"Now that's an understatement."

And now: a rant.

 

Lately I have been flying a lot. When I was younger I used to LOVE to fly...mom would get us some bubblegum (the good kind - Bubblicious) to chew whenever we took off and were up in the air so that our ears wouldn't clog...I loved every part of it....I loved putting my backpack through the "xray machine"..which you probably could have put a bike through back then and nothing would beep. I loved walking to the terminal with my family...getting on the plane. I loved turbulence and I REALLY loved (and still do) a bumpy landing.

 

This all changed for me sometime in my middle school years. I think the TWA flight 800 scared me a bit.  Not to mention once on a flight BACK in the day I was sitting next to a woman IN THE AIR reading the bios of every person that died in the crash. YOU CAN'T READ THAT STUFF ON A PLANE!!! And then maybe it got a little worse after 9/11. I remember one flight I was on a few months after 9/11 and there was some 40 year old muscle man in army pants doing lunges and punches into the air in the back of the plane...a girl about my age in the row over was staring at him and he would just tilt his neck and stare back at her...all creepy-scary like...and I thought to myself, "Oh yeah...this guy is charging the cockpit and we are done." The plane landed. No issue.

 

Flash forward to two years ago. I was on a smaller plane from Wisconsin to Texas and there was a bad storm over the St. Louis area and things out the window were getting bleak. I was watching our flight attendant like a hawk...he kept getting on the phone to talk to the pilots and when he put a seat belt on I knew we were in for it. Lets just say I SAW OUR PLANE GET HIT BY LIGHTNING!!!...then our plane started making a weird revving noise and going up and down (to the point you couldn't really feel how much or little the plane was going up and down). People were screaming, etc. It was traumatic...but clearly I lived.  Now to those of you out there thinking, "Well I read an article about how planes are engineered to have lightning hit them and they get hit all the time." Ok - do me a favor - get in a plane, get to 30,000 feet and see a horizontal streak of lightning touching the wing of your plane going back to where the engine is. And read the article again.

 

So anyways...I flew around the 4th of July this year and my plane that was supposed to take off at 9:00AM from Dallas didn't end up taking off until 2:45PM because they had to fly in a new plane as the one we were supposed to be on had unfixable mechanical issues....yessssss that is right...long. fun. layover. So when I finally got to my grandparents that night I was telling everyone the story of how I had a 7+ hour layover and how I wasn't the calmest flyer in the world to begin with. And my Grandpa goes, "Now that's an understatement." Niiiiiice.  So anyways, as I have been flying this summer I have had some ideas.

 

Ok - so you know that point in flying when you are throwing everything you own in bins and shoving them down long metal tables...taking off your shoes, undoing your belt, removing all the jewelry you didn't know you had on, trying to take any liquids out of your luggage (pending on which airport you're at), all the while making sure that your boarding pass stays somewhere you remember through the entire process of people yelling at you??? It looks something like this:

Yes yes. That is the moment I'm talking about. I think there should be photographers in that moment....kind of like when you walk into a theme park and someone comes up and says, "Can we take a picture of you and your group?" Ok - well this person would take a picture of you as you look RIDICULOUS and then maybe again on the flip side when you're walking to the nearest bench with your shoes in your hand..trailing your belt and purse/suitcase awkwardly and looking dejected and then they could send this picture to your loved ones and EVERYONE could get a good laugh. I think it would bank. I mean $$$$$$ BANK.

 

One final thought from my flight yesterday: Why would you bring tuna on a plane? Now I know I'm not reinventing the wheel with this happening to me because once on an episode of The Office, Oscar brought a tuna sandwich on the plane. But someone did it to me yesterday. And it took all I had not to stand up and turn around in my seat and yell, "OK SERIOUSLY --  WHO BROUGHT THE TUNA??? AND WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM!?" 

I have a few more stories...but I don't want to speak of them here. Ask me in person. I'll tell you. Say these three words: Emergency. Exit. Row.

"It's a big ol' cake and I can't tell if I can have it and eat it too."

I don't have anything to say really. Well, quite honestly I have a lot of great eavesdropping stories...but I can't talk about them here...but I'll just tell you this...after 7 months I have found out that one of my coworkers has a girlfriend. He is the Ron Swanson of the office...very mysterious...doesn't like you all up in his bid-ness, if you will....but he talks on the phone really loudly and I told him from the start - if he's going to talk that loud I'm going to be all up in his bid-ness. He handles it well...he will hangup the phone and yell across the hall, "So who do you think that was?...That was a weeeird phone call." And I'll let out a sigh of relief that he agrees it was a weird phone call and yell back, "Ok - I couldn't tell if it was a good family friend that you've maybe known for a while or your girlfriend or what." He'll applaud me for my good effort and get back to work.

Moving on...I came across this picture & article today and it left me speechless:

This boy and his dad were there for the first launch in '81 and for the last launch on July 8. My grandparents took my cousin and I to visit NASA in Cape Canaveral, FL when we were 13 and a love for space exploration has been burned into my soul. It's truly unreal to stand and look at a replica of a shuttle...to see how big the external fuel tank really is...to know if a single screw is not tightened properly that the whole thing could blow --- it's amazing.

I'll leave you with this...I was talking to a friend today and he was talking about life and about how he really enjoys where he is but doesn't know if he will get to stay in the same location. And then he said, "It's a big ol' cake and I can't tell if I can have it and eat it too." He knew I would understand that analogy because of how much I love food. But what he was really saying is that there is this thing in front of him that he loves...but he doesn't know how long it will last and if he will really get to partake of all that he sees in front of him because things always seem to be changing....and his sentence has really stayed with me. I hope it's meaningful to you as well.

"Whatever, I saw you wearing a visor doing yoga in the backyard last week."

Two words: singles. mixer. Yes - when you and your coworker decide on a Friday morning that "being yourself" at a singles mixer on Saturday night sounds like a GREAT idea...do yourself a favor and don't RSVP. So this is the story of me and two of my friends. One is a guy and one is a girl. The guy recieved an invitation to a singles mixer through his roommate's place of work but said roommate could not go because she is not single. So the guy convinced me and my friend to go.  We all decide it would be so fun - we wouldn' try - we wouldn't be nervous - we would just be ourselves and make it fun. This is all great in theory. I picked up the guy first on Saturday night and he had a look of dread on his face while holding a drink. He looked at me and said, "I dont want to do this, I've already started drinking." This was a relief to me as I hadn't been able to eat and felt nervous all afternoon. So then we picked up our friend and she was wearing the cutest white summer dress holding a bottle of wine. She got in the car and said, "Guys - I haven't been able to do anything all day...I've already had two glass of wine." We were clearly in great company. So we parked downtown and walked to what we believed to be the location of this singles mixer. Unfortunately, there are three condos owned by the same group that are all named the same thing located within about 3 blocks of each other. There was a guy in the lobby of the first building we walked into trying to get up to the party. I quickly realized he was trying to get to the same place we were. From his accent I could also tell he was not from the U.S. We all introduced ourselves and found out he was from Greece.  He spent most of the time talking on the phone to someone attempting to explain that he was clearly in the wrong place and yelling in the phone "No...street as in streeeeeet. Street as in streeeeeeet." The girl and I were leaning against the wall laughing nervously. Then another guy walked in that looked like he had just gotten off of the trail (showered but in all of his REI gear) and he was in his 40's. Awwweeesooome. Anyways - through a series of events we found the correct place and it was an AMAZING condo --- on the top floor of the building with a wrap around balcony on the corner of the building with a great view. The breeze was nice that night and there were two garage door like windows that opened to the outside. We mingled with people then met our favorite person of the night: John. See below.

 

Now look closely. Those are kitty cats...not wolves. And he was also wearing a fanny pack. He was a genuinely nice guy that was an "urban farmer." I mean...he really is an urban farmer. This conversation started out with an argument about how fresh eggs are the BEST thing in the entire world. A fresh fried egg will LITERALLY change your life. Lots of yelling commenced over whether or not you could actually poach an egg.  In the meantime our guy friend was trying to keep from vomitting all over us as he cannot stand eggs -- although he didn't show it during the conversation. The next thing we discussed: aquaponics...the use of catfish poop to hydrate the land in the midst of a drought. (These things really happened.) Other things discovered: the difference between urban farming and rural farming is that urban farming is just farming on a smaller scale. ..... ... .... ... You dooooon't say?!?

 

While talking to the guy wearing the wolf shirt about his fanny pack, John's roommate Ricky, who was also there ran back into the conversation and said, "I JUST TRADED A FEW EGGS FOR A FREE HAIRCUT!!!" This somehow led to a discussion about John wearing a visor a lot. Ricky apparently hates the visor and thinks it's about as on par with John's practice of yoga to which John replied, "Whatever, I saw you wearing a visor doing yoga in the backyard last week." Once that sentence was uttered I knew I had the title of my next blog post. The rest of the mixer was mostly like the beginning.

 

My friends and I left after about two hours of being at the party...we then went to a nice outside casual bar and proceeded to eat queso and discuss the following items: the amazing, awesome, infallible document that is the US Constitution, George Washington, George Washington's teeth, George Washington's death, George Washington's REAL death, was George Washington a freemason?, George Washington's SECOND marriage to Martha, Israel, religion, the book of Revelation, the UN, the IMF...and Obama. My friend said she woke up and said, "Did we really discuss how awesome the US Constitution is for that long?"

Yes. Yes we did. I will now leave you with a quote that she sent me that sums up our night of singles mixers and amazing conversations:

 

"Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people."

-Eleanor Roosevelt

"Sexy, beach hair"

So much to tell you about. My cousin got married and I was lucky enough to be able to stand up with her as a bridesmaid during their ceremony. But alas that is not subject of this post...I realized I needed to blog about a certain girl that I sat next to on the plane on the way to Indy when I got in the car with my cousin Meghan and said..."Oh, I sat next to this girl on the plane...and ugggh...she had a voice that carried." The light went on in my head and I knew I had a good blog.

 

So my mom and I get on the plane in Chicago...and unfortunately I was the person that picked the seat next to this girl. I sat in the middle and my mom was in the aisle seat. The girl was approximately 95 pounds, in her late 20's and was pretty.  My mom asked her where she worked and she told us how she manages Aveda stores (right mom?) in the Chicago area...but lives outside of Indianapolis with her fiance....but is from Ohio. Ok - so at this point in the conversation I'm liking her...she is nice enough...until she started talking about how she works 16 hour days and doesn't eat her entire shift because she is so busy that she does not notice she's hungry. Riiiiiight. I have a busy job too, girl - so does my mom....I still find plenty of time to shove approx. 4-6 cookies in my mouth regularly while on the job. (Exhibit A) Anyways, my mom started talking about tons of hair product things with this girl. I think the highlight was when the girl reached across me to touch my mom's hair and tell her what kind of product to use. My other highlight was when she was gabbing about how she gets, "sexy, beach hair" without washing her hair for a week straight by using some product...all this while her head is right in front of Lucas Oil Stadium on our descent into Indy...the whole time I'm trying to look around her head secretly yelling in my mind, "GIRL, MOVE YOUR BIG HEAD - THERE'S A FOOTBALL STADIUM TO SEE"...and she just kept moving...and with that....there went my chance to see the stadium from above.  *Sigh*. 

 

On a side note - my mom may be the best person to travel with...she is a counselor by trade and whoever sits next to her hits the JACKPOT. And you know why? Because they get approximately 1-2 hours of FREE counseling while on the airplane. And they all want it. On our flight back to Austin from Chicago (while both of us were on about 24 hours of no sleep I might add) I would doze in and out of hearing this man tell his life story to my mom...his dad's problem with alcohol...his wife's family issues. I mean...she has a gift. Start praying for an open seat on Southwest next to my mother now!

"Do you think we're going to die?"

My brother-in-law told me I have to post everyday. Naturally I do as he says. I'm sorry that y'all aren't getting any good eavesdropping stories but the only places I spend my time are at work and home right now. And I can't blog about either. So - here is a chance to again eavesdrop into my life.

Today is Memorial Day and the Legislative Session also "ended" today. So today everyone at the Capitol was at work.  Austin also has a triathlon every Memorial Day called the Capital of Texas Triathlon. The bike portion goes right down the street I work on and forms a loop between the parking garage I park my car in and our office building. So every other year I run across the street screaming like Miss Piggy when she is yelling at Kermit. I wont lie - I was looking forward to my crossing attempt (a police officer is "there" to tell you when to go but he kind of just stares at you like...."hope it works out for you"). In the meantime there are men on bikes worth thousands of dollars gaining speed down a hill, wearing their alien helmets showing no regard for the fact that you have to go to work.

Ok - so I had made it to the road and was watching to see when there would be enough of a break in the bikes so that I could begin my Miss Piggy yell/run when a woman - probably in her mid-to-late fifties with sunglasses on trailing one of those luggage/purse/briefcase things rolls up besides me and looks to the left at the upcoming bikes and says, "Do you think we're going to die?" I thought to myself..."Well, I'm not because I plan on screaming and running full speed across the street - but you probably will die trailing that piece of luggage across." I kept my thoughts to myself and said aloud, "Probably not but I promise it will be the most exciting part of our day." She then responded, "Please - the most exciting part of my day  is when I get to leave this place." Total maverick. Alas, we made it across the street.

And when I got to my office I found this waiting for me:

Aaaaah! It is beautiful isn't it? My coworker introduced me to the recipe last week and made it this weekend. If you look closely you will see a bottom layer of cookie - a middle layer of Oreos - and a top layer of brownie. And yes. It was delicious.

"I feel sorry for you..."

My brother in law told me that if I don't blog soon he will un-follow me. So here I am. This time I will let you eavesdrop into my world for a bit.

About a week and a half ago I had a birthday. At one point in my office I had 3.5 dozen cookies, a dozen cupcakes, and an entire chocolate cake give to me. It reminds me of the story my mom tells of when my oldest sister was a little girl. My sister was being taken care of by another woman who had a daughter my sister's age.  They were in a park and were picking flowers. The woman noticed my sister just standing there and said, "Cara, why don't you pick some flowers for your mommy?" My sister responded, "Oh, my mommy doesn't like flowers - she likes food." Alas, the apple has not fallen far from the tree.

So when I left work on my birthday I put half of the cookies I had received in a container and took the other half home. On Monday I was sitting at my computer doing some work when someone came in to ask a question.  He noticed me picking away at my container that had about 6 cookies in it and made a comment that things must be pretty bad as I was eating a container of cookies close to 12:00PM (I still do not see the issue here). I went about my day ---STOPPED eating the cookies at some point I'm sure--- then picked them up again about an hour later. SAME person comes in...looks down to see that my container of cookies has dwindled from 6 to 2 and says, "Wow....I feel really sorry for you - you just pounded like 1,000 calories worth of cookies." Now this was shocking to me because I didn't think it was socially acceptable to comment on someone's cookie intake. ESPECIALLY if you are not a woman/best-friend/sister who is in the process of also "pounding" said cookies. But overall, it made me laugh. And for all of you taking score at home - eating 4 cookies in a row is not unusual. I didn't even feel it!

Fast forward two days. After my birthday someone also gave me a package of mini-butterfinger's. So I had one in the afternoon. About an hour later I was in my other friend's office stealing some Twizzlers with a coworker and he said, "OH MY GOODNESS WHAT IS ON THE BACK OF YOUR SKIRT?" Upon further investigation I realized that tiny orange pieces of Butterfinger were stuck all over the back of my skirt. Once I figured it out I said laughing, "Oh gosh - you do not want to know."....This made my coworker even more nervous so I explained to him that I had eaten a Butterfinger at my desk and I guess it had fallen in my chair and then I had sat on it and now I was walking around the office for who knows how long with pieces of Butterfinger plastered all along the back of my skirt. I could tell he was kind of relieved.

So there is my update! I hope you find as much humor in these stories as I do!

"Is it....Collin?"

A tribute. This is my first post about a voice that has carried deeply in my life. And it is about a 2-year old orange-headed monkey.  He also responds to: Bubba, little man, baby, Hunter Ryan and Hunta Awney (as my sister tells me his friends call him). He is my nephew and a source of constant joy in my life. My sister has an iphone 4 and will make videos then send them to me.  Hunter loves making videos because he can see himself the entire time. He thinks he's watching a "baby" (although Allison constantly tells him that the baby is him). Anyways, there is one video in which he is saying funny things to the "baby", giving it kisses, and then he looks really close into the phone and says, "Is it Collin?" (Translation: Is it Colleen?). And Allison says, "No, that's not Colleen - that's you...you have red hair like Colleen"....He thought I may be on the phone because they'll face time me from the phone)....The video goes on but I have it saved on my phone and when work gets long or difficult...or my day is long and difficult...I'll just pull up that video and watch it! So here's a tribute to Hunter Ryan - my love and my delight!

This is Hunter making a heart out of his hands!