I am SOOOOOOOOO Not an Outdoors Person

I've already used the title "Why I Could Never be a Pierson" and it would apply here too. As a refresher, the Pierson's are a branch of my family, namely a bunch of cousins - Jon, Dan, Rob, Liz who are all VERY outdoors-types. I'll never understand. I pay my hard earned money towards a mortgage each month so that I can sleep in a BED, with a perfectly good ROOF over my head.

I can only remember one other time that I tried camping, it was probably around 1994 or so with my Kenny Rogers Roasters crew, I will now see how many names I remember in case they ever google themselves (say hi!), this will be fun - Nicole Bradley, Dawn Bradley, Amy Swisher, Michele England, Poppy Bilbra-Jacobs...somewhere I've got a picture of all of us (holy crap I found it!!!! Wow, you probably know how it is, when you see a picture of yourself from about 15 years ago? All I can say is wow) Anyways, it was in the middle of nowhere in Southwest Virginia, we rolled in in my yet-to-be-named FSU-Jew-Mobile (my dinky garnet Plymouth Horizon). We got there, setup a tent, took a picture and that's all I remember before it started DOWN POURING. So we threw everything we could in my trunk and everyone came back to my parents house and we used the basement as our campsite...complete with a functioning ROOF! Not to mention air-conditioning. I haven't had any desire to try camping again since.

My friend Rory recently graduated from, well, some kind of advanced schooling to get her PhD, sorry for not knowing all the details, I don't get paid to write this crap! For her graduation party she invited a bunch of people to go camping at Lake Allatoona (which is only about 30 miles from my perfectly good bed). But, as a good friend I agreed to come...for the day. There was an evite and everything where I made my intentions clear that I'm only going for the day and that anyone else who wasn't a camper was welcome to stay at my place. Apparently that decision was overturned and I was going camping overnight. I soon realized I wasn't getting out of this. So I sucked it up and would give it a try. Tracy came into town from Jacksonville, Kim - and her boyfriend Michael and his boat - came in from Birmingham. Tara and Jason were going (but Tara used the 7-month's pregnant excuse to get out of camping...I was jealous). So it would be fun, a lot of my friends were going.

The first mistake I made (besides agreeing to go) was to drive Tracy to the campsite. Something bad ALWAYS happens when we go places together. Off the top of my head, a few incidents - She blew out a tire on I-20 driving back from a weekend in Tuscaloosa; driving back to Jacksonville last summer, a truck spilled oil ALL OVER poor little Vickie. Tracy will happily help me name some more incidents I'm forgetting. As we're driving up to the camp-site, on (the) 75 (why are interstate's only preceded with "the" in California?), we heard a noise at one point. Looked back in my rear-view and didn't notice anything, kept driving, assuming it was nothing. A few miles later we got off the interstate and onto some windy roads when driving got a little tougher. I just figured it was because there was a ton of stuff in the trunk maybe. We pulled into the camp site visitors center to check in, then when pulling out of the spot, guess what!!!!

Of course! A flat tire! Not just a flat tire, the tire was barely even on the rim even. Now, we're on a mountain, I was parked in a spot that was on a bit of a hill, so I had some trouble getting the jack to do it's thing. It slipped off about 3-4 times and about a half hour before I finally gave up. Rory's sisters' boyfriend (did I get that right?) managed to get the car jacked up (sounds funny) and he changed the tire in less than 5 minutes. Not the first time I've been bailed out in a tire-changing situation!!!!

So after installing a poor little donut on Vickie, I let her chew on that for a while and threw all our crap into Jason & Tara's car (nice timing by the way! They showed up just as we were done!) and headed to the camp site. Things calmed down for a bit...settled in, grabbed a beer and setup a chair and just sat there. I guess thats what you do? It was cool though just sitting around...at least it wasn't too hot out, there were plenty of trees and we were right by the lake. So all was going well, I did pass on the opportunity to go on a ride on Michael's boat, especially knowing Tracy was going...something bad was bound to happen :)

The most fun was probably watching Rory's friend (and my soon to be kickball teammate) Joel's dog swimming. (To clarify Joel's dog is not eligible for kickball I believe) That dog probably swam more in the few hours we were there than I may have in the last 10 years. It was also fun watching him and Rory's dog Piper go after a frisbee in the water. Especially when they finally gave up fetching it and we got to watch the frisbee slowly but surely float away. Eventually I did get in the water for a bit, then decided I'd even go on the next boat ride. It soon became evident that someone didn't want me on that boat. Almost immediately...in came the clouds. Dark clouds. Even though the radar was clear (OH! Tracy brought her laptop, you know...like a true camper!) We all know that the weather-peoples are never right, so it became obvious that the sky was about to explode all over us. First came the clouds, then came the wind, the thunder, the lightning, the rain...and just for the hell of it...let's throw in some HAIL for good measure. Luckily we were able to make our way to a bathroom facility in the middle of the campground site. The power was out, so it was pitch black inside the bathroom. I will admit this was a better situation than 2 weekends before when I was stuck on Pensacola Beach in a lightning storm with just an umbrella protecting (or, NOT-protecting) me! But the combination of those two weekends got the best of me...I had enough, I did NOT want to be there anymore. After the storm finally passed, they managed to get a fire going and I got a hot dog out of the deal before I got the hell out of there. If I had stayed, I know I would've been miserable and probably ruined it for other people, so I took one for the team and left with Tara and Jason, who took me back to poor little donut-wearing Vickie and then followed me back, going about 45MPH on "the 75". Ughhhhhhh! So I'm officially 0 for 2 in attempts to camp. Which reminds me of my favorite Bush-ism..."There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again." Well, I got fooled twice now...shame on you Rory!!!!!!

Here's all of us...I still don't understand why everyone's so happy? If you look carefully you can see some hail on the bottom left...I think

Did I pick the perfect shirt to wear or WHAT? Goes good with the Twister towel :)

Trying to Get Back to Normal

I promise no more depressing blogs for a while after this one...

Its been a week and a half since Hayden left us and it still doesn't seem real. I think about him everyday and I can still hear his voice in my head. Mostly either yelling at Monty (his dog) or Scott (his little brother) but still, just doesn't seem real. I've been amazed at how many people Hayden touched in his days. Just look at the number of visits I've gotten at this blog over the last couple of weeks:

June 5 … 24

June 4 … 46

June 3 … 43

June 2 … 55

June 1 … 70

May 31 … 58

May 30 … 84

May 29 … 109

May 28 … 155

May 27 … 232

May 26 … 181

May 25 … 11

May 24 … 2

May 23 … 14

May 22 … 8

May 21 … 9

May 20 … 13

May 19 … 9

May 18 … 10

Almost all of those have been through people googling Hayden. Then looking at all the comments here and all of the responses on his facebook page, unbelievable. I don't know if you need to be a member of facebook to read everything, but some of the posts on his "wall" show how great of a kid he was. A couple of girls are planning on getting his initials tattooed!!! We miss you Hayden!

To pile on, my grandmother (Bubbie) lost her brother last night...on her birthday! He had been sick and in the hospital for a while, and is truly in a better place now. It's just unfortunate that she has to go through all of this right now. I love you Bub!

On a completely unrelated note and definitely not depressing news, congrats to my two favorite and most important Kim's in my life! First, my sister Kim, accepted a new job with the Federal Reserve! Finally no more 80 hour work weeks! Then my friend "Nurse" Kim is graduating (and I know I'm saying this wrong) anaesthesia school in October and just accepted a job at a hospital in Huntsville, Alabama which apparently blew her away with their offer. Congrats to Kim's everywhere!

The return of Kevin Fulmer

I don't think I'd seen Kevin since 2002 or 2003 or so, so its been a WHILE! I lived with him in my Tallahassee days for about 5 years. Kevin of course is best known as "Garnet Guy". I stole this picture from ESPN the Magazine. Pretty cool, huh? He used to go running around at FSU football games with his golden painted and glittered buddy Josh White. I went with Rory to pick him up at the airport and Rory had the idea to make a sign for him. So we picked up some posterboard and a red, errrr garnet, marker and some glitter and glue. Rory did all the work, but it was pretty cool, he had a sign waiting for him that just said "Garnet Guy". So we found him and went to go get his bag and his flight was listed no where on the baggage claim boards. Figures! There was one carousel that had alot of bags and I just kinda pointed and said to check that one. Turns out his bag was pretty much right where I pointed!!! So, we left the airport and met up with some friends in Little Five Points and just hung out and chatted for a while. We didn't want to stay out too late because we were planning on waking up early to play golf saturday morning. We still wound up getting home pretty late and didn't get to the golf course til almost 10am. John was waiting on us and Kim was meeting us there, but was late because she (a nurse) managed to get herself drunk on what she claims was cough syrup! (ha!) We hit some balls on the driving range before Kim showed up. I don't think any of us had played golf in about 3 years (once we learned not to hold the clubs like a hockey stick, we were ok), so we needed the refresher. I did alright, I was only about 45 strokes over par :) (note the sarcasm). We did teach Kim a lesson though. She was hitting from the ladies tees most of the time and on one hole she was standing way over to the side, but in front of us. I took my shot and almost killed her. I didn't even have a chance to yell anything before the ball was at her head. That was one of the scariest moments I've ever experienced, it barely glanced off her hair I think. But it really scared the shit out of me more than it did her. We finished about 5 hours later (yes mom, I put on sunscreen at least 5 times!!!) and were about as sweaty and nasty as you can imagine! Seems like the perfect time to go to a fancy thai restaurant, right??? Shockingly enough they sat us in the far corner of the restaurant not near anyone else. After eating we went back to clean ourselves up, but more importantly a nap was essential. Me and Kevin went to my friend Divya's sisters' going away/birthday party. Hung out there for a couple hours, then met up with Kim and Rory and eventually Matt at the Brick Store, where, they sell no bricks, but more importantly, about 500 different beers. Don't ever ask for a Bud Light there! I can't even pronounce the beers that I had...and thats why I love that place. After that, the only thing left to do at around 3am in Atlanta is to go get some food!!! We were gonna try and go to "OK Cafe", which, we thought was 24 hours. Its not apparently. So we went to Waffle House :)

Slept in til about noon on Sunday, me and Kevin went to see Evan Almighty...pretty funny, not as funny as Knocked Up, but it was good. Steve Carrell is hilarious. And that was pretty much it for the weekend. Hopefully it won't be another 4 years before we hang out again!

Another trip to Jacksonville

Lots of interesting stuff to report from this weekend. I'll try my best to make it brief. (HA!)

(Nurse) Kim met up with me in Atlanta and rode with me to Jacksonville Friday. Got into town and met up with Tracy & Stacey and others at the local Mellow Mushroom. Some people know of Mellow Mushroom as a pizza place (some may not know it at all) but the version in Jacksonville is more like a bar it seemed. Still pretty cool. Tracy was being a party pooper and wanted to go home, but me and Kim stayed and hung out at "The Shroom" (I just came up with that! I'm sure i'm the first too). Right about at last call time, I went back to the bar to get a last beer ( a Newcastle - draught, of course) and was rejected. The taps were cleaned and closed out. I went back to Kim to give her the bad news, she went up there and next thing I know, here comes Kim with 2 very very dark glasses of beers? What the???? Well, apparently the bartender liked her boobs better than mine, so she got us beer. Oh well, whatever. After the bar we went back to Tracy's place and popped in Talladega Nights. Kim was asleep within 10 minutes. Funny movie!!!!

Saturday I got tricked into going to a shoe store with Kim & Tracy..THATS not gonna happen again!!!! After that we went to this place called CRAZY Sushi. It didn't seem too crazy, but I'm not a sushi guy. Later that afternoon me and Tracy drove up to Jekyll Island for my friends' Jill & Josh's wedding. Before I left I got the address for the hotel and got directions from google. As we're headed towards the island the directions took us in a different direction than the signs for Jekyll Island. I definitely got suspicious, but stuck with the directions. Shouldn't have! We wound up in Saint Simon's Island. the street name is apparently on both islands, and google maps screwed me over. Finally we got to the hotel and to the wedding. Oh, on our way to the wedding, I found out my friends Mike & Courtney got engaged. So thats pretty cool. No one seems to listen to my "stay single" advice that my Grandpa gave me!!! Anyways, the wedding was pretty cool. I tried to get drunk enough to dance, but it just didn't happen. They actually had a cool idea for the music at the wedding - they emailed a select few of the guests and took song requests. They had a band for the first part of the reception when we were eating, but after that they just setup Josh's ipod. I thought that was a pretty neat idea. Anyways, I, of course, requested "Get Low" (you know, the sweat drop down my balls song). At the wedding Jill kept telling me it was coming up next, but it never came!

Sunday morning just as we were getting back on the interstate, I was passing a truck who decided to shower poor little Vickie with oil. It was ALL over my windshield, my hood, my bumper and just everywhere. A couple exits later I finally decided to stop at a gas station to make sure it wasn't coming from my car, and it wasn't. I really wish I took a picture, but I didn't. It really was everywhere. We grabbed 2 squeegee's at the gas station and just completely wiped my car off. Not fun. But it wouldn't be a road trip with Tracy if bizarre stuff like this didn't happen!

Sunday we drove back to Atlanta. Then this morning after I woke up, my TV in my bedroom (not Mitsa) was on Sportscenter just like its supposed to be. I walked into the living room for a minute and I heard the sound from the TV go off and heard some odd noises. I went into my room and smelled smoke. Something inside my TV blew up!!!! I couldn't do anything with the remote, so I wound up just unplugging it. Looking inside the TV you can see a bright orange glow...not quite a flame, but something was definitely burning in there! So...now I need a new TV. And since Mitsa has spoiled me, I'll probably have to spend a good bit of cash on a new TV now. Nothing huge, but definitely something HD compatible.

Thats a pretty eventful weekend, huh?

Moving Sucks (2006 version)

First, before I begin my rant, a big thanks to:

Shari, Janice, Jeremy, Joe, Kim, Ric, Tracy, PK and Cintron!!!!! You guys made it a hell of alot better than last time!

Now for the rant. Whats better than waking up at 6:30am on the day you're moving to a HUGE thunderstorm!!! You have GOT to be kidding me right? Well, I went back to sleep and thankfully the storm was gone and not a problem at all. But it definitely provided me with quite a scare. So I go to pick my truck up at UHaul...and apparently I because some girls' bitch!!! I asked to use a couple of those blankets to protect furniture. She says they're $1 each, but there are "a few" in the truck and she'll let me use them for free if I just fold them before returning the truck. So I think thats the greatest deal ever, us jews like free shit! I leave with the truck. When we're about to start loading it, I see why she offered me this deal. There were about 25 damn blankets in there!!!!!!!!!! In the end...I used 1. 1 lousy blanket, I saved $1. At midnight when I was dropping off the truck, I sat in the parking lot folding those damn things. ONE DOLLAR!!!!!!!! What a lazy bitch that chick is!

In the end, the move was not nearly that bad. The only casualty was about 3 broken glasses, which I'm pretty sure were 3 that I've "accidentally" walked out of local bars when they've somehow managed to find their way into my pocket or something. I guess thats Karma.

So, June 30, 2007....who wants to help me move? :)

My World Tour

Last Saturday I flew out to LA. The plane ride may have been the best part. On the plane they had these GPS-like monitors. They consitantly monitored where exactly the plane was and how cold the air temp is, the wind speed, plane speed, distance travelled, all that stuff! Then they ditched it to show Sky-High! Damn you Delta!

I was going out there to visit my friend Lauren who just moved out there. We had fun, but it was frustrating because she didn't really know the cool places to show me. But we drove all around Hollywood, went to the most wonderful eating establishment not named White Castle - In 'N Out Burger. mmmmmmmmm. Apparently its just a california thing. Thats so not fair! The two best places are not available to me. Then throw in 7-11 and I'm just screwed! Why Atlanta is anti 7-11 I'll never understand! At least we've got Chic-Fil-A! I don't know what I'd do without Chic-Fil-A.

So anyways, then Sunday I went to San Diego and loved it! I had my first flesh-to-Pacific Ocean experience of my life. It was kinda cold, shockingly enough. Right after doing that we found an ice cream shop on the beach that had waffle-ice cream sandwhiches! Sometimes I wonder why it takes so long to invent things. 2 fresh hot waffles with a scoop of ice cream in between!!!! (later I found out that you can get a burger with donuts instead of buns right here in Atlanta! No wonder we're such a fatass country!) My roommate Kim is currently living/working out in San Diego (13 week travelling nurse stint that will probably turn into a 26 week gig) with our other friend Tara. Anyways, I stayed in SD for a few days, then went to a hockey game in Anaheim,then everything went to hell on Thursday!

Thursday morning I had a 7:30am flight. Got to LAX at 6:15, waited in line at the Delta counter and it took FOREVER and I didn't get to the desk until 7:00am - ie - too late. Then from there they said they didn't have my flight info and that they needed a confirmation number to find my info. Naturally I didn't have it, luckily I called dad, he looked it up, and through the miracle of a phone line, within 45 minutes I had a confirmation number. They rebooked me on a 9:30am flight. Which sounds fine, but I was flying to Austin from there and had to connect in Salt Lake City. Well, there's only 2 flights from Salt Lake to Austin, and I missed the first one already. The 2nd one is at 7:15pm. (Note - I got to LAX at 6:15am). So I get to Salt Lake at 12:30pm and have 7 hours to kill. Instead, I think the mormons tried to kill me. I think they can tell that I was not one of them (I dont know how? I've got dark hair and I'm pale!!!!) But they gave me what I'm calling the flu. So I finally get to Austin at 11pm. But guess what didn't make the trip! My luggage!!!! Awesome! Of course I'm not the type to take a spare change of clothes in my carry on luggage. After 2 trips to the airport on Friday I finally get my luggage, and was drugged up enough to make it through a couple of days in Austin. Luckily they do sell Nyquil there! Thanks to my friends Kristen and Lou for taking care of me!!! For anyone who watched, the Real World Austin House is in the sad process of being demolished. The Austin sign on top of the building was gone already. I went to a Texas basketball game, they got killed by Tennessee who had a bunch of jew-fro wearing white guys. And that was about it.

Wow, that was long. Feel free to skim, the long parts are the sad parts. The moral of the story is Kim is the traveller of the family not me. Although I am going back to utah in a month to go skiing. I've gotta do something about those damn mormons!!!!