This one time that Colorado was still the best state ever...

Well, I pretty much haven't posted in ten years, and that's because I've been waiting for something really awesomely hilarious or insane to happen like it usually does. But lately I just haven't had as many near death experiences, abandoned buildings to explore, or crazy "did that just happen...?" type things to report. So, this post isn't actually going to be funny... sorry. Instead I am going to tell you about a real life adventure I had, one that didn't involve breaking the law or anything too ridiculous.

So, this one time I hiked 32 miles up a mountain in five days and discovered that New Zealand is actually located in Colorado. Pretty neat.

See, I am going to be doing this thing... I don't really see the need to explain it when you could easily go to this website and see for yourselves. Basically, it's awesome. If you go to the "meet the guides" part, you will find me... yep there I am, being a guide. So the first week of June all the guides you see there plus the ones we have been training with from Fort Collins and Durango went on Trail Training, which is basically a week for us to all go on a trip together and make sure we know what we're doing. Every day two different people are the "guides for the day," so we all get experience planning a whole day out and leading the team and what not. All in all, the week was definitely one of the better ones of my life. I got to be in one of the most amazing places, hang out with some of the coolest people, and feel like power woman at the end of it.

I am just going to give you a picture tour of the trip along with some observations I made over the week.

Observation #1: Backpacking backpacks... they are heavy. So heavy I continually felt like I was just going to fall backwards and never be able to get up. However, the longer you wear them and the more pain you're in, the more they also become sort of like a friend... sort of.

Observation #2: The water in the below picture was probably the coldest substance I have ever touched in my life. That pain was not like a friend. Not at all.

Observation #3: New Zealand is not so hard to get to.

Observation #4: Snow is not so bad when the temperature above it is still t-shirt weather. And if you have never or don't know what glissading is, you are missing out on one of the greatest parts of life.

Observation #5: Heights--I love them.

Observation #6: God's creation is the coolest.

(that right there is a moose, yessiree.)

Observation #7: I just wanted to make a #7 because I hate the number 6. 

Six Life Essentials.

Back in December I was in Michigan for Christmas break. Since my mom was in the process of getting married and moving to West Virginia, she wanted me to clean out my stuff in the apartment and put everything I wanted to keep into one box to have her mail to me once I got back to Colorado.

It will probably shock you to know that I'm not very good at cleaning (see that's funny because it DIDN'T shock you...). My room in Michigan was still a disaster and I had no clue where to start with sorting. That's when Reina came to the rescue... and together we decided the difference between the things that were okay to throw away and the things I definitely, absolutely, could 100% not live without.

I am now receiving box after box of these things, and I just thought I would share a few of what we decided were essentials....

1. A gameboy color. About three years ago, at the ripe age of 16, I woke up one morning and thought to myself, "I want a gameboy color." Forget the PS3's and Iphones and whatever else in technology that is infinitely more advanced... I needed a gameboy color. And so, I got on ebay that morning and bought one. I won't lie to you, I have spent many un-wasted hours playing Donkey Kong and Duck Tales 2 on that thing. Probably the best 13 bucks I have ever spent (except for the time I bought a lot of Chicken In a Biskit crackers... that was a good buy as well).

2. A ball of string. To keep in the back of my car in case I need to complete an impromptu prank. Brooke, Reina and I once spent about four weekends in a row pranking the same boy with just a ball of string. He always left his car unlocked at the end of a wooded culdesac, which we would turn into an enormous spider wed--his car being strung up in the middle of it. Yes, you never know when the urge for prank-pulling may hit. A ball of string is completely necessary.

3. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles boxers. Could be used for two purposes: A) also pranking... there are plenty of weird places you could leave them on someone's house that could be cause for a good laugh. B) in case I need that extra kick to my Raphael costume.

4. Romanian toilet paper. Because it is pink and stretchy and pretty much party streamer. So when people come into my room and it's hanging on the wall, I can be like "Guess what that is?" and they're like, "Party streamer..?" and I'm like, "NO! It's TOILET PAPER."

5. My Lord of the Rings ring I got in my Burger King Mighty Kids Meal when I was like, eight. Complete with elvish. I don't really think I need to explain myself on this one.

6. This thing:

That, ladies and gentlemen, is a plastic-cup-Christmas-nightlight. You can't see it very well in that picture, but it is basically a big sphere made of little plastic cups with Christmas lights protruding from each one. Don't ask me where we got it, all I know is that it has lit up my room every Christmas season probably since I was born. Obviously couldn't leave it behind. Unfortunately, upon plugging it in in Colorado, it seems that the plastic-cup-Christmas-nightlight has seen its last glow. RIP.

And there you have it, folks. 6 essentials to life that I am surprised any of you could be living without. In addition to these treasures, I also have four more boxes I have barely gone through... mind you, I only filled ONE box that I wanted sent to me. It seems that my mother, whom I love dearly, decided to also send me everything out of the crevices of the apartment... in case I wanted to keep those crumpled papers I wrote my name in cursive all over back when I was nine and it was exciting to learn cursive because the education system put us all under the illusion that it was actually necessary to know. 

How drive-thru bagging at Chick-Fil-A is equivalent to digging five-foot holes every day in the desert.

If you've seen the movie "Holes," you might remember how it started (and if you HAVEN'T seen the movie "Holes," you won't really understand this post): a bunch of boys are out in the desert digging holes, and one of them spots a rattlesnake. He sees the deadly creature as an opportunity--an escape--and inches towards it. He takes off his shoe and puts his foot close enough to the snake, willingly letting it strike his flesh. In causing himself severe pain, he got what he wanted: freedom from the work camp which the movie revolves around.
The desperation that that boy felt to get away at all costs, is the exact same desperation I feel every time I'm in drive-thru bagging at Chick-Fil-A.
I know I know... "Bagging? What's the big deal about bagging?"
Well let me tell you.
It is a huge deal.
You don't even know.

See, most people cannot even comprehend how seriously Chick-Fil-A takes things. Everything. It's not fast food, it's a corporation. And since our CFA location in particular is actually ranked #1 in the country or something like that, the pressure is infinitely higher. Today we had some people from CFA corporate from like, Arizona or somewhere, come in just to watch us. Watch us. Now there is a situation in which the stress level is comparable to hiding under your bed while murderers are in the house trying to hunt you down (it's stressful because everyone knows being under your bed is basically the worst hiding spot you could pick). It was mostly stressful for me just because all the stress my managers were radiating soaked into my skin as well. But anyway, back to bagging.

Even regular bagging seemed demanding, but it is nothing compared to drive-thru. In drive-thru, everything is 45093871239849239034201094835949209485782340 faster and begs for perfection in all areas. Meaning, all food combinations must be in the appropriate bags (two entrees and two fries can fit in an 8-pound bag, but if one entree is boxed in a clamshell then that's too much, and all cold items must be bagged separately from hot unless it's just one cold item then it's okay unless there are fries and then it's not, and all items must lay flat in the bag and there are a certain number of condiments that can go with a particular numbers of entrees and the list goes on...forever...), all products appear top quality, triple check for accuracy, clear communication with the kitchen crew, headset person and window person, and all orders are meant to be out to the guest one minute after they order it at the box. One. Minute.
Now, during down time when we aren't so busy isn't so bad. I'm talking about the three-hour-long lunch rush when the orders on the screen are literally never-ending and you have to meet all the above criteria for each and every order out of the hundreds that are coming through, that is a bit upsetting. And by "upsetting" I mean "Every second I just want to collapse to the ground in the fetal position and cry."

There are a few ways that drive-thru bagging can relate to the work camp in Holes. For example, Holes is set in a desert. And let me tell you, with the heat from the kitchen hitting you at the speed you're moving and the sweat you're losing... well, I have played basketball all my life. I was on the court running up and down with few breaks, exerting a great deal of energy for eight seasons plus summer camps. I have biked 200 miles in four days before. I have had an active life. But never in my life have I ever felt so dehydrated as I have whilst drive-thru bagging at CFA. Never. That whole cotton mouth syndrome thing? Yeah, that's definitely real. I firmly believe the only people who might understand my level of thirst and dryness of mouth are those boys on Holes.

And another thing... they get those nasty blisters and stuff, right? Well, in CFA drive-thru bagging, instead of blisters, you get paper cuts. Endless amounts of paper cuts. And burns. Let me tell you, I don't think I have ever felt true pain until I burned my hand on the fry shoot irons. My finger is still scarred. And those fries... when they are fresh out of the frier and the grease on them is still sizzling, they are deadly. However, my manager was comforting when she told me, "Don't worry, you'll reach a point where you have no feelings in your fingers anymore." Except just kidding, that's not comforting at all. And those paper cuts... sometimes I just look down and my hands are bleeding everywhere. Right now I can count about a dozen cuts on my hands and I don't even know when they happened, just that they are there and they hurt.

There is one positive aspect on how working at CFA is like being a work camp boy who has to dig a five-foot hole under the desert sun every day, though... and that is community. I mean, those boys who dig together every day, they gotta be pretty tight. Of course there is the occasional fist fight, but everyone has problems to work through, right? At the beginning some of them hate the others, but through blood, sweat, and tears they learn to love each other for who they are. I can't think of a better way to describe the Chick-Fil-A family. And everyone is a character. In Holes they've got names like Zigzag, Armpit, Caveman, Zero... if we tried, everyone at CFA could have a nickname like that, too.

And there you have it... how working in Chick-Fil-A's drive-thru bagging is just like living out a movie.

Bri + Education = haha lol.

So, I know it's been like 8903280437312789217946093240104578.8 years since I've blogged, but the good news is I will be having someone feed me subjects to blog about now. It's kinda weird, this business called Blue Matter Marketing emailed me a few weeks ago. Basically, their job is to help other businesses branch out and become known on the web. Hence the whole "marketing" part of their title. They emailed me and asked if I would collaborate with them, meaning periodically they will ask me to create a post on a topic that is relevant to both my blog and their partner. They told me they want me to create a natural post that fits the blog and my "audience," and within that post I'm supposed include a simple text link to the partner's product or service. Oh, and there was something about them paying me $15 every time I did it... My first thought was, "Haha, these people obviously haven't read my blog if they think there are any businesses out there who will have anything in common with what I blog about...." 
But then I realized that I could just be totally shameless in helping them out, meanwhile they're giving me something to write about, since my shenanigan income has been pretty low lately anyway.


My first assignment: ACT Registration


So, now I will talk about the ACT and my experience with education.
....................

That's what I have to say about that.

No but really, the ACT was one of my lower life experiences on the scale of "good." I think I got like a 29 in English... great, right? Not so much when you get somewhere in the 14-17 range on math and science. I remember feeling slightly confident at the beginning of the math section... meaning the first question I probably got right. By the time I got to science, I just started spelling out words with the lettered bubbles.

My education as a whole... well, being home-schooled, I obviously experienced life on a rigorous schedule. Up by 6:00am, breakfast, became absorbed in my studies for 12 hours, then milked the cows and churned the butter.

Oops, I think I misspelled "school was a joke" up there.

Disclaimer: my mom did a wonderful job raising me and for the first part of my life she was successful in making me take education seriously. However, then I hit high-school and our family turned crazy, so we had more things to worry about than this thing called "school." Besides, I was 14 and everyone knows 14-year-olds are completely independent and in charge of their lives, regardless of what their moms say. In other words, I am often terrified that someday I will have a child just like me.

My first experience in blowing off school came about when I was eleven... I was in our home-school co-op at church when we had a guest teacher. Her name was Mandy. She was teaching English, only my pal Scott and I decided not to care. We decided to take advantage of “the outsider” by being as big of turds as possible. We decided we had nothing to lose by amusing ourselves, so we goofed off and back-talked and refused to cooperate. On one assignment, we both copied one of our other friends, Isaac, and when Mandy asked who really wrote it first, we all argued over who it was (meanwhile Scott and I were high-fiving under the table). I think I figured I would never see her again or something. This story is ironic because A) I now love English and B) Because I now live with Mandy (and also love her).

My next encounter with hating school/being awful came in 8th grade. Ohhh Mr. Minor's Physical Science class. Definitely my most hated class at the time, but now my most memorable. Poor Mr. Minor... so monotone, so boring, and so oblivious. I remember one day Tim even brought the answer book to a test day and everyone passed it around under the table, and Minor had no clue (Note: I do not condone cheating... but in 8th grade it was pretty funny). There were maybe two kids in that class who took it seriously. I actually met one of my best friends, Kaitlyn, via goofing off in that class. We would make it a game to see how many times we could throw a pencil back and forth across the room while Minor's back was turned. Once we got more advanced, it switched to her throwing Runtz candy across the room and me catching it in my mouth. Eventually we did introduce ourselves to each other outside of being complete turds.
The best part of that class was the second to last day, when Mr. Minor gave his long speech about how much grace he had given us over the year, and compared it to God bestowing mercy until "Judgement day." He ended his lecture with a very dramatic, "And today... it's judgement day."
I tried to keep quiet like everyone else. I really, really did. But the over-dramatization of the situation and the character of the person presenting it was just so unbearably hilarious. I started snickering, and the second I made the sound, the whole class erupted in laughter. Poor Mr. Minor. Everyone from that class still jokes about "judgement day" to this day.

High school was a grand ole time. I learned a lot. I learned a lot about what it was like to hang out with friends, to argue with my parents, to stay out late and sleep in, to make a lot of inside jokes, climb onto a lot of roofs, explore a lot of abandoned buildings, have a lot of adventures, get in a lot of trouble. Education, however, was slightly absent. If you want to know about how I graduated, well, so do I.
 I already used this picture on my blog once, but I am repeating it because it perfectly sums up my high school "career."

Then this one time, I tried to go to college. The good news is, I passed English. The bad news is, English was only three of my attempted 14 credits. The goal is to go back in the fall and try again... because if at first, or second, or third you don't succeed, try try again.

You know Bri's back in the house when...

Well, two nights ago I got back from my 16 day trip to Michigan! It was long, but good. Got to see some of the greatest people ever, had some good adventures (if you didn't read my last post about how Reina and I narrowly escaped rape/murder, I don't know what you're doing reading this one), and got to hang out with new, awesome family members thanks to my mom and Ray getting married! It turns out that step-siblings are actually not what Cinderella made them out to be.

My Colorado pals Hannah, Charlie, and Chris picked me up from the airport and gave me the most useful welcome home present ever: a radar detector for my car! It sits on my dashboard and alerts me when it picks up police radar/laser guns before the cops are even in sight. In case anyone missed my really depressing posts on Halloween, there was a three week period inside of which I obtained three traffic tickets... so, even though I'm not sure why they are even legal to own, a radar detector is pretty much the perfect thing for me.

Yesterday was my first day back here, and life did not waste anytime reminding me of my luck. Or I guess you could also call it my incapability of being able to accomplish any normal task normally. Mandy works on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so every Tuesday and Thursday morning I can be sure to wake up to a note containing a small list of things to do while she's gone. 10 out of 10 times, "Clean the kitchen" is on the list. So, there I was, following orders. Michael was out running errands, I had just put Lindley down for a nap, and Isaac was playing video games as I loaded the dishes into the dishwasher just like always, opened the cabinet, grabbed the handle of the dishwasher detergent which always sits in the same place, poured it inside, and pressed start. I then went downstairs for approximately three minutes, and when I surfaced, was met with this sight:

I sort of wish I had snapped the picture before turning off the cycle so I could have captured the waterfall of suds spilling out from both the top and bottom of the washer. I walked over to the cabinet to examine what exactly I had dispensed into the washer, and the yellow container read, "Dawn Dishwashing soap." Apparently while I had been in Michigan, Mandy had begun using detergent pellets... the container for which does not resemble the detergent I had been used to, as the Dawn had. I then called Isaac over from the living room. He trotted over and stood next to me with a mouth gaping as much as mine and said, "...whoa. That is a lot. Did Lindley do this?"

You know it's bad when your actions could be confused with those of a two year old.

Michael arrived home just in time to see the pool of suds right before Isaac and I laid several bath towels over it. Praise the Lord Michael has a sense of humor.

He opened the dishwasher to see that the entire thing was filled with thick suds. In a fantasy movie, that would have been the moment where the suds had come alive and eaten us.  He tried to open the little thing that held the dish soap in order to wipe what was left out of it, but since we had stopped the washer mid-cycle, it was impossible to do so without breaking it. He tried to bail the suds out with a big cup, but that proved a bit pointless. The only solution seemed to be that we just had to let it run its cycle in order to work all the soap out of it. We sat there for a while soaking the soap up with towels as it cascaded out of the bottom of the washer before Michael decided to go get the shop-vac, which proved much more effective.

It's these types of things that completely reflect the rest of my life. I try to do something good and normal, yet somehow it always leaves me with wide eyes saying, "......WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?!?!??!?!?!?"

Here's some encouragement that Michael left me on my facebook post about this: "It's just not all that surprising anymore. Although I'm still trying to figure out how so many things happen to one person. It's like the Diehard sequels. Really? This keeps happening to the same person?! I guess it makes most every action sequel every made a lot more believable. Thanks, Bri, for increasing my faith in Hollywood."

..Anything I can do to help the entertainment industry, I suppose.

Too Close for Comfort Encounters.

If you've read my posts about hobo week, the abandoned asylum, the horrific journey to East Lansing, or the time we camped out in Salvation Army for five hours and bought 83 coats, you have probably figured out by now that Reina and I are very exciting people who like to do very exciting things. It only made sense that we should find an adventure in which to partake on New Years Eve. 

In the dinky town of Plainwell, Michigan, there sits the most enormous building I have ever seen.

The Plainwell Paper Mill opened in 1867 and provided jobs for 1,400 people up until its closing in 2000. I couldn't find any pictures on google that best showed how massive it is, but it sits on a 36 acre lot... and there's not a whole bunch of "lot" that isn't taken up by building. 

In May of 2010, Reina, Brooke, John and I explored this magnificent playground. If you look in the last picture in the middle-left you can see the top of the cluster of trees that had grown in a very small courtyard right behind that loading bay. Not completely sure how the group of us got away with this in the middle of the afternoon, but we had managed to climb one of the fences, waltz around the building until we found this little courtyard, and, well... break in. Although we justified the breaking of one pane of glass with the fact that it was already cracked, and the one above it had already been broken anyway. So, once we had broken the second pane I could easily slip inside, break a rusty padlock off a door and open it for the rest of the gang. 

The next couple hours were some of the best ever. Every time we turned a corner it was a whole new experience. One level was filled with rows and rows of fenced stalls, all empty except for one in the middle that contained a very large elf costume sitting up (creepy). One level was full of run down offices. One enormous room contained shelves and shelves of ancient blue prints and old, Polaroid pictures of the days when the Mill was functioning. A section of one level was oddly refinished - carpeted, lit, furnished - and was set up as if a board meeting had recently taken place, containing blue prints for what the future plans of the Mill were. The basement appeared to be nothing short of the deepest depths of the caves of Moria... only with a lot of rats and bats instead of trolls and a balrog. And then there was the roof - the highest point in Plainwell. For those of you who don't know, I have a thing for roofs. And this was by far the best one on which I'd ever been. 

We became hopelessly lost, but eventually squeezed under a garage door we found in one of the darkest sections of the building. Even for the hours we were inside, I know we didn't explore even a fraction of the place.

So now that you're up to date, I can talk about Reina and I's second encounter with the Paper Mill, which was much more threatening. 

We had talked about going back to the Mill ever since our first escapade, and decided to finally go for it tonight. So we got all geared up in layers and, rather than your boring ole flashlight, found HEAD LAMPS. Because we are that hardcore.

                

At about 9:00pm we walked over the bridge, climbed over the fence, and ventured over to the courtyard where we had entered a year and a half ago. There was a piece of plywood nailed over our broken window panes, but nothing that we couldn't easily peel back to slip inside and then replace as if it had never been touched (remember that bit at the end of the story).

We explored around all the old places like before, just as enthralled as before. Since our first visit, they had begun to start rehabilitating the place (the city plans to move City Hall operations there and build a new Department of Public Safety facility at the site), so there were some lights left on here and there and some construction equipment, but for the most part nothing seemed to have been changed. 

(A view from the roof I really wish I didn't have to take with my crappy phone camera.)

But then, of course, things had to get interesting. We spotted a spiral staircase and descended down it, because at the bottom we spotted light, and the lit rooms were far and few in between and a breath of fresh air. However, once we stepped off the staircase, ready to turn the corner through the doorway leading to the light, things turned a bit horror-movie-ish.

"What do ya got, if ya ain't got love? Whatever you got, it just ain't enough...."

The voice of Bon Jovi echoed through the vast, dimly lit room that lay ahead of us. In the depths of this massive building that we had been in for an hour with no evidence that we might not be alone, there was a radio playing. Our first reaction was to freeze, but then of course we had to act on our curiosity by slowly and quietly inching our way around the corner. No one else appeared to be there - the radio was all alone, sitting on some scafolding that was set up on the other side of a massive hole in the wall.

That's Reina in her headlamp standing on the scafolding - that blue light on the right of it is the radio blaring 106.5. 

See, this picture was taken on the second floor, but the scafolding was set up on the first floor. Meaning from where Reina was, she could see down beneath her to the first floor, the wall in which was also busted out just like this one. So two, identically busted out walls stacked on top of each other, the levels connected by the scafolding. We were just about to climb down the scafolding and see what was through the hole on the first story, when we heard a crunch... crunch... crunch. It was the sound of footsteps trying to slowly but deliberately make their way over a pile of bricks -- the pile of bricks on the other side of the hole right beneath us. We stopped for a moment to make sure we weren't mistaking the sound for something else, but the more we listened, the closer it got, and the more obvious it was that we were most definitely hearing someone below us walking towards us: two teenage girls inside an abandoned building at night time who had only seconds ago been speaking to each other in full volume and shining our headlamps in every direction. 

We wanted to run, but the floor was creaky and we didn't want whoever was beneath us to be able to track our footsteps. As silently as possible, we made our way all the way to the other end of the room in order to reach the stairwell that, while it was furthest from us at that point, would lead us closest to our point of exit on the first floor.

We reached the first floor, hearts pounding, and peered into the long, fully lit room - in the middle of which was the window through which we had entered. The part where we heard someone walking was connected to the other end of this room. So basically, if we wanted to get to our broken window, we had to make it to the center of a wide open room, the other end of which had a doorway where said person could walk out of at any given point in time.

We were quietly debating on whether we should go for it or not, when our question was answered with a loud BOOM. Some door that sounded as though it was just beyond the doorway across the room slammed. I like to think of myself as a fairly brave person, but at that exact moment, there wasn't much I could do to keep my knee from trembling. 

At the moment of the slam, Reina and I both jumped away from the doorway and joined in a very brief panic attack, until (praise the Lord) I decided to look around the other corner - away from the doorway into the room where our potential murderer could be entering at any moment - and spotted another door, which happened to lead directly outside. I swallowed the biggest gulp of relief that I possibly ever have, summoned Reina, and pushed through the door and into the cool, death/arrest-free air. 

The exit was very close to courtyard, so we decided to trot around real quick to look through the windows for any sign of the other person(s), but instead what we noticed was that the plywood that we had carefully re-attached to the wall to cover our entrance had been completely ripped off and thrown aside.

We ran back around the building as fast as we could while still remaining in the shadows, and hopped the fence at a speed that is only capable of achieving while extreme amounts of adrenaline are pulsing through one's veins. Once on the other side we gave each other a very well-earned fist bump (typical). But just to be safe, we waited until we were across the bridge and into the parking lot before hugging each other and jumping around while squealing about what seems to be our unlimited supply of luck. Or just God.

So anyway, that was how we had the most exciting New Years Eve ever via narrowly escaping either death or arrest or something else highly unfortunate.