Salida puts stuff in the water

First thing first, congrats are in order for one Mr. Bob Pinkerton. Way to take 1st place! Thata boy!!! We are all very proud of you. I think Joey might explode because of all the pride. Ha ha.. I don't know when I've seen him grin like he did after got the news. It was cute, and touching all at the same time. Speaking of Joey, and it seems like I rarely do anything else, we spent the weekend together in Salida for the last race of July. As you can see from the photo, Joey put a lot of effort in which made him sleepy.

While he was off racing and focusing on being the rough and tough cyclist man, I was being my normal slightly weird self and climbing trees. The tree was GINORMOUS! For example here is a photo of me in the tree.... And here is a photo of Joey from my view up in the tree.... Joey looks tiny.

We also found a very large bug.. I think it was a June beetle but I am not sure. You have to wonder what exactly it is that is in the water down there to make things grow like this. :)

THERE WAS A PICTURE OF A LARGE BUG HERE. IT LOOKED LIKE THIS:


Other than that Joey and I went hiking together, and tried to take a photo where we were both in the same shot. That way we'll have a total of 4 together or something lame like that. It didn't really work, but it's kind of artsy. I call it, "We both only have one eye, but together we have two." I'm kidding. Breathe people. It's okay. I'm not that sappy. Yet.

We also got to see my parents and some family friends, although for some reason I completely spaced taking pictures with them. :( No bueno. It was a great weekend. I like weekends like that. I do not like the moving that has taken part for the beginning of this week. Joey and I were up till 1 am last night moving stuff. My back went out at some point so I got to hobble around like an old man, and Joey was up waaay past his bed time for a 6:30am alarm clock. YAWN.. but there is still more moving to do today so off I go. (on the bright side, the new apartment is wonderful and we got to sleep there last night... on a mattress, on the floor....but still... progress has been made. Mauh ha ha!!! )

So long Dr. T

Tomorrow is my last official appointment with Dr. T. No more spinal traction for me. YAY! I have been going for a year and in a way I think I am almost a little sad to say good bye. Yes, it has helped me more than I would like to admit and yes, I have hated going. The important part right now is that I have completed my program just in time to move. Go me! If you are bored you can read about my experiences with all of it. If not then you can wander off to your life, which is probably a lot more exciting then this. :)

5. Traction and Dr. T
I have spinal sclerosis. It is a hard word to spell, but a fun one to say. It sounds a lot more intense than it actually is. When I was told that I had this I was confused. I did not know what that word meant. Everything I knew about it dealt with old people. Old people had this, which meant I could not. I was 22. In fact the reason I was even diagnosed with this was because I went mountain biking the weekend before and went flying over my handle bars which pretty much tore my arm out of the socket. Old people do not mountain bike and take diggers over their handle bars…which logically meant I was safe, he was wrong and he should ask for a refund from his medical school. I had this set pretty firmly in my mind until I got to my car. I opened the door and sat in the driver’s seat, and started crying like a complete wimp. I didn’t want to be old with spinal sclerosis. I am very active and this would mess with my Mojo. I went home. I looked it up on the internet and oh… it made more sense. It wasn’t the end of the world. It just meant that while spines are supposed to go straight up and down mine had decided to be artistic and do the shimmy around my thoracic and lumbar regions. Aka, it was not straight; it curved out to the side. I could deal with a spine that wanted to express itself. The next day I was supposed to go back to the doctor. I went, and we did X-rays. I still didn’t know if I believed him so I left my belly button ring in so I could tell if he was switching out my healthy 22 year old spine x-rays for that of an old person. No such luck, not only was there the blaring whiteness that was my belly button ring proving that it was indeed my spine, but I got yelled at for not taking it out. Bummer. Sigh. Okay, okay it was my spine now how do I fix this? Dr. T was more than willing to tell me exactly what I needed to do and how he was going to help me get there. This man sells chiropractic work like some men sell cars. He talks fast, wears tacky brightly colored polo-shirts and smiles while asking about your family but he moves on to the next person before you can answer. He is also religious. In the office there is Christian music playing non-stop. I am not religious and I have nothing against religious music. I even own some that I listen to on my 8 hour drive home to see my family. But this was not even music you would listen to if you were desperate 6 hours in on an 8 hour car ride. The solution to spinal sclerosis is traction and adjustments three times a week for a year. From my experience I have determined that traction means they strap you down, with weights attached to your head and force you to listen to bad Christian music. You cannot look around at the other people who are in equally ridiculous positions, some drooling and more than one making the snorting, sucking sound as they try and swallow with their heads tilted back all the way. It is funny but you can’t really laugh because you might choke on the spit that is accumulating in your own throat. When you are taken out of this particular traction you have red marks on your head and you have to try and act dignified knowing that all of the people around you just heard you making the snorting, sucking sounds when you were trying to swallow. Next you move on to standing traction. This is much more exciting because you can look around and people are doing different things which are entertaining. However it is a lot more dangerous. A couple weeks into my traction experience I thought I was doing pretty well, I had mastered the swallowing part of the neck traction and I was getting fairly good at the standing traction, meaning I no longer broke out into a sweat when I was doing it. I was talking to a man in his early 40’s that was standing next to me. It was involuntary communication because he was doing traction for one side of his body, and I was doing it for the other side so here we were strapped in, staring at each other. After about two minutes of awkward silence we started talking, I can’t remember what about. Something to deal with farms. I grew up on one and he was working on one now... I knew this because he was wearing a red shirt and overalls. We were talking for awhile when I suddenly woke up on the ground. I was being held up by straps, two people I didn’t know and some stranger in front of me was saying “woo-ie I didn’t know I person could go out like that, we was in the middle of talking and suddenly she went white as a sheet and BAM!, ha ha ha.” He has a huge grin on his face. I had a lot of things I wanted to say in order to remove that shit eating grin but at the moment I needed to lie down. I was led over to a table, and the doc whizzes by asking if I am okay. Apparently this happens all the time to light weight females. I think I missed that in the opening presentation. Traction: may cause head injury while fixing your spine. I waited a week before going back, and then I only went grudgingly. I still go to traction, not as often as I am supposed to but my car salesman of a doctor tells me that this will cure all my ills. This is my new elixir. It will make my ovaries happy and my immune system invincible. My spine will be straight as an arrow and I won’t have any problems when I am an old person. I go and the bad Christian music continues to play, but now I bring head phones which I jam into my ears while glaring around the room daring any farmer to laugh at me.

SIDE NOTE: I am not sure it really was a cure all elixir but it did help me out a bit. The migraines I have had since I was a teen are gone and I can run again. So really, it was worth it. ( I think) Oh yeah, and the passing out part never went away. In fact I passed out yesterday. Really, it wasn't passing out, I just wanted a closer look at their carpet. That's all.

Home sweet home

Break out the champaign, and bring in the clowns. We have an apartment! Move in date is set for next Monday. Joe and I will be residing in a nice two bedroom, two bath apartment. It has a full kitchen and a balcony off the front which means it will be facing west for those beautiful sunsets in the evenings. In the master bedroom there is a large walk in closet (so that Joey can fit his truck load of clothes) and the master bath has a HUGE tub which makes me a very happy girl. I just need a beach ball and some floaty wings and I am all set, well and maybe a rubber ducky. "Rubber ducky, you're the one, you make bath time oh so fun..." sorry. Back to describing the dwelling. We are planning on setting the second bedroom up as a guest room/computer room. It is going to be entertaining trying to cram all of the stuff we both own into one place. I am planning on throwing away half of my stuff cause really, it's just random junk. Next week is going to be a lot of work. But we can handle it because we're the tough, big, strong, moving types. Quit laughing at us. Really. We are good. The apartment complex is spiffy too. (Yes, I just used the word spiffy. Wanna fight 'bout it? )There is a pool and hot tub downstairs, and a gym. Pretty much everything we need and in a location that is right next to a bike/running path. Score. I believe my sister Nikki will be the first guest because she was not wise enough to consider that I'll probably make her help me set things up. Aka: My sister Nikki is coming to town on the 6th of Aug. I am excited to make her work for me, I mean see her and spend some quality time catching up. Lol. The comical part of this whole moving in together business is that for the first month we will hardly see each other. I am going out of town the first weekend and then Joey had one, possibly two business trips towards the end of the month. :( Sad panda. As soon as things get kind of arranged in a house like manner people can come over and check it out. Unless you want to fall victim to the moving crew. (Trust me, you don't. Run while you still can. If Joey or I call you in the next week, don't answer!!!!)

So that's the exciting news for today. As gun shy as I am at the moment about living with significant others I can hardly wait for this. I can honestly not imagine my life without Joey in it. Strange how that stuff falls into place sometimes. You just never know what is going to happen next. Well, except for right now. I know that next I am headed off to Dr. T's and then to run errands for the rest of the day. :) Yes, I know, I am smart ass. But I enjoy it so much.

Ps. I'll put pictures up as soon as I can.

Drake is the Bombdiggiety

Whew... weekends are supposed to be for relaxing, and yet I seem to look forward to the work week so that I get a chance to breathe again. This weekend was kicked off with finding an apartment! YES!!!! It is a very nice place, and I'll give you more details later. Today we have to turn in applications and all of that jazz. This happy news was followed up by an alarm clock going off at 5 am Saturday morning. I don't know about you, but for some reason that just seems wrong to me. You are supposed to sleep in on Saturday but noooo... 5 am we are rolling out of bed and crawling towards the shower. We had a race to marshal at the top of Mt. Evans. Aren't we cute in our matching little orange vests? Awwww.... That's the Christmas card right there. 6:15 am...finally coffee! I can stop growling in response to everything Joey says and start to form sentences. That is a pleasant change. By 7 am we were at the top of the mountain. There wasn't much to do but set up and drink a lot of water so that we didn't pass out due to the change in elevation. It was a little cold, but that was mainly the wind. I wore flip flops because I am just that cool and I decided that I would control the weather and make it not rain/snow that day. Lucky for me that plan worked. About an hour and a half to two hours in we start to see the first racers. Wow. That is all I have to say to those guys. That was a hard race. I was dead impressed. I would not want to do that. I would not want to wish that on my worst enemy, and yet here these guys are doing this by choice. I question their sanity as much as I applaud their strength. :) I mean that in the nicest way possible. So we spent the day at the top of the world, or at least at 14,240 ft. My face became nice and crispy. I did not know that your lips could actually blister from sunburn. Sexy...



We did have a little company up there at the top though. Check out the mountain goat/sheep. They were pretty cute. I oohed and awed like a girl is supposed to and then ran and got my camera. By 3 pm we were finally making our own descent down the mountain. Picking up road signs along the way and making faces at the tourist which were allowed to come up the mountain before the race even ended. Finally we got home around 4 pm, at which point we crawled back into bed and passed out cold for the next two hours. I am not sure why it was so exhausting to stand around all day but I was dead to the world. Joey and I curled up with some quesadillas for dinner and watched a movie. Sunday morning we headed off to Joey's race in Boulder. It was killer since the temp was 103* outside at the start and as soon as it was over we headed back to my house to begin the YARDWORK.. insert dramatic music here. It took us a couple hours with the use of Drake's phenomenal weed whacker. Drake, I will forever be in your debt. Next time you need help with something let me know. So the result of hard labor ended us with something that resembles a yard. Sweet! My landlord will be happy and I am sure that the neighbors are thrilled. Now if we can just keep it kind of neat for another week, I am set and I am forever done with Campo Ct. ( this is where the band breaks in and the parade starts). As for right now I am off to buy renters insurance and then head off to lunch with my boss. Blackman out.

I'm picking up a baby bumble bee, won' t my mommy be so proud of me?

After years of holding the world's longest record for NOT EVER being stung by a bee, I lost my title last night due to a nasty little stinger on the butt of a foul tempered little beast of a wasp. IT FREAK'N HURT! I now understand why girls run screaming with their hands thrown over their heads when a bee is flying around them. I get it... it hurts... ouch! I was casually walking into joey's apartment last night, minding my own business, when out of no where a wasp decides to ruin 23 years of non-bee stings by stabbing me in the leg with his stinger. I screamed and batted at my invisible quarter inch foe. I was prettying much just trying to figure out what the hell just happened, and why did it hurt so much and I thought that flailing my arms around would help with all of this. Joey pointed out the hive that I had apparently walked to close to. They need to have an alarm system like a car or something so this shit doesn't happen. "Please step away from the Hive, BEEP BEEP BEEP. Please step away from the Hive!" I wish it had been a bee and not a wasp because then it would have died afterwards, but no, the little f*&^#$ will live to sting another day. I don't really have anything against bees or wasps and I wish them luck in their little buggy lives but from now on I think I might take a tiny amount of pleasure when I scrape their dead bodies off my windshield. Okay, so maybe I am a little bitter at the moment. The good part is that I now know that I am not allergic to them and I got to watch CCL hose down the hive from the safety of the window. (They were re-building it this morning when I left. Evil stinging bastards!)

In order to make me feel better, and because we don't own any food at Joe's house, we headed out to a Chinese dinner. It was very good, and had a cool presentation. We ordered the Imperial Dinner. Which came with soup, an appetizer, entrée, rice and dessert for two people. The soup was good, and the appetizers were very original. The best part was when the entrées came.

Joey had ordered something called Seafood Bird's Nest. For as gross as the name sounded it was tasty. It contained Jumbo shrimp, scallops, crabmeat, fresh broccoli, water chestnuts, mushrooms and baby corn sautéed in wine sauce. There was also a type of sea food that neither Joey nor myself had ever seen before. We dubbed it a white Christmas tree because of the way it looked, not the way it tasted. Anyways all of this came in a nest made out of fried potatoes. It was fantastic. I recommend the Imperial Chinese Restaurant to anyone who is craving a some Chinese food. After dinner we had a wonderful ginger ice cream dish, drizzled in chocolate sauce... mmmmm...

With the dessert came the typical fortune cookie. Joey's reaction to his was the entertainment portion of the evening. He opens his cookie, looks at it, looks confused, re-reads it and then starts laughing. "Your clever mind will lead you to many rewards" was what it said. What Joey read was: " Your clever mind will lead you to many retards". As is the tradition you add the words "in bed" to the end of your fortune. So Joey ended up with " Your clever mind will lead to many retards in bed." I think after a prediction like that he was rather disappointed with the rest of the evening. :)

Day two of week three. 16 more days to go

Lets see, what is new and exciting in the life o Sara? Not much. It's a Tuesday. Tuesdays are one of my favorite days of the week although I have no idea why. I think it is simply because I like the way the word sounds and it is generally not that stressful of a day. You don't have to deal with the issue of returning to work like you do on Monday and you aren't watching the seconds tick slowly by like you do on a Friday. This week has been fairly productive considering I am only two days in. I have scheduled a couple of apartment tours for Mr. Pink and I. I have given thousands of dollars away to CU and promised even more with the repayment of student/parent plus loans and I managed to bribe my roommate into replacing the light in the kitchen so that I did not risk the chance that I might short circuit my brain. As entertaining as that might have been. :) I think my brain might have short circuited anyways though due to the heat in my bedroom. My room is above the garage, and since heat rises this makes my room the hottest one in the house. It is like a sauna. I think the heat makes me slightly delusional. You might ask why it is that I continue to spend time in my room if this is the case and the only answer I have is I have no idea. Maybe I am practicing for the off chance that I might be moving to CA. Ha ha... okay, not really. I am here because the computer is here and since I am old fashioned I still have desk top. They lack in the portability feature.

Work was entertaining today. I went in at 8:30 am to meet my boss so that I could get the right type of elemental sulfur for a plant I am trying to bring back to the land of the living. He did not show up till noon. :) I found plenty of things to do as always but it still made me laugh. My boss is a very unusual man. He comes off as very gruff and displeased about everything, if you forget one little thing he rants and raves at you. His favorite line is " you think this is just some small thing, but when you are a nurse if you forget some small thing people will die!"( he was talking about re-labeling a drawer that had pencils in it). He also uses a similar line when trying to make me remember the Latin names of plants that I will never see again. "Sara, you have to remember how to spell this --insert three long Latin names, followed by a 6 digit number.. which is of course just for one of the ten plants he has handed to me---. When you are a nurse you'll have to be able to spell these things." I have to bite my tongue or I might remind him that I doubt I will be using the Latin names of plants in my nursing career. Don't get me wrong I understand the gist of his goal but the whole thing still makes me smile. I think it is sweet in sort of a crazy way that he is trying to help me with my career goals. He is also giving me a self help book as a going away present. It is about relationships. I let it slip one day that I was dating Joey. I'll let you know if it rocks my world. Don't get me wrong I really like my boss. I think I have a bit of a soft spot for him and all of his intense emotions and quirky sense of humor. He gives me a tough time in front of everyone and then he smiles a little and winks. For example we are going out to lunch on my last day and this is the email he sent out to everyone.

"Dear All, We are having a going away lunch for Sara next Monday, 21 July. Meet at 12:30 at the 30^th St greenhouse. Since Sara and Max are college students and “not picky” (Sara’s words), we will be having hogshead “cheese” sandwiches and Durian-flavored Gatorade. Mmm mmm good. Looking forward to a fun lunch.

Tom"

Later he called me and told me that unless the Ramy greenhouse floors sparkled I would not be getting any desert. I replied with a threat never to touch those floors again and an offer to make fried tadpoles with ice cream. Yeah, I'll miss him a little when I leave. Speaking of leaving I am going to go start making dinner like the good little house wife I am. Fire up the grill, we gonna have us some BBQ chicken tonight!

Kendall defeats the Scorpion!

The highlight of the weekend was Kendall's birthday for sure. Mainly because I spent the rest of the weekend curled up in a bed somewhere, or wishing I was curled up in a bed somewhere. Saturday night all of us went out to good ol' Steubens for dinner and drinks. I say good ol' like I have been there a lot but really this was only the second time. It is a hell of place, I like it. There is one drink in particular that is pretty fantastic. It is known as the Scorpion bowl. Look to your left and you will see just what type of beast we are dealing with here. It is the size of Kendall's head and Kendall, being the manly birthday boy that he was, is downing that sucker like a champ. (Kendall does not remember the rest of the night but if he reads this he will get flash backs maybe). After our wonderful dinner, complete with a cupcake for the birthday boy we headed across the street the Tavern (think that is what is was called). Here there was much girl stalking and a realization that Bekah and I are completely useless as wing men. This means that when we said we were going to go outside to find a pretty girl for Koach we really meant that we are going to go outside and get a table and completely forget that we were supposed to be finding a girl for Koach because we got to caught up in people watching. Whoops. Lucky for us he had Joey and even though they did not make a move they still had fun.

After this bar we headed over to some other bar (I have no idea what it was called because it was my turn to drink and I was taking full advantage of that fact). The highlight of this bar was the dancing. Yes, that's right folks, I got Joey to dance with me! Okay so we kind of danced in the corner by the table but it was still dancing. I was still thrilled and I think I fell a little bit more in love with him. Kendall was tearing it up on the dance floor and so was Ashley. They rule. Drake was in there somewhere but I honestly did not see much of him until it was time to go home. Home we went, crawling into bed at about 3 am. YAWN.... What a fun night. Well until the hangover the next morning, that wasn't too great. I also made the mistake of laying down in the grass at Joey's race the next day. Yeah... big wipe out about four feet from my body. Note to self: Don't be stupid and lay down at races... Getting crushed by Chuck as he comes flying over the curb is a lot worse than a head ache from too many Cape Cods. Go Allen and Randy by the way for taking 1 and 2nd place! VC shows them how it's done!