A Murphy's Law kind of day

I had to give a lecture this morning, so naturally I woke up with a sore throat. I stopped at Starbucks on the way to the lecture and got a frappuccino with my free drink coupon and that helped numb my throat so that I could lecture on the exciting topic of urine.

I left the lecture, went to turn a corner and hit another car. I'm okay, just a little sore. Ok maybe more than a little. My car on the other hand is in some sad shape. Driver's side to driver's side accident. I was able to open my driver's door once to get out of the car, after that it was climb over the center console to get into the driver's seat. So I had it towed to the nearest Chevy dealership and am waiting for an estimate. The front end isn't pretty and I'm not sure what got damaged under the hood to make it start smoking after the accident. So I'm waiting for the phone call that will tell me how much the damage is.

I feel like I've been on the phone all day now. Had to talk to the insurance company locally. Had to find out which comes first, medical or car insurance. Stop and get checked out as I got more and more sore. Talk to the claims department. Get claim number. Call med express back with claim number so that my car insurance can be billed.

Someone make Murphy go away!

Once again reminded why some animals eat their young...

Today in church was just another reminder of why some animals eat their young. This kid in front of us was most likely ADHD and needed to be on drugs and wasn't. He may have had something else wrong with him too. But we're standing listening to the Gospel and I can't help but notice that the kid is SPITTING on the FLOOR OF THE CHURCH! And he knows that what he's doing is wrong because he gets about 4 puddles on the floor and then rubs them into the carpet with his sandal. I wanted to lean forward and tap the dad on the shoulder and be all "Um excuse me, but do you know that your son is spitting on the floor?"

Then throughout the rest of the service he was picking his nose, spitting into his hands and wiping it on his shirt and just scrambling all over the row. His dad tried to get him to sit up and behave a few times, but it just didn't work. Then the kid wanted to shake my dad's hand for the sign of peace. Dad had noticed how he'd been acting and after shaking with him, he leaned over to me and asked if I had a wet wipe in my purse. Luckily, I've always got a bottle of hand sanitizer with me, so even though it was black raspberry vanilla, dad took a squirt of it.

Girl's night out

Tonight Karen, Kelly and I went out to dinner. It's something that we do at least once a month. Well, they came to pick me up and I had on these aqua capri pants and a printed tank top that matches it. I answered the door and burst out laughing because Kelly had on the exact same shirt. We'd talked on the phone earlier but we hadn't even mentioned what we were wearing. Great minds think alike.

Ouch

My shoulder hasn't felt like this in months. I want a new one!

Sick Puppies/Finger Eleven/Seether

April and I went down to the Chesaning Showboat on Monday to see the Seether and Finger Eleven Concert. I'd just finished working 6 straight nights and so did not want to get out of bed to go to the concert. There are some times that skipping sleep is worth it, and this was one of those times, and I didn't have to go to work that night, so I got to sleep after the concert, but it was so hard to drag my butt out of bed after only a few short hours of sleep (5ish).

Picked April up around 4:45 and we made a short stop at Benningan's for a meal and drinks, since we both wanted to bitch about work a bit. Then we made the drive. It would have been a great drive, except we took Swan Creek Road down to meet M-52 and I did not know that Swan Creek Road was all torn up and is getting ready to get resurfaced, so we had that wonderful sound of torn up road and a great cloud of dust following us down the entire way, so we couldn't have the windows down and it was a beautiful day. :(

We got to Showboat Park and got parked. Ran into John, April's kinda-guy, and then went to get our seats since we actually had reserved seats and not general admission. Well, we get up there, and no where on the ticket or posted does it say no cameras. Security checks my purse, and sure enough, I get told that my camera (my little Kodak 3mp camera) has to go back to my car. So walk back to the car, put the camera away and walk back, we go in a different gate and the guy barely checks my purse. Gah. Get our seats, and check it out, the people in front of us got cameras in. Only the one security guard was really checking the contents of purses. Not that it really mattered, since every cell phone there had a camera on it. FAIL! On the part of security.

Sick Puppies played first, and though I'd never heard of them since they were from Australia, they were really good. And I wish that I was as tiny as their bassist Emma. I want a figure similar to that so I can wear the tiny corset-like top that she had on. They played a short set, getting us revved up for Finger Eleven.

Finger Eleven was my favorite band of the night. Probably because I'm not a total hard rock person, so the fact that I could actually understand what they were saying was a big plus for me. That and they had the coolest guitar that I've ever seen. It was nothing but a frame in the shape of an electric guitar and the neck, strings too of course. And that made the coolest sound that I'd ever heard come out of guitar. It's the one that they use for "One Thing." It was just awesome.

Now, the Chesaning Showboat is actually a boat. Kinda. It's on the Shiawassee River and there's an old Paddleboat behind the stage. And people were smart, they were taking their boats up and down the river. Good thinking, hear the concert without having to pay for it. The coolest boat though was the one with the giant swan raft floating behind it. It was freakin' sweet.

Honestly, by the time Seether played, I was tired, I hadn't had any allergy pills in a week, so I was sneezy and itchy (I lost the pills), and I had a headache because my neck was acting up. I only knew a couple of the songs, and while they sounded great, I wasn't totally into it, and I was kinda ready to go. But they played for about an hour and a half, and I enjoyed them, but not as much as I'd enjoyed the earlier two bands.

Concert ended a little before 11:30 and by the time we stopped by the merchandise table and got what we wanted, parking had cleared out enough that it was no problem getting out of the park, except I know I followed the way the guy was pointing me, and somehow I ended up on the wrong side of the barrels. Oops, but that was quickly solved. Guys directing traffic probably thought that I was drunk, but there was no way I was paying $5 for a can of alcohol that I probably wasn't even going to like, and being tired already, I knew that wasn't a good idea.

'Twas a fun night though. Good times and good music.

It's over

I survived accounting!

I'm giving my brain a break, I'm not gonna learn a thing for a week!

Sleep

I miss it. I want to go more than 2 hours before waking up.

Camping

Ok so I know it's been like 2 weeks since I've gone camping but I've been busy! I've been meaning to blog for a while, really, I have!

We packed up the trailer and headed up to Tawas Point. If you can't tell from my flickr pictures, I just love Tawas. It's a great little tourist town, even if WalMart has put all the little stores out of business.



We were at the campground out at the point so we were across the bay from the State Harbor, where I stayed last year. It was nice being in the campground because I hadn't camped there in ages. It was nice to be back, and they'd totally redone some of the campsites, and the bathrooms and showers (score! Private shower area instead of stalls lined up next to each other).

Would have been great had we not gotten there and found the campsite we were assigned to under about 4 inches of water. Made me so happy that we were in a trailer and not a tent. Luckily, the campground is mostly sand so the site drained quickly.

Got set up, ate, hung out with our neighbors. I learned the most interesting thing from the Hash's.

Hot dogs make good fishing bait.



Friday's campfire was good, but not everyone in our group was there, so we called it a slightly early night (If you call midnight early).

Naturally, as always happens when I'm camping, I was up early on Saturday, in fact I thought it was later than 8am when I woke up.

After a leisurley breakfast we headed into town for a bit, had lunch at Mulligan's (formerly The Perfect Pickle) and had an order of the original deep fried pickles. No one else can beat them.

We got back to the campground, suited up, went down to the beach, and of course, then the rains came...

So back to town with the Hashes to kill time.

And I managed to twist my ankle by stepping in a hole in a rain covered street trying to get from one awning to another. That was fun.

Not nearly as fun though as getting back to camp and finding our campsite ankle deep in water and our carpet floating.

Yes, floating.

And the rain wasn't stopping.

So we went for pizza.

And saw some amazing lightning and then a rainbow over the bay.

Luckily it dried out enough that night for a good fire.



And we roasted peeps in that fire, but they don't eat well after you've reduced them to a bubbling pile of marshmallow slag.

And we had some sticky marshmallows left, that we didn't want to take home...

So I roasted all of them at once on our new marshmallow stick.



And the flames rocked!

Sunday we broke camp a little later than intended, but we were down the aisle that every camper had to go down to get to the dumping station. So we just left late. And the rangers didn't have much of a problem with it.

I can't wait to go sailing again.