Birthday

My birthday came and went and there wasn't a lot of fanfare. Which is the way I like it.

I got my birthday present a couple weeks earlier: a new(er) vehicle! The Blurple Turtle was just giving me too many problems so, with the help of my parents, we were able to find a nicer vehicle: a Blue (yes, it's actually blue this time) 2008 Ford Explorer. So much nicer than the 95 Isuzu. Don't get me wrong, the Isuzu has gotten me through countless film projects and a move but I think that at 130000 it had just given out. I'm learning all the new tricks of the Ford. It is strange to be driving a vehicle that is "technology" driven. I think that is what I miss a little bit about my Isuzu: the simplicity behind it, but I am learning to love this vehicle. It's definitely going to be easier to load (no more holding up the glass window in back), there is a bit more room in the cargo area. The seats are a 60/40 split, so I can lower just a bit and still have someone else sitting in the back.

Goodbye Isuzu that I really never knew the color of. . . . . .

Hello Blue Explorer.

The Friday night before my birthday I decided to treat my friends to dinner. Yes, it's my birthday and people believe that I should be treated to dinner, but my friends were coming to spend time with me and they have done so much for me. This group of friends I have known for almost 15 years. We went out to dinner (PizzaPieCafe) and stuffed ourselves with all you can eat pizza, pasta, salad, and dessert pizzas. Yes, we were comatose afterwards while we tried to play games at the house. I don't think all of us were thinking fully at that point. But it was great to be able to spend time with those people.

Court diving into two slices of pizza at once. Yep. I think she was hungry. . . .or she just really wanted the pizza.

The Saturday of my actual birthday, Jakob had rehearsal in the morning and wanted me to go with him, then after rehearsal he treated me to lunch. Fried food. Yummy. Not that I need it, but it's good to splurge once in a while, right? Then my mom made me a really pretty necklace of White Onyx. Never heard of it? Well, it's really rare and when she found it, she knew that I would want something made out of it. I absolutely love it. It's part of a new line that my mom and I are putting out this year. (I'll get a picture of it soon).

But of course, there were no pictures of me taken. I tend to be behind the camera rather than in front of it, but I'm happy that way.

Warm weekend

The weather here has been horrible lately. It can't decide on whether it is cold and inversion or snow and warm. Yes, I said snow and warm. When it snows it tends to warm up (a lot) and when there's no snow on the ground it is freezing! We had a couple of weeks of single digit or below 0 temps. So when the opportunity to go down to St. George for a conference popped up, Jakob and I decided to go for it--thinking that it would be warmer and the inversion not so far reaching.

Jakob and I were able to go down on Friday since my Principal gave me the day off to travel. I could have made it after school hours, but it would have been too much of a rush and since we had the problems that we did in the first place, it was nice to be able to just move along at whatever pace we needed. To start things off, we decided to rent a car so we wouldn't put undo miles on our own vehicles. We first placed an online reservation at the rent-a-car place in the city. I will NEVER use them again. They decided to cancel our reservation because of a "communication error". Yeah, they never communicated to me that they were going to cancel. So we went to one a little farther north and told them about the issues we were having down at the other one. These guys were so much nicer. I will use them again. They actually said that we were the 4th or 5th people to come to them after having an issue with the other place this week.Makes you believe all the nasty reviews that I read online.

So after the car debacle, we were able to get going. We bought a book-on-CD (one that I had read before but Jakob hadn't. He's really into the story now, plus its Jim Dale who reads. Perfect combo), and started off.Easy nice drive down. Kind of interesting to see the temperature change as we went farther south. We arrived late afternoon, checked in and took a quick nap before heading to the teacher's conference. I wish they would have posted the program earlier than they did. . . I don't think I would have gone if that was the case.There really wasn't anything there for me to go to, so I ended up hanging with the Broadcasting and film guys.

Jakob and I were thinking of going to see a movie or something down there but I really didn't want to after the hard week I had previously (see my teacher's blog for a post on what has been going on), so we just chilled in the hotel room.

I noticed on our traveling back that I hadn't sneezed or felt horrible the weekend we were down there. Perhaps it was the cleaner air, but we saw a difference on the way back. The minute we hit the valley, I started sneezing, and not feeling all that great. Yeah, it's the air.

Simple weekend.  I needed that.