Happy New Year?

When I envisioned my first New Years Eve as a 21 year old, I envisioned big plans. Parties. Bars. Alcohol (because I can partake in that now!), and most importantly friends (because what's a good party without people to enjoy it with?)  Well, plans changed drastically slightly when our family was invited to go on this amazing trip to Colorado (more on that later). Amazing as this trip was (and it was amazing, did I mention that!?), I went to Colorado sans any friends. Instead, I went with my family and four of my sister's friends (who are great, but not exactly who I envisioned spending new years with).

Anyway, as a result of being in Colorado sans friends, I figured New Years plans were out of the question. You know, other than maybe toasting at midnight with my parents and then going to bed. Except, my sister and her friends had other plans and for some reason they wanted me to come. Begged me to come. Obviously, I said no right away, and named off all the reasons I just couldn't possibly go. "I don't have anything to wear." "You just want me to go because I'm 21." " I don't know anyone there." Eventually, though, after all my excuses were shut down and I had a couple glasses of wine at dinner I decided I had nothing better to do, might as well go out with them. Plus, at least when people asked me where I rung in the new year, I could say "The Ritz" as opposed to "At home with my parents" or "in bed" (which could have easily been the truth if I had stayed in). So off we went to a party at the Ritz Carlton because obviously that is where the party is at. And, oh boy, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. (Well, really, I did but I tried to be optimistic and think it would be better than I assumed.)

Me and my "friends" for the evening!

Anyway, I put on my party hat and went in to the Ritz to see what was in store for me. As soon as we got there, my sister and her friends were running off to the bathroom and all of the sudden, for what would be the theme of the night, I had no idea where they were. The rest of the night was spent what I came to call "making rounds; I would occasionally get up from my super exciting activity of sitting in the lobby drinking the night away my few glasses of champagne to walk into the party to check on the girls to make sure they were A) still there B)Not doing anything I wouldn't do inappropriate.

The real fun came around 1 AM when I tried to round everyone up because my mom (driver for the night, lucky her) was on her way to pick us up. Have you ever tried to round up 5 17/18 year old girls who are in party mode?! Let me tell you, it is no easy feat. I went into the party room and I found 4 out of 5 of the girls. The one missing? My sister, of course. "Where's Anna?", I quizzed. No one knew.  Awesome. This is where I turned into, what a friend described as "Mother Hen"; I went into overprotective, older sister/ mother mode. I told the girls I found not to move and went to search for my sister who I found with a boy, of course. "Let's go," I told her, "Say goodnight." Yeah, as if it could be that easy! She informed me she needed to talk to this guy for awhile, and my protests failed. The guy was no help; he promised me he would take care of her. At this point, I was stressed out trying to round everyone up, I was tired, and frustrated with the way my New Years was turning out and I snapped back at the "Oh, yeah, I can trust you." Oops. A little harsh I think. To prove his trustworthiness, he promised me I could punch him where it hurts if he didn't bring my sister back in 5 minutes. What do you say to that!!?

Anyway, she goes down the hall to talk to this guy and I'm trying (unsuccessfully) to watch them without them knowing I'm watching them. Because, you know, what if he tried to run away with my sister!? Once I was confident that he wasn't trying to run away with her (ok, well after I got caught spying on them) I went back to check on the other girls. And what do you know? Another one is M.IA. When I asked where she was the answer was "she ran off with some guy." Fantastic. So I send the other one's to go hang out with Anna and her new found lover, who by the way, did declare his love for my sister in the exact words "I love Anna." Thank you so much for sharing. Now please back away from my sister, thank you. Finally, by some miracle thanks to my great rounding-up skills, all 5 of them are together. I did have to double check a few times, even counting off "1, 2, 3, 4... there's only 4 of you? Who's missing? Oh you're right behind me. Great, we have everyone." Seriously, I felt like a mother counting off all my children. (Thus the "mother hen" reference.)

So, if my New Years Eve has any indication of what my 2011 will be like, let's just say I'm not looking forward to it. Just like I had big plans for New Years Eve, I have big plans for this year (what they are, I'm not sure, but they are big plans, trust me). I definitely do not plan on spending my year chasing around partiers, but hey, you never know. One thing I can say, is that New Years Eve was definitely an adventure, and I'd be up for some adventure in 2011... why not!? If I can handle crazy teenagers, I can handle anything! Bring it on 2011...

I am linking up at Mama Kat's Losin' It for Writer's Workshop today. I used the prompt "If the way you spent your New Year’s Eve is any indication of how the rest of the year will go, how would you say your future is looking right about now?"

Nothing is as Easy as it Seems- Apple Store Edition

Due to events in my recent life, I have become inspired to start a new series here on my blog called "nothing is as easy as it seems". This is a rule of Murphy's Laws, and lately it has been popping in my head a lot as it seems to be a rule of my life. Some may call these situations "misadventures", whatever you call them the jist of it is these things were supposed to be easy, and weren't. So here is the first installment... let me know what you think!

So about a week and a half ago, I came home from work and of course went straight to the couch, and propped open my laptop. Noticing it was dieing, I plugged it in only to discover it wouldn't charge. Fantastic. So right away a few days later, I made an appointment at the genius bar at the Apple Store and was all like "uhh.. my charger is broken. Can I have a new one?" Easy enough, right? Go in, get a charger, go home and go back to my blissful life with my laptop using my laptop. Of course not! Because nothing is as easy it seems, remember?!

So, the Apple store genius guy looks at my laptop, looks at my charger. "Is it damaged?" he asked about my charger. "Uhh no? It just won't work..." So he plugs it in, and what do you know, it doesn't work. Could've told you that... Then he plugs in another charger to my laptop and that one works. Awesome. So my computer's not broken. Just my charger... like I said. Now can I have a new charger? So he says "let me see if we have any in stock," and goes off into Apple-Employee-Only-land. He comes back and is all "uhh, yeah, we don't have any in stock right now, so we'll have to call you when some come in. It should only take 1 or 2 days." Alright, whatever. It's just one more day of suffering without a charger or functioning laptop (since its dead since, you know, I don't have a charger). So he's all sign here saying I helped you, blah blah, we'll call you when one comes in, blah  blah. So I leave. Empty handed. Feeling like I wasted time. But whatever.

So flash forward to yesterday. It's been like a week and a half since my first oh so awesome experience at the Apple Store, and still no charger. So I brilliantly think "I know, I'll call the Apple Store, ask them if they have a charger, and if they do, I'll go get it." Again, easy right? Wrong again. I call up Apple and get this automated voice lady whose all like press 1 for this, press 2 for this, blah blah, press 5 if you're a business customer. So I press 5. "Thank you for holding," the automated voice lady tells me. "Your call is important to us." Gee, thanks. Then she says "You have 6 calls ahead of you..." What? At 8 at night? So I keep holding, and at first I'm excited because they are playing non-elevator, cool hold music. Except that wears off after about 10 minutes. Maybe 5. So I'm holding, and holding, and holding. Seriously, I figure, how long can 6 calls take? I mean they have to have a lot of people answering the phone. Apparently not.

30 minutes later, I'm still on hold when the automated voice lady tells me "you are the next caller to be helped." Finally. So after a whole 2 minute conversation and holding for 30, I find out that yes, they do have some chargers in stock, sorry I never got a call. They close in 30 minutes if I want to come get one. Awesome. So after 30+ minutes, I find out what I could have done by simply going to the store which would have taken the same amount of time, there and back. Great.

So I'm like you know what, I have waited a week and a half for this charger and I want it NOW. So, I get in the car and drive to the Apple Store because I haven't had enough of them and their fun and by golly, I want my charger! So I walk in, and even 15 minutes before closing it is still fairly crowded. Finally I track down a sales guy who is by far the oldest Apple employee. I mean this dude was rocking the gray hair and seriously had to be at least 60. And I'm all uhh how did he get hired considering every other Apple employee is like mid 20's- early 30's ish.What? I don't discriminate...

Anyway, I tell him what I need, give him my receipt, and all that. "So," he asks me, "do you have the other charger so we can swap them out?" "Um no. I gave it to the genius bar dude who helped me a week and a half ago."  So he looks all confused, scratches his head a little, and says "ok well let me go figure out what to do with this..." Seriously? You work here. You should know. Once again, who hired this dude? So I stand there waiting for like10 minutes*, he comes back and again asks me if I brought the other charger. The answer is still no, dude. So he says again "let me go figure out to do with this, I'll be right back." What have you been doing for the past 10 minutes? I try to be patient and wait some more.

Then 10 minutes* later some butch chick comes out carrying my receipt and the charger, walks over to the genius bar, asks them some questions, grabs my old charger that was in a drawer or something at the genius bar, and walks back to me. "Are you here for a new power charger?" Yup, that's me. "Ok, let me get a manager and we can swap them out." Fine, great, whatever. Then old guy comes back and says "ok, honey, follow me." I'm thinking "look here, buddy, don't honey me just because you're old and especially after you have left me waiting here for forever." But I follow him, he opens my new charger, gives me the part I need, mumbles something about how he is giving me some part that is really important not to lose because if I lose it I have buy it again or something and he makes it sound like he should be my hero. Yeah, ok, thanks.

So total time I spent on this charger now is about an hour, maybe even more. So I get home, go to plug it in, and what do you know? It doesn't freaking work on my crappy older version of the MacBook. Awesome. So I'm thinking I'm gonna have to go back tomorrow (today) and kick some ass for sure. Except wait, my sister has the better newer version of the MacBook. So I plug it in to her computer, and voila, it works! So I talk her into trading with me (don't know why I had to talk her into it, what's the big deal  but whatever), and finally after a week and a half of waiting, 35 minutes on the phone, 30 minutes at the store, and lots of frustration I finally have a charger and a laptop that isn't dead.

Just like Murphy said, nothing is easy it seems. It seemed a small, minute task to get a new charger. No big deal. Yeah, not so much. But hey, at least I got a blog post out of it, right?


*The actual amount of time that passed is unknown, 10 minutes may or may not be an exaggeration.

The Dangers of Beer Pong

So most of you are familiar with the sport game of beer pong, no? If not, let me break it down for you: basically you line up all the cups in a diamond, and throw ping pong balls at the cups, which are filled with beer. The cups can also be filled with other types of beverages such as water or sodas of course. Such was the case when I was playing obviously! Anyway, I feel the need to warn all of you that this can be a very dangerous game. So Last Monday night I was participating in a friendly game of beer pong, and pretty much kicking ass. Well it was all down hill from there, let me tell you! Occasionally when the other team misses their shots, one or both of the ping pong balls used may roll off the table onto the ground, requiring you or your partner to retrieve it. WARNING: if you must be the one to retrieve the ball(s), proceed to the floor WITH CAUTION, especially if there may have been several a couple drinks consumed prior to this particular game. It is very possible that you could fall on your face lose your balance ever-so-slightly and end up looking like you got in a fight with a slight injury to show for it. The above may or may not have been what happened to me... My partner (who happened to be my ex, but that's another story) was a little busy hitting on talking to other girls (which may or may not have made me cry slightly upset), so it was up to me to retrieve the lost balls. Sounds simple enough, right? Well I thought so, too. Now, the details are a little fuzzy, but I made it to the ground successfully, and I was underneath the table, then something went wrong, and I somehow fell over and landed on my face. Go ahead, laugh... So luckily no one happened to see my fall stumble, so I recovered, successfully retrieved the balls and went back to playing the game. Now I'm not sure at what point in the game this happened (before or after the previous injury), but somehow in another attempt to retrieve the balls, I started to lose my balance again and caught myself with my hand, but somehow managed to seriously hurt my finger... so much so that it was swollen the next morning and was like 3x the size of my other fingers (ok maybe not that big but it was really swollen!) And my eye? Oh yes I had a nice little scar to remember my mis-hap by, and had people asking me for the next few days if I got in a fight! Just to prove I'm not making this up (If I were making this up, it would be a way better story!) I managed to take a couple pictures of my nice battle wound!It's kinda hard to tell, but it's basically like rug burn on my eye! So the lesson? Be very careful when playing beer pong and exercise caution at all times when getting on the floor for any reason! You can bet the next time I played beer pong, I made my partner pick up all the balls. hehe!

Can't Believe I Didn't Blog About This Sooner!

A non-break up related post!! Woo for me trying to move on! I was over at Mrs. Newlywed's site today, and was reminded of her awesome contest about your biggest misadventure of 2008! At first, I didn't enter because I didn't think I had any misadventures, at least not funny or interesting one's. Then, today, a light bulb came on and I couldn't believe I hadn't told this story yet! So one night, a couple weeks ago, my best friend in my sorority house and I decided we should take an adventure. It was like midnight or somewhere around there, but we are young & in college & we didn't care! So my friend decides we should smoke flavored cigars, and I agreed... so we go to the gas station to buy cigars & decide we should drive around town smoking. Well, I don't know if you've ever smoked cigars and accidentally inhaled, but it can give you quite a buzz! We were having a great time... we couldn't stop laughing, and at one point my friend had to pull over because she felt like she was driving under the influence! Anyway, we called one of our guy friends who heard about our adventure, so we decided to invite him. So we go over to his fraternity house at the other college in town and pick up him and his roommate. They decide we should go to Taco Bell, so we do, and then we decide we'll just drive around town some more and smoke, and they can eat their taco bell. So it's a small town... there's not far to drive, so we go down this one road that pretty much has nothing on it, so my friend turns on her brights because it was a long road & it was hard to see. Well, we were lead to the highway going to Jeff City, a major city outside of town and we didn't want to go on a road trip like that, so we turn around. Well, after a few minutes when we turn around, my friend gets pulled over. Turns out she forgot to turn off her brights, and its illegal when you're approaching a car to have your brights on. Let me just say the cops here in town have a reputation for not being so nice. This was my 1st experience with them, and I would say that statement is pretty true. The cop stops us, and tells her why she was pulled over, asks for not only her ID, but all of our ID's. So we give it to him. Of course, my friend can't find her insurance so we spend 10 minutes looking for the insurance, and then finally we find it and give it to the officer. After stalling for what seems like forever, the cop comes over and asks my friend who was driving to get out of the car. By this time, two more police cars and officers have showed up. So the cop talks to my friend and asks her if any of us have been drinking tonight (we hadn't), and she answers honestly that she and I haven't but she doesn't know if the guys have because we just picked them up. He goes on to tell her that he smelled beer in her car, and has she had beer in the car recently? She tells him she has never had beer in the car. She points out that one of the cigars we were smoking was wine flavored, maybe that's why it smells like alcohol? So, one of the other officers that showed up proceeded to go over and pick up one of the cigars we had thrown on the ground (more on that later), broke it in half, sniffed it & claimed they didn't smell anything fruity in it... Then the officer comes over and asks me to step out of the car, and go stand by my friend. He asks me if I've been drinking tonight. I say no. He asks me if my friends have been drinking and I can honestly answer no since we discussed it once our friend got asked to get out of the car, and say no. So he asks me if he gets them out of the car, and find out that they have been drinking, if he can arrest me too. I say yes, because I was 100% sure they hadn't been drinking unless they were lying to me. AT this point, I'm freaking out a little... I just told an officer he could arrest me! I think about who I would call if I were in jail- my (now ex) boyfriend? Well I don't know if I want him to think of me as the kind of girl who gets arrested... my parents? Well, what are they going to do all the way from TX? Someone in our sorority house... who? Then the officer asks me more questions... about the cigars we were smoking. He asks me if I was smoking, I say yes. Then he asks me if I threw it out the window. I say yes, because I got nervous when they pulled us over & so I threw mine out the window! Not smart. He then asks me if I was aware that its a $500 fine for littering... and my response?? Are you serious?!?! (I don't do well under pressure... I was nervous!) He then says "Why would I joke about that?" Me: "Umm... well I didn't know that, sorry." Officer: You didn't know that throwing something out the window was littering..?" me: "Well... I didn't know cigars counted!" Yeah, I can sound real dumb when I'm nervous!! Then the officers asked the guys to get out of the car, so they did, and a different officer talked to each of them. It went something like this: Officer: Have you been drinking tonight? Boy 1: No sir... Officer: When was the last time you slept? Boy 1: Um... Last night. Officer: How much did you sleep? Boy 1: I don't know... 8 hours? Then the officer asked him at least twice where he was coming from, and what he was doing out, and several times if he had been drinking. The conversation with boy 2 was even more bizarre... Officer: Where are you coming from? Boy 2: Westminster College... Officer: When was the last time you got high? Boy 2: Um... never. Officer: Are you always this nervous? Boy 2: I'm not nervous. Officer: Well you're shaking, why are you nervous? Boy 2: Its 30 degrees outside, and I'm wearing shorts. I'm shaking because I'm really cold! Officer: Why would you do that? Boy 2: Um I don't know it was warm earlier today. Finally, after at least 20 minutes of interrogating us, and making us stand outside in the cold and think that we could be getting arrested... they finally let us go without a ticket or anything. I think it's pretty safe to say this was definitely a misadventure!