Monday, May 21, 2012

25 before 25

Guys.  I turn 25 years old this year.  And I am freaking out about it a little bit.  And I know people will tell me that 25 isn't even old, blah blah blah blah.  But it feels old.  I have a whole list of things that I want to do before I turn a quarter of a century old.  That gives me less than 4 months to get these all checked off.  Yes, I know some of them will not be possible, so those ones will just transfer over to my 30 before 30 list.

So...who wants to help make this the BEST. SUMMER. EVER?  :)

1. Sleep until noon
2. Run in a race
        FINISHED!  And have two more coming up.  Bahhhh I still hate running.
3. Pay off my car
4. Jump off the high dive
5. Kiss a total stranger
6. Give up Diet Coke
7. Teach myself to like avocados
8. Go skinny dipping (technically I have already done this, but it was more skinny run-into-the-water-and-run-back-out, so it needs to be on there again)
9. Save $500 dollars (apart from my regular savings) and go on a shopping spree
10. Participate in "Ellen's Dance Dare" and submit it to her show
11. See Garth Brooks in concert
12. Go to a professional baseball game
         GO BRAVES!
13. Make a dress that I will love to wear
14. Go to a formal event that requires me to get really dressed up
15. Lose 20 more pounds
16. Visit a state I haven't been to before
         Colorado?  Check!  But I do want to visit more.
17. Eat funnel cake at a fair
18. Go an entire day without eating one single piece of candy/sweets
19. Learn to waterski
20. Make 5 of the recipes I have pinned on Pinterest
21. Go paragliding
         Coolest thing of my life.  So glad I did it.
22. Go on one date during every month of the summer (doesn't seem like a lot but I NEVER date)
23. Make 10 blankets to donate to a children's hospital
24. Learn to play a song on the guitar
25. Be happy with my body and who I am - don't let other's opinion of me bring me down

*Honorary goal: make a scene in a public place

Ok.  Now be a dear and help me cross of these things in my life.  :)

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

#ihaterunning

Notice the title of the post?  I think #hashtagging is cool.  I don't do it often because I don't want to be one of those people who hashtags everything.  Because that is not cool.  Ok.  Moving on.

See the other part of the title?  The "I hate running" part?  That's because I do.  My race was on Saturday.  I for real almost died.  It was fun to be able to run with my girls, but I hated every second of it.  The race was a relay, with each person running two legs ranging from 5.84 miles to 7.1 miles.  Thank goodness for Janae who was willing to run my other leg for me.  That means I was left with only a 6 mile leg to run.  She is champ and totally my hero.

I think I kinda psyched myself out for this run, because I felt like I was going to die 2 miles into the leg.  2 miles is nothing for me.  I do almost 3 on my easy days.  I think part of the problem is that I had no reference points.  I had no idea how far I had gone or how much further I had to go.  In my training, I know exactly how far I had gone, and I think that helped.  But during the race, I was going and I was thinking that I had run for like 45 minutes, but really I had only gone like 4 blocks - which is nothing.  It was frustrating.  And I was sloooow.  I was almost the slowest person to run the leg.  But I actually ended up being faster than I had originally thought I had done it in.  And you know what?  It's ok.  It is ok that I had to walk a significant distance.  It is ok that I almost cried when I thought it was never going to end.  You know why?  Because I did it.  If you could see how far I have come from a year ago, you would think it is ok too.  :)

Alright.  Here are some pictures.  So glad that I got to run this with Rose, Brit, Nat, and Janae.  You girls are the besssst!



These are our super sweet car decorations.  Yes.  I decorated a window specifically for myself.  Because I am that awesome.

All of us girlies before the race.

 My pre-race picture.

Coming in.  Don't let this picture fool you...I walked a significant amount and then ran the last little bit.  :)

With my sissy pants right after I got done running.

 About to cross the finish line! 

52 miles in 9 hours.  I would say that is a success.

 My medal!

Now I just gotta start preparing for the Dirty Dash....  AAAAAAAAH.






Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Adventures

This past weekend was quite the little adventure for me.  There were parts that were AMAZING.  And then there were parts that make me cringe when I think of them.  But it was definitely an adventure.

My bestie, Koby, and I headed to Denver to see the Atlanta Braves take on the Colorado Rockies.  Koby is a huuuuuuuge Braves fan, which makes me a fan by association (but I am now a real fan and have done my research to back it up).  I had to get up at 4:15 AM on Saturday morning (should be illegal).  We left at 5:30 to pick up a cat that we were dropping off at a friend's parents' house in Colorado.  The cat was supposed to be drugged and sleep the whole way - it did not.  In fact, there was one time she got out of her carrier and almost jumped on my head while I was driving.  Scared the shiz out of me.  But I'm sure it gave the other drivers on the road a nice little show to watch.
*Side note: the cat's name is Astrid.  Every time I hear that name, I think of the episode of The Office when Jan has her baby and names it Astrid.  But Michael thinks she names her Ass-turd.  That is what I called the cat the whole way to it's home.
After the longest drive ever, we finally made it to Denver and got ready for the game.  We left significantly early to make sure we could watch warm ups.  We did.  Parking cost me 20 effing dollars. Not so cool.  At the game, I found my looooooovely friend, Nate (he is the coolest and I miss him).  The couple sitting next to me were from Blackfoot, Idaho so we had a nice little chat about that.  The two guys sitting next to Koby were friendly but I couldn't stand to look at them because they had chew all up in their teeth and kept spitting all over the ground.  I almost threw up.

The game was way fun.  The Braves came back from being down by 5 and won 13-9.  We had a rain/hail delay for like an hour and half.  And it was FREEZING.  The rain wasn't supposed to move in until Sunday morning or something, so we were both in shorts and flip flops.  I thought I might die from hypothermia.  But I didn't.
Besties at the Braves game!
 Found Nate!  Love him.  So glad I got to see him.
 3 of the coolest people at the game!
Chipper Jones!  Love some baseball booty!

After the game, we went on a little adventure to find something to eat.  We FINALLY found an Applebees.  I was surprised to see how many restaurants were closed at 11:30...we weren't even in Utah!

Sunday morning, we woke up after sleeping in (much needed and deserved).  Koby and I went and picked up Nate and Kenny to take them to the airport, then we headed on our way.  This is where the trouble started.  We stopped to fill up my car and I noticed that my battery light came on.  So I called my dad and he sent me to an auto store to have the battery checked out.  Welp, it wasn't the battery...it was the alternator.  Definitely not what I wanted to hear.  It was a Sunday afternoon and I couldn't find a mechanic to fix it for me.  I talked to one mechanic who was sooooooo nice.  He said that the alternator wasn't all the way out and there was a chance I could make it home or a chance I could make it 5 miles down the road.  After talking to my dad, we decided to risk it and get a little closer to home...BAD IDEA.

We had been driving for almost an hour when all of my gages went off.  I was afraid I would lose my steering, so I pulled off on the nearest exit.  We were about 30 miles outside of Cheyenne and had to call a wrecker to come tow us into town.  He took us to a hotel then dropped off my car at the Ford dealership...another bad idea.  We stayed at this crazy ghetto Motel 6 with some creeper neighbors and ordered some awful Chinese food.  I made sure my boss at work knew I wouldn't be in the next day.
Koby was trying to keep me positive...it wasn't working so well.  Poor Walter.  :)

The next morning, at 7:21, I get a phone call from the dealership asking me what was wrong.  I wasn't upset because I thought they would be done in a couple of hours.  WRONG.  At 11:45, I called and they hadn't even started on anything.  Checkout for our hotel was noon.  So we had to go sit at the dealership.  They told me it was going to be 800 effing dollars to fix and that they couldn't fix it until the next morning.  I almost crapped my pants.  My dad was pissed that they hadn't done anything and were going to charge so much, so he had us towed to another mechanic.  Then freaking Ford charged me over a hundred dollars to "diagnose" the problem - the problem that had already been diagnosed and I had told them what to do to fix it.  I was a mess.  Fortunately, the other mechanic place was so nice and worked really hard to make sure we could leave that day.  But after all of the towing, having Ford rape me of all of my money, the hotel, and getting the other mechanic paid, it still cost me about $900.  I sure don't have that kind of extra money.  I was way upset about it because the mechanic outside of Denver was only charging me about $350.  I'm trying not to think about it... :)

We finally left the awful town of Cheyenne at 3:30 that afternoon.  And got home at 10 pm that night.  It was sooooooo nice to sleep in my own bed again and not have to pay to stay somewhere.  And know that if anything goes wrong with my car, I have someone here who can fix it without stripping me of my life savings and my credit score.

All in all, it was quite the adventure.  I could have used an extra day of relaxation...one that didn't cost me almost a thousand dollars plus my pay from work.  But that's life.  I'm suuuuuuper glad I was there with Koby.  She helped me keep sane.

Moral of the story - always make sure you have $900 just laying around in case of car problems.  :)