the beach, i went back to the bahia to meet up with kelsey and go shopping. we got some schtuff for our peeps, and then we went down the beach a little ways on our longboards and met up with a couple of the guys from the full summer summer project. they were surfing so we watched for a bit/chatted with them/chatted with each other, then i left her and boarded back to the bahia bc i thought i had something to do which ended up not happening anyway so i then boarded back that way and kelsey and lindsey and i met up bayside by the rec center. we boarded a little ways to some more shops and perused/hung out, then we went to yogurtland and had some yum yum frozen yogurt. mmmmm. =]
afterwards, we boarded back to the bahia for a wrap-up group meeting, then everyone went to 205 to hang out/finish the ice cream from the night before. lindsey and i almost peed from laughing so hard for many different reasons. we were just in hyper moods and we started making our own workout video choreography and doing cheers [who's that spartan in my teepee? it's me! it's me! hahahahahahahaaa] and then some dancing broke out, which just lead to more laughing. we ended up on the floor in tears because we were laughing so hard!
after all of that fun i went to my room, attempted to pack, then decided to just not pack at all and go hang out with kelsey. we watched more south park about poop, and i was suuuuuper tired so i ended up falling asleep. i woke up at like 2 a.m. which was a good thing because i didn't have an alarm bc my phone was still in my room. so i went back to my room and slept the rest of the night.
kelsey missed me when i was gone. haha she had no one to snuggle with! :(
day 13/shannon's summer project day 8
this morning we had small group bible study at a cute little coffee shop called the olive. we sat outside and there were flowers and birds everywhere and it was sunny......just a b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l way to start my day =]
oh and i ran before that. um, it was a good run? no good details about that.
after bible study we walked back to the bahia (our hotel/resort-ish place we're staying) for a student-led meeting. we planned an outreach on the beach with a huge tug-of-war game and a huge ultimate frisbee game. after deciding who would do what, we gathered everything we needed and went to the beach to do our thang. the tug-of-war game was huge and all of the people who weren't participating were definitely watching. the boys won (boo!) but then us girls decided we wanted a rematch. our plan was to drop the boys. we played right at the edge of the water to make it interesting, so the waves were up to our ankles. however, the boys had the same idea....and they were faster about it. the boys dropped us and mostly everyone got wet. i mean, i managed to stay dry, but mostly everyone else got soaked. hehe tough luck i guess. :] other than playing games with strangers, we engaged these people in conversations and stuff like that. leah and i evangelized to a guy named junior (not kidding) and it was cool because he said he had never even heard the story of Jesus Christ. leah and i talked to him for over an hour, and he was asking questions and listening really intently to what we had to say. he didn't come to a decision, but he definitely was left thinking about it when the conversation ended. so that was really cool =]
after our beach evangelism/outreach we came back to the bahia and then went to the bus stop to go to the padres vs mariners baseball game. we sat wayyyyy up high but it was kinda nice because then we had a great view of the city and, let's face it, that's what all of us girls were concerned with. haha the padres won (i think) and lindsey and i ate the biggest hot dogs known to mankind. they had to be over a foot long and we were just dying laughing when we were trying to figure out a way to eat them without poking someone's eyes out. we laughed even harder when we tried to put ketchup and mustard on them because it came out SO FAST! we may or may not have made a mess.....but dude it like shot out of there. i have never dealt with so much mustard at such high speeds. intense.
after the game we rode the trolley/bus back and somehow a girl in our group (named laura - and she is soooo cool!) lost her bus pass so we had to be all stealthy so that she wouldn't have to pay for another one. on the trolley, the lady came around checking passes, and after she checked some of our group, she came to the next 4 seats where laura, lindsey, and i were sitting. laura pretended to dig through her purse while lindsey and i handed the lady our passes. the lady saw laura looking for hers so she turned around to get the people across from us. right when she turned around, kelsey casually dropped her pass on laura's seat before the lady turned back to face us. (this is hard to explain because it was much more intense in real life haha) the lady watched laura search for like 10 more seconds before lindsey was like "oh here it is!" and picked up the pass that kelsey had dropped on the seat. it was sooo hilarious. as soon as the lady was out of our car, all of us girls just started giggling uncontrollably.
lindsey and i started cracking up yet again like 15 min later when we ate these energy bars that the stadium had given us for free (promo) and felt like vomiting. we ate them, felt fine, then like 2 minutes later we just looked at each other and were like "ugh we shouldn't have eaten that. bleh" the rest of the ride we spent pretending to get sick. we're so immature. =]
when we got off the trolly and switched over to the bus, laura had to sneak by the driver without her pass again. luckily, this guy had no motivation for life, so he just lazily looked at us as we flashed him our passes and laura flashed him an old movie ticket. hahaha supah stealth.
by this time, lindsey and i were bouncing off the walls with energy, so we did some stair sprints until the bus came. then, on the bus ride, me and lindsey and kelsey sang some sweet jamz and did the appropriate dances to them.
when we finally got back to the bahia, i went to kelsey's room and we watched part of a south park episode about poop. meanwhile, everyone else was in room 205 setting up schtuff and hiding because it's kelsey's birfday!!!! when i got the appropriate text, i hopped up off the couch and was like "shoot we need to go to lindsey's room. she needs to talk. idk what's wrong." so kelsey and i went to 205 and when we got there, the door wasn't completely closed, so we walked in and the only light that was on was the bathroom light. lindsey walked out and tried to look seriously troubled, but that's not a look she can hold very well. she tried not to smile as she's like "hi"
...
....
.....
nothing. so she tries again: "hi" (this time, her attempt at not smiling failed)
...
....
.....
still nothing. by now i was bent over behind kelsey just shaking with silent laughter. finally lindsey just about lost it as she said, much more loudly this time, "I SAID HI KELSEY!"
finally, everyone in the room got the memo and jumped out to say SURPRISE!! kelsey obviously knew it was coming after lindsey's and my terrible acting, but she was still surprised by the number of people in the room. she thought there'd be like 5-10 of us, but instead everyone was there. there were like 5 people in the living room just hiding in the dark, and there were like 20 people who had been hiding on the balcony that were filing into the room. we had cupcakes and ice cream, we got our groove on and hung out. we watched some youtube, etc. it was just silly fun-ness. after ze little party we all kinda filtered back to our rooms and went to bed.
that's about alllll!
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Days 11-13 in Greeley, Colorado
So the host hotel I'm staying in doesn't have the greatest internet connection which is why I haven't blogged in here for a couple days. So let's recap...
Day 11 - Left Denver for Greeley
This day I really just drove to Greeley and painted fields. The volunteers were great and we got done painting 24 fields in a matter for 3 hours which is incredible because that also includes taking the necessary items out of the truck, putting everything together, and clean up. Next up was checking into the host hotel. I must attract broken toilets or something because mine didn't work in this hotel. So I had to switch rooms.
Day 12 - Greeley
This day we got everything set up before the storm hit Greeley. Jif and Juicy Juice are two of our national sponsors. We're supposed to get shipments of them every Friday so that we have them and are ready for the tournament. Well neither of them arrived and our sponsorship lady decided to have her phone turned off while she was at a wedding so we had some serious phone calls to make. We finally got a hold of someone who knew their purpose in life (aka to serve me) and I received the lovely honor of driving to the trucking company's shipment location and pick up the Juicy Juice. This occurred during check in so I missed most of it which wasn't the end of the world. We have plenty of help. After check in and picking up the Juicy Juice, the staff (about 9 of us total since this tournament is pretty local, big, and Shan isn't here) went out to Old Chicago for some dinner and social time. When we got back to the hotel, I went into my room to find out that one of my windows was broken. Like honestly, it looked like a crack in a windshield. Low and behold, it was raining for the last 2 hours so my room/clothes/suitcase was drenched. Sweet host hotel we found. However, our ref assigner decided to drive up to Greeley from Denver at about 10:00 last night for who knows what reason. The tournament didn't even start till 9 which meant he wouldn't have to be to the tournament site till 8:30 which also meant he didn't have to leave his house in Denver till about 7:20 in the morning. Anyways, apparently he thinks he trumps me so I got another lovely honor of moving rooms once again. This time it was in to Hilary's room (my event director for this weekend) so it wasn't all too bad. Except the two locks on her door are broke. Yep, I feel rreeeeeaaaaalllll safe in this hotel. Thank god we're only staying here till Saturday night.
Day 13- Rainy in Greeley
So today we had a wonderful alarm clock wake up call at 5AM. I just love those. Not. We had to be to the fields by 5:45 but had some stops to make on the way. When we got there, the rain started and it was freezing. I'm talking like people had on their winter coats; I had on winter gloves. Remind you it's JUNE and I have on winter gloves. I couldn't tell you the last time that occurred. It is now 4:25 and the rain finally let up. We played through the morning session. (We scheduled in a 2 hour break for the World Cup game. Prior to the break, we were given the OK by the City to go ahead and keep playing after the break. When we returned from the break, it began down pouring. As in not a single part of my body was dry. Then the City came back and said we couldn't play on the fields any longer. So the afternoon session is canceled which means we get to re-bracket and re-schedule everything tonight for tomorrow morning. This will be pretty interesting to do given the fact that we couldn't read half the score cards because they were too wet and none of the team's contact people thought it was a good idea to return our phone calls to let us know who won and what the score was. Like I said.... tonight will be interesting. Oh and this Dan guy (the ref assigner who thinks he is high and mighty,) is ridiculous. Every 15 minutes there was someone up at headquarters complaining that they didn't have a ref. For 4 hours straight. And of course he is nowhere to be found. Let me know you... I love my job. =] Now I'm off to shower and FINALLY get dry and warm and hopefully not get sick. More updates on the spectacular Greeley tournament tomorrow!
P.S. We met the man who owns all the McDonald's in Greeley. That man = MONEY. Good thing we were uber nice to him before we even knew that.
- Laura
Day 11 - Left Denver for Greeley
This day I really just drove to Greeley and painted fields. The volunteers were great and we got done painting 24 fields in a matter for 3 hours which is incredible because that also includes taking the necessary items out of the truck, putting everything together, and clean up. Next up was checking into the host hotel. I must attract broken toilets or something because mine didn't work in this hotel. So I had to switch rooms.
Day 12 - Greeley
This day we got everything set up before the storm hit Greeley. Jif and Juicy Juice are two of our national sponsors. We're supposed to get shipments of them every Friday so that we have them and are ready for the tournament. Well neither of them arrived and our sponsorship lady decided to have her phone turned off while she was at a wedding so we had some serious phone calls to make. We finally got a hold of someone who knew their purpose in life (aka to serve me) and I received the lovely honor of driving to the trucking company's shipment location and pick up the Juicy Juice. This occurred during check in so I missed most of it which wasn't the end of the world. We have plenty of help. After check in and picking up the Juicy Juice, the staff (about 9 of us total since this tournament is pretty local, big, and Shan isn't here) went out to Old Chicago for some dinner and social time. When we got back to the hotel, I went into my room to find out that one of my windows was broken. Like honestly, it looked like a crack in a windshield. Low and behold, it was raining for the last 2 hours so my room/clothes/suitcase was drenched. Sweet host hotel we found. However, our ref assigner decided to drive up to Greeley from Denver at about 10:00 last night for who knows what reason. The tournament didn't even start till 9 which meant he wouldn't have to be to the tournament site till 8:30 which also meant he didn't have to leave his house in Denver till about 7:20 in the morning. Anyways, apparently he thinks he trumps me so I got another lovely honor of moving rooms once again. This time it was in to Hilary's room (my event director for this weekend) so it wasn't all too bad. Except the two locks on her door are broke. Yep, I feel rreeeeeaaaaalllll safe in this hotel. Thank god we're only staying here till Saturday night.
Day 13- Rainy in Greeley
So today we had a wonderful alarm clock wake up call at 5AM. I just love those. Not. We had to be to the fields by 5:45 but had some stops to make on the way. When we got there, the rain started and it was freezing. I'm talking like people had on their winter coats; I had on winter gloves. Remind you it's JUNE and I have on winter gloves. I couldn't tell you the last time that occurred. It is now 4:25 and the rain finally let up. We played through the morning session. (We scheduled in a 2 hour break for the World Cup game. Prior to the break, we were given the OK by the City to go ahead and keep playing after the break. When we returned from the break, it began down pouring. As in not a single part of my body was dry. Then the City came back and said we couldn't play on the fields any longer. So the afternoon session is canceled which means we get to re-bracket and re-schedule everything tonight for tomorrow morning. This will be pretty interesting to do given the fact that we couldn't read half the score cards because they were too wet and none of the team's contact people thought it was a good idea to return our phone calls to let us know who won and what the score was. Like I said.... tonight will be interesting. Oh and this Dan guy (the ref assigner who thinks he is high and mighty,) is ridiculous. Every 15 minutes there was someone up at headquarters complaining that they didn't have a ref. For 4 hours straight. And of course he is nowhere to be found. Let me know you... I love my job. =] Now I'm off to shower and FINALLY get dry and warm and hopefully not get sick. More updates on the spectacular Greeley tournament tomorrow!
P.S. We met the man who owns all the McDonald's in Greeley. That man = MONEY. Good thing we were uber nice to him before we even knew that.
- Laura
day 12/shannon's summer project day 7
today was more of a free day. i went for a run this morning, then had about 2 hours of free time/time with the Lord. it was niiiice =]
zen we went to seaport village for lunch and shoppppppping. teeheehee
when we got back, me and nichole and rachel (roomie #4, in case i haven't mentioned her before....) all fell asleep. and i guess we each were sleeping in the same position? all 3 of us were on our beds face down sleeping when ashley and janelle got back. they saw us and were just like uhh...
then everyone met up at 7 to go to what's called friday night live - it's like a worship service/fellowship....kinda like a cru meeting. it was sooooo great! i miss regular cru meetings and i can't wait to get back to unl in the fall now! haha
after the regular fnl, there was swing and salsa dancing. i participated of course, and rocked it. :)
afterwards, kelsey and i went to holly's and chatted it up/hung out til midnight-ish. (holly leads the regular full-summer san diego summer project, and let's just say she's had a huge influence on kelsey's life. oh, and she's fantastic)
now i'm just heading to bed. bible study with mah small group in the morning! woop woop!!
Friday, June 11, 2010
day 11/shannon's summer project day 6
first, i ran. it was a good run too =]
next, i had some breakfast with ANGELA! we had this weird acai stuff.....idk what exactly it was that we were eating actually. but it was good and supposedly healthy. so..yay =]
after that we had a session about giving our testimonies. i learned lots and lots.
then we hit up san diego state university (sdsu) to evangelize. i was paired with kelsey and we talked to 2 girls first that were buddhist/agnostic (a strange combo, long story) and i mean we didn't see any results or anything, but i think we at least planted a seed and got them thinking a little bit. we also talked to a girl named melissa who had just started going to church about a year and a half ago, and she called herself a "baby Christian" and she seemed really excited to grow and continue in her faith. so that was a really sweet conversation. me gusta.
sdsu has a wittle tuwtle pond (a little turtle pond, in case you didn't catch that) and kelsey and i picked up a couple of the baby turtles and took photos with them ;] they were so cute!!
when we got back from sdsu, we had small group bible study and then some time to just hang out afterwards. i skyped a little bit with the one and only alex kolbo, shopped with kelsey, leah, and lindsey, and went to yogurtland for some yum yum. then we came back and had a BONFIRE ON THE BEACH!!!!! that was so cool and this guy named keto (kee-toh) came and shared his testimony. it was probably the best one i have ever heard. wow.
otherwise, we crunked in the sand, we sang to abe and his guitar, we had smores, etc. it was a blasty blast. zen it was nighty night time.
our room smells like a blast of bonfire smoke everytime we walk into it. buuuuuut i kinda like it. =]
peace and blessins, PEACE. AND. BLESSINS.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
day 10/shannon's summer project day 5
today i skipped my morning run bc i was up so late the night before. so instead i got up about 1o min before i had to leave, then met my small group for breakfast and bible study :] that was all good.
then we had a session and it was realllllly interesting! it was basically about debating theories that say Christianity is false. i learned some cool stuff that i could use to argue naturalist/scientific beliefs, plus lot's of other tidbits. i couldn't include all of that information in this post though, cause that'd take like, upwards of 3 hours to read/write. haha
after zat, we got to go evangelize on the beach! we talked to 2 different groups of people. the first was a young couple who grew up catholic but now they're both agnostic. we chatted with them for like an hour and they seemed genuinely interested and curious about what we were saying. they said they had never heard that message except in a condemning way before, so it was really refreshing that me, lindsey, and leah weren't judging them or something. we ended up exchanging emails so that i could get back to them on a question they asked that i didn't have an answer for. so we'll see what result comes of that! pray for them please!
the next ppl we chatted with was a group of 3 girls. 2 didn't really take the convo seriously, but the 3rd seemed pretty interested, yet she couldn't really express her interest because her friends were there. i ended up giving them my email but i doubt they'll really use it. either way, pray for them too!
after evangelizing, i then took the opportunity to do my run on the beach barefoot. soooo perfect! i ran for like 33 minutes and the time flew by!
and zen i showered and got ready to go, then went and had sushi w/like 6 of the girls. =] after sushi, we came back to the hotel for GIRLS' NIGHT!!!! i can't give deets about that though cause....... it's a secret =] haha but i will say that the boys had boyz night and they interrupted our girls' night to give us all roses and tell us how beautiful we are. it was so cute! and i'll also say that some really good discussion came out of the women's night. got me thinkin about a lot of schtuff. so great!!
and zen it was beddy bed time. zat is all. gute nacht! ;]
day 9/shannon's summer project day 4
so this post is coming a little late, as i'm sure all of my avid readers have noticed... ;]
the day i'll be talking about (tuesday the 8th) was saweet. it was kinda cloudy and chilly, but eh what can ya do? we had morning worship and then some alone time to spend in the word before we met up to go to the university of california san diego (ucsd) to evangelize. that was a cool experience. lindsey and i were paired up and we ended up talking to 2 people. the first was a girl named christina and she was a total sweetheart! we did soularium w/her and went through the kgp booklet and she listened pretty well. she didn't necessarily pray to receive Christ right then, but i could definitely tell she was thinking about it differently than she had before. then we chatted with "that guy" (we couldn't remember his name) and he was pretty content where he was at in his life. lindsey and i just think that he'll need a bad experience or something of the sort to make him realize that he needs Christ in his life. but until then, we just don't think he's really searching for something more.
we could've had time to talk to more people, except ANGELA was following a silver van that we assumed was our group, only to wind up in the boonies with a van full of complete strangers!!!! ahhhh! so we had to gps our way back to where we were trying to go in the first place (ucsd). it used up a good hour of our time but we were laughing so hard it didn't even matter =] haha
however, on the way home, we got into more trouble. when we had arrived at ucsd, we paid for our parking which ran by 2 hour intervals. well, i convinced angela that we shouldn't pay for an extra 2 hours of parking since we'd be coming back to the car like 20 min after our parking pass would expire. i said i'd pay it if we actually got a ticket. bad idea. $50 ticket. oops. so now it's my responsibility to appeal it or pay it. i'm attempting an appeal so wish me luck! haha
after that neat experience, we met up with our small groups for bible study. twas good.
we finished the night with a trip to the park. played some ultimate frisbee, played a game w/rocks and jolly ranchers, was tackled by kelsey, assaulted by kelsey AND grant, then struck up a convo with a random lady at the bus stop while i waited for kelsey and angela and steph to get out of their little staff meeting so we could go to belmont and ride the roller coaster. the girl i was talking to was an artist and we just had a really good convo about life. i enjoyed it a lot actually. =]
after that, kelsey and grant and i skateboarded/longboarded to the rec center at the bay, cause there's this spot a little ways from the building where you can sit and just look out at the water and the lights and it's all quiet and peaceful. =] we chatted for a long time, then boarded back and chatted a bit more in the parking lot. i went up to my room around midnight and realized i didn't have a key. i didn't wanna wake my roomies, so i went all the way to the lobby building to get a new key. that turned into an adventure.
there was this weirdo (likely drugged up) guy that was demanding to get one more night in his same room bc he was "injured" and had to go to the hospital the next day. he also asked for a wheelchair, then made a big scene about sitting down in that wheelchair. after he spotted me, he immediately began to hit on me. he asked me to wheel him back to his room, he invited me to go hang out with him, he asked for my name.....etc. i was just like "nope, no way, absolutely not...etc." haha and then the best part is that he had a wooden flute there with him, so while the nice lady behind the desk (named marian) activated a key for me, he serenaded us with his horrid flutey music. the 2 ladies behind the desk and i were like "is this really happening? is this guy really playing a flute right now?" hahahaha soooo funny! then marian walked me back to my room so that she could make sure the creepo didn't try to follow me. she was SUCH a sweetheart!!!!!! so here's a shout out to the COOLEST hotel/resort lady ever! marian rulezzzz. ;]
hokay that's alllll for now. i'll tell about today's events tomorrow. that makes no sense if you don't read my blog every day. just read the labels if you wanna know what day this post is talking about. ok i'm done talking now. i'm delerioussss.....
k night!
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Day 10 - Last day in Denver till Monday
Another pretty uneventful day. I worked out, switch hotels because I was not a fan of dried blood on a pillowcase and a handtowel, room service didn't come until 4:00PM, etc., and then I received a lovely phone call asking me to come back to the office once again to pick up some more things. I just love that place, let me tell you. Oh yeah, and in between working out and switching hotels, I had the first conference call of the summer. Every Tuesday at 9:30 (this week's was rescheduled to today, surprise, surprise) all the road crew members all call in so we can hear about each other's adventures of the weekend and find out what not to do (Don't lock your keys in the truck, yep, that was me; blown tires absolutely suck but they are Ryder's fault, not our's). Other than that, just another lovely day in Denver. I'm totally going to move here at some point in my life as well as Boulder.
Tomorrow morning begins the Greeley Adventures!
-Laura
Tomorrow morning begins the Greeley Adventures!
-Laura
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Day 9
Another day spent in Denver. I had the honor of getting to go to the office twice today to exchange the parts that I couldn't get exchanged yesterday. After that, I went and watched Sex & the City 2 and The Killers. Sex and the City = not too great. The Killers = amazing. It was the first time I've ever gone to a movie by myself. Kinda weird. On my way home from the theatre, I realized another great thing about this summer.... I never have to worry about cops radaring me because 9 times out of 10, the truck isn't physically able to go the speed limit.
That's all I've got. Tomorrow I just wait for my Event Director to call me and fill me in on the game plan.
-Laura
That's all I've got. Tomorrow I just wait for my Event Director to call me and fill me in on the game plan.
-Laura
Monday, June 7, 2010
day 8/shannon's summer project day 3
herrrrrrrrroooo dere!!!!
today was sooo fun! i got up and ran nice n' earrrrrrly, then went to morning worship session where we sang it up before learning about soularium. after that, we had some quiet time with the Lord before a bible study w/our small groups. all that was pretty sweeeet :]
then we had some lunchy lunch before our scavenger hunt. that's right, i said SCAVENGER HUNT! it had the weirdest things on it such as: find a person w/brown eyes and ask them what sound the pillsbury dough boy makes (and record it), find a married couple and take a photo of them kissing w/all of the team members in the background, ask someone for one of their socks, etc. SO MUCH FUN. we find out the winners tomorrow......drumroll plz...
then lindsey, kelsey, and i went shopping to buy lindsey a longboard (oh yes the gang is growing..) and to buy some toms. i got some purty yellow ones and lindsey got some striped ones. kelsey already has some bedazzled ones so she just assisted us. ;]
then we just kept riding around the boardwalk and poking our heads in and out of shops until we were late coming back to the hotel for the next thing. oopsie. we grabbed some graham crackas and grapies and stuff so we could get some yum yum on our way to the....place we went. haha it was like..the rocky coastline i guess? it was pretty and we climbed all over the rocks and i carved my name into some sandstone and there was a beach with a flock of seals on it that kelsey and i were naming.....it was thuper duper.
the "friends of the seals" (no joke, these environmentalists don't have very creative names) gave us some sass for wanting to go onto the beach. legally, we're allowed on there as long as we don't go past these certain marked out points - so that we don't disturb the seals. so grant, angela, and i were on our way down to the beach when these 2 old ladies like jumped us and gave us some tude for even wanting to reach the sand. we were like "uhh...." and had a pretty silly convo with them. in the end, we made a game plan to sneak on the beach later this week; but for now, we had to leave anyway so we just gave up on those dreams. those old ladies may have won the battle, but they did NOT win the war! ;P
next we went to mt soledad, which was BEAUTIFUL. there's this huge white cross at the top and the view is superb! we looked out at all of the city lights and had group prayer and the groups kept getting smaller as our prayer topics got more specific. it was a neat experience. in the end i had a pretty good chat w/kali that lasted for a good while.
on the way home, abe played his guitar and everyone in our van sang different songs - it was hilarious because in some of the songs, all of a sudden people just like stopped singing cause none of us knew the words. haha so we just like half hummed/half made up words until we got to the chorus that we all knew. soooooo funny. =]
tomorrow angela (who is black) and i are planning to go get prunes from the store. just cause. angela is awesome - she's not very hood, but i'm slowly bringin out her inner gangsta.
you know how i do.
now i'm back in me room, covered in sand and dirt, but ready for bed. ima run the boardwalk again tomarrah, so why shower right? right.
i think that's all that happened today....idk it's hard to capture every detail. but i'm getting closer to all of these people and it's great how we can encourage each other in our walks with the Lord =] very exciting!
gute nacht!
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