Two-Month Recap: Birthday, Trip Plans, WAY too much Overtime...

It's been a couple of months since I have written anything, so I think it is long past time for catching up on my life in February in March.  Overall February was fairly uneventful.  I worked my typical 40 hour work weeks without a day off.  I had a slightly miserable Valentine's Day (first single one in seven years) mitigated somewhat by making dinner for and spending the night with a good friend.  :-)  My overall mood was mostly blah with a touch of depressed.  I spent quite a bit of time with friends and family in the evenings and on the weekends, which helped keep me relatively happy.

March has been an incredibly better month for me.  As usual, this is the time of year I start to come out of my depressed funk associated with wacky Utah winters, shitty inversions and lack of daylight.  While the weather has been far from perfect, it has been good enough that I have been able to ride my bike to work all but about three or four days since Daylight Savings Time began.  I have also been exercising more on the weekends, eating better, and just overall feeling so much healthier than I have literally in years.

I decided at some point toward the end of February that it was absolutely necessary for me to have a big bash of a 25th birthday party.  After all, one only turns a quarter of a century old once, right?  So I asked my wonderfully accommodating roommate, Bryan, who agreed to let me use the house that evening for a rather large gathering.  I invited about 80 people on Facebook and a few who don't do the whole FB drama thing (and I don't blame them one bit, lol), about 30-40 of whom showed up at some point during the night.  Being St. Patrick's Day and my birthday, of course I was compelled to drink much more than I would any other night of the year.  So when many of my late-partyer friends showed up past 10 or 11 o'clock I was already smashed and having a very good time.  I don't remember much of what happened or what was said, but in situations like that, you can always count on your friends to embarass you about it later.  Apparently I drunk dialed someone who did not show up to the party and left a rather incriminating voicemail.  I will never live it down, and that is probably for the best.  How else can I learn?  I also apparently was gone enough that when everyone else went outside for a cigarette, I joined them (even though I don't smoke).  And despite feeling far to cold to be out on my front porch in a T-shirt, I INSISTED on finishing the cigarette, because you don't just WASTE a perfectly bad cigarette, for crying out loud!  The next morning the house was actually clean.  I apparently stayed up after everyone left around 2 to clean the kitchen.  What shocked me was the amount of liquor and food that was leftover.  At least a dozen beers, two bottles of wine, four FULL, BIG veggie trays, a box of cookies, a box of donuts, two bags of chips and dip.  Yeah, it was an epic night that I will always remember.  Can't wait for 30; that is going to have to be a big party as well.  :-)

A couple of good friends and I are planning on going to Seattle and Vancouver, BC this summer.  I am SO excited because I have never taken my new car on a road trip before, and it is going to be AMAZING.  Plus I have not been to Seattle since I was a small child and do not remember really anything about it.  And I have never even set foot in Canada, so I am very excited to add it to my list of countries I have visited.  And from what people tell me, Vancouver is an amazingly beautiful and fun city.  We are also going to be in Seattle (intentionally) during their annual Pride festival and parade.  I have never been in a city other than Salt Lake for Pride, so I am very eager to see how Seattle Pride compares.  We will be staying at least one night right downtown in Seattle at what I have been told is their very best Marriott property.  I am hoping to meet the general manager and talk about what working at the property level is like, as my experience has all been in corporate phone-based customer service.  After Seattle Pride is over we are planning on driving up to Vancouver and spending a couple of nights there with some friends of one of my friends who is coming with us.  It has been about ten years since I have had a valid Passport, so I recently applied for and received one and I am very excited to use it for the first time.  :-)

In order to be able to afford what is bound to be $5.00/gallon gas for this trip, I have already worked one week of overtime (62 hours total) and plan to do so again for the next three weeks, as they are currently offering an added incentive: in addition to the time-and-a-half pay, we earn a $25 Amex gift card for every five hours of overtime worked.  So far I figure I have racked up about $125 worth in gift cards and plan on getting my hands on as many more as I am capable of.  Until the overtime starts to make me physically ill, I plan to continue working it as long as it is offered.  Since I am already at work from 10:30 - 7:00 every weekday anyway, adding 4 hours on in the morning doesn't really affect my schedule much, except that I end up being a bit sleep deprived, which is okay.  The tradeoff is well worth it in my opinion.  We'll see how long I last.

One final thing I would like to write about before I have to go back to work from my VERY extended lunch is the Holi Festival of Colors I went to this past Sunday.  It was SO cool.  It was held down in Spanish Fork at the Lotus Krishna Temple in Spanish Fork.  Basically you go, pay $2 to get in, buy some bagged powdered colors made from corn starch and throw color at random strangers, get completely grimy and take lots of pictures.  :-)  At no other event I have been to is it completely socially acceptable to soil a complete stranger's clothing with colored powder.  :-)  It was SO much fun.  There are also times when everyone throws color up in the air at once, which, if you are above the action as I was, makes for an AMAZING photo opportunity.  See my Facebook for photos of the event.  I can't wait to go again next year.

That's all for now.  Gotta get back to work.