Relay for Life, Sno-Cones, and Single Adult Conferences

This weekend had two main events. First off, the Stake Single Adult conference. I showed up there for dinner on Saturday about 6:30. But it really wasn't as good as I hoped. I mean, there was good food, yes, but the only one there to talk to was Trudy, and even though she's always good for conversation, I just couldn't imagine spending the whole evening with just one person that I know. There were other people to meet, I guess. But it was such a small turnout, and no one really peaked my interest. So I grabbed a schedule of today's event, and went up to Orem High for the Relay for Life.

Now, FYI, this is a project that a girl named Krista in our ward (er, former ward), who had cancer a few years back, is in charge of. And thus, she's made a lot of other people in our ward in charge of various things. So it's been advertised for the last five months straight. The point of the whole thing is to get people to donate money to Cancer research by having them pledge a certain amount of money for every lap your team runs. And then your team runs and runs all night long—for like 20 or so hours. Our ward had two different teams: a competitive team, that is actually trying to beat other teams, and a non-competitive team that just walks or jogs or whatever it wants. The key is to just keep going all night.

I've never been much of a runner, so I didn't sign up for this thing, which is something that I feel kind of guilty about now, because they really needed some runners in the wee hours of the morning, and I couldn't jump on because I didn't sign up. Actually, I ran a few laps for them anyways—in sandals, which was a stupid thing to do to my shins. But I was mostly here for the social factor, and the fact that they wanted to use my projector to show a movie in the middle of the night. When I got there, it was just getting dark, and they stopped the relay for half an hour to do this ceremony with a talk and a bunch of candles lit up and stuff. At this point, things already looked bad for our competitive team. There was one team that was obviously better than us, with lots of long distance runners, and to make up for this Patrick and Megan decided to do wind sprints. This burned Patrick out way too quickly and he was cramping up. On top of that, it made the other team mad and they just started running harder. In the meantime, I distracted myself with a lot of Frisbee playing. Lori and I threw for a while and I taught her how to throw a forehand. We also flew a kite for a while. Then I went off and joined a very laid-back Frisbee game, while a lot of people entertained themselves with really bad karaoke. This lasted until midnight, when we started the movie down at our team's campsite (which, by the way, was fantastically decorated as a tropical island—apparently there's some decorating contest, and apparently our team was robbed on account of some sort of politics). A number of people watched at first, but by the end, everybody had left to socialize or sleep. Let's see...who was there? Kristen and Andy (the two of whom stayed together pretty much all night—funny thing was Andy walked around the track with his accordion like at 4:00 in the morning, waking everybody up). Liz, Lori, Michele, Shanta, Melinda, the other Liz, Patrick, Megan (Erin's in D.C. for an IHS seminar—I want to go :( ), Dave, Tony, Mike (for a little while, of course not running). Lots of other people showed up as well, like Trudy in the morning, walking with her dog (actually, I have some cute video of she and her dog sliding down the giant inflatable slide). People just came and went throughout the night. I took Patrick home about 2:00, because he couldn't find his keys, and I went to sleep myself. Then I came back about 8:30 in the morning, mostly to pick up my things. But I ended up doing some laps, as I said, in sandals. Everyone was dead tired. For example Kristen, who had gone home around 6:00, somehow felt guilty about leaving, and came back to run some more. I felt guilty about leaving them as well, but it was Frisbee time. So you see, I had to leave. Anyways, they finished in second place, 25 laps behind the first place team.

After Ultimate this afternoon I did something a little bold. You see, there's this girl named Laura who plays with us. I guess she's been gone, because I hadn't seen her in a while. But I do remember she's tried to talk to me in the past, and then the last few times at pickup I've been looking at her and thinking she's kind of cute. I like her hair (what is it about me and thick, long, black, curly hair). And she's a pretty good athlete. So when I noticed her lingering around after pickup today, I decided to ask her out for sno-cones. I did this discreetly, of course. Don't want to upset the social balance of us Frisbee players :). Her car was parked next to mine, so as we were getting in our cars to leave, I asked her if she wanted sno-cones. But it was kind of a hasty thing, and as soon as I said this I started having a sneaking suspicion that maybe she's married. I mean, I honestly didn't know. It would have been embarrassing. So I was worrying about this as she's following me in her car. Also, I had no idea where a sno-cone place was. Fortunately the one right by King Henry was open, so we went there. And through a series of indirect questions I determined that no, she wasn't married, and that yes, she's quite attractive. She's from Iowa, but doesn't know Mark, so I'm thinking they're from different parts or something. Only problem is she's young. I don't know how young, but I'm thinking from the fact she's a senior, she's probably 21 right now. Hmmm. She intrigues me though. Maybe I'll have to ask her out.

From there, I rushed home, showered, and headed off to the stake single adult conference. I attended two sessions—one on developing workout routine, and another on dance. The dance one is what I was really looking forward to. It was supposed to be ballroom dance. But the instructor decided to do country dance instead, on account of the fact that 1) they're similar and 2) nobody around here does ballroom socially—it's all country. So I was a little disappointed, but it was still fun. I think I figured a few things out. Like twirling and stuff. But I've got a long ways to go before I can actually feel comfortable leading someone out on the dance floor. One really disturbing thing was when we started doing some country dance routines to "Men in Black." It just didn't seem right.

Anyways, from there we went over to Kristen's for a dinner she was throwing. It was a blast. Basically all the same faces from the Relay from Life, so most everyone was exhausted. This made the partying all the more hilarious. Melinda can be a riot—I didn't know this before. The food was great. Chicken Parmesan. I supplied the chicken, they cooked it. I figure that's a pretty good deal. And then we watched "The Kid." Actually, Melinda, Megan, and I lobbied hard for "Life is Beautiful." But we were outvoted. I did end up liking "The Kid" more than I was expecting, though. It had a pretty high cuteness factor. The hilarious moment of the night came when Kristen walked into the room and Candace quickly told Andy to cuddle with her. Kristen totally freaked out. Candace really knows how to push her sister's buttons.

Posted June 28, 2003 (11:54 PM) | Comments (1)