A Promise

Well, yesterday I committed to blogging every day and of course, today, I have no stories to tell.

So I will reccommend a funny website - www.awkwardfamilyphotos.com. Go. Now. You will laugh until you cry!

Attention, This is Building Management

First of all, I need to let you all know that my new goal is to blog every day. Please try to hold me to that or at least help make funny things happen so that I have material.

For the past week, Diddy and I have been in Denver for a conference for work. As is typical, this conference is a lot of meetings during the day and drinking and debauchery at night. Friday night was no different - probably even more drinking and debauchery than normal.

So Diddy and I arrive back at our room around 2:15 am. He has had a lot to drink (on the way home from the bar he told a friend of our that he though he got roofied. And then he said, "They should probably call it flooried because I'm about to hit the floor."). I'm not so drunk. I have to be up to sign in folks at the board meeting in the morning, so I set my alarm for 6:15 am and we go to sleep.

The next thing I know, I hear a noise and look at the clock - it is 4:30 am. I know it's not my alarm and then I listen. "Attention, this is Building Management. An alarm has been activitated. The fire department has been notified and is en route to investigate. For your safety, the elevators will not work during this time. Attention, this is Building Management..." You get the picture. Over and over and over. And each time it gets louder and louder. So I get out of bed and look out the peep hole to see if others are evacuating. Keep in mind that I have no idea how long this has been going off. They could all be at the street by now, but they are definitely not in the halls. So I wake Diddy up and we proceed to run around our room like idiots. We look out the window to see if there is a fire. Seeing none, we start texting other people staying there. No one replies. So finally, after five minutes or so, Diddy calls the front desk. Amazingly, the woman answers it; and he asks if we should evacuate. She says that it is a false alarm. He says, "Veronica, you're the best thing since sliced bread. Since it is a false alarm do you think you could turn the f-in thing off?" Apparently she tells him no because he hangs up, we go back to bed and for ten more minutes building management talks to us. Then finally the message changes to, "The fire department has investigated and every thing is secure." Yay! We can go back to sleep.

But no. They decided they wanted to be Sir-Mix-A-Lot with the announcement machine and they start playing them in parts for the next five minutes. I could have killed someone.

Turns out the alarm was only on the seventh and eigth floors so the people that we texted did not hear it. It also turns out that Diddy and I would not be very good firemen.

Step Up 3: The Gym

For the past week, I have been taking some of the group fitness classes at the gym. I tend to get tired of just doing an hour of cardio on a machine so I figured that the classes would break up the monotony.

On Tuesday night, I attended the Latin Fusion class. Apparently the teacher was a sub and she didn't like the music that the normal teacher gave her, so she made up her own class. We basically just did some hip hop dance moves to music for an hour. It was a great workout! Before the class started one of the other girls in attendance started talking to me and after class she asked me if I wanted to attend the Hip Hop class taught by the same teacher on Thursday.

So, Thursday night rolls around and I put on my normal workout clothes and head to the gym. I'm standing in the classroom waiting for my new friend to arrive when others start coming in for the class. They are all wearing hip hop clothes - scrunchy pants, sweat pants with one leg pulled up, wife beaters, etc. I felt like I was on the scene of a movie. And then the class started. And it was literally a hip hop class. We learned a dance. To a song I've never heard. It was not aerobics.

I'm Sorry, What Did You Say?

So there is apparently a characteristic that I inherited from my mom. There is clearly something about us that makes people want to tell us intimate details of their lives.

I can not begin to tell you how many times someone has poured out their soul to me and then followed it with, "I don't know why I just told you that."

Yeah, well I don't know why either and it is kind of freaking me out!

So, tonight, I'm in New Mexico for work and it happened again. Well - kind of.

As you'll remember, back in October, a portion of the fam and I headed to Hawaii for a work meeting. Well, it was a regional meeting so there were people from all over the southwest there. And there was this one family - a man, his wife, two daughters and mom.

Tonight, I was wandering around the social (actually contemplating heading back to my room and skipping dinner) when he stopped his conversation and yelled out, "What are you doing walking around here all alone?" As much as I would have liked to ignore him, I didn't. I walked over and started chatting. I kind of thought he was drunk becuase he kept swaying and getting really close to me (many of you know of my personal space issues...), but then he mentioned that he quit drinking. Hmmm. So then I ask, (because I've run out of things to talk about and it is getting awkward) "Did you come alone?" I don't think this is a strange question - I met his family. We all spent a week together. And he says, "Yeah, my wife found another boyfriend so I'm really alone."

What are you supposed to say to that?

Roll Tide, Roll?

At the airport today I saw a woman wearing an Alabama Crimson Tide shirt. And it got me thinking:

I'm not really sure what a Crimson Tide is, but I don't think it's a very good mascot for women. Regardless.

Don't Cha Know...

I seriously can't get over how these people talk. I actually am starting to feel like I'm drawing out my "o" sounds because I have been spending so much time around here.

But I need to keep writing or I'll forget some of the stuff that has happened on my trip.

When I got on the plane in Denver to head to Bismarck, there was a group of people who were travelling to ND for some type of work conference. Apparently it has been here before, but one of the ladies on the trip had never been. So the guy sitting next to her said, "Prepare to take a step back in time." And these people were from Idaho, so I deduced that it was going to be bad! And nothing has summed up this comment like the following picture.



These signs are everywhere! I actually said to a couple of the people that I'm travelling with, "I haven't seen one of those signs since 1982." And they didn't even blink an eye. North Dakota LOVES the giant fluorescent letters on the black sign.

And speaking of salons - the women love the short hairstyles here. I would think that more hair would keep you warm, but everyone has their hair very short.

And the other day, the exec for the NDSA was wearing Rockies. I almost cried for her!

On one of our trips, we got directions from one of the other staff members and he said, "You'll go through town and then start seeing signs." So as we come up on a grain elevator, the girls say, "this must be it." I looked at them and asked, "what distinguishes this as a town? As opposed to the guy a couple miles back that has a lot of grain bins?" And for that matter - why is there a country club in a "town" with only a grain elevator? And how exclusive could membership to a country club be if only twelve people live there? And how bad would you feel if they denied your membership?

In other news, we went into some small town podunk bar the other night and there was a woman (who was clearly a regular) walking around with no shoes on. I tried to take her picture for a punch in the face, but she wouldn't stand still and I only had my camera phone.

I have discovered that they do have West Nile Virus here, so I am starting to get a little concerned by the large number of bites that I have all over my body. Only time will tell...

On The Plains of North Dakota...

I'll just give you a few highlights of my trip so far:

I have literally been eaten alive by mosquitoes. Can they bite through clothes or are there just really perverted bugs here that are flying up my pant legs? I really hope they don't have West Nile Virus!

As my body is still two hours earlier than local time, I tried to sleep in on Tuesday morning after a 16 hour day. Apparently this was not in the cards. The fire alarm at the hotel went off at 7:30 am. But there was no fire and no one evacuated. I felt like I was in Coronado dorm again.

The people here talk funny. Like hilariously funny. They just add random words to the ends of their sentences. Words like, not, anyway, yet, hey. It is the strangest thing I've ever heard. I actually started to think about it last night - and was wondering how they teach language arts here. Do they learn proper English and then just disregard it? Or do they actually teach them to add random words to sentences?

I think that just about covers it. I have four more days of meetings though so I'm really hoping for some more stories!