Let's see, last week was spring "break." I put break in quotes because it was anything but a break! Maybe from work, but my parents were here and we just went went went. They flew in on Tuesday and that night was a laser tag fundraiser I had organized-- which made over $800! That was split between me and another guy. It was a lot of fun and clearly a huge success. Wednesday we went to a Cubs-Rangers spring training game and laid out at the pool. Jeff made dinner that night, oh and he made french toast that morning since this has become a staple for my out of town guests to experience! Thursday we went to Sedona which was a good time. The red rocks are beautiful and the shops were neat.
Side note: all over up there is this little Indian character for sale, as decoration, just everywhere. So all say I was in search of the right thing with him on it, his name is Kokopelli. I finally find something. We get in the car to leave and I look up the story on Kokopelli since he is obviously such a big deal...turns out there are multiple meanings for him. The most prominent is that he's a fertility god!!!!!! Whoops! I spent my whole day searching out a fertility god! Luckily there are more meanings such as that he chases away winter and brings spring. (More Kokopelli stories to come).
Friday I arranged with a friend of mine to go out to Luke Air Force Base since my dad was in the AF years ago and thought it might be cool. It was awesome. I've been out there on a tour before but for some reason it's just always so cool. I guess because we civilians cannot get to it regularly maybe? Anyway, my friend Todd is an F-16 pilot and showed us around his squadron and told us all about the jets, and we got to look inside them and everything. It was interesting. After that we went to the White Tanks, which is a park here with trails into the mountains. We walked out there for a bit and got some cactus pictures.
Another side note: Just 2.5 hours after we left Luke AFB (which is an F-16 pilot training base) a jet went down. Luckily it wasn't Todd, but the 26 year old pilot did not eject and the wreckage, although very little left of the jet, was found later that day in the mountains.
Saturday we went to Apache Junction. There is is this whole "trail" you can drive and has all these little shops and restaurants through the mountains and around some lakes. Our first stop was a little museum and a church that used to be used in Western movies all the time. Turns out there were tons of movies filmed in Apache Junction. After that we went to a ghost town called Goldfield. Everything there was exactly what the original settlers had left behind. It was kinda cool if you could really imagine what it had been like. They had the stores & restaurant (saloon) set up and working as gift shops and things. I would have preferred it to be more like museum quality where you just saw how they left it, but either way it was cool and made me wish, like I always have, that I was living in the late 1800's or early 1900's. We also went on a mine tour. You walk down these stairs and onto a simple elevator and our guide just walked us through and told us what the people did down there and how their tools worked etc. It was cool. Oh-- time for the other Kokopelli story-- so a woman in the shop there told us the "real" story. Kokopelli was a trader who came up through the west from South America trading feathers. He would always play his flute to let the tribes know he was coming in peace (all the pictures & figures have him playing a flute). The story is that if the men of the tribes weren't there he would sleep with the women! And that he was also very well endowed! Obviously as time went on and the story was passed around he evolved into a fertility god that brought women babies, when in reality he was just a slut who gave women babies by knocking them up! Nowadays though he is pretty much just a symbol of the southwest. So that's that. Eases the mind on the whole fertility thing, but now I just have a slutty south american on some pottery in my bedroom! hah
Sunday we went to eat Margaritaville for lunch and went to Cabella's (sporting/hunting store). That night we went out to eat again and they left Monday morning, only for me to return to work (yuck). So, as I was saying, I'm exhausted!
Saturday night my mom & I also cleaned Jeff's apartment. Long story short-- Jeff is helping me with my math class (he's a math teacher) and in return I clean his apartment. Also his daughter has been sick-- high fevers, not eating, took her to the ER a couple times, after a week they finally admitted her to the hospital with pneumonia, 80% of her lung filled with fluid, surgery to get that fluid out, on oxygen--just crazy stuff, SO we thought it would be nice to clean the place up and do all the laundry. So we did. She's still in the hospital, will be for a good couple of weeks but finally started eating and her lungs have been looking ok.
Tuesday night is our bowling night and Ivan had an awesome night!! First let me say, we are not good bowlers! We bowl for fun and have been in last place the entire year (since August). Not anymore! We arrived Tuesday to find that we had moved up to places! And we were playing a VERY good team, who we ended up beating 2 of 3 games...which means we will move up again most likely next week! AND, Ivan bowled a 232! He did awesome. It was so fun. And the team we played was just a really fun team as well.
Last night (Wednesday) I had to go take a test to get a food handler's card so I can work the beer tent at a spring training game for a fundraiser some of us TNT folk are doing. After that I went to the hospital to see Jeff & his daughter, which was just sad! She's doing alright but children's hospitals in general are just kinda sad. Nobody wants to see sick kids, plus you could just see how weak she was, but she's on her way :)
Side note: Fundraising is going A-M-A-Z-I-N-G-L-Y well! I have had a wonderful response to the letters I sent out (THANK YOU EVERYONE!), laser tag was a huge success, and most importantly, Schmid Electic (my sister & brother-in-law's company) provided me with a corporate sponsorship! BIG BIG BIG THANKS TO SCHMID ELECTRIC for supporting LLS!!! So I don't have much fundraising left that is required and I will be able to focus on the training.
Today (Thursday) my friend Becky is flying in for the weekend. She's a HUGE Cubs fan so she bought tickets to a spring training game on Saturday. So we'll be hanging out, drinking, and watching baseball all weekend. Sunday right when she flies out I'll be heading over to another game to serve beer to raise money (which just MIGHT meet my minimum requirement of $4200...I will let you know!).
After that...I plan on sleeping!!!!!! And getting back to training hard core. With my parents here & Becky coming I've missed some practices and haven't been on the bike much. Can we say shooting self in foot? I'll get there though. This is not the end of the world :)
What else...geez I feel like I've been typing for weeks already... today I found out that my flight to Africa will have outlets so I can plug in my computer on flight! You have NO idea how happy that makes me! Normally I could barely get through a movie without the battery dying so knowing that I can plug in on flight eases my mind SOOOOOO much. I'll be able to watch movies (although the plane has TV screens in the seats already) and work on homework (yes I'll be finishing up a class my first 2 weeks in Africa, boo! And they start back up THE day I get back, yuck!) I can only take 4 weeks off before it starts messing with financial aid. And the thing I bought to charge with will let me charge my IPod while I'm on the computer. Handy stuff! I also ordered new headphones with a microphone so while I'm in Africa I can talk to everyone back home for free through my computer. Very excited about that. Only 79 days til I leave I think!
Alrighty I'm out.
