Beauts and Buttes, Rejection, Deactivation, Defeat, Ace, Ace, Ace!

Sorry it's been so long since I've gotten on here. Couldn't help but notice that my page has gotten over 700 page views! Not sure if that's mom, dad, and the grandparents logging on multiple times a day in hopes that I've posted a new blog, or if it's randos stumbling upon the page taking a quick look and finding that it's not what they bargained for, or if there truly are many silent followers... I'm thinking its the second hypothesis. No matter... I'll just continue to ramble in hopes that strangers, family, and friends alike will find something entertaining or interesting on this page.

Bob

In my last blog, I wrote about my travel to Colorado. Turns out the psychic United airlines employee was right, and my flight was delayed a few hours... until it was all together canceled. My trip went from delayed bad to non-existant in the 10 seconds it took the brave lady to make the announcement, and then deal with the long line of angry travelers all trying to find a way to escape the teeny, suffocating Spokane airport on that foggy and depressing day. As I waited in line among the rest of the chums, I decided I'd take the bull by the horns and call the United number. I found a tip online that someone had posted that said the key to getting a hold of a real human to talk with was to keep hitting "O" until you heard a human voice. That's just what I did. Some lady answered the phone who said she'd call me back and I never did. Again I dialed, 0,0,0... Success! For the purposes of this, we'll call him Bob. He answered the call with the courteous and helpful tone he was likely taught in training, and I explained to him my situation- where I was headed, where my canceled flight was routed to take me, and that I just needed to be on one of the 3 or 4 flights that were brave enough to take off through Spokane's dense fog that afternoon. He acted as if he understood my plight, and put me on hold so that he could call up a rep from another airline and get me booked. After an hour of intermittently being on hold, chatting with my boy Bob, and handing Bob over to the representative at the counter for the flight I was vying for to Salt Lake City, my phone was on the verge of lifeless. I was pissing off people in line who had been waiting because the rep for the Denver flight told me to keep coming straight to her because she understood my situation with Bob being on the line and all. Those in line however, did not. I got a few angry glares, which would usually make me really sad and send me sulking to the back of the line in guilt. BUT NOT TODAY! I was on a mission. I worked my magic and booked a flight from Spokane to SLC, SLC to Grand Junction all for the price of my initial ticket from Spokane to Denver.
I won't try and hide it, I'm proud of how I handled this situation, especially without mama Deb there to work her magic.
I landed in Salt Lake City at 8:47. There I stood in the first row behind first class (truly incredible leg room) just itching to get off that flight. My connecting flight to GJ left Salt Lake at 9:05. I had just about twenty minutes to get off the plane, find out which gate to go to, run through crowds of people like a mad-woman, and plop down in my seat next to Cindy who was on her way to visit the grandkids in Palisade. She and I got to chatting and before we knew it, we were touching down in GJ!



BEAUTS (Family Beauties)
After the hour long flight to Grand Junction, I arrived weezy still from my run, but delighted to find my mom, grandma, and great gram all there waiting for me (Ok--I'll be straight with you, they were a couple of minutes late, but my flight was early--I'll give it to um).

Slumber Par-T!

The trip to Colorado was really fun, and it was a blast spending time with my mom, staying up late and having girl talk, laughing hysterically and deliriously because we were so darn tired, eating grandma's famous batista in the morning (I was sure to leave her my mailing address here ;), and getting some mama lovin. She made me toast. I was so happy. Also good to see the bro and my dad. I'll be seein' more of mom and dad this weekend when they come to visit for Fall Family Weekend!

Gram was super excited about the
hummingbird decal on the cake

The family pictures were chaotic but I think we got some good ones, and the party was a huge success. They were super surprised, because their birthdays weren't even relatively close to the date of the fiesta. There were many elderly folk there, and when I say many I mean everyone that was there. And it makes sense. If it were my birthday party, I wouldn't expect to see anyone a day older than 50 (sorry to out you mom). At this rager there wasn't anyone under 50 besides us kids. Nevertheless it was nice to see people I dont often get a chance to see, and Betty and Gil had a blast- that's what matters!

On the guest-list: the Gillespie family
doctor! SURPRISE!

BUTTES
Cousin Brit and I ditched the party a bit early and hiked (I'm using this term loosely) a butte! It took us about 20 minutes to find the little dirt road that crossed the highway to get to the rock formation, but boy was it worth it. We felt so accomplished after our little hike. She and I drove to Denver on Sunday afternoon, and make quite a few stops along the way to get in touch with some more mountainous nature. She dropped me off at the Denver airport and I flew with no delays from Denver back to Spokane. Home sweeet home! Here are a few pictures we snapped along the way. We joked that it seemed like we were driving through the seasons. We started out in sunny colorado, saw some fall colored leaves and flowers on the first stop, and when going through vail experienced winter!

Driving through Vail was amazing... looks like a painting, huh?

REJECTION
Over the weekend, I found out that I did not get the Kennel Club position that I had applied for. Oh well, I'll still be able to sit in the crowd and be in the Kennel. Maybe it's good for me to take a break from having to be so involved in everything I do. I'm applying for the Comprehensive Leadership Program though.. haha. We'll see if I get that one! I wont take the time to explain it unless I get it. Then I'll go into detail. :)

DEACTIVATION
My best friend Lily made a bold move the other day when trying to accomplish some homework. She deactivated her Facebook. With her deactivation, about 600 tagged pictures of myself went missing, but mostly I mourned the loss of being able to type in her name and see what she was up to that moment. In the spirit of scholastics I too have said "hasta luego" to my Facebook account. It's been deactivated, which means that I can go back to it at any point and time and all of my photos and information will be there, but if you were to search for me now on the site, you couldn't find me. This helps me to focus on the more important things in life, such as Blogging. Syd was inspired by my story and she too deactivated today. We've admitted we have a problem (that was the first step), and now we're taking steps to overcome our addiction. I'll pour everything I have now into this blog, and she will anxiously await to refresh the page and read it.

ACE
Our club tennis team had a scrimmage versus "Moody Bible" (??) college in Spokane on Saturday morning, and a match versus Eastern on Sunday. I arrived at the scrimmage and awkwardly stood around with my "teammates" for a good ten minutes before I got up the courage to ask where the heck the other school was... My "coach" replied, "we have no idea where any Gonzaga people are," to which I said, "wait, you're not Gonzaga....?"
It was embarrassing to say the least, but hey, I'd only been to two practices before this, so how was I supposed to know who everyone was! I just thought they were people I'd played with and they just looked different in the daylight (practice is at 7:30 pm weeknights). It wasn't until I realized I was among the enemy that I noticed they were all wearing garb labeled "moody bible." HA!
Once the team got there, Sam and I won our match, as did John and I! Woohoo!!

DEFEAT
Sundays match versus Eastern did not go as well, and I played terribly. Shawna and I lost, and it was all my fault. I felt like such a n00b, and she doesn't know I am any better than I showed her that day. Such a bummer.

ACE
Our intramural volleyball team won yet another "D" league match on Monday! Only four more games until those shirts (that dont specify what league we're in) are OURS!
I got my serve over the net this time! It was so exciting.

ACE
Also "aced" my art midterm! It was half project and half test. I got an A- on the test (which genuinely surprised me) and 100% on the project, which brings my over-all grade to an A. My friend Sean and I spent 7 hours in the art room the night prior/morning of the due date for our midterm project. Seven hours is an average school day! I spent just as long working on one project as I would spend at VHS trekking from class to class, lunch to class and so on. CRAZY! Sean is one of the artsiest people that I know. No, I take that back. He IS the artsiest person I know. His paper bag was almost entirely done by hand-- like he drew out all of the stuff that was on it. Mine was a creative cutting and pasting job. I'll post both here.

Here's mine-- the eye in the face is a photo of my eye printed on transparency paper! 

Aand here's Sean William's ©