Backpacking?

I'd never thought I'd see this day.

This day where I'm packing my clothes in a backpack.

This day where I'm thinking about what to eat for dinner while in the woods.

This day where I'm looking at backpacker.com.

I am going backpacking with Geo.

Yes, I said it. Backpacking!

When I told Mary, she said, "Are you sure?"

When I told my Mom, she said, "Backpacking?"

When I told my Dad, he laughed.

They were all shocked.

Nonetheless, I'm still excited about it, despite their reservations. Well, excited/nervous!  This will be just a little bit different than any past experiences that I've had camping.

I have always camped at a place where my car is close and we could get inside of it for heat or air conditioning. When we got hungry, we could drive to Taco Bell for dinner and McDonald's for breakfast. Instead, we will carry all of our food in backpacks, including the water and food and everything to go with it. We'll sleep in tents in the middle of the woods with BEARS. (I'm hoping they'll be hibernating.) No cars nearby with cushioned seats. There will be no community bathrooms, just trees.

It should be interesting.

I'm really nervous about not being able to go to sleep because I never can when I hear coyotes barking at night. I've stayed awake all night before because of those dang coyotes.

My last camping experience went like this: Two years ago, the middle of October. It was a beautiful day, and Aunt Anne G was staying in Gatlinburg, so I went to visit her and Uncle Paul. Cale and El and some friends were camping at Cade's Cove and asked Mary and me to come stay. Aunt Anne G said we could stay in their hotel room if we wanted to. Dumb decision--we chose to stay at Cade's Cove because we were too tired to drive back to the hotel. We though we were going to sleep more at the camp site; I'm not sure why. To this day, I'm just not sure why we did that. The temperature dropped from the 70s during the day to below freezing at night. AND, there weren't enough sleeping bags for everyone. Plus, it had been warm that day and I didn't have any warm clothes on.

Ends up, Mary and I slept pretty much on top of each other with a couple of blankets in freezing (literally) weather, on the tent floor with about 9 girls in the tent and I was on the side and had dew all over me when I woke up.

I'm pretty sure that as soon as it got light, I walked straight to my car and drove home.

There was nothing fun about that night, and I vowed never to do that again.

This is different though, this backpacking trip I'm going on. We have sleeping bags and the guys sound like they are preparing in advance. I'm packing warm clothes and fuzzy socks and Xanax (just kidding.)

But really, I am excited to be in the outdoors in this beautiful weather, and we will see how I like backpacking. Let's hope I like it! I'll report back after.

New GEICO Commercial - Piggy

This is my new favorite commercial. Geoffrey always makes fun of me for laughing at commercials, but my friend Alli told me about this one being funny and I thought it was blog-worthy.

Maybe it's dumb...

But it made me laugh.

Please Come Back Soon!

Monday, September 20th, 89 degrees

Monday, September 27th, 65 degrees

Monday, October 4th, 51 degrees

I'm not very fond of this trend. I'm not big on winter, and today was way too close to winter for me.

2 weeks ago, it was 38 degrees warmer.

2 days ago, it was (75-51=24) 24 degrees warmer.

I'm not sure what's going on, but I do know that it's chilly, and even chillier inside my house. For some reason, at home and in my Knoxville house, it's always colder in the house than outside. And, I'm always too cheap to turn the heat on. I'm slowly learning that body heat will not heat up my living room.

As of yesterday, I now come home and change into furry socks, long sweatpants, a sweatshirt layered over a full set of long johns, a hat, gloves, and a scarf. Okay, well maybe not the last four things yet.... But  at the rate it's going, that's what I'll be wearing next week when it's 30 degrees outside. 

As my roomie Nat just said, "This winter will not be the winter that we start wearing normal clothes." We have discussed trying to wear normal (not nike shorts and tshirts) clothes more often so that it won't be such a shock next year.... That's not happening. Our house is going to be way too cold.

If I took a picture of myself sitting in my house right now, my nose would be bright red... It's really attractive. I won't share.

Sidenote: I learned how to turn our house alarm on today. (We never even knew we had a working alarm until today. After being scared out of my mind all summer, the house actually had an alarm that would have helped calm my fears and nightmares.) I'm hoping that I won't have any blog worthy stories about it though. Tonight will be our first time to ever use it, and we're hoping for no police at our house tonight (unlike 3 nights ago). 

The Boy

 Geo feels left out from my blog, so I thought I'd dedicate this post to him. I made this lovely picture for him so that I could make a post for him.

You're pretty awesome, so this is just for you Geo!

Business Law and the Real World

I'm getting my car checked out right now because when I get out sometimes, the mirrors move and when I get back in and look in them, all I see is the pavement below my car. Then I fix it, get it just right, and I turn it off, get back in and they're facing the sky. It never does it when I'm watching, and it doesn't happen every time. It's really annoying, so I thought I'd bring it in. I felt stupid trying to explain it to the guy here. The woman told me she would run me through and tell me how to move my mirrors, like I just didn't know how!

So anyways, I'm reading my law book here, and it made me laugh.

I'm not sure if I told you the story about my painfully short dress that I wore in Eleanor's wedding this summer. It was super cute, but the length was down to my mid-calf, and so all of the bridesmaids got it hemmed up to right above our knee. I was in Knoxville and didn't know who to take it to, and I saw a nice-looking place that had a nice name, so I took it in.

I told the man there that I wanted it right above my knee. I tried it on, told him I was wearing it in a wedding, so I didn't want it very short.

Fast forward three days (9 days before the wedding), I pick up the dress and it is literally 2 feet long. I looked at it and PANICKED. He told me to try it on to see if I like. I said, okay. I held the tears back as I zipped it up. I couldn't even walk outside the dressing room to show him, because I was too embarrassed to wear it in front of people.  It was shorter than my nike shorts, which are not long. The back was shorter than the front, and my underwear showed the back (especially when I walked).

I never tell people that I am unhappy with them, I usually let it slide as much as I can. But this time, I got up my nerve to tell him that it was way too short. His reply, "You look like you like short dress." 

I held it up so that he could see it, and I showed him how short it was and how short I had told him. He told me that I asked for it to be that length. I told him that I would have never asked for it to be that length! 

After much conversing and no sympathy, he told me that I would still have to pay $35 for it. Yes, I had to pay money for that dress/shirt! I paid $120 for the dress originally, spent $35 on it for alterations, and I wasn't even going to be able to wear it. I couldn't walk down an aisle in that in front of my entire family.

Anyways, I asked for the material that he cut off, which was about a foot. I calmly left and then called mom to figure out what to do. I took it home to her the next morning and we got to work with her sewing machine. We couldn't add the material back to the end because of the seams, so we had to put another layer under the dress, connected to the liner. It was confusing, but it didn't look too bad--a little different than everyone else's, and still very short. We couldn't add too much length because the layer thing looked weird. 

I was really insecure about my short dress the entire night. I couldn't ever bend down and had to be sure to walk really still. From the pictures, look and see the bridesmaids--conservative, conservative, conservative, conservative, WOAH! conservative, conservative, conservative...

Well, this morning, in the BMW dealership, I was reading my Business Law book for class. Let me just quote The Legal Environment of Business. "When the subject matter of a contract is personal, a contract to be performed to the satisfaction of one of the parties is conditioned, and performance must actually satisfy that party. For example, contracts for portraits, works of art, and tailoring are considered personal." 

I should have gotten that $35 back! I'm not sure that I had a contract with the man, but I probably did have an implied contract. I will keep reading to find out, but I'm pretty sure that he shouldn't have made me pay.

$35 wasted! 

Marketing, Marketing, Marketing, and History

I have been studying all weekend, and I thought I'd share a few of the interesting things that I have been learning in History and Marketing. That way, I will be learning as I blog and this doesn't count as a study break.

1. If the world were a village of 1,000 people, it would consist of 520 females and 480 males, 330 children, 60 people over the age of 65, 10 college graduates, and 335 illiterate adults. The village would contain 52 North Americans, 55 Russians, 84 Latin Americans, 95 Eastern and Western Europeans, 124 Africans, and 584 Asians (over half!). Communication would be difficult because 165 would speak Mandarin, 86 English, 83 Hindu, 64 Spanish, 58 Russian, 37 Arabic and the rest would speak other languages. There would be 329 Christians, 178 Muslims, 132 Hindus, 62 Buddhists, 3 Jews, 167 nonreligious, 45 atheists and 84 others.

2. Gay and lesbian populations range between 4-8% of the US population, with a higher percentage in urban areas. Compared to the average US consumer, respondents who classify themselves as gay are 10 times more likely to be in professional jobs (like doctors, accountants, etc), 2 times as likely to own a vacation home, and 8 times more likely to own a notebook computer.

3. Half of the US population (120 million people) moved at least one time between 1995 and 2000. State by state analysis shows that the shift has been toward the Sunbelt states and away from the Midwest and Northeast.

4. People in Seattle buy more toothbrushes per capita than any other city. People in Salt Lake city eat more candy bars, and people in Miami drink more prune juice.

5. The number of US citizens living in poverty rose 17% between 2000 and 2004. The number of very affluent people rose 16%. It is expected that this gap between rich and poor will continue to widen.

6. When asked what their favorite leisure time activities, these are responses in 1995 and in 2004: reading was 28% in 1995 and grew to 35% in 2004 (surprised me!). Watching tv was 25% in 1995 and dropped to 21% in 2004. Spending time with family was 12% in 1995 and 20% in 2004. (Seems like our society is getting their priorities a little bit better!)

7. The average consumer was estimated to spend 9 hours and 35 minutes a DAY using media in 2006. This includes radio, tv, internet, newspapers, books, video games, and stuff like that.

8. 20% of households consist of married couple with children under 18. 27% of households is single live-alones,  8% is single-parent families, 32% is empty-nesters or childless married couples, and 5% is living with nonrelatives (that's me).

9. There are 23% more women enrolled in college than men. As fewer men go to college, their spending power will drop. In 2005, women held 52% of all professional or managerial positions. Now, on average, 2 out of 7 executives for a company are women. In the next decade, it is expected that 4 out of 7 will be women.

10. To reach opinion leaders involved with their African American communities, Chrysler is taking its cars to megachurches around the country for test drives at church.

11. The Hebrews were the first society to practice ethical monotheism. No other society had one God who was held to the same ethical standards as the people. Hebrew laws were the first to ever describe ethical conduct like respecting people over property, protection for the oppressed, and respecting parents. (I had to put one history fact in there, but history is just so boring. This is the only interesting thing in my entire 3 chapters.)

That's it! I've learned a lot more interesting marketing facts, but I don't want to type out my marketing book for y'all. Well, I would, but I know you wouldn't want to read it. If you have any questions about the demographics of America, I'm your person to ask. Ask before Tuesday though, because I'll forget it all after that.

Active Mosquitos, Dead Roaches, and Numerous Fruit Flies

This is my house right now. 

[Notice I'm the only one here, just like last night.]

But it looks cozy enough, right?

Clean maybe?

Well, at least not filthy?

This is me right now.

I look content, right?

[Content is the only positive word I could think of for the way I look right now. I have been studying all day long.]

Clean maybe?

Well, at least not filthy?

This is a mosquito. 

She looks well-nourished and very active, right?

She wouldn't even be still for me to take the picture.

Anyways, she is well-nourished because she's gotten to feed on my blood all day long.

This mosquito along with her friends reside in my house.

They also reside on me at times.

I've never heard of mosquitos indoors.

But apparently these mosquitos are rare, and they enjoy my cozy house... and my content self.

We aren't sparkling clean, but we aren't that dirty.

I don't understand.

What is going on?

We have fruit flies like crazy, dead roaches everywhere, AND mosquitos that bite us inside our house.

It's funny though.

I see the fruit flies everywhere.

I have never actually seen a live roach in the house, always dead.

And I've never seen a mosquito, only felt them once they've fed on me. 

So obviously I didn't take the picture of the mosquito up there since I've never seen her, that is just what she looks like in my imagination. I've had lots of time to imagine today, as I have been studying way too long!