Running On Fumes
I’d first like to apologize to those readers I have left for my long absence from this blog. I have been, quite honestly, running on fumes for the last few weeks. My schedule has looked something like this:
Oct 22 – Team Training – Copper Mountain
Oct 23 – Team Training – Copper Mountain, Ski shopping w/ Jacqui
Oct 24 – Pub Quiz (playing)
Oct 25 – REST
Oct 26 – Team Training – Copper Mountain
Oct 27 – Team Training – Copper Mountain (on snow)
Oct 28 – Halloween Swing Dance
Oct 29 – JLD Volunteer, Halloween Night
Oct 30 – Broncos Watch Party w/ Maggie
Oct 31 – REST
Nov 1 – Pub Quiz (hosting)
Nov 2 – Film Fest Volunteer
Nov 3 – Steamboat (work)
Nov 4 – Steamboat (work)
Nov 5 – Film Fest Volunteer
Nov 6 – Film Fest Volunteer
Nov 7 – JLD Training
Nov 8 – Pub Quiz (hosting)
Nov 9 – SOS Volunteer Orientation
Nov 10 – REST
Nov 11 – Date (?)
Nov 12 – JLD Volunteer, Film Fest Volunteer
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Nov 13 – Film Fest Volunteer
Nov 14 – JLD Fundraising Council
Nov 15 – Pub Quiz (hosting)
Nov 16 – Provisional Social
Nov 17 – Adviser Meeting
Nov 18 – 21 – REST!!!!
Nov 22 – Pub Quiz (hosting)
Nov 23-27 – HOUSTON!!!!
Now I’m not complaining, really. I like having a busy schedule, I like having things to do, something that will get me out of the house. However, I will admit, I haven’t done laundry in almost a month. My house hasn’t been cleaned (dusted, vacuumed, scrubbed) in over a month. I let dishes sit in the sink for days at a time, because the few nights that I have time to cook dinner I don’t have enough energy afterwards to clean my pots & pans. That is very much not like me. I always have pots and pans cleaned before bedtime. At the very latest the next morning…but not right now. I come home from whatever event I was at that evening, throw on PJs, have a glass of wine while catching up on my missed TV shows (Revenge, Big Bang Theory, Office, Community, Pan Am), then crash in bed to hit snooze 3 times the next morning and start all over again. On the bright side, I really enjoy everything that is keeping me so busy right now. Let me elaborate:
Team Training – Copper Mountain: You may remember my post about Team Training from last year. This year was more of the same, but so much different! Since our Meeting/Event Coordinator left my boss Sara and I have taken over the planning of these events. Since I’m trying to convince the office I’d be good in that position, and since Sara said she’d be training me for it this year, I expected I would be told to go up for the first weekend. When Sara made no mention of it I casually suggested that I had nothing planned that weekend, so it might be good for me to come up and see a day. A day turned in to both as I helped with check-in, room set up, and other general tasks for the first two days. I came back to town for the week and then went up with the office on Wednesday for the supplier reception and on-snow portion. Again I made sure I was at Sara’s side, showing her that I can do this job, that I can handle what goes in to a meeting. Whether she saw it or not is yet to be determined, but I made it my job to be on my best behavior and super helpful. As always the snowboard team had a party, this year the theme was Ski Movies. Thanks to my mom, I had a perfect and authentic 80s ski movie outfit (not making fun of you, I swear!). I loved it, the ladies loved it, the teams loved it, it was awesome. And now I have it in reserve for any other time I need an emergency costume (seriously Mom, not making fun of you).
Halloween: The Friday before Halloween, my friend Preston invited a group to go swing dancing at the Denver Turnverein. Now I haven’t been dancing in ages, and I haven’t been swing dancing, properly, since we learned it in 7th grade PE. The night ended up being just a small group, but after a quick refresher from Preston I was back in the game (mostly). And besides one serious creeper the people were very nice, I got asked to dance, and I had tons of fun. It really makes me wish I went proper dancing more often. The next night the Geeks asked me to join their group of Jawas as they trolled around town for Halloween. We all had our brown cloaks from Beer Fest (we went as monks) so we just added some gloves, masks, guns and LED lights for eyes. People loved us and it was a pretty cool group costume, definitely not one I’d seen before. Aside from a few passive-aggressive remarks from John (who’d recently told me I was a crappy girlfriend. News to me, I didn’t know we were serious) the night was pretty good. Preston and Jason are definitely to thank for making sure I didn’t go home early, which I was definitely planning on doing. They rock.
Steamboat: My boss Sara and I took a work trip to Steamboat, really quick, overnight last week. We want to start visiting the division offices to see what they do on a daily basis and learn how we can help them more from the national office. We took a trip to Truckee to see the Western division in September, and decided to visit our Rocky Mountain office before we couldn’t travel anymore (we’re pretty much chained to our desks from Thanksgiving – Spring Break). Having never been to Steamboat before it was pretty cool for me to see the town and the mountain. The office visit went really well too. It’s great to be able to put a face to a name, since I talk to these people on the phone every day. I think we learned a lot about how a division runs, what their focus is and how events are put together and run on a division level. Highlight of the trip was driving past the barn, where the famous Billy Kidd picture was taken. I even got my own picture which I sent to Mom, she was super jealous.
Film Festival: For the third year in a row, I decided to volunteer for the Denver Film Festival. After being Jury Coordinator, and on special events last year, it’s weird to be just “one of the crowd.” My former Volunteer Coordinator moved on to bigger and better things, and the new girl doesn’t know me from Eve. I even went to introduce myself to her, tell her my experience and at the end of our 3 minute conversation she’d forgotten my name. After some begging and pleading I was put on the Red Carpet team and in the Filmmaker’s Lounge. Red Carpet is not like what I’ve worked before. At AFS I helped walk celebs down the carpet, get the media in place, do check in…for this event I was a seat reserver. I checked badges and made sure nobody sat in these 10 seats! Very different. On my first shift at Filmmaker’s Lounge I went to check in and realized that in my 3 years of festing I’d never once gotten a t-shirt or had to go to volunteer check in for a shift. Little things you don’t think about until they happen. On the bright side I’ve met some really cool people (nobody famous), saw some old friends, and got to see some really good movies.
I’ve seen Like Crazy, a movie about a British girl and an American boy who fall in love. She over stays her student visa, is deported from America, and they spend the next 6ish years trying to be together while living continents apart. No ending, I hate no endings. The Decendents is the new George Clooney flick that’s been getting some Oscar buzz. It’s about a man who’s wife is in a coma and he has to start taking care of his children. He finds out his wife was cheating on him and has to decide what to do while dealing with her impending death. One of his daughter is played by the girl from “Secret Life of the American Teenager” who I found to be very bland in her TV role, She does a semi-decent job in this movie. Definitely worth the watch. Last night I saw The Pruitt-Igoe Myth: An Urban History, this documentary was about the public housing project in St. Louis. Within 20 years of it’s being built it had fallen in to disrepair and was condemned then razed. The “solution” to the slums only lasted 20 years before it was declared a failure. The film looks at the lives of those who lived there, why they were there and what went wrong. It was a really moving story, and I’m still thinking about it the next day. Basically the failure of Pruitt-Igoe was the city planners didn’t understand what was happening to the world after WWII and their plans for Pruitt-Igoe were outdated before the ink was dry. As my post-college interest in sociology has grown, this film has been a real eye-opener in to cities as they were, what they strived to be, and what the ultimately became. Tonight I’m going to see my last film of the festival Goon, described as an updated, Canadian take on SlapShot, should be fun.
Junior League: As a provisional in Junior League you’re required to do so many things, Provision training, a Done-in-a-Day, two shifts in our resale boutique, 12 hours of community service, etc. My adviser gave some great advice at the beginning of the year, “if you ski, plan on having no weekend from December-March, plan your hours accordingly.” Not to mention I’m one to get all requirements out of the way early (that’s why senior year of college was strictly electives!). So I’ve been registering for a lot of stuff to be done before Thanksgiving. I’ve gone on my Provisional Retreat (September), worked my two shifts at our Second Time Shop (slow, but not too bad), and attended a Provisional Social and Fundraising event for “League Experience.” Adviser meetings will be done throughout the year and I found a program that teaches underprivileged kids to snowboard for my 12 hours of outside credit, which I’ll be doing Saturday in Jan/Feb/Mar.
This past week I attended JLD 101, a course that teaches provisional members about the different councils they can serve on next year and how placement works (lottery, scary!). This morning I volunteer for my Done-in-a-Day shift at Read2Kids, a program that goes in to schools and has a book fair (books are free and they each get 3!), arts and crafts, and a performance from a local theater group. A couple of the Denver Broncos cheerleaders even showed up for an autograph signing. I must say, I was super excited when I saw this on the schedule and immediately decided I wanted to do that. I was manning the 3-7th grade table and it was so awesome to see that books I read as a kid (Ramona, Super Fudge, Boys Start the War, the Boxcar Children, Junie B. Jones, Nancy Drew, the Baby-Sitter’s Club) were on the table. And when I suggested those books to kids they kept telling me “I’ve read that, I’ve read that.” It was so awesome. I’ve been saying for years that when I have kids I’m going to start stocking up on “old school” kids stuff because I think it’s great compared to today’s books/tv shows/movies. But to know that kids today are not only still reading these books, but like them and are super excited to get new books for themselves, it was an incredibly touching experience. It gives me hope for today’s youth and tomorrow’s children.
So that has been my life for the past month. I do apologize that I haven’t been writing as much. I have a few ideas rattling around that I hope to get down in the next few weeks. I’ve got a trip home booked for Thanksgiving. This will be my first Thanksgiving home since college, it’s a little weird. I must say I was a little beside myself when Mom told me to book the ticket, especially since she and Dad are coming to Breckenridge the first week of December, but I wasn’t going to argue. And it all worked out for the best. Mack Brown in all his stupidity denied A&M the chance to play Texas for the next 5 years. Thanks Mack for screwing my family Thanksgiving tradition. My sister however, in her brilliance, found me a reasonably priced UTvATM ticket for Thanksgiving. Sure I might be sitting in the Corps section, in burnt orange, and my team will probably lose, but damn it to hell, I’ll be THERE and it will be totally worth every penny.
Alright, now off to another Film Fest movie and then hitting the sack. I’m counting down the days until next Saturday, when I can finally, finally, FINALLY sleep in!
