Karaoke and the Emergency Room

Man, too many things happening recently and a lack of internet connection. Doesn't make for consistent blog postings.

This story dates way back to finals week, first week of December. One of my friends from karate, Brad, went to his last karate class and was going out to celebrate moving back to Washington. I got the pleasure of joining him and his friend Bobby at Suds here in Corvallis. I had never been to Suds before, it's a pretty sweet little place, in the building of Woodstock's pizza.

Brad and Bobby started drinking some beer and got me some hard cider, catching up and talking about what lies in store ahead. After two ciders for me, (and I don't know how many each of beers they had!) we decided to head over to the Peacock. Now this was odd for me, I have never gone out on a Wednesday night, and never putting no thought into what I was dressed like.

I discovered that the Peacock is great for some karaoke on weeknights. There were some impressive folks singing too! After I had another beer, the boys convinced me to sing a song with them. (It ended up being the last song of the night, I guess it took me a while!) We sang "What's My Age Again?" by Blink 182. It was a lot of fun, and I definitely messed up the song with the lyrics right in front of me.

The Peacock closed and none of us were in any shape to drive, so we started walking towards Brad's place. Bobby thinking ahead, had some chex mix to eat on the way. By the time we got to Brad's house, we discovered that there were nuts in the mix and Brad happens to be allergic to all nuts except for peanuts.

Bobby and I were going to try to head over to my house, where I have a car and could drive somewhere to get Benadryl, but instead we called an ambulance. Brad and Bobby spent the night in the ER, one of Brad's roommates dropped me off at my house where I slept until about 6am and went and picked them up. It was an eventful night to say the least. Things I learned: Benadryl is an anti-histamine, so that means good for people having an allergic reaction, and Good Samaritan Hospital is in a weird place at the end of 9th Street. Good things to know.

Blog Ideas

I decided to give myself a day to think of the possibilities I could write about in a blog. If I do go with one of these, it will probably become it's own blog....here are some ideas:

1. Going right along with the movie Julie & Julia I could go through The Complete Home Bartender's Guide. The only problem is setting a time frame, there is no way I'm making drinks every night! Not to mention how expensive that could get.... but it would go along with me wanting to be a bartender.

2. I could write music reviews. This is probably coming mostly from my need to write a review on the new Lady Gaga cd, which will come soon. I have a huge variety of music I listen to, and I wouldn't mind an excuse to keep expanding my collection...

3. Being a fashion design major, I could write about fashion. I would probably use this blog as a tool, so I could better understand what designers are out there and what the fashion world is doing or has done. There'd probably be some room for some fashion tips too, not to mention any projects I happen to be working on.


And there you have it, my top 3 ideas for a blog project. I'm still unsure I want to tackle one of these, because I could use that time for a lot of other valuable things that I want to do. Like learning french, drawing, practicing karate for my next belt test, and the list goes on. For now, I am going to commit to write more often, everyday during break, and at least once a week after the term starts. Still, these ideas intrigue me. What do you think?

Red Dress Fashion Show

Back on December 1st, the Oregon State Fashion Organization along with OSU's student health put on a fashion show in honor of World AID's day. It happens to be the first show I have ever entered anything into and I'm very glad I did it.

I am very new to sewing and being able to create what I design, so for this show I tried to do something fairly easy. I used a knit/ spandex material, which is great as far as fit goes, just some side seams and you're done! The bad thing is actually working with this kind of material. It stretches and moves all over the place when you try to sew it, you better be generous with pinning is all I can say! I added a strap and a flounce to the bottom and created a nice dress.

I know I want to make something a whole lot better when I enter into the next fashion show, but for about 2 weeks notice I am happy with what I did. Next show, Recycled Fashion! I'm thinking of doing something with shoelaces and shoe soles. Maybe I'll post a sketch soon :)

Purpose

So I just finished watching the movie Julie & Julia. If you don't know anything about this movie, it is about the beginnings of Julia Childs, the famous TV cook, and of a woman named Julie Powell who writes a blog committing herself to get through Julia's book of 524 recipes in one year. I really enjoyed the movie and definitely recommend it. It's very inspiring.

It's things like this that get me thinking about what I'm doing. I find it interesting how people can take something simple like a blog and turn it into something that really affect people. Not only does it affect other people but it gives the person doing it a real sense of purpose. I brought up Michelle Phan in an earlier post, and I think she is another one of these inspiring people. She has taken Youtube videos on make up tutorials and I believe, has companies sponsoring her to do what she does.

I don't think that every persons blog or youtube channel should live up to these standards, but it is an interesting concept to consider. Wouldn't it be neat to have a purpose with all of these rants? I would like to commend a friend Miss Jennifer M. She has her own project of teaching herself photography and shares her lovely photos with the readers of her blog.

I am not sure if I want to create a specific purpose for my blog, but it has got me to thinking... if I did, what would be the purpose? I think for now, I might just set a goal of posting every week... or something like that. Maybe I will get some great inspiration. Do any of you have some ideas? I think I remember another one of my friends having this question.... :)

Of Games and People

I am a little behind on writing about some great events in my life that are worth writing about, but I will try to post them in chronological order and maybe throw in a rant or review in the middle :)

This event happened the Sunday after Thanksgiving in the form of the Turkey Triples Tournament. I had the opportunity to play in a triples disc golf tournament. If you are unfamiliar with idea of triples, it is basically three players using their throws for one group score. There are variations on how you can attain your score. In this tournament, the first round was "three-headed monster," in which each team member must contribute 6 of the total 18 drives, and for the holes that a team member contributes their drive, their other two teammates continue to play out the hole.

The second round was played as "best shot" which is exactly how it sounds. All of the team mates get to throw something for every shot, and the team picks which one they like best to get an overall best score.

As fun as this event sounds, (and as hard as I tried) there ended up being only one women's team at the event. (Actually, there ended up being a total of six women at the tournament, the other three were all part of different men's teams). My team consisted of Amber Cochran, Jackie Heider and me. We called ourselves Team Girl Squad and we competed with the Advanced Men. (Sadly, I was the only teammate who could appreciate Strongbad's cartoon!)

Our first round we set our goal to playing the coarse at par (54 total strokes, par=3 at each hole). We played most of the course at 2 over, but saved some of the difficult holes for the end where our focus and energy also dwindled, and ended up with a score of +6.

After getting some food and getting warmed up on that foggy day, we came back to play the best shot round at 2 under par! I can lay claim to 2 of the birdies (Birdie is one under par for the hole, so a 2) and the other 2 birdies I contributed a decent putt and a good drive.

The day proved to be very exciting for me, it was the first time I had ever birdied hole 15, and I hadn't played a round of disc golf since the event I ran on Halloween. More than just having fun at the event, I learned some things too. I feel like I have a very strong mindset, and have a lot of self-confidence in general. During those two rounds of disc golf, I learned that I have limited myself with how well I can play that disc golf course at Willamette Park. In my head, I really didn't think my team could play better than par. What helped me see these limitations I had put on myself, was playing with Amber. She is an up and coming disc golfer, and has a generally positive attitude towards disc golf. She helped me remember the attitude that I used to have playing that course, that one day I really could play every hole there really well. Why not? It's not like my drives haven't been getting farther and my putting range hasn't been getting longer. If I got nothing else from that tournament, it was well worth it.

Alas, that was not all I learned that day. For a long time I had been struggling with one certain relationship that seems to follow me like a shadow. Just before this event, some changes were made and I was still unsure that my decision was the right one. Now I know it was. At this event I got to see the many friends I have made over the years through disc golf. There are so many people that I know, and people that actually are happy to see me and what to know all that I have been up to since we last spoke. I have come to realize that it is really nice to be around people who want to see you. It's probably close to whether anyone reads your blog. I mean, take a look at this one, super long, should I read it? Well, I genuinely want to know what is going on in her life and what insight she can bring into mine, why not? Thanks for caring and I apologize for the length!

Youtube & Fashion

So I got online originally to write a blog about one of the 3 or so ideas that have been rumbling around in my head waiting to find their way on here, but instead I got on Youtube.com, and watch a lot of videos on how to do make-up and other fashion tips. This girl is adorable, you should check her out. She also has some great costume ideas, Heidi originally sent me the "How to be ninja" one right before Halloween.

Here is her link:


Enjoy!!

Update

Hello friends.

I haven't written anything for a really long time, and I miss it! I'm a woman of too many interests, which is the main problem. Another problem is I have my blog linked to facebook, and I'm not sure I want to maintain that link. There are a lot of people who view my facebook and less, potentially closer friends who view my blog. Although it is the internet, so everything is essentially public anyway, right?

So be you my friend on facebook or of my blog, please leave me a comment of your opinion on whether or not I should keep up this link. I will start writing more.

Thank you for your thoughts!!

Split Personality?

Hello friends! Today I had quite the terrible round of disc golf. I can't say that going into it was so bad, I was excited to work on that anhyzer that Dion was helping me with to improve my drive.

When I got to the course, I was excited to see that there weren't very many people around. I got to throw a few drives on 1 and 2, but by then there was already some guys right behind me. I let them play through, and threw more drives on 4, only to realize there were some guys behind me again, except these guys were newbies with regular frizbees. I don't know what it is about people who play disc golf who really don't know what they're doing, but some how they always seem to play faster than me and not get the hint when I'm trying to let them play through.

Once I realized these guys weren't going to get the hint, I just decided I'd forget throwing tons of drives and just try to play real fast and get ahead of these guys. For some reason, I was super annoyed by these particular frisbee throwers, and I began playing absolutely awful.

Something that I have learned in my studies of Exercise Science (now finished with that degree, woohoo!) is that when you learn something new, you usually have a shift of getting worse and then all of a sudden you get better than you were originally. I find it interesting that I get the opportunity to taste that awesomeness with those first few throws, and then when I try them on my own... look out! The other annoying thing about learning something new is that it seems to tweak everything else that is related to that skill. All of my other throws are not doing well at all, and it's not like I can just go back to how I was throwing before.

With all of that going on in my round, (not to mention only one par!!!) I was not so happy. I hate the mood I get in too, it's horrible! The funny thing is, I had to confront those frisbee players behind me, who were indeed, very nice. Made some jokes about playing catch and they of course were in wonder about my huge disc golf bag I carry around. Then I finished 18, and saw that there was a girl putting on the practice basket. I of course have to go over to her and give her a flyer to promote Women's Weekends at Willamette, so I forget my round and put on a happy face. It was pretty exciting, because she actually had heard of WW@W, and had a flyer before, so maybe she'll actually come to one and there will be new girls playing Willamette on Saturdays.

Moral of the story: No matter how frustrated you are, make sure you can keep it to yourself, or be able to fake a good attitude to everyone else around you!