Midnight. Middle of the week. I'm home alone, fast asleep in my bed. My phone rings...finally waking me up after the 15th call from a number I do not recognize. I silence it, not fully aware of what's going on. Then the doorbell rings...several times. I'm startled awake and my heart starts pounding as I try to put two-and-two together. I want to curl up under the covers and ignore it...but curiosity gets the better of me. So, armed with absolutely nothing, I creep down the stairs and slowly open the front door. No one. Wait. My eyes adjust slightly to the night and I see a dark shadow standing in the middle of the street holding a cardboard sign. Common sense would say I run back into the house, lock the door, and call the cops. However, common sense doesn't work the way it should after midnight. I take a couple steps forward only to see...MAX?!?
Yes. My boyfriend, whom I was certain was thousands of miles away, had hitchhiked all the way to San Antonio to surprise me. He mentioned hitchhiking before, but I never thought he was serious about it. Besides, I'm pretty sure it's illegal. Regardless...it was the BEST surprise I could have hoped for. He spent the next few weeks here and we had many more adventures together (of which is a completely different story). However, when the time came for him to leave for Mexico, I refused to let him hitchhike. I wanted him back alive. So...he bought a car...maybe not so much to please me as much as he wanted to teach himself to be a mechanic...which is bound to happen when you pay $425.00 for a vehicle. And mechanic he did become.
After making in to Mexico and back...with only some minor repairs...we took the green machine up to Dallas. We made it! ...but not without a little help from AAA...and a few hours in the Auto Zone parking lot where Max fixed the car...
And I did what any helpful, worried girlfriend would do: ate truffles.
I don't know what I should be more uneasy about...the fact that my boyfriend is a hitchhiker...or the fact that he's now driving around in a car that he calls "the 4-2-5 ride".
I wish I could say it was the crazy Christmas rush at the airport. OR the 2 hour drive from Council to Boise on slick, snowy, foggy roads. OR the huge line at security. Unfortunately none of that would be true. The truth is this: I read the wrong line. The flight I THOUGHT I was two hours early for was long gone by the time I got to Boise. So...50 dollars and 6 hours later...I will spend this day...the WHOLE day, in the airport. Thank heavens for free wi-fi. I will take this opportunity for a much-needed blog update.
(Oh and is it so bad that I hope the flight I was SUPPOSED to be on crashes so that I don’t feel so bad about missing it? Ha okay that’s awful. I would never wish that. I’m actually secretly excited to see if I can keep myself entertained all day long with nothing to do! But I DO wish I didn’t have to be at the hospital at 7 tomorrow morning…this is going to be a very short night.)
Well…I just spent the last 6 days in Council, and it was FABULOUS. A little cold, yes, but I can handle anything for a week. I couldn’t get enough time off closer to Christmas, so I came home a couple weeks early to celebrate my birthday and Christmas. We did all the things I love:
Chinese food. (Although my stomache rarely agrees)
Gingerbread houses and hot cocoa.
Children's Choir concert in Cadwell...Oh how I miss it.
And of course...snow. Lot's of snow.
(Wi-fi too slow to upload snow pic...guess it's time to quit.)
Salt Lake now...next stop, Austin. Now how to get from Austin to San Antonio...?
Well...if you haven't guessed by the 2 month lack of postings...I got a job! And OH what a job it is. I have been working for Southwest General Hospital for about a month and half now and I love it! ...most of the time. I decided, while trying to weigh my options, to start in the department that scared me the most. After all, what better place to learn than in the middle of all the action...in the ER?!?
There have certainly been times I question my reasoning, but so far I haven't killed anybody, and have managed to not be yelled at too much by my patients OR the doctors. However, I continue to keep my fingers crossed every day.
A few things I love about the ER.
1. No bed baths. Don't get me wrong...I like a good bed bath just as much as the next person, but I am happy to say I no longer give them.
2. If your patient is obnoxious...no worries...they will be gone in an hour anyway. I mean out of the ER of course, not dead.
3. Every day is like a reality T.V. show...or a Spanish soap opera...I'm not sure which yet.
A few things I hate about the ER.
1. Emergencies that are NOT emergencies. I'm sorry that you have pink eye, but come back when there is a three inch nail protruding from your pink eye. ha okay that is a little harsh...but you get the point.
2. Messing with pre-diagnosed patients is risky business. I will be amazed if I don't end up with shingles before Christmas.
3. I'm convinced my co-workers think I have no personality. In all reality, I'm just trying to stay above water and don't have time for trivial things like conversation...or humor.
Okay, there may be SOME truth to all of that...but the real truth is that the ER is great. I go home every day feeling like I accomplished something meaningful. I work with some AMAZING people who are so talented and I hope every day to become more and more like them.
Meanwhile, I have been enjoying life in Texas. I LOVE that it is still 80+ degrees and it's November!! I love my roommate Holly who sits and talks with me in the hallway late at night when we both have to get up super early. I love that there are traffic signs that say "Don't mess with Texas". I love that I can get freshly made tortillas at the grocery store every day. I love that it seems to be someone's birthday every weekend. I love that there is a jazz radio station I can listen to in my car, and live jazz on the Riverwalk every night of the week. I love it...and so much more, but it's time for bed. Yes, I'm going to bed at 9:30 on a Friday night...but somebody's got to save lives on the weekend, right?
It's on to week two here in San Antonio!! ...and I am still unemployed. Don't get me wrong...it is not necessarily regrettable. I have made a lot of progress and feel like I will be employed in the very near future. And-I have met some amazing people (my favorite being the missionary couple over-seeing the employment center that I have gotten to know very well. They are my best friends and I must not have made too bad of an impression on them either considering they tried to hook me up with their son...ha). But. For now, I am going to enjoy my last days of freedom. So, what does one do in a new and somewhat strange city? SIGHT-SEE! I know, this is what tourists are supposed to do...but as a new resident, I feel like I should see all there is to see...so I can at least show people around when I finally convince them to come visit me. First stop: the Alamo-number one tourist destination in Texas.
The last time I was here, I was 16. Now I am 22 and SO much more mature and actually interested in things like...history. I thought it would be a lot more exciting this time. And...it wasn't. Don't let the cheesy smile fool you. I mean, there IS some amazing history at this site...but I think once is good enough. However, I did meet this guy in the gift shop...
Apparently he is a famous UFC fighter (Nate "the Rock" Quarry or something like that)...but since I unfortunately don't follow UFC, I had no idea who he was...ah well.
I was then directed to check out the other missions in San Antonio, and these are definitely worth seeing. There is some amazing history at these as well, and bonus-NO TOURISTS. Just beautiful (and somewhat eerie) chapels.
After parking in what I believe was a private parking lot right by the church, I got out and explored the grounds. It was gorgeous. All of these missions are set a few miles apart and all were home/refuge/sanctuary to hundreds of people around the same time as the Alamo (1836 I think). Each is set up as a fortress with cannons and other weapons ready for war.
This is my face...looking through a cannon hole. ha ha
Oh, and this is the amazing tree whose trunk was literally swimming in and out of the ground.
(Julie-this pose is for you...thumbs up to the duckies)
The absolute coolest things I have seen so far in San Antonio though are these. Now, I don't know exactly what they are or what they are doing out there in this random field. But they are MASSIVE. And extremely curious...with only this little sign to explain...
You would think someone who could make these...um...women...would be able to make a better sign. Regardless...I googled the guys name and it turns out they were made by Tom Otterness...a famous artist out of New York. I stopped reading right there. I like not knowing why on earth these creatures exist.
I finally did it. I moved myself to Texas. And when I say "I moved myself", that's exactly what I mean. After trying to convince several people to road trip it down with me (to no avail because apparently school and work come first), I trudged the 27 some hours to my new home.
The trip started in Council, Idaho--had a brief break in Utah where I saw family, old roommates, friends from BYU-I who had decided to try out Provo, and Leigh and Jon-to give them the wieners and syrup from Max (Oh and where I got my oil changed only to have my car smell funny and make weird noises, then to bring it back where they realized they had forgot to put the oil cap back on and hot oil was spewing out all over my engine...that's good. They thanked me heavily for being so observant and bringing it back in, saving me-and them-much trouble).
Now, normally, I am perfectly content just listening to music, or my own thoughts, during car trips. But 27 hours?? My thoughts would go crazy after 10. So, I decided to make my time useful by listening to highly motivating, somewhat random books on CD. I was going to be THE most determined person in Texas when I arrived.
The first book I listened to...
Highly motivating. All about life's lessons seen through the eyes of a dying man. What a way to start a road trip...depressed, but SO ready to start living.
Book number two...
Okay so this one doesn't make much sense, I know. 1. I do not have a husband. 2. Dr. Laura, really??
However, she makes me laugh with her incredibly blunt opinions and I have heard this was a good book and got a little curious. There were several things I learned from this one. First, apparently it is abuse to say your husband looks better without facial hair...hm. Second, that man is a very simple creature, "who needs only direct communication, respect, appreciation, food, and good loving". And third, that if he gets all these things, you-and he-will be happy.
By the time this book was over-I had made it the Albuquerque where I planned on getting a hotel room and spending the night. However, it was only 6pm so I decided instead to find a grocery store and get some fresh fruits and veggies because the thought of fast food made me sick to my stomach after all the Canadian chocolate that was so readily available and shamelessly eaten up to this point. However, after driving around downtown Albuquerque for almost an hour, and finding NOTHING, I decided people in New Mexico must not eat food...not real food anyway. I did see the college campus during my wanderings and it was actually really cool. Maybe I'll go there someday. Well, after consulting with a nice gas jockey, I decided to continue my trip to Roswell, and see if THEY believed in grocery stores. So, three hours later, I arrived in Roswell, New Mexico-home of the most alien sightings...and the most insane tourists searching for little green men. I was a little worried at first, but then I realized they were all so welcoming...
And SO cute.
And I found a grocery store!! But. I bought raspberries that were a little on the moldy side and they made me sick for the rest of the trip. Also, because I could not bring myself to pay 100 dollars for a hotel room where I would only sleep a few hours...I slept in my car. It was incredibly uncomfortable-but totally worth it. Who sleeps in their car in an alien town?? Don't tell my mom.
In the morning, it was off the San Antonio, and I was so thankful that the night was over and I hadn't been abducted. The next book was by Zig Ziglar, whom I have come to absolutely love. SO entertaining.
This is another of those, "does this really apply...?" But it totally did! After all, we are all salesmen (or women), in some way or another, right? He definitely kept me from falling asleep on this leg.
The last book was a little less exciting, but oh-so-interesting.
I recommend this one to...well, anyone. It reiterates the fact that what you think is what you do and what you do is who you are. I totally agreed with everything this man wrote...now I just have to apply it.
Well, this book was just coming to a close when I finally reached San Antonio where it started POURING rain as I started to unpack my things from my car into my adorable new house where I met my awesome new roommate, Holly.
So, all motivated (and still slightly ill from the raspberries), I started my Texan journey...now I just need to find a job.
What is youth for if not to have crazy foreign adventures in far away countries like...Canada? Okay, so maybe it's not so foreign...or very far away, but it definitely holds crazy adventures for all who dare enter its borders. That is if they let you stay (thank you to the border guard who so kindly did NOT deport me...Max grilled him a delicious smokie). Now, about this hot-dog shop. You may be tempted to picture Max up in the mountains selling hot-dogs out of something that looks like this...
But don't be fooled...it is MUCH classier than that. In fact...it looks a lot like this:
Ha ha okay, okay...maybe more like this:
Now, life as a "hot-dog babe" (as Max calls it), is not as glamorous as you would think. I mean, it's a good time, don't get me wrong, but one can only handle so many weenie jokes from drunks at 2 in the morning without starting to second-guess what you're still doing awake...either that or you find yourself laughing at them which should make you even more worried. Although the hours are long and you tend to smell a bit like sausages at the end of the day, there are some awesome things that go on in a hot-dog restaurant when no one is around. One being....S'MORES! and not just any s'mores, but s'mores made out of MASSIVE marshmallows stuffed with Canadian chocolate between two delicious dutch ginger cookies (I forget the name...). All made by an incredibly handsome....wiener.
Ha. Okay, so he only wore it to amuse me after much pestering...but it was totally worth it!
Also, what better place to own a hot-dog shop than in the center of a gorgeous Canadian national park? Jon and Leigh (Max's business partner and his adorable wife), gave us the day off and we spent it hiking. This was not just any hike though. Max had to test my mountaineering abilities by taking me to the top of Galway. It was a little embarassing...for him of course. He must have been 20 feet behind me the whole time and was relentless in yelling at me to slow down. I basically carried him through the shale and up the cliffs just before the peak. I was so proud of him when he finally made it to the top!
This is him (obviously still breathing super hard from the strenuous hike). Oh, and don't mind my hair...it was windy. He insisted on ruining all my pictures with silly faces and the only one that would have turned out...he's missing an eye...
Yep...this is more like it...
Here we are enjoying our buns and veggies before we headed back down. (Oh, and Julie...I want you to note the color of his eyes...but don't get any funny ideas. We all know your secret...that's what happens when you share it as your "something exciting about yourself" at the beginning of the semester. Next time stick with the salivating at the sight of human flesh)
Before the big hike, though, we took a little "walk" up a mountain to a lake with Max's best friend Kristopher, the amazingly talented photographer. But even with that kind of talent, you can't do much with a model who insists on choking his girlfriend.
I had much better models...
Alright...it's getting late, but there are a few more things I love about Waterton. One-being grilled corn on the cob. Max says everything is better in Canada, and although that may or may not be true, it IS true that is was probably some of the best corn I have ever tasted.
Oh and you cannot forget the TIGER ICE CREAM!! Tiger ice cream is orange flavored ice cream with strips of black licorice and it is arguably THE best ice cream ever invented...BUT you can only get it in Canada! I begged Max every day to buy me some and it wasn't until I had been there an entire week before he finally relented (he seemed to think if I got it, I wouldn't have any reason to stay in Canada...ha)
I shared with him of course...because it was more romantic to share than have our own...we felt the same way about hot-dogs. Well, one of us did. The other had to be forced against his will to pose for such a photo:
And that is how I spent my last two weeks. Adventrous? Maybe. Exciting? Possibly. Would I do it again? In a heartbeat.
Well...I have been stuck in Salt Lake (somewhat against my will), for some time now and although I was skeptical at first, there are actually a lot of things I have grown to love. I love that I have 4 sisters within an hours drive. I love that you can stand on one hill and see three temples. I love that I have 3 of my very favorite roommates from college within 15 minutes of my house. I love that there is a black horse statue down the road whose butt I slap every time I run past in the morning (or night considering I sometimes run at 11 when I get off work...bad idea, I know). I love that there are free concerts in the park every Thursday (how they get bands like modest mouse to come play for thousands of crazy hippies in Utah, we will never know).
But-one of the things I love the most, are the mountains. I cannot get enough of the hiking and have been on several over the course of the summer. Granted, these are completely amateur hikes and if I had to do a strenuous one I would probably die...but they are beautiful regardless. This weekend, Shelly and I took Gavin on a little birthday outing to Timpanogos Caves and although his goal was to ruin every single picture he was in with me, and he is much to cool to admit it, I think he had a blast. If not at least he enjoyed the huge vat of cotton candy ice cream with butterfinger (sick) that we got him afterwards...
Off to a great start...
Okay, he did smile in this one...but only because if was with Shelly.
Charming.
He may ruin my pictures, but not without consequences
I don't know what's going on in this one...oh wait...he was probably falling asleep because he had heard enough about stalagmites and stalagtites....zzzzz I though it was cool :)
I don't know if he's crying because I'm forcing him to take another picture, or because we made him wear Shelly's baby blue sweater.
Finally. Got him to smile only because we were stealing the sing-in book.
Peeking out of what Gavin called the "Alice in Wonderland Tree"
All pooped out...until of course he woke up to insist we get ice cream.
It's been almost 4 months since I graduated from nursing school and although I have filled out a gazillion (I was a nursing major, not a math major) applications, the only job I have landed is working as a government official. I know, it sounds pretty cool, but you have no idea. It's AMAZING. There are a few things I especially love about working for the census-I mean, government.
1. Oddly enough, the strangest people you talk to are NOT the maniacs on the phone, but your co-workers. Today a short girl on break (whom I have never met before), informed me that girls who are 5' tall are smarter than those who are 5' 8" (thank heavens I'm only 5' 7" and 1/2-fooled her). She then proceeded to tell me that if she hadn't failed out of biology, English, and Shakespeare (whom she loathes), she would have had a 3.0 gpa in high school. I had no idea what to say to that, so I said, "hm..." and walked away.
2. During my first week of work, I found 2 long lost cousins. Now this IS Utah, so it's not incredibly surprising, but of the hundreds of people who work in the building I ended up sitting right by my mom's first cousin, Curtis, and a man named Mark, who happens to share a last name and a great, great, grandpa with me, on my dad's side...weird.
3. It's nearing the end of the project and we are now recycling calls where the respondents have already refused to take the survey. And because there's nothing we census interviewers love more than furious people whom we've already succeeded in ticking off-we made a game out of it. It's called Census Refusal Bingo (invented so brilliantly by my aforementioned cousin, Mark).
4. My cell phone has not been shredded-yet. It's a rule working with Title 13 secure information that cell phones are not permitted in the building. This rule is VERY heavily enforced and if you are caught with the dreaded cell phone, you will be fired and your cell phone "shredded" on the spot. Now, I don't know how exactly they manage to shred cell phones but I picture it being somewhat like a heavy duty paper shredder with a similar limit like "no more than 10 cell phones at a time". (I don't know how many times working in my dad's office I got paper jammed in that thing by going way over the limit...)
5. Lastly, I am serving my country. Contrary to popular belief, I do NOT work for Obama (as assumed by the hostile respondents who ask if they can speak to Obama as if he were upstairs...oh, and by Max). I feel like this is just my little way of paying back a country which has been so good to me. Ha. Okay, maybe it's not so glamorous, but it was worth a shot.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
A wise friend once said, "first entries in anything are always awkward." So...awkward or not, here goes...
I try about 15 times a year to start a journal. If I'm lucky, it will last a week. That same wise friend (previously mentioned) started a blog and insisted I start one as well so we would at least have each other to follow it. Since I am not one to pass up perfectly sane advice, I agreed. What better way to document my life than with an online scrapbook? Ergo, my lovely, little, life.
