Retold

It’s early summer, though you would think it was August already by the heat here, and everywhere I turn someone’s talking about camping.  Why do people do this?  I mean, sleeping in a tent on the ground doesn’t sound like much fun to me.  Even if you have an air mattress, it still seems like you could just stay home, make s’mores in the microwave, not get eaten alive by bugs, and have air conditioning!  Now that sounds like an awesome night to me.

I know a lot of my friends are campers, but I’ve never seen the appeal.  Maybe I should try it again, there has to be something good about it, but I can’t help thinking I’d go nuts without the Internet.  Since I don’t have a cell phone, and even if I did camp grounds seem to be strategically placed where cell phone service is low, like it’s some evil plot to force you to have fun, I couldn’t tweet or check my email.  I’m sorry but that is not my idea of fun.  You wouldn’t catch me dead in a bathing suit in public, so swimming in a river or lake is definitely out, not to mention what you could catch or be bitten by swimming in a lake.  Still water is the devils tool… or is that idle hands?  Either way, lakes are out.

Tell you what kind of camping I do like, RV camping!  RV camping is nice. You sleep in a bed, cook on a stove, have plumbing and air conditioning.  When I was a little girl my family had a membership with Coast to Coast.  Coast to Coast, in case you don’t know, is a camping membership where you can use campgrounds across the country.  Sometimes that means tent camping, sometimes RV camping, other times little log cabins.  We use to go to a place in California called Oak Glen and we had a good time!  They had a clubhouse that showed movies at night, had video games and pool tables.  They had a mini-golf course.  They had two, yes two, swimming pools.  They had a play ground with swings and slides.  They had shopping and caramel apples and a petting zoo.  I loved going to Oak Glen!  We also went to Fisherman’s retreat, which was fun, but not as fun as Oak Glen.

Oak Glen is famous for it’s apples. You could get hard apple cider, candied apples, carmel apples.  They have an apple festival and all the while, RV camping, baby!  Man, I use to love it!

But sleeping in a tent? No.

Camping in a little log cabin in Sedona, AZ?  Yes.  Just for the record, I love Sedona in a way I cannot express to you.  If Matt would consent to living in Arizona, I would move there in a heart beat.  When we stayed in a little cabin by a river, it was raining, everything was so green against the grey backdrop above the clay vistas.  It was beautiful.  I want to go there again!

But sleeping in a tent?  No.

Starting to get the picture?  RV Camping, in; tent camping, out.

…(¨`·.·´¨)
…..`·.¸.·Kristyn

So, I did so much bitching and moaning about my speech, I think it’s only fair to tell y’all how it went.  All in all, I think it went really good.  I was super nervous, but there were only 4 other girls in my speech section, and me.  It wasn’t as bad as it could have been and all in all, I’m glad I took this class online this summer.  It’s been a good experience.  Right after my speech, I was so thrilled to have it done, I recorded this short clip and thought I’d share it with you!

Yes, I am a spaz.  Yes, I will look for any reason to play with my little Flip Mino camera and Windows Movie Maker.  Yes, you may see my face around here from time to time (though I wouldn’t come to expect it on any sort of regular basis.

On that note, thank you to everyone who offered me kind words, both here and on Twitter, about my speech.  Public speaking is very, very difficult for me.  Social anxiety’s a bitch.  So, your encouraging words really meant a lot.  I have to give another speech on July 7th, but I’m not terribly nervous yet.  Maybe having done one is going to make the second a little easier, we’ll see.  It’s a fairly different type of speech, it’s persuasive.  I’m going to do mine on Fair Trade Chocolate, if she’ll allow it.  Crossing my fingers.

Oh, I don’t have a grade yet for my speech, but when I do I’ll edit this entry and let you know how I did… unless I bombed it and got a terrible grade, then I’m liable to skip on sharing.

UPDATE: I got my grade back.  I made a 117.5 out of a possible 125.  Unless my math sucks, that’s a 94, which is an A!!  Go me!!

…(¨`·.·´¨)
…..`·.¸.·Kristyn

Speech today.  It’s 7:30am and I’ve been up since like 4:30am, shortly after Matt left.  He had to go to work this morning to do some manager training stuff.  Melanie’s been nice enough to offer me a ride to my speech, which is at 10am.  I’m feeling so nervous, but I’m also more calm than I’ve been about these things in the past.  I’ve practiced probably ten times this morning and I can’t seem to get under 5 minutes.  Under 6, yes; under 5, afraid not.  Hopefully I won’t go over by too much, it might hurt my grade to do so.

You know how I’m feeling right now?  Have you seen those commercials for Southwest Air, “Need to get away?” You know, the ones that offer awesome travel deals for those who need to run the heck away from something.  Yeah, that’s how I feel right now.  I need to get away.  Right now, I just wish I could get it over with.  Just a few more hours.

Amazingly, I woke up the other morning thinking, “none of those people are better than me.”  Of course, the thought faded as soon as I was awake enough to wonder what the heck I was thinking.  But, it stuck with me, that thought.  Now if I could just believe it.  I think most I wouldn’t be as afraid if I had better self-esteem.  As it is, I feel like everyone who looks at me is judging me.  It makes it very hard to want to do things like this and not crawl under a rock.

Wish me luck.

…(¨`·.·´¨)
…..`·.¸.·Kristyn

Maybe I should have said something about this yesterday.  Well, something to more than my Twitter feed, that is.  I didn’t, but I did take a picture.  Some of you may know that I write for Helium on and off.  The day before yesterday I got an email from Helium saying that one of my articles, “How Twitter could replace blogging” had made it to the front page.  I went and checked it out and found that my article was near the middle of the front page.  It wasn’t the feature, but it was there!  I was pleased, but went on about my business.  Yesterday, I got another email saying that my article had again made it to the front page.  When I went to check it out, this is what I found…

Click it, you know you want to.  Go on, click it! CLICK IT!  I added the red circle.  My article was the feature on Helium’s home page!!  When I clicked open the article and read it over, I found that the editing was a little weird.  There were sentences that had been cut off, so parts didn’t make 100% sense.  Otherwise, I was quite pleased to be the feature.  It’s great exposure.

If you’re interested in seeing the article, or anything I’ve written for Helium, you can find them at: http://www.helium.com/users/48779

If you’re interested in writing for Helium, please, please, please let me know so I can send you an invitation.  I get credit for all the articles written by people I invite, but I don’t want to send random invitations because, well, that seems rude.

So yeah, there you have it, my personal triumph.  I was quite pleased with myself.

…(¨`·.·´¨)
…..`·.¸.·Kristyn