This one time, when I finally figured out how to golf…
This one time, when I had race cars come at me from all different directions...
This one time, when I really thought a tornado was going to get me…
This one time when I finally got to taste bootleg rye whiskey…
This one time, when our hotel flooded…
This one time, when my life was so not average!
The weekend started out in a relatively average way with movie night with some co-workers. Saturday morning came early but it was still an average drive to the golf course in an average little Iowa town 3 hours away. The golf tournament was also pretty average until a friend started giving me tips, suddenly it wasn’t average anymore! I learned years ago the sure fire way to hit the ball straight almost every time, but now I can hit it straighter and further with a lot more consistency. I also improved my short game and may finally be able to resemble a real golfer! When I join the Women’s PGA, I’m bring B along as my coach!
After golfing we hopped in the car and headed off to an even more average, smaller Iowa town to the figure 8 races which are run by the local chapter of the young professionals group I belong to. I have never been to a race before and I had no idea what I was about to experience! As visiting State Board members, we were immediately escorted out onto the platform in the middle of the track to watch the races. If you have never been to a figure 8 race, you’re probably wondering how this could be all that big of an experience. Well let me draw you a picture. The track itself is really not that big, the width of the lane is about the size of a small gravel road or a bit wider than a regular single lane of an interstate. The entire track is mud, this time it was pretty packed down and kind of dryish, but I was told it is usually really muddy and slippery. From one end of the figure 8 to the other is a quarter mile and the distance is a half mile per lap. During each race, there are 8 cars on the track I believe, don’t quote me on that though! They are slipping and sliding all over the place as they speed around this mess. When the first race started, my eyes had to have been the size of dinner plates! I didn’t know which way to look; I couldn’t take it all in fast enough! All I keep thinking was, OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD! I was sure they would slam into each other any second or one would go up off the track and take out our little wooden platform that I stood in the middle of turning in circles trying to see everything at once. It was a total sensory overload!
After the races were shut down abruptly due to a storm coming in, we got off the track to find out that it wasn’t just a severe thunderstorm but rather a tornado warning. We didn’t notice, but off in the distance the sky was as dark as midnight and the wind started picking up fast. We decided to head over to the hotel to check in and see what was going on. As we were pulling out of the parking lot, the police officer that was directing traffic was shouting at the top of his lungs “TAKE COVER!” We sped up and raced down the road to the hotel and around back and came to a stop in the middle of the parking lot. My friend tells us to get out and as I get out of the car, the dust from the parking lot is blowing up into my face, I turn to my friend and tell her to get out of the car. There may have been a few explicit words in there too as my panic set in and I didn't want to leave my friend behind to park the car. I fear what I may have seen if I had looked up at that moment. We ran into the hotel and straight down the stairs to the basement. I was sure the windows were going to blow in any second and we were all going to be taken off to Oz with Toto. I tried desperately to call my brother so that someone would know where I was at since really no one, except those I was with, knew that I was in this little town in the middle of no where! After an hour or so of some intense storms we sat back and breathed finally feeling safe that we weren’t going to meet the Lollipop Gang any time too soon.
As we sat in the basement of the hotel, the owners were handing out beers and we all were starting to relax and getting to know the other guests. One of my friends, not a beer drinker, passed on the beers they keep offering and when they asked what she drank, she casually mentioned that her drink of choice was Templeton Rye (a rye whiskey made in rural Iowa). Awhile later one of the owner’s comes over to us and asks who the Templeton drinkers are and we both step forward. He lead us into the kitchen and pulled out a bottle of Captain Morgan. At first I was wondering what he was doing; maybe he’d already had a few too many beers? He proceeded to pour both of us a glass and handed it over, I casually sniffed the amber liquid in my glass and smiled when I realized this really was Templeton, but not just any Templeton, it was the kind I had never had but heard legends of. The reason the owner kept this particular Templeton in a Captain bottle was because it was never meant to be sold, it’s the bootleg stuff that you only get if you know the right person! This is the kind of stuff that you would have once upon a time, had to have known the secret knock to get any.
After the highs and lows of a long day, I finally hit the hay around 12:30am only to be woken up an hour later by the sounds of frantic movements in the room next door and in the hallway. I got up to see what was going on and found the owner and one of my friends grabbing buckets and starting to bail out the furnace room. Before long, water was seeping into the basement from all the outside walls. A guest room at one end of the basement had water coming out from under the door and when we finally woke up the occupants, the room had over 2 inches of water in it! We helped the owners bail water, hall what we could up stairs or piled it up high and did everything we could to save what we could. There were several moments of “oh god, what’s the point;” but we kept going. Finally around 4am we made a make shift bed for ourselves on the floor of the lobby and got a few hours of much needed sleep. In the morning, we were glad to find that the owners and their family had gotten a little sleep as well and that the basement was free of standing water! We were all so happy we had been there to help them save their property!
Later that day, when I finally got home, I crashed quickly and slept for nearly 14 hours! We had been through so much with such little time to decompress. Oh how I loved my bed that night!
I can now say though, that my life became a lot less average after this past weekend! Oh holy buckets! If I ever say that my life is dull again, please remind me of this particular 24 hour time period; yeah that wasn’t dull or boring at all!!!!
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Thursday, June 24, 2010
From Time to Time
From time to time I get an itch to write and obviously I haven't had that itch for quite while since I haven't blogged anything since the beginning of the year. My friend Cellarmistress reminds me periodically that I really should write more so here you go friend! My life really hasn't become any less average but now that the monstrous amount of snow that we got this winter is gone and summer is finally here, maybe things will get better!
If you know me...at all...you know that guys are on my mind pretty much all the time! Today is no exception sadly. But lets not talk about the newest guy in my life that is sure to break my heart soon, lets talk about ALL of them!
When I was younger, I just went with the cliche that all men are jerks and only if you are lucky will you find one of the few good ones. Yes Disney warped me as a kid and I really thought my Prince Charming would suddenly fall into my lap so there really was no point in finding good in all the other guys out there. I think this may be one of the reasons I never dated much in college, I didn't believe guys could be good. Lets face it, in high school and college, I had very few guy friends and the ones I did have weren't all that close of friends or I called them a friend simply because I had a huge crush on them. The first would be Fro Boy. We will call him this because when he came to visit my freshman year in college, he had grown his white boy hair out and it looked strangely like a fro! Fro Boy and I had been "friends" since my freshman year in high school when we were in theater together. Over the course of my high school career, I crushed on him on and off mostly because he was nice to me. This may sound odd and some of my friends may wonder why I always fall for the guys that just want to be my friend. Well here's the answer, guys weren't nice to me in high school and no, I did not date.
Now, I'm not going to get into all the guys that were jerks to me; lets keep this to the good guys. So back to Fro Boy; he really was one of the good guys. We hung out all through high school and when he graduated (he was a year ahead of me) and went out of state to college, we started emailing and actually became better friends. When he was home for breaks, we spent quite a bit of time together and he even came and hung out with me and the girls I was nannying for in the summers. When I went off to college to another state, we saw each other even less but emailed even more. Midway through my freshman year, he left school and moved back home so we saw each other a bit more when I made it home. I was in a sorority in college and we had a spring formal and I needed a date so I called him up. He came down and this is sadly where our story ends and I admit, I'm to blame. How you may ask, I was a jerk. I did not pay a lot of attention to him and even went out of my way to avoid him. Why, I can't tell you, and yes I do regret my behavior that weekend. After he left on Sunday morning we only saw each other once and never really talked again. For this, I am sorry. My mom has kept me somewhat updated on him and he has gone through some pretty rough times but from what she tells me, he's doing pretty good now! I wouldn't know for myself though since he never accepted my friend request on Facebook.
In college I met another one of the good guys that we will call GI Joe. GI Joe was in the National Guard which is really the only reason I give him this name. GI Joe was there for me during my sophomore year when I was going through a lot of crap in my life. He was there for me when I sometimes felt like I had no one else. My roommates were beyond jerks, my dad went through a quadruple bypass and life in general was unexciting. GI Joe was actually dating one of my sorority sisters so I knew he was off limits which was good for me because I could only think of him as a friend. We had a standing breakfast date every M/W/F after our 8am class and lunch with my sisters and his frat brothers on a regular basis. When I invited one of his brothers to go to our semi formal in the fall, he was the one I went to at the end of the night when my date didn't seem to want to hang out with me much now that all his brothers were around at the after party at their house. My date may have decided a few days earlier though that we weren't going to go anywhere when I ran into him on campus and called him GI Joe rather than his name! Yeah, that wasn't a good move on my part but he knew we were friends and knew I was coming out of lunch with GI Joe. He never said anything about it, but I think that really bothered him. It really was an accident though! My date and I stayed acquaintances but GI Joe and I stayed pretty good friends until he graduated and we lost contact.
After college, I moved to "the big city" and after a lonely year, I joined a young professionals group and started making friends right and left. At first, I mostly hung out with the guys, which if you haven't gathered by now, was very odd for me. This is the point in my life that I started opening up my eyes to the good guys, that I now realize, are all around! Over the next few days, I'm going to focus my energies on the good guys and sharing them with you because they deserve to be shared with the world! On a selfish side, I'm hoping this will also help take my mind off of the new guy too!
If you know me...at all...you know that guys are on my mind pretty much all the time! Today is no exception sadly. But lets not talk about the newest guy in my life that is sure to break my heart soon, lets talk about ALL of them!
When I was younger, I just went with the cliche that all men are jerks and only if you are lucky will you find one of the few good ones. Yes Disney warped me as a kid and I really thought my Prince Charming would suddenly fall into my lap so there really was no point in finding good in all the other guys out there. I think this may be one of the reasons I never dated much in college, I didn't believe guys could be good. Lets face it, in high school and college, I had very few guy friends and the ones I did have weren't all that close of friends or I called them a friend simply because I had a huge crush on them. The first would be Fro Boy. We will call him this because when he came to visit my freshman year in college, he had grown his white boy hair out and it looked strangely like a fro! Fro Boy and I had been "friends" since my freshman year in high school when we were in theater together. Over the course of my high school career, I crushed on him on and off mostly because he was nice to me. This may sound odd and some of my friends may wonder why I always fall for the guys that just want to be my friend. Well here's the answer, guys weren't nice to me in high school and no, I did not date.
Now, I'm not going to get into all the guys that were jerks to me; lets keep this to the good guys. So back to Fro Boy; he really was one of the good guys. We hung out all through high school and when he graduated (he was a year ahead of me) and went out of state to college, we started emailing and actually became better friends. When he was home for breaks, we spent quite a bit of time together and he even came and hung out with me and the girls I was nannying for in the summers. When I went off to college to another state, we saw each other even less but emailed even more. Midway through my freshman year, he left school and moved back home so we saw each other a bit more when I made it home. I was in a sorority in college and we had a spring formal and I needed a date so I called him up. He came down and this is sadly where our story ends and I admit, I'm to blame. How you may ask, I was a jerk. I did not pay a lot of attention to him and even went out of my way to avoid him. Why, I can't tell you, and yes I do regret my behavior that weekend. After he left on Sunday morning we only saw each other once and never really talked again. For this, I am sorry. My mom has kept me somewhat updated on him and he has gone through some pretty rough times but from what she tells me, he's doing pretty good now! I wouldn't know for myself though since he never accepted my friend request on Facebook.
In college I met another one of the good guys that we will call GI Joe. GI Joe was in the National Guard which is really the only reason I give him this name. GI Joe was there for me during my sophomore year when I was going through a lot of crap in my life. He was there for me when I sometimes felt like I had no one else. My roommates were beyond jerks, my dad went through a quadruple bypass and life in general was unexciting. GI Joe was actually dating one of my sorority sisters so I knew he was off limits which was good for me because I could only think of him as a friend. We had a standing breakfast date every M/W/F after our 8am class and lunch with my sisters and his frat brothers on a regular basis. When I invited one of his brothers to go to our semi formal in the fall, he was the one I went to at the end of the night when my date didn't seem to want to hang out with me much now that all his brothers were around at the after party at their house. My date may have decided a few days earlier though that we weren't going to go anywhere when I ran into him on campus and called him GI Joe rather than his name! Yeah, that wasn't a good move on my part but he knew we were friends and knew I was coming out of lunch with GI Joe. He never said anything about it, but I think that really bothered him. It really was an accident though! My date and I stayed acquaintances but GI Joe and I stayed pretty good friends until he graduated and we lost contact.
After college, I moved to "the big city" and after a lonely year, I joined a young professionals group and started making friends right and left. At first, I mostly hung out with the guys, which if you haven't gathered by now, was very odd for me. This is the point in my life that I started opening up my eyes to the good guys, that I now realize, are all around! Over the next few days, I'm going to focus my energies on the good guys and sharing them with you because they deserve to be shared with the world! On a selfish side, I'm hoping this will also help take my mind off of the new guy too!
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