I didn't carry around my camera at all this past week, so instead I will weave my tale of magic and adventure with Iphone and Instagram photos.
It started out with going to the Farmers Market again on Saturday. I did bring my camera to that, fortunately, but I snapped this special picture with my Iphone
Mustachioed accordion players
Monday
-my brother's birthday! I originally had an appointment to get my hurr did that night, but instead after work we headed over to Benihana to celebrate the 18th year since his birth. If you've never been to Benihana, basically it's an entertaining show that feeds you in the process (aka my dream). A chef cooks your food in front of you on a giant grill and does things like flips shrimp tails into his/her hat (although I've never seen a her before) and does complicated and terrifying knife tricks while chopping vegetables. They make THE BEST FRIED RICE! My aunt and I got super alcoholic drinks (I had a "baby blue ocean" and she had "benihana punch"). I ate until I wanted to die (such delicious shrimp and steak, the "splash 'n meadow"!) and drank a lot more. My second round of cocktails involved the waiter apologizing to me for the bartender for making it "too strong". AS IF
-after I digested a little bit, I went to Nostalgia and hung out with Rachel and Maddie
-went out to Twilite Lounge with Rachel after Nostalgia closed. It's the same bar that we went to with Kit and Fernando the past week, though this time it was PACKED. It was like hipster paradise on Monday night. We got wine for Rachel and a cranberry vodka for me and talked about girly shit like how she and her boyfriend met. Then we hung out with Alanis Morissette guy while he played Pool with our other new friend (whose name I can't remember...a really great new friend). I ended up going home around 1:30 AM and then passed out.
Tree lights outside the bar and a wise sticker stuck to the bench
Driving home with the windows rolled down on a summer night
Tuesday
-my mom won free tickets to The Sound of Music, so I invited Gillian and Alice to come.
-after work we headed to the theater, where I had MAJOR Indiana Jones ride flashbacks. The first happened when I was going down the hallway towards our seats, which was SO LONG and dimly lit. I had this sudden feeling that we were in line for Indiana Jones, which raised the excitement level in my heart. Then, during a specific part in the play, the entire stage was dark and there were fake nazis riding a motorbike, which REALLY reminded me of the ride (for some weirdish reason). So that was weird.
-the play was REALLY GOOD. The girl who played Gretel was SO CUTE!!! She was my absolute favorite. Also the woman playing Maria was really great. We all had a really good time being adult connoisseurs of the arts
-after the play, we headed out in search of a bar. After much debating (and realizing that I know/inhabit downtown bars much better/more than I thought I did), we decided to go to the Beerhive, since it was well-liked by our peeps and also a NEW place for me!
-Beerhive was really chill! There was a strip of ice that you used to keep your drinks cool, which we actually used to draw pictures in. I ordered a Lambic, since I hadn't had one since the unfortunate Flagstaff Hostel incident (also known as the "aborted baby" incident, but that sounds terrible to people when it's out of context of that specific situation. I'll even explain because it's not bad at all. Basically we had raspberry Lambic that spilled, so since it was a red liquid on the floor we thought BLOOD and our drunk minds immediately went to ABORTED BABY so there you go). Anyways, I got peach this time. We hung out, drank beer, and decided where we were going to live and what we were going to do in the future (Alice and I are moving to Capetown, Africa).
left: our line of beers at The Beerhive, right top: the bunny I drew in the ice, right bottom: our drinks at Benihana
Wednesday
-found a service that will transcribe my childhood photos into digital form (I feel like I didn't use that word correctly, but whatever)
-rediscovered Pinterest and posted a lot of drawing inspiration
-went to Nostalgia, drew a lot
I was watching The Fall while I drew these, which is why I created a tiny version of Charles Darwin, my favert.
-this was Maddie's face when I asked her what she'd been drawing.
-The Fall was SO GOOD by the way. Lee Pace was so adorable and I love him and the tiny Romanian girl who played alongside him was ALSO ADORABLE and omg I was in love.
Thursday
-work again, because you know. Money and all that
-went to the TWILIGHT CONCERT!!!
honestly, I've never even heard of Nas. But I wanted to get back into the swing of going to the Twilight Concert, so I headed down with Gillian to meet up with Alice and Mar Mar. Before Gillian picked me up, however, I pre-gamed HARDCORE. I drank three lemonade vodkas and then made Gillian drink one before we went to the concert. I'm a bad influence.
-met up with Alibus, Mar Mar, and Gabigail and then danced. Danced like fools. The concert was way fun and, although numbers were projected to be 25,000, it wasn't badly crowded at all. It was a great start to my Twilight Concert season
-we originally were going to get thai food after the concert, but instead we ended up leaving the concert a bit later than we anticipated, so I begged Gillian to take my by McDonalds before we picked Raphael up. We finally got to the movie theater an hour before midnight.
-why were we at the movie theater, you ask? Why, because of THE DARK KNIGHT RISES!!! We were too late to get tickets at an assigned seat movie theater, so we ended up going to our high school haunt, where midnight showings are a free-for-all and full to the brim with high school students (what do you know).
-in order to make our experience THAT MUCH MORE ENTERTAINING, Gillian had brought a rum runner full of vodka, which we emptied into two cherry Icees. They were so delicious, mmmmm. EXCEPT for when we accidentally sucked all the flavoring out of one of them and it turned into a vodka Icee. So I stole the one that was in between Raphael and Alice. The movie was phenomenal, in my opinion. I wouldn't say it's better than Dark Knight, since it will always be my favorite due to the villain, but it was AS GOOD and that is just as great. I would do a huge movie analysis, but I think instead I'm just going to leave it at "I loved it". And that's enough.
-at the end of the movie, we were all in awe. At this point it was 3:30 or something, so we all said our goodbyes and when I got home I PASSED. OUT.
Friday
-even though I had gone to bed at 4 the night/morning before, I still woke up seven hours later (which is still late, but 7 HOURS) because I went to bed drunk the night before. Ergh.
-went to work, hung out with peeps, did the big cleaning for the pigeons (ugh), and then headed over to Clioh's to see The Dark Knight Rises again!
-we went to Century 16, which now has assigned seating I guess, and I reacted the exact same way I had during my first viewing. Though maybe a little less vocal, since during my first viewing I was incredibly drunk (I kept squealing and gasping and screaming at the screen). But I still did all that, just a bit quieter.
-after the movie, we decided to go out somewhere to get dinner. Clioh asked me if I'd ever been to The Rio Grande Cafe, and when I said I hadn't she told me to head in that direction. It was an adorable, DELICIOUS mexican restaurant located in the old Rio Grande train station. There was a huge taco pinata hanging over the front counter with a fake lady splayed out inside it, a jukebox in the corner, and the best homemade guacamole I've ever had at a restaurant. Our waiter was a sassy old man who kept trying to persuade me to get the margarita with five shots in it rather than the lime margarita that only had one in it (hey, I had to drive). I got a grande flauta, and it was SO GOOD. There was no way I could finish it all, it was so huge. Especially with all the guacamole I'd eaten a second ago with the freshly made tortilla chips.
-thinking about is making my mouth water, I want to go back to there. Especially since I can't eat very much right now due to my stomach bug >:(
-the sunset was beautiful
-also their bathrooms were super old school and looked like the Harry Potter bathrooms to me. I wanted to write "THE CHAMBERS OF SECRETS HAS BEEN OPENED" across the mirrors.
-after our delicious dinner (I can't think of another word to use), we headed back to Clioh's house to talk and gossip. When we got there, Olivia (little sister) told us that she and her best friend next door were going to put on a fireworks show for us, in honor of the 24th. The 24th in Utah is a special holiday called "Pie 'n Beer Day" which celebrates when all the pies and beer migrated from their land of oppression to their new desert paradise where they could frolic without religious prosecution and without fear of EVER getting eaten or drunk. Or at least that's what I remember of my teachings. We celebrate with a shit ton of fireworks.
-Olivia and her friend Liv are so hilarious together. Liv will start doing some strange thing, like darting out of her chair to roll around on the lawn, and Olivia will follow. Then they'll start spinning around in circles, singing songs about martians, and then sit back down as if nothing had happened. I love childhood friendships when they're like that. After a good hour of fireworks, we went back inside smelling like smoke and ate some cake before we said our goodbyes and I left.
-the rest of the night was spent watching Netflix and doing NOTHING. Glorious amounts of nothing. I lied, actually I watched Netflix and edited the shit out of photos. One thing I've learned about being interested in photography and having this new camera, I will never not be knee deep in photos ready to be edited and shared.
Saturday
-Saturday morning I woke up early to go get my hurr did for reals so I could get turquoise put in it! The plan was to dye all the underside turquoise while leaving my natural color on top.
-first we dyed it blonde to make the turquoise show up, which looked hilarious. My hairstylist, whose name is Autumn, had to mix a bottle of blue dye with two and half bottles of lime green dye to make it even remotely turquoise. The entire process took about 2.5 hours and when it was done it looked so nice! It's a bit dark, but in the sun it glows turquoise. I felt so good and sassy when it was done.
-on the way home, I took a picture of this sign that has tons of stickers on it that I always pass when I'm in that area. I love stickers.
-I headed over to Raphael's house to hang out with her for the rest of the day until I had to head over to a party at around 7 PM. While there, I was introduced to SKYWARD SWORD!
I LOVE Zelda, but I don't have a Wii so I had to watch as the rest of the world played Skyward Sword and I played Windwaker and Twilight Princess over and over again (don't hate, but they're my favorites and not OoT). So I forced Raphael to get her Wii out of storage, unwrap the packaging of Skyward Sword, and we started playing it.
IT IS SO MUCH FUN.
Basically you live on a floating island and fly giant colorful hawk storks around. There are little raccoon kitties that turn into demons at night and adorable hedgehog bulbasaur penguins and an amazing GASTON CHARACTER WITH GOLDEN LIP GLOSS!!!
(he's on the left and his name is GROOSE! And on the right are the happy hour swizzle sticks topped with tiny cocktails and beers)
Groose is my absolute favorite character, besides Pipit (who's this upperclassmen who knows EVERYTHING about birds apparently and is super condescending to Link). He is hilarious, and his henchmen are terrifying. Basically the game is amazing and I played it ALL DAY LONG. Finally, at around 7:30, I grudgingly put down the nunchucks and left for my party. I mostly left because Heidi called me in a panic, telling me that all the alcohol would be gone soon if I didn't show up. I noticed as I left that my arm was super sore (and still was up until yesterday), which is called Nintendonitis apparently. All the swordplay is done with the right nunchuck, so all the invigorated slashing and hacking I did while killing moblins and destroying logs and trees really did a number on my arm.
-got to the party and was confused to see that there were two different parties going on in the apartments across the way from each other. I went into the party at the apartment I knew, though a lot of people were at the other apartment. It was like a double whammy.
-this is where I did shot after shot in an attempt to "catch up" to everyone. I double fisted smirnoff and a margarita, attempted to make a disgusting combination of black licorice vodka and what I THOUGHT was limeade (it was POISONOUS) and then I shotgunned a beer
it's black and white, which makes it classy
which was after Kit Fry showed up!
We hung out on the deck a lot, since it was so hot inside (and crowded), and when we did go inside I started talking to a girl who works in another lab a couple floors down from us. She is studying locomotion of parrots, which is so cool. We talked for like an hour about birds and science, though I feel like both of us were pretty drunk at this point. She has a green-cheeked conure too in the name of SCIENCE, so I told her all about Maeby Baby. In the middle of my drunkenness, I asked Ale if I could show Kit their service dog, Cody (who I adore). While in the office, where he had sought refuge, I saw that Ale had framed the drunk picture of a Quetzal I painted them.
derp. This is where I sassed Brooke and she screamed FUCK YOU at the top of her lungs and the entire party went silent. Whoops.
I then spent the rest of the party walking around with my bottle of UV lemonade that I continuously drank from. I got so fucking drunk.
Also this happened.
We decided to leave the party in order to hang out with our friends at Nostalgia. This is where I cried and ran away to hide behind a tree. It was embarrassing (for me to look back on, not like I remembered). Meanwhile, my phone was kidnapped and instagram photos were taken.
My friends, ladies and gentlemen.
I cannot for the life of me remember the rest of the night, though I remember flashes of being at Rachel's house and like crying in her kitchen and trying to pet her cat. Welp. Whatever. Kit took me home and I passed out after trying to apologize to everyone.
Sunday
-woke up at 8:30 (going to bed drunk makes me wake up fucking early) and texted everyone with real, slightly more sober apologies
-Gabi texted me, asking if I wanted to ride up to Lagoon with she and Lisa. We were all supposed to go to Lagoon as one of Lisa's going away events (I was also supposed to go to the Dark Knight Rises drive-in with them the night before, which I clearly skipped out on to get crunk), but I was feeling sick and hungover so I told her it might not happen.
-a couple of hours later, Lisa called me telling me she would NOT take no for an answer, and she knew that I was hungover and not sick, and she was picking me up in half an hour whether she liked it or not. I'm so glad she did this, because otherwise I would have missed out on one of the BEST Lagoon trips of my LIFE!!!
-I hurriedly got dressed and cleaned my birds before waiting for Lisa to pick me up. Once she had, we headed over to Gabi's to mix drinks. We poured vodka into individual lemonade bottles and labeled them according to how much alcohol was in them (drunk, buzzed, and sober). We also brought pinnacle whipped, half and half, and orange juice for whipped cream shots. We packed up the car and headed up to Lagoon!
-listened to SHOTS and KE$HA on the way up
-got to Lagoon and went to our terrace we rented
-rented out to the Beer Goonies, of course
-started drinking and taking shots before everyone else showed up. I was hesitant to drink at first, since I had felt so hungover/sick just an hour ago, but then I decided WHATEVER and drank anyways. Thus begins day two of my bender. There were a couple of people I knew already from other parties and going to Poplar, but then there were a couple of peeps I hadn't met and then two random guys who Lisa didn't even really know because she'd invited them while drunk a couple of days ago. We definitely knew why they were there
-went on the kiddie rides, joked about how everyone thought that the Superman trailer before Dark Knight Rises was about Aquaman due to all the ocean paraphernalia
-rode all the roller coasters
-it was lucky I was drunk for the line for The Wicked because otherwise I would have been FREAKING. OUT. Instead, I started freaking out WHILE on the ride and kept saying "ohmygodohmygodohmygod" before we blasted up the straight down drop
-went on the Music Express, a roller coaster that goes around really quickly in circles, so the person on the outside get squashed. I always forget which side gets crushed, so I accidentally was the one on that particular side. With Gabi and Travis both on the other side of me. I spent the entire ride whimpering "ow...ow...ow", which Travis laughed about afterwards.
-we went on the FIRE DRAGON aka the Colossus. We made friends with the ride attendant, so when we started to brake to get off the ride, Gabi said, "One more time, Andrew!" and he nodded and was like, "One more time!" and we were off again. It was awesome.
(top left: the main fountain at dusk, top right: I thought this was HILARIOUS because ensign is an LDS magazine and since it has a little picture of Utah next to it, it totally has mormon connotations, bottom left: little Spongebobs as a prize at a game, bottom right: one of those amazing singing/dancing shows that occurs every half an hour)
-when we heard that a show was starting, Nikki was like, "LET'S WATCH" because she used to do a singing/dancing gig, but as soon as we started watching it she was like, "I'm over it." I love the stage shows because they are HILARIOUS
-we went on the old rickety "white" roller coaster (which is actually now just brown because the paint has been stripped off), which was basically just pain. The seats are too small for my hips, and it's so sketch and decrepit that it's terrifying. Terrifying, but fun.
-we often went back to our terrace for more drinks, so we were all pretty shit-faced by midday and in desperate need of some food. I especially was hungry because I had eaten little to nothing in the past 24 hours. I had half a sandwich before I left for the party because I was only halfway through the sandwich when Heidi called me, and then for breakfast I'd only had a couple of pieces of watermelon. So I happily went to my favorite pizza stand that sells HALF BREADSTICK/HALF MOZZARELLA STICK COMBINATIONS THAT ARE FUCKING DELICIOUS! And I ate and it was amazing
-during lunch there were a lot of sexual innuendos. Including "I touched that while it was fresh" and "grab some meat out of that sweaty bag"
-we went on Rattlesnake Rapid and booed at a man wearing a bright orange rain slicker for being lame. Then we got soaking wet, even though I screeched and scrambled about the raft like a crazed squirrel. Even though I love the water, I hate getting wet if I'm not going to be fully immersed and if I'm wearing real clothes.
-we went on the Tidal Wave (a swinging pirate ship) and engaged in the "as old as time" tradition of initiating a screaming contest with the other side of the ship.
-went on the swings, one of my favorite rides, and felt a real pang of sadness at having to leave Utah and all of my amazing friends in just a couple of weeks
-as it started getting later, Gabi and I found ourselves hanging out awkwardly with the two guys our entire group didn't know. We went on several different rides with them, including a really awkward one where I had to sit in the lap of one of the guys.
-Gabi and I hung out while everyone else went on the Rocket, watching as a family tried to persuade a crying girl to go on the Rocket. When I say persuade, I really mean they were telling her to stop being a baby and to just go. I used to be that crying girl, so I felt really bad for her. I told the family that I would watch her while they went on the Rocket, and surprisingly they were like, "SURE!" and left. While I am by no means a terrifying looking criminal type, it's still strange to me that parents allowed a complete stranger to look after their kid while they go on a ride. Anyways, we watched her until Lisa came back, and then we ditched both of them to go on the Samurai.
-as it started getting dark, we focused more on games rather than rides. Travis was super into playing games, so when we passed the ring toss and saw the irresistible prizes...
...the game lackey told us he'd give us two buckets of 90 rings each for just $7. WHAT A DEAL. Travis took the bait and immediately seven of us started throwing rings with gay abandon at the milk bottles set out in front of us. ALL OF US MISSED. Let me repeat. The seven of us threw 180 rings at stationary milk bottles, and no one got ONE SINGLE MILK BOTTLE. Geez
-Gabi and I went on the Screamer, one of my favorite rides. It's a giant wheel that spins on its side and then goes upside down. The best part about it was that the sun was setting really spectacularly, so whenever I looked out the side of my cart, I could see the sky alit with pink and gold. It was beautiful
Of course, this face itself could not be any more beautiful
-then we went on the Colossus at sunset. And it was so cool.
-at this point, we debated going home. We were exhausted and I was so drunk and hungover combined that I just felt sort of iffy and done. Instead we hung around some more, which I'm so glad we did. The boys played tons of games while the rest of us hung out at the terrace and Travis won Lisa a baseball cap playing Speedball (a game where, if you throw the ball faster than 45 mph, you get a prize). He then won a Chococat for me and a little red whale thing for Gabi! It was so nice and awesome! Chococat is definitely coming with me to Minnesota.
-it started to rain at this point in time, so we booked it out of Lagoon and headed home. Conveniently, Gabi lives just two blocks up from Ale's apartment where my car was stashed, so I jumped into my car and went to get myself drunk food. Gabi and I accidentally switched up our IDs, so we switched back while I was still in the neighborhood, and then I headed home to crash.
Thus ends my amazing whirlwind week and giant alcoholic bender weekend. The past few days have also been awesome, but this post is already long enough so I'll divulge the secrets of pie 'n beer day and my last book club next time. Niiiight!
