Wing conference

First, a glossary:

Wing: State, as in, "There are 52 wings in the Civil Air Patrol, one for each state."
Conference: Gathering, as is, "I fell asleep at the gathering."
Lake George: a lake, named George. Probably it had some super long American Indian name, like Oskeetchgemaboranic, and the early explorers were like, "dude, we can't say that. We're naming it George." And thus it was named Lake George.
Volleyball: You "volley" a "ball" back and forth over a "net." Only for the very talented. The rest of us stand and try to look cool while getting sunburned.
Banquet: Where they serve food of the mediocre quality, everyone eats it, and then exclaims about how good it was, as in, "That chunk of uncooked meat was simply delicious! And that crusty roll upon which I broke 4 teeth on? Superb!"
Ceremony: It involves clapping.
Conference: It also involves clapping.
CAC: Cadet Advisory Council. They, um, do stuff. Like talk. And say "aye." (As in, "all in favor, say aye." Not the, "Aye, pirate! Arghhh!" kind of aye.)

So yeah. Vene, vedi, vici. Minus the vici part. The NYWG conference was held this year at a hotel place in Lake George. Lake George is located a long ways away, over in the lake-y, Adirondack-y part of the state. Lake George is touristy, drawing heavily on the Adirondack theme. You can eat an Adirondack waffle, look at multiple gift shops or small eating places that include the word "Adirondack" in their name, admire the Adirondack-themed decor, and in general, immerse yourself fully in the Adirondack-ness that is Lake George. There is also a lake there somewhere, involving (I hear) water.

I was picked up from work around 11 on Friday. My squadron commander drove me and another girl (Megan) from my squadron out there. It took us several hours, but the trip passed relatively uneventfully, and we arrived around 6. Let's just say that more than one route leads to lake George, and we discovered another route that wasn't the one sanctioned by whoever it was at wing headquarters that sent out directions and maps to all attendees. Luckily, Lake George, with all of its touristy-ness and Adirondacky-ness was fairly well marked, and following signs placed strategically along the road, we found it.

Friday evening was spent unpacking, eating supper, and then trying to get to know others there. I knew a few of the cadets there, and met some. I played volleyball that evening, and then...hmm...can't remember. Oh yeah, helped clean up the cadet room, and then hung out. Then we went to bed, because Saturday was going to be a Big Day.

So now in our chronological perusal of the 2011 NYWG conference, we come to Saturday. Waking up and eating breakfast happened first. Megan and I and another cadet walked to a cafe-type place, complete with the two local elderly ladies (and small dog) sitting at a table and visiting. This is where I ate the above mentioned Adirondack waffle. After breakfast, we hopped into our dress blues and went over to the conference room. the conference general assembly was from 9 to noon, and it involved some basic talks, and awards. The national commander wass upposed to be there, but something came up and she wasn't able to attend. Bummer. But we had a safety briefing, head from the wing commander, someone from national, and a special speaker from an organization with an incredibly long acronym. He didn't need the microphone...this is where sound system people need to turn mics down to compensate for the speaker's lung and diaphragm strength. But did they? No, they did not.

Then the awards. They were the achievement awards, like the squadron that had the most growth, group with the best aerospace program, stuff like that. Around award number 78, I began to suspect that they were just making it up. I mean, I can believe something like "The LaGuardia Award of Aerospace Development." But then they go on to like, "The Donald L. Kickenbasher Award of Outstanding Filling In Of Circles When Taking Multiple Choice Tests" and I'm going to get skeptical. At least all the clapping kept me awake, or not totally asleep anyhow.

Then we had lunch. The cadets segregated themselves from the seniors and went to the Cadet Tower (except...it was one floor, the ground floor, and did not have your typical tower accessories, such as Rapunzel) and ate pizza. Before/during/after lunch, we had some presentations directly for the cadets. One was a public affairs briefing (essentially, don't talk to the press unless you're authorized), one was a rather direct appeal to join the AFROTC, and...I...can't remember the rest. Oh, a safety briefing too. THEN, cadets who had signed up for the cadet olympics were free to go off and do that, while the rest of the cadets had more seminars or courses. Megan and I opted to go the cadet olympics route. There were 4 teams, and we did a few activities before starting volleyball. My team won the first round, lost the second, and then I'm not sure who won.

We played volleyball for pretty much the rest of the afternoon, and then hung out until it was time to get ready to go to the banquet. So then we got ready and headed over. The room was a little on the small side, and it was quite loud. We ate dinner, and then had the more interesting awards, like the cadet NCO of the year, and wing cadet officer of the year. Then, it was hang out/dancing time. I was standing watching the proceedings when Josh, a fellow homeschooled cadet walked over. "Having fun?" Honestly compelled me to say no. "That makes two of us, then," he said. Thus it was that I opted to head back over to my room and call Jessica and debrief her on the conference so far. Then I packed and talked to random people. I think we went to sleep around like 2.

Then...in the morning...I had to go to a CAC meeting. Essentially, I awoke, texted my squadron commander to see what she was doing for breakfast, hopped into my blues, and payed like 8 dollars to eat at the hotel buffet. Then we went over to the CAC meeting. I had hoped to run for an elected position on CAC, but I wasn't able to. So, I guess I'm just a representative for my group...I think?

After that, we had a couple minutes before we had to be checked out of the hotel. So I hastened back to my room, hopped into more comfortable clothing (haha, slingshots, ribbons, dress shoes, and a suit coat are not exactly my idea of comfort for a long ride), and then we departed. We drove a ways, stopped, drove a ways, stopped, drove a ways, stopped, and then drove some more. I got picked up shortly after 7 pm, went to our church for a baptismal service.

Okay, I'm sticking the pics down here, with captions.

Above: the cafe where we ate breakfast Saturday morning. Below: my breakfast.

The conference. This is the wing commander speaking.
The pizza that the cadets ate for lunch on Saturday
Volleyball. Photos courtesy...someone else :P


The scenic-ness that is Lake George
Me before going to the banquet thingy
The banquet thingy

Our aerospace display
okay...before I fall asleep here on my keyboard, I'm going to close this up! Goodnight to all and sundry :)

Nadea, can you think of a creative title? Cause I can't. Also titled: 'In Which I Manage to Inform the World of Jess's Return Before She Herself Does'

[And those of you who don't understand the title just need to get with it and get in the groove...or just accept the fact that you haven't kept up with comments and so forth in which this is sorta an inside joke.]

Hmm. Since my last post, stuff has happened. Only...I'm not sure if I can remember that stuff to write about it. I do have another draft ready to blog, all about our polka-dotted bathroom, but that won't be ready till I put pictures in it. So, this is just to catch us all up, because I'm getting tired of looking at that last post every time I hop on my blog to see if I've blogged yet.

May 7th and 8th were pretty busy. I had the SAT Saturday morning, so I had been doing some studying the week beforehand. It's pretty typical of me that I signed up for the SAT the last possible day (possibly the last possible hour, actually), so I had about 2 weeks for any prep work. I wouldn't really recommend that route...a little more studying would have been nice, but I think it will be okay.

I'm very thankful for a mom who keeps track of time and who will come upstairs at 7 am and say, "Shouldn't you be up now?" I THOUGHT I had set my alarm for 6:45, but it was actually set for 7:45. So she woke me up, and I zipped around getting ready, and we were ready to leave on time. So I got there and stood around...and stood around...and stood around. Finally, we were sent up into our rooms (we were split up by alphabetical order), and my room had some nice windows. I got done at about 12:45, went home, and did some reading and cleaning.

Jess's flight was supposed to land around 10:50, and we (all but Lydia, Josh, and Katrina), got to the airport right around then. And we stood and waited for her, and probably creeped out the other people who were coming out.

I think we got to bed between 1 and 2, after getting home and staying up talking and looking at the stuff she had brought back for us.

Sunday, I was really annoyed that I had to work. But work I did (:P :P) , and then that afternoon, we had some friends over for supper. After the supper, Jess, Annetta, and I went down to Rachel's house for a sleepover. See, Rachel is currently out of state at a school till the middle of August, so we wanted to get together with her after Jess returned and before Rachel departed. We watched a movie, slept (I use that term loosely), woke up (I also use that term loosely), and ate breakfast. I created an omelet and had tea because I had to drag myself off to work (:P :P), and it was a good omelet.

[UPDATE on whatever day today is. Monday or something: More stuff has happened. This is getting published now, sans photos, so that I can move on to more exciting stuff.]

Hi

This is just me saying hi, I live, and I have 2 posts in drafts and I AM going to publish them eventually, but not for a couple days. I've been working...Spanish class started on Monday, but the first week doesn't have a lot of assignments. I'm leaving tomorrow morning to go to the New York Wing conference (for CAP). Should be interesting, to say the least :) This post is awfully short...maybe...if I put in more ellipses...it will look longer... Or not. Okay, see you all later!

A Day in the Life of Ivan Kasinorarororvoravivitch

Or whatever his name was. Except I'm not Ivan K. and this is only about the work segment of my day. As promised, and as eagerly awaited for by Jessica, who probably will not even read it as she's fixin' to be pretty busy this week [yeah, I know. I just used 'fixin'' in a sentence. It just...fit, k?].

Basically, my alarm goes off, and I hop out of bed, ready to begin my day by running three miles and then doing chores. Well, that's not really true. My alarm does go off, though. Then I get up and go downstairs to call in and see if I'm scheduled to work. I generally draw comments, side looks, or snickers or giggles when I stumble into a populated area of the house on my way to the phone...I can't help if I look like an electrified lion. I've also been told I look like Tweety. So this is my "I just got up" face.

Then I make my breakfast...sometimes pancakes, but generally toast and fried eggs.

If anyone's wondering, it's 3 pancakes stacked on top of each other with butter, syrup, applesauce, and cinnamon on top. It's how I eat my pancakes.
This is the lunch...hamburger patty. It's cooking.

This is my "at work" face. You can tell I'm overjoyed. This was taken at the Comfort Inn, but sometimes I work at best Western, which is right across the street. I'm sorta chucked across wherever they need me.
The Comfort Inn is yellow. This is the back door.
Once I get inside, I grab my list of rooms, and my keys. Then I punch in and go find my cart, stock it up, and go to my first room. This is my cart at Best Western.
This is me in room 218 at Best Western.
And this is room 218. Before I cleaned it, of course. It's probably occupied right now by someone who is throwing trash all over the place, and in general making a mess :P

This is 234 at the Comfort Inn, before cleaning. Observe that the bed is stripped and ready to be made. The laundry person has a lot of laundry to do each day.
This is the bed half made. It just needs the top blanket and pillows.
This is my "it's time for lunch!!" face. I punch out around noon, and eat in my van.

I also read my Bible, and a cool little study book I found, while I eat. I have a half hour lunch break.

Then it's more cleaning till all my rooms are done. Then I help the other housekeeper if they need it, punch out, take my trash out and head home! Typically, I'll have between 11 and 14 rooms. 12 is pretty common. Some rooms are stayovers, and they'll sometimes have a do-not-disturb sign on their door. We like those people a lot. Sometimes people actually leave us tips. And some very rare and wonderful occasions, I find chocolate in the room.

Now, don't everyone trip over themselves in the mad rush down to the Comfort Inn for work applications...

[Oh, last note. I cropped some of the date-time-stamps out on the pictures, but for those of you who analyze my every photograph and notice the seeming inconsistency in time, yes. My camera clock appears to be like 2 hours fast or something.]

Easter and Being Sick

So maybe you don't want to read this, but what good is being sick if you can't complain about it? :P

Easter was good. We had breakfast at church, and then had the Easter cantata. That went well...except for some major technological difficulties at the beginning. (Specifically, a small but important piece of equipment stopped working, but Mr. Arnold was able to find a replacement. Also, we went through 4 DVDs before finding one that would record.) But we got it figured out (wait, we? Mr. Arnold figured it out. I just stood there and tried to look helpful). Then, we went to Uncle Steve's for supper. Aunt Martha was sick, so she stayed upstairs. After supper, we went to some friends house and ate pie and stuff, and played some games. We played Reubo. Reubo is what happens when you're trying to play slapjack, but you only have Uno cards and no one can remember how to play, so Reuben makes up the rules. It was interesting.

Then, Monday evening (was that last night?), we had the Awana awards ceremony. This signifies the end of Awana for the year. We had a good year. I helped with the T and T girls this year, as well as leading games for part of the time. Oh, and since a certain Sparkie leader happened to be gone, I helped the Sparks during handbook time.

Last night around 1 am, Katrina puked. And thus began the Flu of April 2011. It's been a long time since we had a family-wide flu epidemic (well, last I knew, 2 kids and Daddy were still healthy, but yeah.), but we appear to be having one now. Typically, I get the flu 2 or 3 times worse than everyone else, and it certainly appeared to be true as I found myself throwing up for the 9th time at about 7 am, but since that time, I've been improving. I can drink water, and I'm slowly eating some frozen fruit. I think that the others are also improving, but I slept pretty much all day so I don't really know.

Anyhow, that's the news for today.

Grand Prix/Et Cetera

Et cetera is a good phrase. It means that anything not related to the grand prix can still be stuck in here without me being perceived as being off-topic, simply because you can group lots of stuff under "et cetera". Anyhow, from our bowling expedition last time, we headed to our church for the Awana Grand Prix. Our neighbor Elizabeth was able to come too, which was fun! Thanks for taking all the pictures, Elizabeth!

This is Katrina with her car. She got first place for design. I think.

These are the awards for speed. Annetta got first place, Josh, got second place, and another child in Sparks got third.
Mr. Arnold was our announcer, and he would pick 3 names from a box. Those three kids would go up, grab their cars, and give them to Pastor and Mr. Moore, who would out them on the ramp and flip the little thingy to make the cars start going, et cetera.

It was a fun time :) Leaders did get to race, too. So I had my car from a couple years ago (repainted in a camo theme), but it didn't win anything. It just sorta went down the ramp like molasses or a snail or something. Maybe more like a snail on roller skates, but the other cars it was up against were going like roller skates wearing roller blades, so yeah.

Okay...so now on to the real et cetera, non-grand prix part. I'm siting here, space heater going on and off intermittently, two fuzzy blankets keeping me warm, listening to music, trying to stay awake...yep. (wait. It's like 60 degrees out today. It must be colder in my room...) I have this idea to take a camera with me to work someday and photograph a housekeeper's life. Because you all know that you want me to :P Anyhow, today, I worked at Best Western. They've been having me work there a lot. It's getting more tolerable there now that I know the other housekeepers more and I can find my way around. After work, I went to Dollar General and bought some stuff for my secret prayer partner and some crazy socks for me. Those few of you in my readership who actually see me in person occasionally (mother, sisters, et cetera) may have the opportunity to see said socks. Anticipation mounts, I know.

Jess is coming home in like 17 days...mhm, maybe a little excited there :) Random things on my to-do-this-week list are clean room, sign up for the SAT, sign up for RCLS, send in paperwork for the wing conference, do laundry, study some stuff, email some people, et cetera...besides work and any social life I decide to involve myself in :P For example, Easter coming up. Speaking of Easter, I went to choir practice this evening. No Jess, I haven't joined the choir...you remember the thing known as the Easter Cantata Singing and Narrating-ness? I like familiarizing myself with it before Easter Sunday finds me in the sound system staring at the tape player wondering how to run it. Since I've had to work the past 3 Sundays [:P at work, and managers, and people who stay at motels on Saturday nights, et cetera], it was nice being there. Anyhow, it went well. I recognized most people and only had to ask twice where the sound room was.

K...I'm going to hit publish and head to bed. Goodnight:P

Adventure involving pizza and bowling balls

On Monday, we did this.

We went with a group of people from another church. It was good fun.

By the end of the afternoon, it was generally accepted thought that the pink bowling ball was inhabited by a pink ghost dragon alien, which forced the bowling ball to turn to the right or left and not go straight. Between that and the jinx that got put upon my bowling efforts, it's a wonder I managed to get the score I got :P

So I pretty much gave my camera to random people there (well, they did ask for it, and I was only too happy to oblige), so most of the pictures here weren't taken by me. The above picture was Matt's retaliation on Dominic. Matt insisted that Dominic was having entirely too much fun taking bad pictures of Matt, so it was time to turn the tables. And I thought it was entirely too epic not to post. I did leave out the close up shot of his eye...
Me: Um, are you taking my picture? And if so, would you just take it already?!

Please note that Tyler has the black bowling ball. The pink one was not associated in any way, shape, or form with the guy bowlers. At all. Except that I have an incriminating photo of one holding the pink bowling ball, but I refrained from a) posting it or b) mentioning names.

This is me, preparing to show my skillz. Perhaps I managed to hit a couple pins that time.
From the perspective of a bowling ball... This was the one where she got all but one pin on the first try, and she got the one remaining one the second time. Pretty impressive (says the person who got a 50 and a 54 on the two games :P )

Jessica L and Megan

Yep, Katrina is airborne. And I refrain from further comment.

Oh! The place glowed! It was so cool...they turned out the lights for part of the time there, and it was so neat. People with light shirts glowed, and some of the shoes glowed too. And some people's teeth glowed.

Then we had pizza and cake...cake was to celebrate a couple birthdays, including Dominic and Jeff.
And of course I had to get a picture of the person with the other camera.
I don't know who this little guy is, but he was cute.

Ah...that would be the cake. It was quite good :)

One of the moms...
This is Kevin, giving the safety briefing. "I don't want anyone swinging back and taking out a couple of your favorite teeth," he said, in part. We all appreciated his concern for our teeth and maintained safe practices throughout.
Annetta. Shown here with the pink bowling ball of fame.
This is us arriving.
This is the sign for the bowling alley.


Yes...it got up to 65 degrees! It was exciting. And then I woke up this morning and it was white on the ground. A 30 degree drop overnight? Yeah :P


Then, after we bowled, we zipped to our church, because Monday night was the Awana Grand Prix. But, that is another post, because this one is ending.

Random

I'm working on editing my way through a ton of pics...these didn't really fit in but I still wanted to post them.