My Newest Awesome Hobby...Hooping! Hoop Post #1

I've called this my Hoop Post #1 because, frankly, I anticipate there being many more in the near future!


Also...THE WORLD HASN'T ENDED. YESSSSSSS. I was so scared!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Not.


So, I've not been posting very much lately, mostly due to how busy I've been since GRADUATING COLLEGE!!!! Yeah, I am a graduate now. It's really weird. Basically I don't feel any different...but I know I should.


Summer has been super busy recently! Since I graduated, I've been moving back to my parent's house, getting back into the swing of my job, typing old notes from my major classes (because I want a review, it's more organized this way, and I can be rid of all of the old notebooks they're in), and HULA HOOPING!


Let me just say that hula hooping is incredibly fun and exciting and everyone should do it. You wouldn't believe how therapeutic it is to just go outside and put on some music and start hooping. The other day I hooped through the Wild Beasts' album, Two Dancers, and I was soooo tired and sore afterward. I have bruises on my hip bones now, they were really dark a few days ago. It was strange, but I was kind of proud of it!


I've made my own hula hoops. It's been an adventure...let's just say that the parent's weren't too enthused on the night that I came home from Lowe's with 100 feet of polyethylene irrigation tubing. It was 160 PSI, and 3/4 inch inner diameter, so about 1 1/3 inches outer diameter or so. From what I understand, it's a pretty heavy and thick type of tubing, but I'm okay with that, because I've never been good with hula hoops and wanted something ideal for beginners. I made my first hoop, Ole Faithful, on May 12th. It's around 40 inches in diameter. Here she is!

Since then, I've added some silver accent to my Ole Faithful. Here's how she looks now!

Action shot!

And then the other day I made Shelley, which is made of the same polyethylene tube as Ole Faithful. She's a bit smaller, around 36-37 inches in diameter. Here she is!

Action shot!

It's only been a week since I started hooping, but I feel like I'm making a lot of progress on my big hoop. I can do the vortex, I can do some chest hooping with my arms in, chest hooping normally for a few seconds, and today I successfully completed a trick where I transfer the hoop between my arms behind my back. It's hard to describe.


Just Youtube search "hoop dance" and you will find tons of videos of the things I'm teaching myself to do! I recommend giving it a look. It's really fun and very challenging!

A History of Sorts

I was recently inspired by a friend's blog to create a post on the topic of injury. While I've never broken a bone (every day I thank God for this...it would be so painful), I've had my share of bumps and bruises (physically and psychologically). Let's see if I can remember them!

1. I don't really remember this first injury, or the age at which I acquired it. What I do remember is that I was injured while sledding with my mom. Mom and I were going down a hill into a section of trees (which we had been sledding into for at least half an hour without any negative outcomes), and it turned out that we were heading straight for a tree. Mom stuck out her leg to try to absorb the blow, but all I remember is waking up in my bed a little while later. Good times...I think this was the only time I've ever unintentionally been unconscious.
2. When I got the chicken pox, I ended up scratching a few of them out, so now I have a tiny crater in my forehead, and another on my cheek.
3. When I was in second grade, mom would drive me to my new elementary school, because I wasn't quite familiar with buses yet. One day we performed the routine as usual, but as I got out of the car, I somehow shut my thumb in the car door. I cried for hours, it hurt for days, and this incident has permanently affected my fingerprints. Talk about a moment that shaped a life forever!
4. Later in elementary school, I liked to ride my bike around my neighborhood with my little sister, Monica, and my neighbor, Kelly. One eventful day, while we were playing bike tag, my front tire came into contact with my little sister's back tire. She fell off of her bike into the grass, and I fell the opposite direction, sliding across the pavement for about 6 feet. I couldn't walk home, so some nice lady gave me a ride back to my house. My bike was permanently scratched up on the right side, and my leg was sore and scabbed for days.
5. Sometime when I was young, my little sister and I ran upstairs at the same time, and I fell into the banister. It left a scar on my right side.
6. During middle school, I did some intramural basketball in my free time. During one game, I twisted my ankle, and could barely walk for the rest of the game. After hobbling across the court multiple times, I got to sit down. Walking sucked for a few days, but I got better after that.
7. As a freshman in high school, a witch turned me into a newt. I got better.
8. After freshman year ended, I did summer practices for guard with the other girls and our coaches. We were learning how to handle rifles, which was really fun and kind of intimidating at first. On the first day of spinning, I jammed my thumb...I'm so lucky :)
9. One time during senior year of high school, I went out ice skating with my friends at the local Chiller. I got cocky, and tried to do the Superstar move as I was skating to the exit. I did...but my right leg had a little mishap. My knee popped right out of its socket...luckily it popped right back in, but it was impossible to walk. Thankfully I had friends to help me walk to the car. Working that night was awful. Since that incident, my right knee has been much weaker than my left.
10. The summer after my senior year, I went on a trip to Europe with a group from my high school. When we visited Salzburg, I had a little fall in the castle, and scraped up my knee pretty badly. We didn't have any bandages, but we did have pads, so a friend let me borrow the prewrap in her hair and I tied the pad to my knee. We couldn't stop laughing :)
11. During my mom's birthday weekend in 2010, I was in Columbus to surprise her. Before I went down to see her, I was spending some time with my boyfriend and our mutual friend, Stephanie. We were walking down to Noodles & Co. when I noticed that a caution sign was in th sidewalk ahead of us, marking construction in the road. I consciously remember telling myself to lift my first foot to step over it, but apparently I didn't do the same for my second foot, because the metal leg sliced my big toe open on the spot. Thank goodness we were right in front of a CVS, because my foot was bleeding profusely, and I was hyperventilating...I'd never bled that much before. 
12. During the summer before my senior year of college, I took a little visit with my boyfriend and a group of our mutual friends to his parents' lake house. Due to severe intoxication, we decided to swim across the lake and run through the forest, barefoot. Of course, I got poison ivy, but this was no normal poison ivy. My left calf was absolutely covered in it, was swollen and incredibly sore, leaked yellowish fluid for over a week, and even now, months and months later, there's a scar from where I had so many sores. 

That's all I can think of for now...but it's a pretty fun list, I think :)

Ideas Needed!

So I'd love to keep blogging more consistently, so if anyone has any questions they want me to answer or if anybody would like my opinion on something, please feel free to comment on this post! I need motivation :)

Let the Countdown Begin!

Today I realized that I have two more weeks of school before finals week and my looming graduation.  I can't believe a year's gone by so fast...it seems like just yesterday that the year began! I remember freaking out about being NSSLHA treasurer and all of my new responsibilities, stressing about doing all of my grad school applications, and dying to be done with everything. Now that all of those landmark struggles have passed, I finally feel at ease.

That could just be the senioritis kicking in, though.

I feel like it's necessary to break up large areas of text with images. Meet my puppy!

I'm excited to graduate, in a way. I feel as though I am much less nervous as I would be, had I not been accepted to grad school and thrust into the real world. Thank goodness for higher-higher education...but at the same time, I still feel strange about graduating. It seems like I should feel different, like you hear about when someone turns 21 or 30 and has some kind of revelation, but I don't foresee that happening. I've never really felt different when major times in my life begin or end, like I'd grown and become something better. I just feel like me. 

Now that I know where I will be going for grad school (BGSU, for those of you who haven't read my previous posts), I feel like I have direction again. Before I had heard back from schools, I came to the realization that my future was an open book, out of my control, and that scared me quite a bit. While to a certain extent everyone's life is out of their control, I've always relied on mine having a sense of direction. After high school, I went to college. There was no real discussion there, it was assumed that I would attend, and I was happy to go. I didn't want to start being an independent adult just as much as I don't now. Unlike many people who take comfort in pop songs that tell "the rest is still unwritten," I find a future without direction terrifying. I'm very glad that this whole thing has been resolved, and that I have made my final decision about attending BG. Again, it puts me at ease. 

And this is my cat, when she's not being the devil and ripping people's faces off in unabashed and plainly exhibited hatred for everything that looks like me. 

Still, graduation is swiftly approaching. I don't know whether I should be excited to walk down that aisle again and receive my diploma, it just seems like a normal thing to me. Honestly, I'm not very excited for the ceremony. Having my immediate family and boyfriend sit around in uncomfortable seats for who knows how long (hopefully not very long, I would feel horrible otherwise) just to watch me accept a piece of paper just isn't something I really want them to go through. At this point, I have trouble thinking of a diploma as anything more than a little trophy to be placed on a mantle somewhere, in my opinion, and the graduation ceremony more like a tribute to those who feel like they deserve recognition for their hard work (though honestly, you don't have to work too hard to graduate college). On the other hand, I feel that it's acceptable to want to be recognized for your accomplishments. In the past I have had difficulty letting go when others let my hard work go unacknowledged, so I understand why people want to feel rewarded. It just gets to be a little much when thousands of people expect recognition at the same time.

And this is my dog again. The best dog in the world. 

This summer is something that I'm dreading, a little bit. I'm excited for it to be summer again for the same reasons I am every year: being with the family, boyfriend, and close friends I haven't seen in ages, swimming, sleeping in, just generally being relaxed for an extended period of time. The thing that I'm dreading is finding a new job, or one to supplement the seasonal one I currently have. My current job isn't going very well: I work in a retail store (whose identity I choose to omit) which hasn't been doing very well since the economical downturn. The business can't afford to pay all of the people it employs, and so hours have been abysmally low. Last summer I barely worked at all, and it was incredibly frustrating. Since then, I've had the feeling that I'd need a new one by this coming summer, and that thought was only reinforced by a few experiences I had over spring break this year. This weekend (hopefully) is the time at which I'm going to start applying to several businesses near my home north of Columbus. I just hope that someone wants me...when my little sister tried to find a job last summer, it went horribly. At the last minute she did find work at a grocery store and made good money, but it was ages before any of the businesses responded to her, and many gave her horrible offers for work. I'd love to not have two jobs, but if that's the best I can do this summer, then that just might be what needs to happen. My goal is to have weekends off...we'll see how that pans out. I need to keep things in perspective...I need to find another job before I can negotiate scheduling!

Let's say that this has really been eating at me lately, with summer so close. I even dreamed last night that my sister got a second job and I couldn't find any. It's just not fun. 

Kitty again. Cute, but hateful and sad sometimes. 

Until then, I have a few things to look forward to here in BG. This weekend, a good friend in the major and I are going out to lunch, and then we are going shopping for clothes for graduation. Our final NSSLHA event, our spring banquet, is coming up as well. I'm excited to hear our speaker and just hang out with the girls in a different setting. Then, later that same night, girls in our major are having a bar crawl down Main! Last year it was really fun, and I'm very excited this time around, too :) 

Okay, I think that's enough for one night. Time to lay down on my not-so-comfy couch and nibble on Tagalongs. 

If you want something funny to read, follow this link: 

http://www.cracked.com/photoplasty_188_awful-romantic-comedies-theyll-probably-make-next/

This is an article posted by readers of an online magazine, Cracked, which mostly publishes silly articles. It's still fun to read though :)

Discoveries!

I'm currently home for the weekend to see a few bands with the BF (Explosions in the Sky, the Octopus Project and the Mountain Goats...look them up, they are amazing!), and tonight I came across the idea of making a post about miscellaneous things I've learned. I hope to keep this up as long as I keep learning :)


3/15/2011
WORK AS HARD AS YOU CAN, FOR AS LONG AS YOU CAN, if something is REALLY important to you. In my experience, it really, really pays off.


4/7/2011
Sometimes, the hardest decisions are the ones you are supposed to make, and you'll be all the stronger when it's done.


4/9/2011
Frank's Red Hot is indeed the best ingredient for delicious buffalo sauce. 


4/10/2011
Hula Hooping is not only possible, but super fun!!! I love learning new tricks from my buddy, Stephanie, a self-taught Hooper :)

Stephanie...hooping on a skateboard!
Disclaimer: DO NOT TRY THIS. It's danger. 

4/11/2011
Tennis shoes, while not the most stylish, are definitely perfect for standing concerts. Also, Megafaun and the Mountain Goats are wonderful live. 

Grad School Update

I'm sure there are tons of people who want to know about my grad school decisions...haha. But I just thought I'd say what's going on at the moment.

I got into Bowling Green State University, Ohio State University and Ohio University. Thank goodness. It's nice to know that years of stupidly hard work has paid off. 

Now, I just have to pick.

I visited Ohio University the other day, and it was really nice. Athens is such a cute town, and the Grover Center (where the Speech and Hearing clinic is housed) is all new and very nice. I know it's probably dumb to take aesthetics into consideration in these kinds of decisions, but I really do feel like they make a difference on one's experience. So there's that. The faculty and students also seemed really nice and honest, which was nice as well. They answered a lot of our questions, which is also nice. 

I really need to make a spreadsheet of the pros and cons for each program. It seems like a good idea.

I'll be visiting Ohio State University next week, so I'll be able to talk more about the comparisons later on. I hope that I like it there, I would really like to be closer to family. However, I'll have to make the best decision for my education, not just my personal feelings.

Anyway, that's it so far! I have until April 15 to finalize my decisions, but I should probably make a decision before then, due to a lesser likelihood of funding by that point. 

I just feel so relieved...but terrified to pick at the same time. It's going to be crazy!

And now to continue watching Kelly play Heavy Rain...this game is cray-cray.




P.S.    As of April 12th, I've made my decision about grad school!  Next fall, I will be attending...
Bowling Green State University!
I'm really excited :) 

Spring Break Revelations

Life. It happens.

For example, sometimes people accidentally park in residential handicapped parking and get fined $500. 

But on a good note, I CAN HAS POKEMON WHITE  :)  :)  Thanks to Andy for a great birthday present!!! I loves my Tepig. 

Also, THECOOLTV is an awesome channel. If you have WOW cable, you need to tune in. This channel shows old music videos, like "China Girl" by David Bowie...which is a totally raunchy video, by the way. I've decided that I cannot live without seeing a Boy George music video, and this channel may very well be the means to that end. 

Near my house there is a little local park, which houses an old, dilapidated brick school from the early 1900's, and one of the hugest, most awesome trees of all time. A few days ago I found out that the roof of the Flint School had collapsed, and consequently, the entire building was going to be demolished. Apparently the cost of fixing the roof was too great, hence the choice to destroy one of the most mysterious and historical structures of my childhood. A fellow Park Shark took some of the pictures below. He shares my shock and disappointment in the turn of events, but reassured me that the builders intended to keep the entrance to the building preserved, like a memorial of sorts.

The front of the Flint School.

The side of the school, still relatively preserved.

And then I visited the park today, and saw this.

Sad day. We will always remember you. 

Tomorrow, I'll find time to write about your tree, which will also be fondly remembered...