Jillapalooza

IM IN UR OCEAN. EATIN UR CARDZ.

Happy Birthday Blog Reader Kristen!!

Screw Memorial Day… it’s Blog Reader Kristen’s Birthday!!

I wrote a very special birthday poem for you Kristen, and here it is:

Ode to Blog Reader Kristen

May your springs be filled with anticipations to to go the cabin,
May your summers be filled with sunshine.

May your falls be filled with relief that there are no more trips to the cabin,
May your winters be filled with vacations to break up the long cold weather before you can go to the cabin again.

May your vacations be filled with The Whale Shaaaa(r)k,
May your air tanks always be full.

May your cabin weekends be filled with trips to the Chocolate Ox,
but not too much Chocolate Ox, we don’t want you getting a belly ache.

But most of all when you shop at your favorite stores,
may your inseam always be in stock.

Thanks for being the best blog reader ever!!

Par-tay

I threw a birthday party for my sister Lani today. She’s turning the big 5-0 next week!! ;) The turnout was pretty good. We had a ton of food leftover. Fortunately everyone made to go plates. There’s no softball tomorrow (Memorial Day, ya know) so it would have taken longer than normal to consume everything with 10 less guys in the house. Nick was the grill master of the afternoon, even though he had the meat cooked 5 hours before anyone got here. All right, maybe not that early, but most of it was done before people arrived. It actually turned out quite well because everything stayed warm and we got to eat right away. His burgers got rave reviews.

As a side note, it was one of those rare occasions where I had to thoroughly clean the house. As high traffic area as my floors are, I don’t typically get random dirty stuff stuck to my feet. Strangely enough every time I walk around now I’m peeling something off the bottom of my foot. And not just peeling something off, but having to aggressively wipe away some sort of sticky residue. Weird stuff I tell ya.

It was the first super humid day of the year and some pretty big storms rolled in later in the afternoon. Tornadoes, hail, straight line winds and such. The sirens by our house went off at one point, but other than that it wasn’t very stormy directly where we are. It was really neat though. From the sliding door in our basement, I could see it start down pouring over the softball field before it started raining on our house. It cleared up in less than 5 minutes, and I hadn’t realized how dark it had gotten until the sun came back out. Everything after that was uneventful, although I guess there was a lot of damage elsewhere.

Mass Update

The new Gavin DeGraw CD is really good. My favorite tracks are “In Love With a Girl,” “Next to Me,” “Medicate the Kids” and “Relative,” in order of track number, not favoritism.

Softball has officially started. If you haven’t already, checkout the new Killer Beez website. There’s a bunch of fun stuff, like a forum, stats, player bios, game schedule and field maps (I ♥ Google).

Speaking of ♥ing Google, everyone should use the Google Reader. It’s got a fun little share feature that you can share specific feeds with your friends. And just when I was thinking, “I sure wish I could add a note to my shared items,” voila!! Notes were available. I don’t even know why I’m preaching this. C of cklahr already uses it, BRK doesn’t want to be bothered with it, Renee doesn’t know what RSS means, and Nick is just hopeless. That’s why I added the Cool Feeds For You section to my sidebar on the right. ====> My top 5 shared items will appear there, and you don’t need to use Google Reader to access them. The Read More link at the bottom will bring you to my shared page where you will find everything I think is worth sharing, complete with notes!! And if you do decide to use an RSS reader, please don’t use the on in IE. Darn conformists.

My feet suck. I was having some pain in the big toe joint of my right foot. I went to the doctor and I was misdiagnosed with gout. I went to see a podiatrist when I ran out of drugs and the pain came back. Apparently, my big toe bones are too long in relativity to the rest of the bones causing the joint to be jammed against the ball of my foot. And my extremely flat fallen arches are only adding to the problem. Since it was my second time to the podiatrist, and the second time he recommended custom orthotics (arch supports), I figured I had better bite the bullet and pay the $380 that my insurance company won’t cover before the next problem occurs. So far I love them. I’ve only had them for a week, but they are completely worth the money. They have wicked arch support. A thousand times better than any OTC inserts I’ve ever seen. My only wish is that I had multiple pairs so I didn’t have to swap them between my workout shoes and my fashionable tennis shoes. I’m also seeing a physical therapist to make my feet all better. My feet should heal up just fine, with a combo of orthotics, toe wiggling, stretches and time.

I’m glad the nice weather is finally here. This weekend I’m throwing a b-day party for my sis Lani, next weekend I’m doing a Crawl for Cancer with some friends, the weekend after that one of our friends is having a poker/b-day party and hopefully after that we will be at some lake every weekend. Diving, boating, reading or just basking in the sunlight. Woo-hoo, I ♥ summer!!

Mass Update: Dance

Our second competition, Masquerade, went well. We were put in the recreational category as not to compete with Broadway’s Best. We ended up competing against the Ladies in the adult recreational category, a.k.a. “parents”, which is how they introduced our group. It was pretty comical at the time, maybe there are 5 parents in our class of almost 30. What made it even better was the judge’s comment at the beginning of our feedback recording. He said, and I quote, “You can be my mommas.” (Think large man, overly flamboyant voice). We ended up winning two platinums and got little plastic medallions a la Mardi Gras colors for souvenirs. I wrapped them, and my gold bracelets from the first competition, around my 9 year trophy and put it on full display in my house. I was glad to get a trophy this year. All the awards are trophies now, as opposed to having things like plaques, medallions, etc.

Recitals were fun. We were in all nine of them, three on 5/11, three on 5/17 and three on 5/18. The days pretty much consisted of warming up, waiting, going on stage, waiting, intermission, waiting, going on stage again, waiting for not as long, going on stage for the finale, waiting for 90 minutes for the next show to start, repeat. They were at Osseo High School, the same place they used to be at. It was very nostalgic. I admit after the first Sunday I was kind of emotional. What can I say, it just brought me back. It’s funny how certain things can mentally bring you back to a place in time or an emotion you felt. Memories that were otherwise forgotten pop back in your head.

On the Monday after the first recital I was spent. Waiting takes a lot out of a person. I think I would rather be in 4 or 5 dances instead of two. At least time goes by quickly. And I’d stay warmed up. Re-stretching is way harder than the initial stretch. Besides, I’m such a stage whore. I love being out there. Anyway, I planned on taking the following Monday off work, seeing I would be doubling my performances and I was such a wreck the week before.

The next weekend went all right. At the last performance on Saturday I had some friends and family there (Nick (against his will), Sarah, Michelle, Kristy, Renee, Blog Reader Kristen, my dad, my mom, Randy, Lani, Pat and Denel). There was an extra ticket, so I snuck in during the extremely long wait between my two dances and watched the show live. That was exciting. It’s completely different than watching on a 20″ tube TV with a bunch of little kids singing along to Miley Cyrus’s “See You Again.”

The next day didn’t go so well. The foot issues (see Mass Update, non dance, post) that I was previously having with my right foot started appearing in the left foot, which is my turning foot. No good. Grand pirouettes, I fell once. Triple during the finale, ended up being a single-and-a-half. It made me weep :cry: … it was just upsetting to end the year so crappy. And it made me feel old. It was so bad that I went and paid another $35 for a DVD of Saturday’s performance where I did good. I’m sure glad the people I knew were there on Saturday. Oh well, there’s always next year!!

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