Driving

After 32 hours of driving to get to and from my training location and 96 hours of driving vehicles, I will be done and back home again for exactly one hour. After I finally finish the long drive home, I am having my reluctant roommate drive me to the airport at four in the morning. I wish there was a better flight for me to catch but one of the guys I’m traveling with decided that leaving that early was a great idea. Do we have anything to do once we get there? No, we don’t have anything until 1000 the next morning. Do we have a dinner we wanted to eat? No, it just “seemed like a good idea” to get there early on in the day. The guy who planned this and I have had a little bit of a long talk straightening this glaring misconception out so it doesn’t happen again.

One of the things I am looking forward to about this trip is the weather. There are many days in the forecast where the high where we are going is the low for back at home. We are seeing triple digit temps every day at home and it doesn’t really show any signs of slowing down. Everyone claims there isn’t really a difference once you get about 100 because it’s just “darn hot”. I would like everyone to know that is a lie. There is a huge difference in 101 and 111 regardless of what you think. It is potentially because I don’t have A/C in my car which means I end up just having hot air blow over me the entire time I am traveling, but it’s not as if the tiny compressor under your hood can actually cut the heat down to comfortable ranges.

I realized the other day when my roommate pointed it out to me: my arms are two completely different colors. My left arm is WAY more tan than my right because it just kind of hangs out in the sun whenever I’m driving. I don’t know if this is a look or not, but I’m going to do m best to bring it to the mainstream culture. Keep watching the celebrities, soon the two-tone color scheme is going to catch on and everyone’s going to be sporting this look.

Traveling

This past week I drove for a good solid work day to get to my next work location and checked into the hotel that I had been assigned online. Just to give you perspective, the places we usually stay are Hilton properties or Crowne Plaza properties because the people we are doing work for get a discount at these locations and have decided they don’t need us staying in some flea-bag motel while we are evaluating these systems. After all, you kind of want to take care of the people who are going to make the final determination as to whether or not your program can continue to operate, no?

When I got on site, I checked into my Super 8 room. Yes, Super 8. I haven’t stayed in one of these in a long time and I have actually found it is kind of nice. When I was booking online, I had an option of a King size bed or a comfortable King size bed. Who would honestly chose the non-comfortable option? “Oh, no thanks; I like it when my bed is all lumpy and I wake up in odd positions because I have been trying to get comfortable all night long.”

On the first day of work, I found out why I was in a Super 8 and not a hotel that I am more accustomed to; there is quite literally nothing else around here.

The weather here has been triple digits every day which makes running outside less-than-ideal.

When you look at the weather predictions each day, it will typically say the estimated high for the day is high 90s. It will continue to show that prediction all day ling even as the temp soars well above that number. Call me crazy, but if the temperature goes above the estimated high for the day, isn’t the current temperature the new high and shouldn’t it be adjusted accordingly? This happens on every web site that I have found that puts weather predictions online and it doesn’t make sense for any of them.

Visit

My family’s visit has come to an end and i dropped them off at the airport this morning. I officially dislike all flights that leave from the airport before noon due simply to the fact that they make me wake up early to get people to the airport in time for their flights. Actually, it’s not that I dislike the flights, it is that i sincerely dislike the people who decide booking a flight that early in the morning is a good idea. Dad, I’m talking to you.

This past week was a lot of fun with everyone in town. I learned the my sister is terrible at dancing when we went out to the dance hall. The dancehall actually turned out to be a crazy experience that kept on giving the next few days. I forgot to close out my tab and went back that night. They had just closed and no one was allowed back in even though there were still people in the building. That’s fine, I can respect the rules. I went back the next day like I was told and found there was no one there. Fine, I can deal with that. I went back again that night and was told they don’t know where my card was and they don’t remember seeing my name on any of the cards left over night. So, you guys lost my card? Interesting. I’m traveling next week, too which means I can’t get a replacement for a few weeks. I brought my Debit card, so at least I have a way to get to my money.

Last week we went to the water park that is not too far away and had a great day out there! We went on a Wednesday so it wasn’t as crowded as it typically is on weekends. We still had to wait in line for a good long while to ride anything, but it was a nice day of relaxing and swimming with everyone.

Saturday morning, we went for a quick run and then headed out to a friend’s house for Swedish pancakes. They were a lot like crepes and not a whole lot like pancakes, but they were delicious whatever they were! It was a great way to kick off the weekend even if the people I dragged out to the run with me weren’t any sort of excited about waking up at 0520 to go out and run before the sun became unbearably hot.

Family

To start this weekend off, two of my friends and I decided we were going to go for a ten mile run. Well, it was more that I decided I wanted to go for a run and dragged two of my most willing/gullible friends into going. It was a great idea and was going to be super awesome, but then we also decided to play volleyball and go dancing the night before. I thought for sure the plan would fall apart there, but we managed to persevere. Let me run you through how the weekend went:

On Friday night, we decided to go play volleyball at nine and then head out to some good old country dancing from there. No big deal (I had mostly forgotten that there was going to be run in the morning) except that meant we were going to be out until around 0230 or 0300 on Friday night. The next morning I was pretty confused as to why my alarm was going off at 0500.

The only reason I was able to wake myself up and drag myself out of bed was because I knew there was another person across town doing the same exact thing with just as little sleep to meet me and I was NOT going to be the one who had to cancel it. I turns out, when I got there, that was the exact same reason she got out of bed and dragged herself down to the road we ran on.

One of the friends we ran with hadn’t gone out for a legitimate run in around five years. That means ten miles MIGHT have been a little much to start out with (and I think his joints, muscles and bones might now agree with me) but he managed to finish and he was a trooper about it.

After the run, I turned right around and went up to a river nearby to float down with a few friends. I was vastly underprepared for the float and ended up just going down in the same clothes I had run in which was kind of nice because at least then they weren’t smelly and sweaty for the drive home. We only had one injury for the float trip too; one of the guys dislocated his shoulder when he went over a small waterfall.

After floating, I went home, showered and then went to pick up my parents and sister who flew in for the week!

We managed to wake up for church today and then head out to lunch at a local Vietnamese noodle soup place we all really like. I was pretty hilarious to watch my (very non-Vietnamese) family attempt to understand the concept of Pho and bubble tea.