alright, so this is part 1 of the mondo-update

So, this is what I did this summer. I sailed a 30ft boat with 12 people on it and backpacked in the mountains of Maine for 3 weeks. I LOVED it and think about it each day...not joking. QVO651 is awesome.

These are the lovely folks of my course...from LtoR we have Donnie, Justin, Jazzy, Genevieve, Allie, Ryan, Julia, myself, Neil, Dan, Angie and T (instructor #5). And Donnie has sweet suspenders.

This was one morning when I had second to last watch near Hell's Half Acre, which was around 5am...made for some gorgeous skies. Yeah...ask about the jellyfish we swam through to get to shore.

On Hurricane Island, the former settlement and Outward Bound base which is now used as a pit-stop for sailing courses like ours. We spent 2 nights there and still never got our land legs completely back.

Only because of the situation in which we took these pictures will I be ok with the public seeing them. I miss people :/

So this is from the backpacking part of our trip which was the first part, even though the pictures are out of order. We all agreed that if sailing was first we would have been more likely to try to leave before backpacking even started had we known what it entailed.

Basically this is my "bivvie" that I set up to sleep in for my solo (3 nights and days..SOLO). I surprised myself and really enjoyed being alone for those 3 days...it definitely gives you the opportunity to think over things, as well as catch up on sleep and dry out all your wet clothes.



Ok so this is from sailing again when we stopped in...Farmington I think...to fill up with more water. See, Mainers have a sense of humor too!

















This was our last morning backpacking. We left our solo sites the morning before and promptly got off trail and ended up on mount wheeler, the mountain we did not have to climb. I think God was probably laughing at all of us that day because I cannot possibly count the number of times I got smacked in the face with a spruce branch. Even Bonny and Dustin were frustrated with how far off trail we were (it wasn't even our fault) and that's saying something. We ended up camping on the mountain on rocks and other ridiculously uncomfortable things and after waking up at 3:30am to get hiking by first light, we finally made it to this skippy peanut butter jar that denoted the top of the mountain. Note the tree cover - the reason we were trying to get to the top was so we could take a bearing and do a triangulation. HAH no bearing to be had here, no siree.
BUT we did eventually get off the mountain and found the trail about oh.....7 hours later.



Props to blogger for making it really easy to put your pictures in order. So this is our first day of sailing and wow was it cold when the sun went down and the wind picked up. Sleeping on the boat that first night was definitely interesting. I'll take a nice patch of dirt over oars any day.









This is Dustin, one of our instructors for backpacking. He is hot, and that's all I wanted to say.













Pre-departure camp clean up, featuring Julia Thayne's lovely butt in the left foreground. We had a routine, like a big happy family. :)












3 weeks without a cell phone, computer, or radio. What do you think that would be like? I loved it. The first day on the trail I kept hearing this bird that sounded like the first note of my cell phone ring and so I would hear it and search around for the sound and go "oh wait, I'm in the middle of NOWHERE." Before I left for OB I was realizing how badly I was attached to my computer, and I think going cold turkey was a good thing. It kind of sucks how much I have to use it for school. I think our generation is going to have carpal tunnel by the age of 30, if not sooner.

I really can't describe my OB trip in a succint sentence or paragraph or whatever. It was horrible at times and utterly thrilling at others. There is a quote by Jack London that I feel is very appropriate:

I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather my sparks should burn out in a blaze than it should be stifled by dry rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than asleep and permanent as a planet. The proper function of a man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them.
I SHALL USE MY TIME.

mini-update

Obviously I suck at life for not updating this for oh, say, about 3 months, but I'm a very busy and important person. One day, like tomorrow hopefully, when I don't have a paper to write and readings to read and arabic to listen to, I will try to sit down and cover the highlights of my OB trip and what has happened around here lately. It is very tempting to do it right now, but today I started my "DETATCH FROM THE COMPUTER" phase of my life. So...

come back tomorrow

Well it's been a while. I had two fun weekends in the Thrill, got to see josh, jacob (aka boberry biscuit starting gun), and patrick AND got to stay in la casa rosa of Ben Folds fame. Good times...oh and i christened B-ski's just so you know. Work is still OK, but the guy i'm helping and i have been having some weirrrrrd conversations...like I currently know more about his and his WIFE's sex life than I could ever want to. however, one day he made a brokeback joke and we launched off into a discussion about homosexuality, which I think he feels threatened by. In the end though, he said that I had put my arguments in a way that no one else had and that it had actually made a difference in how he sees gay people, so i was pretty happy about that. (deucie, I kept using examples from your stories haha). Also yesterday i lifted a huge roll of vinyl flooring into a dumpster all by myself BALLER STYLE and impressed everyone (all 2 of us). whateva.

Now - the elephant in the room. In approximately 32 hours I will be on my way to Maine for three weeks. I'm really excited but i still have no idea what I'm getting myself into. I have always been up to whatever challenges are before me, but this is such a big unknown. It's going to be really cool to meet these people and see where they come from and who they are...I imagine we'll be quite close after even a few days.

Copa de Mundial FIFA 2006 has been fun to watch, and it sucks that the US lost today...but that people are finally starting to care about it is good. Also, congrats are in order to the UNC baseball team which is playing Saturday for the CWS title...so add that in to the sports I will be missing out on. (NBA draft, end of the World Cup, Wimbledon...so sad). Someone should leave me messages telling me the important results of said events, k? lovely.

aaand for some laughs
more pics on that page...this is pierce bush, Dubya's nephew at UTSomewhere

is this life after college? the real world?

Dear God no...

honeybabe933: i have you beat...it's 9:30 and, because i have nothing else to do, i am about to go to be. jesus christ, this must be what real life is like :(
MMhorsE186: yeah that's what has been crossing my mind
MMhorsE186: will i work 9-5 and be tired and boring and not do anything all week and then still have to get up early on the weekends because i have things to accomplish that can't be done during the week because of a J-O-B
honeybabe933: god this is gonna suck
honeybabe933: and the one night you do squeeze in to go out, you feel like crap the next day and take a week to recover
honeybabe933: growing up blows
MMhorsE186: and the sad thing is that you'll probably have had like 3 beers

getting up at 6:20 in the morning is becoming scarily easy, even if i don't go to sleep until 1. and working for 9 hours doesn't even seem so long. first paycheck this friday! whee (i think of rollercoasters/slides every time i say that). now the problem will be SAVING this money instead of spending it on the numerous things i found online tonight...

tweedle dee

End work week #1. Waking up today wasn't as bad as the others this week, so i guess i'm adjusting to the lovely call of my alarm clock at 6:20 AM. I swear this has made me revert back to kindergarten where i took a nap every day because i've fallen asleep at some inopportune times this week. today both my dad and i were passed out for like 2 hours until about 7...that's not normal haha. monday off and that'll be good. also with the whole napping thing, i'm not having time to run as much as i need to (read: hardly ever) so i'm getting kind of worried that i'll be in crap shape for outward bound.

uhh no one is in greensboro. this is why it's friday night and i'm posting. sweet. i also am just lazy and don't call people/don't have their numbers from when i lost my phone. SO if you read this and are in the boro give me a call winkwinknudgenudge. on the other hand, my sudoku times are getting better....maybe non-socialness is good for something.

way to go megan

No back up plan no second chance
And no one else to blame
All I can hear in the silence that remains
Are the words I couldn't say
-rascal flatts

I'm seriously an idiot sometimes

long time no see

well today is my last day of freedom as i start working with a crew of my dad's tomorrow morning AT 7AM!! that part is scary to say the least. i usually don't see 7AM unless i've stayed up all night. oh well, at least the pay will be decent and it could potentially be an all-summer job.
this weekend was funnnn. went down on friday with hannah and magen to waxhaw to see kat (and we survived the trip haha) and christina and deucie came for the night also. YAY barbara! that was probably the most uncomfortable night's sleep i'd had in a long time. saturday was carowinds wheee. we only got to ride things once because it was ridiculously crowded but being on the front row of the borg made up for it. no thunder road or the hurler because it started to rain :( that night we went to get pizza and i was so tired it took me probably 5 minutes to order off a 2 page menu. very sad. we watched very bad "tv" that night and there were no penii! next morning we went to cedar lake to see kat's ponies and it made me miss riding again...so i will be going for a return visit to ride one of them yay. hannah so graciously gave me the front seat on the ride home, but i lived because i could close my eyes behind my sunglasses. i figure it's just easier that way. ignorance is bliss.

A Few Ruminations:
Why is this a bad thing?
Who decided that it is a bad thing for girls to not like science and math? Answer me that. I mean in high school i took the required science courses but no more for several reasons. first of all, the AP bio and chem had a crap ton more work and required some calculus i think - i didn't really look into it because i had not taken calc and didn't have the time to spare for a class like that when i don't really like the classes all that much. Then there was calculus. for someone who passed Honors Advanced with a C, calculus was not the best option. my brain doesn't think that way. I was much more interested in history and english, explaining why i came to college practically with a history minor already. If a girl wants to study science and math (which i hate with a passion), it shouldn't be because someone wants her to one day even out the gender ratio in math and science fields. It's stupid to make such a big deal about how girls won't use themselves to their fullest potential if they don't have math or science skills. The whole global competitiveness shit is also taking it too far. If we have the people to compete, who cares if it's a guy or a girl coming up with innovations in his or her field.

This is just cool
The last chromosome is mapped. Kinda neat....it's the most distinct/large chromosome in the whole batch, so that's why it took them 10 years to finish it. imagine that. 10 years to map out something that is so miniscule...there is such a huge amount of information stored in there.

there i fixed it, ok

A Tribute to Spring '06

starting off with my lovely roomate

last day of class loveliness with the return of LBerry

"i survived Pi Phi Formal '06" - or did i

breaking it down 8th grade dance style

popping the he's not cherry

frances, jill, and myself with the help

chipsi funness

SCREAMS college

"it's like disneyland!" boy was it ever...

well that was fun. it served to make me miss the thrill even more, but i mean sleeping til 2 everyday in greensboro really isn't that bad.

here goes nothin'

well. it's 2:40 am on the third day of summer break and i needed something to make my life a little less boring. sweet, now i'm a blogger. maybe this makes me a little less of a waste of space? maybe? anyway i'm reading the latest of robert jordan's wheel of time books, knife of dreams, and it's odd because i kind of forgot a lot of the details from the prior 9 books, but it's still good. that's about the only academic thing i've done since i've been home. 2 loads of laundry done, only about half the rest of my stuff unpacked....the padre is getting irritated about that but when is he not irritated about something i do?
tried to go running today and made it over to the office, which was all of maybe a 10 minute run. i hate running outside. let me reiterate that. i hate running outside. what is outward bound? running outside....yeahhh i'm trying to get used to it so i won't make an ass of myself when i'm in maine.

tenative plans for carowinds with the roomie, kat, and deuce for next weekend which should be fun. maybe we'll see mr. sketch guarding the lives of those nubile recently-graduated swimmers. or not...