Christmas is Coming!!

Saturday, December 19th, 2009. Today was a rather productive day. After being rather lazy all week long, mainly from the battle and recovery of my bout of tonsillitis, I decided to not sit around all day long and play Zoo World, my latest Facebook game addiction.

7 am: Come Run With Santa 5k.

My coworkers, the owner and his son, and I all participated in the race. While I had been thinking that I would take it seriously and try to PR and/or get under 25 minutes, I had recently changed my mind this week since the sickness ruined any chance of training, well that and I was lazy. So I decided I would just have fun and give it what I could and have another race on my "resume." Me and Katie once again carpooled (its more of an excuse to bond and gossip =)) but we were not liking the getting up early and having to drive across town thing. We arrived at the Saturn dealership where they were hosting the event and met up with our coworkers to get our race bib numbers and timing chips (I had no idea that what seemed to me a low-key event run by a smaller organization would actually have something big time like timing chips). Then we hung out waiting for race time to get nearer so we could warm up. After warm up and about 7:15ish, the event organizers are apparently not that big on starting on

time, the race finally started and me, my coworkers, and about 100 plus other people all headed out to run with Santa, though funny thing was he was no where to be seen. I started out slow trying to find a good steady but quick enough pace and proceeded down the rather boring 3.1 mile course. There were several little children participating in the run, which were entertaining because they either were trying to keep up with me and not let me pass, or they had started out way too fast at during the first mile and were winded and walking the remainder of the course. After about the first mile, a man pushing a stroller proceeded to pass me. Now if you've ever run any distance of a race you know there are three things you don't refuse to let beat you: walkers, children, and people with strollers. I decided to let him run his pace though and pass him up in the last mile. But before I could initiate my plan I noticed a small huddle of people in Red Rock Running Co tshirts on the side walk on the opposite side of the track of my current position. I contemplated running across and seeing what was going on, but I decided to continue up to the turn around less than 100 meters away and then stop to see what was going on. When I did reach them Katie explained that Jessica felt like one of her ovarian cysts had burst. Katie along with Brent and Jessica's boyfriends' future step mother were awaiting the ambulance to come assist Jessica. So I decided to wait with them, which happened to be only a few minutes. Jessica climbed into the ambulance and then me, Brent, and Katie decided there was nothing else we could do to help so we continued on together to finish the race. I don't think I PR'd, but I probably got close to it, since my finishing time of the only other 5K that I ran wasn't that good. It definitely made me want to do another one so I can accurately find what my time would be.

After the race and dropping Katie back off at the store, I went home to clean up, eat, and catch up a little on my games while I relaxed from the stressful morning. I had to force myself to stick to my plans for the day, since I was kind of tired from waking up so early and was contemplating a nap. But I got ready and went down to Town Square, the mall all the way on the other side of town, because its the closest H&R in Vegas and I had to return a dress I got for a gift because the size was wrong. So I ventured down there and after doing the first task on my list, proceeded shopping at the mall for the people still on my Christmas gift list.

Once I had done as much shopping as I could at that mall, crossing off two people off my list, and getting a part of the gifts for the others, I went down to the M hotel to see what they've been bragging and advertising about for the past few weeks as the nation's and maybe the world's largest Christmas tree.

Driving down Las Vegas blvd about a mile or two still from the hotel, I could actually make out the outline of the tree and was thoroughly impressed. The tree had to be gigantic to be seen from so far away. Upon arriving at the hotel, I clearly could see that all the talk lived up to the promise. The tree was one of the tallest that I'd seen. It wasn't the fullest Christmas tree though, but I'm sure with the size and age of the tree its quite hard for it to have such growth as a smaller, younger one. It was definitely a site to see though, having decorations all over its branches and fake presents underneath, it reminded me of the tree in Whoville in the How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

Upon entering back inside the hotel after taking several minutes to marvel at the tree and a handful of pictures to capture the event, I found a display of gingerbread houses made by local elementary students. I took some camera phones pictures and sent them to Gina, my best friend, because they reminded me of how we always make gingerbread houses almost every year.And it made me laugh at how artistic and carefully made the house appeared to be while the ones that me and Gina make, being a much older age, are no where as creative or well put together. I still don't quite believe that the kids were able to make such products all by themselves.

I finally went, after I was done at the hotel, to get some Christmas decorations for the house. It just doesn't quite feel like the holidays with not one single decoration in our house or at my work, so I bought some cheap decorations and one strand of multi-colored lights, just to make these last remaining days before Christmas a bit more festive.

So now that my Christmas shopping is halfway done, the house looks and feels a bit more in the spirit, and I've managed to finally write a long and boring blog, its time for bed cause I'm exhausted!!! Stay classy universe. =)

Cold Season is Upon Us

Friday, December 11th 2009. After an extremely slow and boring day of work, me and my brother Jeff relaxed in front of the bigscreen with some Chinese food and watched the movie Grace. I give it 2 out of 5 stars; any movie that doesn't truely explain how a dead fetus suddenly comes back to life and that the mother seems to know what exactly the baby is, some sort of zombie child or something, clearly doesn't deserve to be watched a second time.

So a basic boring day and night; nothing exciting to my Friday. But when I woke in the morning I had a feeling that walking around in the cold for a good 15 minutes yesterday trying to help that boy was a bad health decision. The tingle of a sore throat could be felt. So I am attempting to keep it at bay, yet again for just about two weeks ago I had a cold scare too. But I'm not sure if this time I've caught it in time for my tonsils are quite expanded and pus is forming on them. Oh well. Hopefully the hydrogen peroxide rinse, tea, and vitamin C will kick this germs butt and I won't have to face the week or two long battle against my immune system.

The Extinction of the Good Samaritan

Thursday December 10th, 2009 Technically this is my third blog, but the Aussie incident actually happened yesterday, I just never had a chance to post it.

So after work today I went for my first run since Sundays' marathon, at the park down the road from work. Upon finishing my last cool down lap, I heard crying coming from a young boy walking through the trees in the park. I started to slow down as I approached his location and as I passed by him he stopped, trying not to make a scene. I comtemplated in my head if I should ask him what was wrong and after about 30 seconds of hesitation I did. He went on to explain hysterically that he had lost his $100 replacement phone, missed his bus looking for the phone, and seemed thoroughly concerned with how much trouble he would be in when he told his mother about his loss. I told him that I would help him look for it and tried to calm him down as we retraced his steps through the water retention basin he had travelled through earlier with his "friends" that he explained would not help him look for his phone. The sun was slowly setting in the horizon and the cold winter air was starting to make this simple kind act a bit of a tedious annoyance. Another woman had previously offered a kind hand to the boy, but had failed to find his lost possession, so I figured that our exploration would once again yield no solution. I decided that the best thing to do was for the boy to get home and come back with his mother the next day to look when it was a bit lighter and warmer. So I told the boy we could call his mother to tell her the situation, even though he kept claiming that she doesn't answer the phone for number she doesn't know. After failing to reach her on the phone, I called the local police department for they were the only solution to the situation. The boy kept saying that all he needed was a ride home, but in todays world when a simple act of kindness can quickly turn its back on you and get you in trouble for assisting a young innocent boy with no parental approval, this clearly was not possible. I had told the boy that he should try going back to school to see if the teachers could assist him, or going to his friends house because their parents should be able to give him a ride home or reach his mother, but he would not listen to those options. "No one will be at the school," and, "My friends won't let me into their house. They wouldn't even let me in to use the bathroom the other day," were his answers to my suggestions. So I called 311, Las Vegas's local dispatch who connected me to the park police who sent the Marshall out to come give the boy a ride home.

In todays world, where a simple act of giving a lost child a ride home is no longer a good idea, it truely proves that the good samaritan no longer is able to exist.

And on another note, the idea that the 11 year old had once again lost his cell phone proves the point that child don't need them!! Unless they are able to pay for that phone and the monthly bill that comes with the responsibility of owning a cell phone, they shouldn't be given one.

The Dog with a Sweet Tooth

Its a bad sign when you get home and your dog walks up to you already in the coward position, like she did something wrong and knows it was wrong, and is all ready for your reaction when you figure it out . So when Aussie, my brother's Australian Shepard, approached me as I answered the door, not in her usual "oh my god it seems like years since I've seen you" jumping happy attitude, I knew something was up. As I quickly searched the floor for empty food wrappers, made sure that my bedroom door had in fact been closed when I was gone, and

checked my bathroom to see if she had gotten into my trash, I failed to find anything that she did wrong. I headed to the kitchen to make my dinner when I saw it: the empty plate on the counter that used to contain the dozen of cookies I had made the night before. Before I had assumed the worst, the answer that I knew was the most plausible, I called my brother to ask the ridiculous question. "Did you eat all the cookies," I asked my brother Jeff. " No. Yeah like I would eat a billion cookies," he exaggerated. Then I preceded to explain that Aussie had yet again eaten our sweets.

You see this is not the first case of "Dog eats human food when back is turned." It all started while my brother was gone in Afghanistan and I was dog sitting at his house. Being an avid runner and working at a running specialty store where you get all kinds of free running nutritional items, of course I had a bag full of powerbars, gels and other random items stocked up for my training in my bedroom. One day I came home to find that Aussie had gone into my room, opened up the plastic grocery bag that contained all of my running food and preceded to eat a number of powerbars, some of my gels, and a bunch of the powerbar gel blasts (like

gummy candies if you've never tried them before: delicious!!). The wrappers were everywhere in the house, gel goo smudged into the carpet and on the wood floor. And that began the first of many of Aussie's mischievous incidents. Since then she's gotten a bag of Doritos out of the cupboard, made several trips into my room to eat my running nutrition, gotten into my trash in my bedroom, mainly to get the empty powerbar gel blasts wrapper out which she had previously eaten, along with dragging some random items out of the room (lip gloss, body spray, an empty shoe lace box. what did she think was in it??) and, the incident before the cookies, ate a mountain of a piece of birthday cake off the counter.

Now a dog expert might say that she was doing all of this to either get attention or because she was hungry, but she is well fed (in the morning and at night) and gets plenty of love when we are home with her. And the thing that makes it even more ironic is that her dog food bag sits on the floor in the living room, which is more accessible to her than the food she's ripped out of bags and labels or maneuvered off the counter. I kind of think it might be a Pavlov's dog type scenario where she either hears the crinkle of the wrappers and associates whats in it with her own treat and food packages, or she sees us sitting around and eating all of this junk and thinks she needs to indulge in it too. And by now she technically should be really sick or dead, considering all of the chocolate, sugar, and caffeine that she has consumed, and the number of wrappers that she did eat but vomited up the next day when her body wouldn't process them. But she still lives on, scavenging the floor for crumbs and bugging us in the kitchen when we are cooking. I guess I should be thanking her in the long run cause its better she eat all of the sweets and junk than me.

Day 1: the Purpose

Wednesday, December 9th, 2009. Today marks the first day of my newest expedition. After watching Julie & Julia, I decided that writing a daily blog sounded like a fun idea and would give me a chance to not only put myself on the path to self discovery, yes the old cliche, by allowing me to explore my day to day feelings and emotions, but would give me something to fill the void of boredom that appears so often in my days.

My first task was to decide what I would write on, "Well duh Bethaney because you can't really write a blog with no real topic or purpose;" well you could but who the hell would find that entertaining, not that I'm saying mine will entertain many people. But if its posted on the internet for the world to see and someone comes across it on some boring rainy afternoon and decides to spend some measly few minutes reading it, I would hope that for that little amount of time I would grab the readers attention and they would forget how much they hate being stuck in their dark lonely abode because of the shitty weather outside and have one of those out-of-body, daydream types of situations and be somewhere warm and happy as they read my blog. So as I pondered the purpose of my writing I decided that why not make it a daily journal type blog that would include the highs and lows of my everyday undertakings. And to make it even more of an attention grabbing piece, I would add more activities to my daily life so that I could at least attempt to make this blog interesting, or at least trick readers into believing that my life is full of excitement and adventure. Or maybe the main purpose is to prove to myself that the days when I believe my life is so dull is in actuality based on the fact that I have chosen to be anti-social and non-committal and therefore put myself into this life of lethargic tendencies based of my own personal choices.

So once the blog topic was decided next came down to the naming of the blog. The easy part right? Well that's what I thought. I had finished several blogs in my head before I finally narrowed down my options for the title. I wanted something meaningful, not cliche or something that seemed like no thought was put into it. So I came up with what I thought was an appropriate title relating to my current location and place in my life. For while my choice to move to Las Vegas was seemingly spontaneous, how can choices in life really be truly spontaneous or preformed with no thought process behind them. I mean there are always two choices to a typical problem, and in order for you to choose one over the other, you have to think that choice so doesn't that contradict the definition of spontaneity? For instance while people say that my moving to Vegas was spontaneous, maybe it was more of an out of character maneuver, because there was careful thought put into the decision that I was making. I didn't flip a coin or pull the location out of a hat, I had predetermined that Las Vegas was where I was going to go next in my life.

And with that the title and topic of the blog had been decided. Next it came down to the rules, how do I keep myself on track for completing this goal of writing for a year. Well first of all I need to stop being lazy with my life and start trying new things and getting out in the world, that way I can try my best to come up with a different story each day. If I can't find things to go to or new places to explore, then I'll read a book or (last resort) watch a movie. But no matter what I am determined to stick with this goal, even if its only a few sentences to say all I did was work and it was the most boring day, there will be a bog posted about it. And if you are reading this and might be from Vegas or have ever been to Las Vegas and have an idea of what I could try or do out here, comment with an idea, as long as its legal (though not much isn't here) I will attempt to try it out.

But there's one last thing that needed to be figured out before the idea of a year long blog could be put into motion. What is it that I want to truly accomplish from committing one year of writing a public diary? Well that part I'm still figuring out, but I think I've thought of a few of the possible answers: one I want to get back into writing. I used to love it and thought about entering into the journalism field. So even if this blog is never read by a single person, if it at least starts me on the path to getting back my love for writing then it will be worth it. Two: I want to stop filling my "free time" with movies and sleep and computer games (damn those Facebook games for being so addictive) and start doing something productive with my life. I mean sitting at a computer for a few hours staring at a computer screen is still burning my pupils, but at least some accomplishment will come out of it instead of getting to the next level on Farmville or looking at all of my friends photo albums, wishing I was doing half the things they were. And three: maybe i'll be able to figure out who exactly I am and what exactly I want to be doing for the rest of my life. So here's to the beginning of a new year, starting a little earlier than the actual numeral year change, but more of a spiritual change. Hope you enjoy it.