Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Mad. I'm just Mad.

Dear Coach Anderson:

Congratulations. I sincerely wish you and your family nothing but the best. I'm a sports fan. I'm not a "girly" sports fan, I'm pretty hard-core. That being said, I am a girl, and the reason a lot of girls don't get too involved in sports is that there's a huge emotional commitment involved for us. And it hurts to be betrayed. I feel betrayed. I get that it's a business, and that this was clearly the best financial decision. And I wouldn't have felt betrayed --sad,but not betrayed-- had you not just done an entire interview about how you were NOT under ANY circumstances leaving Logan. Wisconsin has been in the hunt for a head coach for weeks. You can't tell me that this happened overnight. This one will sting for a while. Aggie Nation has been spurned by you. We do not forgive or forget easily.  How do you look the team that you made, the young men that you brought in the eyes and tell them that they aren't good enough?

Dear SeaHAWKS:

Go baby go!! I believe that we will win!!!!!


Also... if the world really is ending on Friday and we're all going to hell, I'm glad I'm going to work. Can you imagine the part we'll be having?! ;)



Wednesday, December 12, 2012

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I want to go to Greece. Sigh.



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Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Athens

There was a day. A day in college when, after watching The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants, my roommates and I made a pact. We were going to Greece when we turned 30. Fast-forward ten years. One is married with baby number two on the way. One had plans to spend the summer in Southeast Asia with YouthClinic on a mission trip. And the other was slaving away working all summer for the University.  And there I was. Slaving away in Seattle... there's just one thing. I still had a dream. And I was committed. Fast-forward 13-months of planning and me and three dear friends from work are in an airport in Philadelphia. We were in the jet-way waiting in line to get on the massive airliner and it hit me. I was going to Greece. This was it, I'd really done it. We snapped a photo, roller bags in hand and settled into our seats.


I had never been on such a large plane! We had come prepared for the 12 hour flight with plenty of anti-anxiety and sleeping medications. After doling them out for the just-in-case-we-woke-up scenario, we settled in. When we got up in the air we cheers-ed with our waters and downed the lunesta. I reached up above me to turn off my overhead light... it did NOT turn off when you pushed it. It did however give me a good second-degree burn to my finger.  Never fear. I added a vicodin to my sleepy-cocktail, stuck the finger in my bottle of water and went to sleep. My finger felt better, but the blister stayed with me for the majority of the trip :(


We landed safely in Athens twelve hours later and I woke up just as we were descending. It was perfect.  Of course I had been woken up a few times on flight when the flight attendants brought us food. Apparently it's not like on domestic flights when if you're sleeping they assume you don't want your complimentary beverage and peanuts. I forgave them. Probably because of the narcotics.  Anywho... So we landed in Athens and made it through my first customs line. And we got our first stamps in our passports!!! Well, all of us but Krista.


It was a pretty big deal. So was the driver I had arranged for to pick us up and take us to our hotel. He had my name on a card and everything!! We followed him out to the car and he offered us each a bottled water for the drive. We accepted and got in the car, giddy with excitement. It was 9am when we landed in Athens and we were excited for a day of fun.  We each took a sip of our bottled water, and I don't know about everyone else, but I was instantly dismayed. I did not like the water in Greece. It had this TERRIBLE metallic taste to it. And I am a water drinker. Seriously. I kept at it though, thinking that I'd have to get used to it, or it was going to be a long week. After a few sips I said something to the other girls. They thought the same thing. It was at that moment that Siobhan remembered that the one time she'd taken lunesta before, she'd had the same problem. Boy was I relieved!!! It wasn't the water, it was a side-effect of the medicine. I was going to be ok after all.  Our driver was great, and even stopped on a ridge as we first came into Athens so we could take photos of the amazing ancient landscape.


We checked into our hotel at the Athens Cypria and settled in... Got connected to the wifi so we could check out Greek Google, then we headed out to explore. By far the pinnacle of our time in Athens was the amazing history we saw while there. There are no words to express how it felt to walk through the birthplace of democracy --literally. How crazy is that?!  And the ruins built by a civillization thousands of years ago that are still standing today. It was beyond words.