My Excellent Adventure; Part 1

I had planned to be productive yesterday.   I knew that I really should finish the "first" draft of my senior thesis so that I might spend the next three weeks editing it.

What happened instead so so awesome that I'm going to break it into two parts for your enjoyment.

My evening started off with a church activity involving food.  I brought vinegar taffy, which everyone seemed to enjoy, but honestly the highlight of the activity for me was the shrimp in grits someone else brought.

For the record shrimp is the most delicious food in the world.  If I were trapped on a island for the rest of my life and I could only bring one book I would bring shrimp instead. That's how much I love it.

After the activity Josh and I headed over the Gladys's house where we were planning on meeting to hike the Y.

When we were finally all assembled we realized that Taylor* wouldn't be able to go hiking and make it home in time for curfew.  We sat dumbfounded for a little while then Josh mentioned that there was a castle here in provo that we could go explore.

It's not a real castle per se, but it was constructed for the filming of some film that was a knock off of a movie that we all enjoy.  Apparently they kept it up because couples like to take engagement and wedding pictures there.

As all the doors and windows were padlocked we just explored the outside of the building.  There was a random amphitheater, a couple stories of locked rooms, and an outside chimney, all of which was made more interesting by the cloak of night.

There as a single room, which was also locked from the outside, that had a bright light emanating from under the door and around the shutters.  We knocked, but no one answered.

See? Castle! (source)

I don't know what I was hoping for, but it would have been awesome.

We dithered around for a while, both at the castle and on the paved trails behind it, then rushed to buy pizza and ice cream before Taylor had to drive home.

I swear it took us longer to pick a single half gallon of ice cream than it took us to eat it. Someone wanted coconut, can you believe that?





* also known as 'He-Who-Has-a-Car'

P.S. the photography blog I pulled the picture from is amazing! Unfortunately it doesn't look like she updates very often. Though I still think you should check it out.

Cranes 2-4

As soon as I posted about my art project last week a witch was flipped and every idea inside my head was stupid.

Then today I was walking my dear friend out of my apartment when I happened to look up.  The concrete on the bottom of the stairs had cracked and mostly fallen away.  It was bright out so you could see the texture clearly.

It was beautiful, in its own way.

So this is what I did with it.

Those are Starburst wrappers so I suppose I should say that I have in no way been endorsed by the candy company. I just happen to like the color scheme.*

I love how these cranes are tucked away, yet out in the open at the same time.  I find that not many people look up when they're traversing the stairs so maybe my cranes will never be noticed.

But maybe they will.

here's Josh, looking stupid for your enjoyment

*I'm totally open to it,Wrigley's advertisement dudes...**

**please?

What about Gladyce?

One of the friends that I mention frequently here on my blog would like to be known as Gladyce*. Of course, she's one of the four people I've already named so to smooth you into the transition I thought you might like to hear a story about her.

Okay, Okay, I mostly want to make fun of the name she chose. Gladice? really?  That sounds like an old lady's wet fart**.

Last year Gladyss, Josh, and I climbed into my little car for a impromptu camping trip down to Arches National Park. There happened to be one more person in the car than there were seat belt. Since I was smallest of our group I was automatically elected to sit on Gladios lap for the drive.

I think my butt was completely numb after about two hours.

When we got to Moab we stopped to ask for directions to a good camping spot.  The awesome local directed us towards a long, winding road.

It was late so the only light came from our car, it reflected off the canyon to our left and made the trees look ghostly.  we could only see as far as the next bend.

"I feel like any moment there's going to be a man with a chainsaw in the middle of the road" I murmured.

"Don't say that!" Glaydys's voice was just a little bit higher pitched than normal.

I glanced towards Josh in the darkness, confidant that we both understood.

"In Virginia near my house there's this bridge" He began  "it's called Bunny-man  Bridge because about ten years ago on Halloween-"

I'm pretty sure that we told her every serial killer story we knew, and then every other scary story we knew.

Glaidiss was not impressed.

She had also heard most of those before SO WOULD WE PLEASE JUST CUT IT OUT?

Of course she was so freaked that night that she ended up sleeping next to the biggest man in our group, and he had a crush on her at the time.

So Win?

*she told me to spell it some stupid way. I don't remember so I'm just going to make stuff up.


**Just kidding!  You know I love you Hallie.

 Edit: Gladys tells me that it's a nickname that she got in school because there were three other girls with the same first name and they were all tired of getting confused with each other. Which is actually pretty darn cool if you think about it.