Happy Halloween everyone! 

Surprise!

I have been telling some people this week that I have a surprise that I am going to post. Well, things haven’t worked out as planned, so I am just going to have to tell you the surprise, rather than show you. I am a red-head! I got bored over the weekend and had my sister color my hair a funky red. It is a dark red-copper, sort of like the color of this font, only much brighter. My sister, Cindy, says that I look like a punk now. :) I wanted to post a picture so that everyone can see it, but I can’t seem to get one that you can see the color in. Plus, the batteries in my camera died and I haven’t gotten around to getting more, so I can’t even try to get any more pictures right now. So, I guess you will have to either imagine what it looks like, or come see me so you can see it for yourself! If I do manage to get a picture, I will post it!

Renaissance Festival 2004

It has once again been pointed out to me that I have not posted in a while. Sorry! My computer went nuts this week, and I was afraid to get online. Turns out that I had ended up with a bunch of adware and spyware on my system. All is well now though, so I am back!

I haven't yet had the chance to tell details about the Ren-fest, so here goes.

The group from WV arrived at Chris and Shawn's place around 10:30 on Friday. Everyone else was already there, so we had a few drinks and just hung out for a couple of hours, sharing stories from the past. Since we knew we had an early, and long, day ahead of us, we actually went to bed at a half way decent hour. There were eleven of us to sleep in a two bedroom apartment, but somehow we managed. As I predicted, I slept in Shawn's bed--thank you! I am certain it t was far more comfortable than my Smurf sleeping bag would have been.

Jump ahead to Saturday morning, seven am. I volunteered to be the first one up to shower, mainly because I think I am a glutton for punishment. Amazing enough, everyone manage to be up and showered with time to spare before 9:30. We arrived at Ren-fest at about 11:00, and headed straight to the closest beer garden!

The day progressed from there, with us watching multiple shows and consuming mass quantities of beer and food. There is just something about a steak-on-a-stake and a beer that just makes Ren-fest fun. For details about the shows, check out Christina's blog. She did a good job writing them up.

This year we tried a couple of new things. One was the throwing stars. The guys went first, and I don't think any of them hit a target. Granted, by this point we had drank a good bit, so it wasn't really a surprise. Us girls then decided that we could do better than that, and we had to show up the boys. Amazing enough, I actually hit the target--twice! I now have a little certificate proclaiming me the "Master of the Stars." We went then to watch Chris get insulted by a girl in a dunking booth. He managed to hit the target and down she went. She didn't give up thoug--she still continued to insult him as we walked away. It was all in good fun though. We later came across a barrel ride. In went four fairly intoxicated adults and one sober adult. Thankfully, Debbie, the sober one, took the most dangerous seat where she had to hold on for her life. The drunks, Chris, Ken, Christina, and myself, were well within the barrel, or things might have got ugly. The guy "running" the ride then took the barrel and spun it out of control, making it go faster and higher with every chance he could. Not real smart when you know you have a bunch of drunken people on board, but lots of fun to watch if you are on the ground, I'm sure. Luckily none of us had weak stomachs, so we all managed to make it through without incident. What was fun though was trying to get back out. We had to step over the side and go down a ladder of four or five steps, with no railing. I personally think it is a miracle that I didn't bust my ass! Drunk, dizzy, and not the least bit graceful on a good day, I don't know how I made it back down. We also got to watch Christina and Ken beat each other with sacks of some sort, trying to knock the other off a log. If I remember right, I think Ken won. Sorry if I am wrong, Christina! We then proceeded to a rock climbing wall to watch Ken, Chris, and Christina try their best to reach the top. Later, Christina was heckled by a guy who you could pay to throw tomatoes at. Chris managed to hit his hand at one point, but I don't think he ever got one in his face.

One of the funniest things happened while we were at the Mud Show. After each show the actors ask for donations. Last year Christina went up and kissed one of them, so we decided this year it had to be a tradition, so we made her do it again. It wasn't so bad, because this guy had a fairly clean face. I guess one of the other actors, the narrator, got jealous though, and he wanted a kiss also. He was completely covered in mud, having taken a full body dive into the pit. Christina finally decided to oblige and found a somewhat clean spot on the side of his head. Right as she was about to make contact though, he turned his head and the kiss landed her face in a beard full of mud. I wonder if it taught her not to kiss strange men..... :)

The day ended with us buying our souvenirs, and Shawn getting me a rose. Isn't he just the biggest sweetie? It lived for almost two weeks, but now is drying to join the others I have from the previous Ren-fests. We all piled into the cars and headed home then, to continue our evening of drinking and just plain having fun. And yes, before anyone (note: my family) questions it, we had plenty of designated drivers amongst us, so the drive home was a safe one.

We played poker for a while, with Leslie ending up being the winner, much to Ken's dismay. Throughout the game, Shawn was drawing "tattoos" all over my legs and back, while Chris was drawing on Christina. I had multiple penises, a castle with a dragon, Jesus eating a fish taco, flowers, some Shakespeare, and I don't even remember what else drawn all over the lower half of both of my legs. Then on my back I had a cute little lizard. Christina's was an eye and mouth on her upper back and neck. Why we feel the need to become human canvases when we are drunk, who knows? At least we had guys with some artistic ability to do the artwork, so it actually looked pretty good.

Then the longest game of Indian poker in history began. For those of you who don't know what I am talking about, it is a game where you are dealt one card, which you place on your forehead without looking at it. Then you look at what everyone else on the table has, and bet according to what you think are your chances of having a card that beats what everyone else has. It sounds strange, but it is actually pretty fun. It came down to Ken, Kevin, and me. For a while, I was playing to win, and then I just got tired and wanted to go to bed. I started going all in, hoping to lose, but I kept having Aces and Kings on my forehead. Finally though, I had a two and got out. By that point I think we had been playing for almost three hours. Oh, a note to Ken and Kevin: For a good part of the evening, Christina and Michele were openly helping me cheat, and you guys never noticed. There were times they just said my card out loud and you never paid any attention. :) I meant to tell you that night, but was too freaking tired to remember to do so.

I finally got out of the game and headed to bed. I lost my Shawn though. When I went in the room to get my clothes to change into, I saw Tricia in the floor asleep, but no Shawn. We looked in the other bedroom, and still no Shawn. And he wasn't in the living room or kitchen. I went back to the bedroom to check again, and realized that I am just a blind fool. He was sound asleep, just on the wrong side of the bed. The people who were still awake got a good laugh out of that one! I finally went to bed, with the Indian poker game still going strong. I think it finally ended about 30-45 minutes later. Shawn kept snoring, and it took everything in me to not reach over and keep bonking him on the nose the way he does me when I snore. I was nice and let him sleep. Remember that next time, Shawn!!!

The next morning we woke at leisure and when we were all up we went to Big Boy for breakfast. After a decent meal and a picture with the large Big Boy statue outside, we headed to see Shawn's mom, Barb, for a little while. We all really like her, so it just seemed like a fun thing to do. Christina and I both now have permission to marry Shawn. I get first dibs, but if by chance I end up marrying someone else, then Christina gets him. Barb was sure to point out though that Shawn may end up marrying someone else and if that happens, we just don't know what we will do. :)

After we returned to the apartment, we discovered that Ken and Leslie had already left, and then half of the WV crew decided to head back early. Kevin, Debbie, and I voted to stay on for a little while longer. We played some rummy, fed the ducks the rest of the bread, and then went out to dinner at Red Robin with Chris and Shawn before finally deciding we had to come home.

The ride home was interesting and I am sure that both Kevin and Debbie think that I am insane. There was this cluster of stars that kept doing strange things. It was one large bright star, surrounded by lots of little ones. The little ones would get really dim, then explode into brightness. It looked like a little thing of fireworks just continuously going off. At first, they couldn't see it, so they really thought I was losing my mind. It followed us all the way home though, and they could see it okay once we were in my driveway. It looked way cooler in the country with no city lights around, but it was still neat to watch from home. I haven't ever seen anything like it and have no idea what it was, but it was fascinating to watch.

I think that about sums up the Ren-fest weekend! With as wordy as I was, be thankful I directed you to Christina's blog for a review of the shows! I do hope to have some pictures up soon. That would be much easier if Kevin and Debbie or Ken and Leslie would e-mail me some! (hint, hint) I have some from Chris, but I am hoping to put up a whole album, with your pictures included.

I am already anxiously awaiting next year!

A true to life picture of Baciana!

See you later, Christina!

I just left Christina's apartment in St. Albans for the last time. Tricia and I spent the evening over there helping her and her family load up her moving van and clean the apartment. We all managed not to cry, although we did tear up at one point. She will be heading to Baltimore bright and early tomorrow morning. I sincerely hope that she is happy there. We made plans tonight for her to hopefully come visit here in the next couple of weeks, and for Tricia and me to travel there for the day after Thanksgiving shopping. So, with any luck, we will still get to see her quite often.

I am going to miss you, girl! You take care of yourself and keep in touch. Otherwise I will be forced to hunt you down! :) Be good and I will see you soon!

The group at Ren Fest, minus Kevin--he was taking the picture. I will post all the details later when I have time, plus another photo album, hopefully. From left to right--Ken, me, Michelle, Leslie, Debbie, Shawn, Chris, Nora, Christina, and Tricia. 

A thought to ponder....

Have you ever realized suddenly that you want something that you had never really thought about before? And the thought actually kind of scares you? It isn't that what you now want is a bad thing, just a really big surprise. One of those things that makes you step back and start thinking.....

What a day!!!!

I have had one of the longest days! It came close to being the day from hell, but luckily I kept running into nice people, so that was the saving grace. To start out, I forgot to put on deodorant this morning. Don't ask--I have no idea how I could forget it. I should have known it was going to be a bad day from that moment. So, I stopped at the travel center and paid two bucks for a little tiny stick of deodorant--a full size one doesn't cost me as much as that tiny one did! Anyways, I was sure then that I wouldn't be stinky today. :) And thank goodness for that, 'cause I had a rough day.

I was headed to a place that I had never even heard of. I got directions from the company, but it seems that today I didn't know how to follow directions either, and I ended up lost. What makes it worse, is that the first time I thought I was lost and ended up turning around, it turns out I wasn't. I backtracked about 15 miles, turned around again, then saw a sign that said I was 18 miles from my the next marker to my destination. Which means that I was only three miles from it when I turned around. Great, isn't it? At this point I was already about 25 or 30 minutes late for my appointment. And I was in the middle of nowhere, so my cell phone didn't get a signal, so I couldn't call the company to let them know what was going on.

I continued on my merry way, trying to follow the directions as closely as possible, and then I really did end up lost. Luckily not too far lost, and I was able to find a gas station to ask for directions. I got even better than that--a man that was getting gas there immediately picked up on the fact that I wasn't from there, and offered to lead me to where I needed to turn off onto the next little highway. First really nice person of the day! :)

I finally made it there, only an hour late. :) Thankfully my contact was extremely nice and understanding. Second nice person of the day. In fact, he offered me a job--he was that impressed with me, even after I was an hour late. But, I didn't have all of the qualifications that he needed, nor do I want to move to this place, so I couldn't accept. It was nice to have the offer though. :)

While I was there, my contact kept getting pulled away from me by various men, and he kept coming back grinning and sort of laughing. I finally had to ask what was going on. He first told me that he would tell me later, but then started laughing and said, "Let's put it this way--we have a lot of eligible bachelors here." I had to tell him then that I had already met a couple. While I was in a conference room doing some paperwork, these two guys walked in and started pretty much staring at me. I said hi, for lack of knowing what else to do. And they told me, "Don't mind us. We aren't like the other losers here. We see a pretty lady sitting by herself, we are going to go check her out." I couldn't help but laugh! I had no idea what to reply to that. I told them thanks, and they turned and left. I guess I must have been looking pretty good today.

Which helped me out at the end of the day. At some point this morning, likely when I needlessly turned around, I ran over a nail. At about 4:00, someone came to let me know that I had a flat. Yippee. I was beyond the middle of nowhere. Now, I know how to change a flat--not a problem. My spare is a dummy tire though and I was over 100 miles from home, so that was not really an option. To get home safely, I had to get the tire repaired. Enter more nice people. Those eligible bachelors from earlier--more than willing to come and do anything they could to fix that tire. :) After just a short time, it was pumped back up enough to get me into the closest town and to a mechanic. And to make sure I made it safely, one of them followed me there. :)

You would think that was the end of the bad day, wouldn't you? No, the worst was yet to come. Let me just preface this part by saying I HATE TRAFFIC. I was so close to home, and I was so tired. For those of you that know the area--I got to shortly before the Oakwood Road Exit on I-64 West. Then everything came to a halt. Almost 40 minutes later, I finally was able to get off at the Kanawha Turnpike Exit. For those of you who don't know the area, that is probably 3-4 miles, maybe five. Forty minutes to go less than five miles. For a tired, cranky person that hates traffic, that was worse than hell. Unfortunately, no nice person to mention here. It just plain sucked. And then I got stuck in even more traffic. I would have expected it during rush hour, but it was after seven! I just wanted to get home. In the end a drive that should have taken me 2-2 1/2 hours, took me almost four.

Then I got home. To end the day of the perfect note, I broke a nail as I was getting out of the car. And not just a little chip--it broke into the quick and hurt very, very bad. I went into my house, to find that my dog had peed in my floor. Not that I was surprised. She has a tiny little bladder and it had been over thirteen hours since she had been out. I didn't blame her, but the last thing I wanted to do was have to clean up pee.

On a happy note, making this day end well, my "Guys Suck" post worked. :) My online not-so-buddy got back in touch with me tonight and is again my online buddy. We talked about everything and decided to put it in the past and forgive and forget. So, we are at least online friends again. I don't know we will ever meet. I am not going to press the issue. I am just going to be happy to have him to talk to again, if only online.

Guys Suck

Just when I start to think there may be some hope for the male gender, something happens to make me change my mind.

I have been talking to a guy online for a few months now, just as friends, and we have been getting along really well. There has never been any mention of us trying to date or anything—in fact we tell each other about our failed attempts at dating.

We have touched a few times on the idea of meeting, but somehow the subject always gets changed and we never make plans. A couple of weeks ago, I was talking with another friend who asked me why I had never met him. I had no answer—there was no good reason why we hadn’t tried to meet. So, that night I left him a message telling him that since we skirted around with the issue so much, why not just go ahead and meet. I left my phone number and told him to call if he was interested.

Now, I saw this as very non-threatening. I didn’t expect that a simple message like that would strike fear into a man. But, somehow it did. It caused yet another man to fall off the face of the earth. I did talk to him on yahoo once since then, and he let me know that he had the number, but “hadn’t had the chance to call.” I took that as truth at the time, but it has been two weeks now. Surely he has had five minutes that he could have called in. Here’s the kicker--now he won’t even talk to me online. I would like to think that he isn’t avoiding me, but I have a hard time believing that. We usually talked three or four nights a week, and since I did the unthinkable and gave him my number, I have only seen him online the one time. Not that I think he hasn’t been online—I think he has his stealth settings on so that I won’t see him online.

If he wasn’t interested in meeting me, I wouldn’t have cared. If I somehow implied that I wanted to date him in my short little message and that scared him off, then I am terribly sorry for that—that was not my intention at all. I just thought, hey, we get along so great online, why not meet and have another “real” friend—not just an online buddy. All I seemed to accomplish though was to lose my online buddy.

To my online not-so-buddy anymore, if you are still reading this blog, please know that I am sorry. I didn’t mean to overstep my bounds as an online friend. I honestly thought I was taking things to where they were naturally progressing, but I guess I thought wrong. It wouldn’t have bothered me in the least for you to just tell me that you weren’t interested in meeting. I miss talking to you and I hope we can still have some type of a friendship, even if only online.

Something I miss

While I was laying in bed last night, unable to go to sleep for some reason, my mind started wondering. I remembered the days of having a boyfriend curled up in bed with me, and I realized how much I miss that. I am not talking anything sexual either; I miss the togetherness. I miss rolling over and having someone to toss my arm around, someone to cuddle up to when I am cold, and someone to calm my mind when I can’t sleep. I miss falling asleep with his arms wrapped tight around me. I miss the security that you feel when you sleep like that. I always enjoyed waking up before my boyfriend and watching him sleep, wondering what was going on in his dreams. And I miss waking up myself to find that he does the same when he wakes up first. I guess I just miss the closeness that you have with someone when you share a bed.

A note to Shawn now: Since I am sure that I will end up sharing your bed during Ren-fest, all I can say is you had better cuddle!!!! ;) Can't wait to see all of you guys again!