I went to a Zoomba class with my mom today. The walls are covered by mirrors on all sides. I picked up most of the moves pretty easily, but man, I did not look good doing them. All this time I have been thinking that I am an average--or even good--dancer, but that is just not the case. Why didn't anyone ever tell me that I look like a lame square string bean when I dance?

After 6 years (yes, 6 years!) of working at the health department, I have finally made a friend. :) I never thought this day would come.

Wellp, Tituaville ultimate is a little different than I remember.

The level is as expected lower than I am used to playing with in Phoenix, but that is not what bothers me (I'll play with new players all day. It improves my skills on offense because I have to be more accurate in my throws.) What bothers me is that we played with 20 people on the field. Even before I really started getting into the sport, I hated playing with this many people at a time. It clogs the field, and as my primary strength in the game is speed, it makes me frustrated that I cannot find a place to run.

Just to beat a dead horse, here is a chart of how I am used to setting up when I play, in a horizontal stack with three handlers and four cutters. The blue dots are the offense, the red dots are the defense, and the green dot represents (hypothetically) me:



See? It's easy to make a cut to the handlers, make a cut deep, and to see what all of your teammates are going to do.

Here is a diagram of what Titusville ultimate looked like tonight, with the same colors representing the same things.



There's nowhere to run, and the field is just clogged with people. Can you see my frustration?

(And yes, I would like some cheese with that whine. I never say no to cheese!)

Titusville ultimate tonight!

So it's turns out that the Orlando NPR station doesn't play music anymore, only news. BUT it doesn't matter anyway because for some reason my old radio won't pick up the station at all anymore. Sigh. So much for being musically productive at work.

P.S. I am cold. ALL THE TIME.

Okay, so I went to Cracker Barrel with my family today. 2 of us ordered catfish, and both times the word "catfish" was said to the waitress, my dad was very loudly made a cat noise. "MEOW!"

Also, I start work tomorrow in a new place and a new set of faces. Even though this place is closer, I'd rather be working in the Titusville Health Department, Where Everybody Knows My Name.

Wellp, I'm in Florida. The work has not commenced yet, but the fun has! Yesterday we went boating and then out to celebrate my brother's 25th birthday. If you know him at all, you know he's quite the party animal. Things got a little crazy (not a lot crazy, just a little) at the piano bar, and a good time was had by all.

Also, unrelated, here is a conversation I had with a student of mine:

E: "I didn't get a lot of time to practice this week. I had the trip, and then [insert list of excuses]."
A: "That's okay. Sometimes weeks will come when you don't get a lot time to practice. It happens to everybody. Just last week I was only able to practice for 5 hours."
E: "5 hours in a week? How much do you usually practice?? Wait...do you practice an HOUR A DAY???"

lol

What a night!

Duuuurrrr, I made it to Florida. Yeah airplanes!

I'm on a PLANE!!!

I take off from Phoenix Sky Harbor in t-3 hours. And it's my first nonstop flight in, oh, I don't know, like 7-8 years. I am so excited! Florida (and money) here I come!

Florida tomorrow! And I'm feeling a bit under the weather right now. Ah well. The sum is the same.

I'm going to see my BOYS tonight at the D'backs field! Dan Haren vs. Andy Pettite! GO YANKEES!

Looking forward to being in Florida again!

Edit: my Internet is still down which explains my lack of blogging lately. Apologies.

Okay, the weather.com predictions for Tempe the next nine days are really funny:

Fri--sunny. high of 106. 0% chance of rain.
Sat--sunny. high of 105. 0% chance of rain.
Sun--sunny. high of 104. 0% chance of rain.
Mon--sunny. high of 104. 0% chance of rain.
Tue--sunny. high of 105. 0% chance of rain.
Wed--sunny. high of 107. 0% chance of rain.
Thu--sunny. high of 106. 0% chance of rain.
Fri--sunny. high of 107. 0% chance of rain.
Sat--sunny. high of 107. 0% chance of rain.


The weather here is a little predictable right now.

Brittney and I cancelled our cable a while ago. It took them about two months to come out and shut everything off. Two months of free channels--I'm okay with that. They were also nice enough to break my Internet in the process, free of charge! Since that's in Brittney's name, I'm going to have a really good time trying to get it fixed.

Bottom line: my Internet is derped.

Yesterday was terrible! I have no Internet and no television! I didn't realize how much I depend on those two things. I felt lost. Right now I am at the music library--and have just spent an hour catching up on a day's worth of Internet-ing. It's terrible.

I don't think I am going to try to call and have it fixed though. I only have a week left here and it'll be annoying, but heavens knows that even if I do manage to get all of the required account info AND make them believe that I am authorized to make decisions on the account, you know it will take them weeks to fix it. Cable companies are like that.

Uh, anyway, here's a cool song to make the post better: Neo Love...new love.

No I cannot forget where it is that I come from
I cannot forget the people who love me
Yeah, I can be myself here in this small town
And people let me be just what I want to be

Back to T-ville in 9 days!

It must cost less in AZ to get personalized plates, because I see them all the time! Today I spotted one: MNYPNNY. Made me smile :)

P: "How are you so attractive?"
A: "I play ultimate."

Back. Great tourney, tons of fun. Tired and sore :( But not too tired for Settlers!

Ultimate tourney this weekend: Mohini in Flagstaff. I'm playing on a Phoenix team with various VOTS kids. Our theme is pretty kickin': Mohini Militia, and we'll wear camo. Should be fun!

I think we have more control over our destinies than we often think we do. We say, oh, I can't control this, I can't control that. And we meekly receive what life alone offers us, sinking into acceptance of a life which is less than the potential. And we often forget to acknowledge that there is always a choice. We underestimate our own abilities--if only we had the courage to take hold of life, to demand, to demand upon love...wouldn't this be a better world for all?

Happiness is possible. But it's not always easy.

(I just told my story to a wall. Hope you liked it, wall.)

My first game of Risk ever (and this is the nerdy and awesome Lord of the Rings version), and this is how it ended:



(I was red).

PLEASE WORK.

Take that, GANON!

Edit: This is my 3,000th post. Happy anniversary!

You know, before I moved here, people would tell me how got it gets here in Phoenix, like 110-115, with highs above 100 for 3 or 4 months of the year. Now remember that I have spent most of my life in Florida. Florida is hot and humid and very unpleasant at times, but it rarely if ever gets above 100 degrees.

I think that before I moved here, I unconsciously did not actually believe that it could possibly get up to 115 degrees. And that if it did, I would be able to handle it...I'm a Florida girl, after all!

Yesterday I played ultimate when it was 107 degrees out. It was hot. My body did not want to move. I would say, run, dang it, run! And it would do nothing.

So in conclusion...it really does get that hot here. It is unpleasant, but not totally unbearable.

Gosh, when all days are equal...Sundays win hands down.

Didn't manage to stand up on the wakeboard--I pretty much lived up to my expectations. I am, however, quite sore today from trying 6 or 7 times and from tubing in the meantime. Also ultimate yesterday. And swimming.

SO SORE.

Dude, I found this on IMDB. This is Jewel Staite's vision of what Serenity 2 would look like:

If it were up to me, how would the characters' relationships conclude in Serenity 2? Okay. Hypothetically speaking only. River and Zoe really hit it off, fall in love, and decide to form their own renegade girls-who-kick-ass space team and leave us in the dust; Mal realizes he's more destroyed over Wash's death than he ever thought and spends the rest of his days wearing Hawaiian shirts and drinking booze out of the engine; Simon and Kaylee have a set of genius triplets and turn the ship into a cocker spaniel search-and-rescue with "crazy Grandpa Mal" still at the helm cradling toy dinosaurs; and Inara finally realizes the potential in Jayne as a male companion, loans him a toga, and takes him back to the training house where they become King and Companion Queen...you know you want that sequel!

Wakeboarding today...derp de derp.

Blah blah blah get life back on track blah blah blah.

So lots of plans fell through for Memorial Day weekend. Paul and I wanted to go on a trip together, we just didn't know to where. Plan A was Flagstaff, which turned out to still have snow, so no dice. Plan B was Rocky Point with some ulti friends, which never came to fruition. Plan C was the grand canyon, which didn't work for many reasons. So we looked at a few other options and I almost blindly chose to go to Chiricahua National Mounument, about 4 hours away in Arizona.

We left on Saturday morning and found that the campsite was full...so we ended up setting up camp in a flat spot in the woods. Good thing we brought toilet paper! I'm sure the stars would have been wonderful if we were able to venture outside of the tent. Who knew that there were so many mosquitoes in Arizona?

Sunday morning we woke up extremely early (not exactly by choice), rolled our tent into a ball and stuffed it into the car in hopes that we could nab a campsite right away. We did! After setting up camp, we had planned to do the main long hike, but a health problem brought us to the drug store 40 minutes away instead. Bleh. With that problem solved, we did two shorter hikes, heading to the top of Sugarloaf Mountain with some great views--not a hard hike at all at about an hour total--and then hiked to the natural bridge. This whole day had me worn out. We drove back to the campsite and Paul cooked dinner (while literally getting eaten alive by mosquitoes, no joke) while I snoozed in the mosquito-free tent. He's a good guy, readers.



On Monday we woke up quite a bit later than before (meaning like...8:30), and we packed up and got ready for the all-day hike. This was by far the best part of the trip, the part with the best views and coolest places to play. The park is made to protect these really awesome rocks, and in addition to seeing views of these rocks on the hike, we actually got to hang out inside the collection. I know it doesn't sound that cool on paper (or...web?) but it really was spectacular.



I'm not going to lie--the hike was a challenge. After this 5 1/2 hour trek, we were quite tired, and again Paul pulled through for me by driving the entire way home and buying me dinner and ice cream.

We ended the night with a few games of settlers, which is fast becoming our new addiction. I won one of them :). And now here I am!

If you guys have been wondering where I have been, the answer is Chiricahua National Monument. Will post more later.