Week One and Two: Back to Nerd Camp
Oh, back to Los Angeles!!! Hugs, kisses, fairies, and gumdrops! Nerd camp was wonderful as always. Christin and I stayed together again and ate too much peanut butter and jelly and giggled and tried many new things. First of all, we didn't have a car. We tried a new service called Lyft--cheaper than a cab, real people pick you up in their own car and drive you when you request them on an app. The cars have pink mustaches. Awesome. The first time we took Lyft to the Director's Guild Theater and saw a screening of Spike Lee's Old Boy. It was pretty much what one would expect of Spike Lee. Well, what I would expect of him and I'm not a movie person. Pretty cool to see a movie before it hits theaters though. Then we were Lyfted to a party for Nebraskans in Los Angeles. We met the woman who will do the voice overs for our audio books when we are rich and published, well, maybe just published. We also cleaned house in the raffle for Nebraska stuff for Nebraskans in Los Angeles and met the actors in the Robitussin commercial, the tablet with the dad in the backyard camping commercial, the Cox guy, and the Nebraska Furniture Mart girl (actually from Iowa, but you know she wishes she were from Nebraska). We had epic Korean BBQ and sang Korean karaoke (not karaoke in Korean, but karaoke in Korea town where we were the only ones who could sing in English, Michael Jackson, Lady Gaga, The Stones, and I may have accidentally hijacked an old Korean lady's song). Christin, Dalia, and I met my friend Carrie and her husband Jake on the haunted Queen Mary ship in Long Beach on Friday the 13th. We didn't see any ghosts, but we did follow a family so that we could talk them into letting us see their room, re-enact Titanic, and I sat on a huge gun.
I did it! I accomplished one goal of age 25. I bought my house. It's officially official. I am the proud owner of a 4 bedroom 2 bath 1916 home with all the original wood work, an office where I will write my novels, a window seat, a huge kitchen with granite and stainless steel, a deck, and a 2 car garage. I also ripped a hole up the buttcrack of my swim suit at some point the day before I closed on my house. I noticed it in the shower after my swim. It could have happened when I put the suit on (mind you, I work where I swim), think the walk to the pool, when I was swimming, think every flip turn, or when I took off the suit in the shower, fat chance. I thought I'd feel like a real grownup when I bought the house, but buttcrack still makes me giggle so maybe I'll always just be a silly girl.
Week four: Be a boss
This week I pretty much did all the new things a person wants to do when they become a home owner. I sprinkled sage in every corner of my home and said, "Please no ghosts" because I heard that sage and Native American chants ward off ghosts. I had sage but no chant so I improvised. I unpacked. I set up my office and I finally have closet space for every single article of clothing I own. I also have I new big girl bed.
Week five: The New Year
On New Year's Eve most of my dad's side of the family, including John and me, traveled to Iowa City to watch my cousin play basketball. He plays for the University of Iowa and this was my first time going to Iowa City. John and I had big dreams of street food and toasting to the New Year after some hoops. We then planned to get up and run in the morning, drive to Des Moines to a Husker bar for the Nebraska Bowl game and then head the rest of the way home to Omaha. Between the 2 of us, we had one person's full luggage for all we planned to do. I forgot tights for my dress. He forgot running shoes and a toothbrush. My dad told us the wrong location for dinner before the game so we ran a mile in the subzero temps and were hangry (so hungry you're angry--you know you've been there) with everyone but each other for duration of the game that we were on time to by only 9 minutes after the going to the wrong bar and running. We thought we'd change to go out at the hotel then get dinner but then I saw my tights were missing so we decided to go out scrubby in our Iowa gear. After 2 failed attempts for places serving dinner, we landed on a gem and pigged out on chicken stripes as big as my head. We then decided we were full and didn't want to attempt to cab home from downtown Iowa City, bought a cheap bottle of champagne and made it back to the hotel pool with minutes to spare before toasting 2014 with my family and some other white trash family who talked us all into playing flippy cup with them and their 13 year old daughters (playing with Mountain Dew). Not how we envisioned our first road trip/New Year's but I really did have a ton of fun.
Even though it's not part of 2013 and my resolution, I'll include the rest of our little Iowan adventure:
It was so cold in Iowa City that you would walk outside and want to shout things like BALLS! POOP! and other choice words. It was cold as balls and snowed 4 inches or so, over night but the interstate was clear. John and I planned to get up in the morning and drive half way to Des Moines, stop at one of the few Husker bars I know there and then drive the rest of the way home after the Nebraska bowl game. Poor guy though, he was driving my car and we had to exit the interstate to get gas. The off ramp was not well plowed and we slide the entire length of it, passed a truck we both thought we were going to hit, through 2 lanes of traffic, and slammed into a snow bank. John was freaking out and I was talking in my voice reserved for preschoolers: "You're doing just fine. We're going to OK. You're fine. We're OK. You're doing just great."
I had just taken my snow boots out of my car so that I could have more room move boxes the week before. I was wearing my slippers so I tried to put the cowgirl boots I brought to wear on New Year's, but it was so cold the leather shrank up and I couldn't get them on. My car was fine but we had to dig it out of the snow pile, because, yes, I travel with a shovel in my car, then get yanked the rest of the way out by a guy with a tow rope. The guy pulled us out, drove away, and I tried to start the car, but the battery was dead. It was, like, real feel negative 6 and we'd left the lights on while digging out. So someone else stopped to jump our car. We drove the rest of the way to Des Moines but my car would shake like crazy when I went over 50 mph. In Des Moines, we manhandled some BBQ chicken pizza--I can't even remember the last time I've had such wonderful pizza and it was so phenomenal AND WARM! We missed the first half of the Husker game and I told my mom about what happened. She didn't want us driving the rest of the way home in case we were to make something worse with my car. So we sat there and called the 16 AAA places in Des Moines, none of which were open because of the holiday.
By this time it was almost 3pm and the sun would be setting well before we get home. I called AAA back and asked about what it would cost to tow my car back to Omaha (at $4/mile after 5 miles that would be over $600--not going to happen) and the guy was so nice he started giving us ideas on what could be wrong with the car. He must be a dad with a daughter. He told us that if there was something wrong with the tire axel, it would be visibly noticeable from the outside. So John and I went out to the parking lot and I drove back and forth across the parking lot while he ran across it and tried to watch for the tires wobbling. We also witness a huge ass truck run into a snow covered fire hydrant, but that is neither here nor there in my story. John didn't see any wobbling. My grandpa then called me and said that there might just be snow packed in the wheels and we should try to knock it out. So after running all around the parking lot we then crouched by the tires and knocked snow out of them and decided we're out. The shaking was better, but we still drive 50 the whole way home. On the interstate. I almost hated myself for being That Person, but we had to get home.
In the end the snow packed in the tires was the problem. But what an adventure. We actually had a lot of fun with it.
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