Sunday, April 27, 2014

Saturday Thoughts Vol. 4..................The Sunday Edition

Yeah I know its Sunday, but whatever. Maybe I'll just change this to Weekend Thoughts? Anywho, here's what I've been thinking about!

1. Vibes 
I have come to the conclusion that I give off very weird vibes. When I was in Flagstaff I got stitches in my neck (broken blood vessel situation, it was gross) but I had to get them removed in Portland because I got them the day before I left. After she took them out, the doctor here was like "OK now try not to get punched in the neck". Totally serious, like getting punched in the neck is something that happens to me on the reg. Then my friend's dad was in town for a couple of days, and he told to be careful of bar fights. This was also a thing in South Dakota, I drove the company truck to Montana one day and multiple people asked me if I had any warrants for my arrest out in that state.

2. Jobs 
I got a job at an athletic club in town and I'm pretty amped. Its a super elite and fancy establishment (think "country club in a city" sort of deal) so apparently my hood rat vibes did not overpower my other awesome qualities. Unfortunately, I let all of my certifications expire when I was in Hawaii, so I have to re-take the lifeguarding class. I haven't read the lifeguarding manual since I was about 18, so we'll see how this goes. Haha

3. High School 
Portland is weird. A lot of people I went to high school with live here, and I've been hanging out with them a lot. But the two that I hang out with the most are people that I didn't actually stay in touch with after high school, so its been extra weird. I saw both of them the first night I was here, and it was one of those "so........how have you been the last couple of years?" situations. Its been a lot of fun though. Also a guy I went to high school with who also lived on Oahu lives here too, so that's pretty cool.

4. Hipsters 
Hipsters. Ugh. I hate hipsters. I promise I will write an actual post in the near future going into more details about this hate, but I'm too lazy. So just take my word for it, there are a shitload of hipsters in Portland, and I am having a hard time dealing with all of them.

5. Clothing 
I am so bad at Portland. I never seem to be wearing a raincoat when its raining, or wearing pants when its cold out......its a mess. And being super underdressed is apparently my thing in this city. I've unintentionally worn sweat pants to TWO different bars, and I accidentally went to happy hour at this place called Portland City Grill wearing a hoodie and polka dot under armour running shorts. Its on like the 30th floor of a building downtown and was full of working professionals. So that was embarrassing.

Monday, April 21, 2014

Can't even find the stop for the Struggle Bus

I have a shockingly terrible sense of direction. People think I'm kidding when I say this, but its really bad. Most of the time its just little things, but occasionally I get so lost that its just too ridiculous. Today was my first time getting so lost that I almost cried in Portland, and I am going to share it with all of you! Don't you just feel so lucky? 

Today I went to visit my roommate at work for the first time. Getting to the actual place was fine, its two bus rides and you're golden. Total, it takes about half an hour. I hung out there for a little bit drinking italian sodas and discussing our very hipster Easter (originally this was going to be a post about how much I hate hipsters, but then I got lost and I decided that story was the one that needed to be told) and then around 3 pm I decided to head home. 

HOLY SHIT Y'ALL.

I have no idea what happened, but her building was like a goddamn black hole. Seriously, I was defying some laws of physics or something, because no matter what direction I tried to walk I was always going to opposite direction of the stupid Google Maps thing. Every. Single. Time. I didn't even know that was possible. I just kept walking around this stupid building, before I finally found a stop for the city car thing. Of course, I round the corner just as the fucking thing leaves. WHOMP WHOMP. I didn't feel like waiting there for the next one to come, so I decided to find another bus stop (because clearly I was so good at that). I finally got on track with the Google Maps dot, and I'm cruising, when all of a sudden it takes me to this giant tower looking thing and basically tells me to continue straight through it. I figured GM was lying to me, so I turned around and then was back at Paulina's stupid building again, and at that point I was basically convinced that I was just going to have to live there. I decided to give the tower route another shot, so I went back that way and headed to the elevator that was at the bottom. It took me up to this giant bridge, and then  Google told me that the bus stop was in the middle of a pedestrian bridge. It wasn't. In case you can't tell, Google Maps and I are in a fight right now. I continue across the bridge, and ended up in a full on residential neighborhood. At this point I had been trying to find a bus stop for almost 45 minutes, so I was very upset. I said "where the fuck am I" out loud, and because I had headphones in it was a lot louder than I thought. This homeless guy looked over at me and was like "you're on planet earth". COOL GUY, THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE HELP, I REALLY APPRECIATE IT. 

I finally found a bus stop, and the numbers of the buses matched up with the ones that Google was telling me I needed to use. Hooray! So the 17 rolls up and I get on, super amped to finally be heading home. I sit down, look at my phone, and just watch the little blue dot start moving the exact opposite direction of where I needed to be going. No joke, I almost cried. Turns out I forgot the small detail that its actually really important to know what direction you should be going. I figured I would get off at the next stop, but that took forever because the bus took me across a bridge spanning a large body of water. Unfortunate. Also unfortunate, the bus stop that I got off at appeared to be located in Sketchville, USA. After the bus left I was standing there trying to figure out where I had gone wrong with my life, when this large man just walked up next to me, grabbed a paper bag that was sitting on the ground and proceeded to chug the contents of the paper bag. That he had just picked up. Off the ground. Yup. I could see the bus stop that I needed to be at across the street, but it was a busy 4-lane road with no cross walks in sight. It felt like 400 years, but really I think it was about 5 minutes before I finally got to a cross walk. I crossed the road and found a bus stop, and finally got on the stupid 17 going in the right fucking direction. 

Before I get into the next part of the story, I think its important for everyone to know that I have a really bad habit of just full on ignoring my GPS. It'll be like "OK you need to get off at ______ stop" and I'll be like "that's cool. I'm gonna get off at this one instead. Just to make things a little bit more interesting". I have no idea why I do it, but its a thing. I also do it in cars, where I'll just randomly take the wrong exit. Anyway, back to the adventure. I'm sitting on the bus, and I vaguely hear the announcement that the next stop has a connection to the 4. My brain was like "OH! THERE IS A BUS STOP FOR THE 4 A STONE'S TOSS FROM MY HOUSE, I SHOULD TOTALLY GET OFF HERE SO I CAN GET ON THE 4". So………..I got off the bus. Turns out the connecting bus stop was actually a little bit of a walk away, and at that point I full on thought I was going to be homeless. Like oh yeah, I have a house that I pay for and has all of my stuff in it, but I can't find it so now I live on the streets. Just as I had accepted my homelessness as a fact and was trying to decide what corner I was going to live on, I finally found the stop. Seriously, I'm pretty sure I heard Jesus and all of the angels singing my praises. The best part was that it ended up being a 5 minute bus ride to get to my stop, and I didn't get lost because you can literally see my house from this bus stop. I finally got home at 4:50 pm. Yeah. It took me almost 2 hours to get home from a place that it took me 30 minutes to get to. So stupid. 

Oh, and I took this picture at one of the 47 bus stops that I went to today. It basically sums up my entire afternoon. 

Saturday, April 19, 2014

Saturday Thoughts Vol. 3

We finally got internet, so I was going to write a Saturday Thoughts that would update everyone on how Portland has been so far, but I am way too lazy. So here's something I wrote on the plane when I was coming out here. Enjoy. Also, sorry the format is so fucked, but I just copied it from Word and I am way too lazy to fix it. 



True Life: I’m not a fan of flying.  I’m on a plane right now, and to take my mind off of being 30,000 ft in the air I’m going to watch Iron Man and tell you about some of the weirder flights I’ve been on.


 Switzerland    When I was 10, my dad was living in Zurich and I went to go visit him. The day before I left, I got the worst stomach flu I have ever gotten in my life. Nobody could get ahold of my dad, so at 10 years old I flew overseas by myself puking every 30 minutes or so. The plus side was that nobody wants to sit next to the girl who’s puking her brains out, so I got the entire middle row to myself.


 Belgium  
I did a foreign exchange program in Belgium my junior year of high school, and I got in a car accident a couple of days before I left. My face got fucked up by the airbag, which made flying super uncomfortable. I had to get special permission to bring the topical medicine on board, because it was a big tube, but I had to put the medicine on my face every hour. It was so dumb, and I met my host family looking like I had just gotten my ass kicked.


 Frankfurt    
The summer before my senior year of college (OH SWEET JESUS THERE IS TURBULANCE WE ARE GOING TO DIE) I went to Europe to visit my friend who had spent the semester studying in Italy. I sat down ready to sweat through 14 hours of airtime, when the guy one seat away from me looks over and says “just to let you know, I fucking hate flying”. I just kind of sat there and was like “uhhh……well that’s a bummer”. He looks me dead in the eye and goes “I’ve already been drinking, and I’m going to drink the entire flight. Are you old enough to drink?” I had been 21 for exactly 4 days before this, so we proceeded to get hammered. I have never had so many rum and cokes in my life. This made trying to navigate through the Frankfurt airport to get through customs and catch my connecting flight to Milan super exciting.


 Coming home from Italy   The return trip from Italy was a goddamn mess. My flight from Milan to Frankfurt was scheduled to leave at 7:30 am, which meant I had to be at the airport at around 5:30 am. I didn’t know that the bus stopped going to the airport at 11:00 pm, and didn’t start again until 7:00 am. This meant that I had to spend the night at the Milan airport by myself. I didn’t want to sleep because I didn’t want my belongings stolen, so I drank my body weight in caffeinated beverages and pretty much just sat there twitching until I could board my plane and pass out. After I got to Frankfurt (sober, this time) I boarded a plane for one of the Carolinas, but I forget which. I sat next to a guy who looked like Jesus, and we drank a lot of wine and watched movies together. It was pretty magical. I arrived to whichever Carolina we were going to not very sober. Then the real fun began. The flight to Phoenix ended up getting delayed for almost 5 hours. This was because (no joke) they left the plane on the tarmac for too long and it was too hot, so they had to let it cool down. Then, in the process of cooling down the plane, they found some sort of mechanical problems. At this point, I had slept for about 2 hours in the last 30, so I was not a very happy camper. I kept going to the Starbucks, and I’m 99% sure the barista thought I was on drugs. By the time we finally got on the plane, I had basically become convinced that I was going to have to live at the airport like Tom Hanks did in that one movie nobody actually saw.


 Hawaii  Flying back to Hawaii after my knee surgery was ridiculous. My little sister was flying out to visit our dad the same day, and because I couldn’t function by myself, I had to go with her and was at the airport over 5 hours early. I just posted up in the airport cafĂ© watching Netflix with my leg propped up on my suitcase. I had hoarded my last two prescription painkillers, and I popped them as soon as I got on the flight. This young couple was sitting next to me, and I feel so bad for them because I was a mess. I watched the first 30 minutes of The Big Lebowski laughing my ass off, then passed out on the guy next to me. When I woke up I decided that I needed to ice my knee, and I spilled the ice cubes all over myself. To top it off, every time they asked me what things they should do, I couldn’t quite remember the names for anything, so I just made shit up.   




Well this was fun. I’m going to watch Iron Man now.

Monday, April 7, 2014

The best advice I ever gave.

http://mentalfloss.com/article/51919/whats-your-best-advice-college-students

Yesterday I had breakfast at Macy's (the best coffee shop on the planet) with a dear friend, and I had one of the best ego boosts ever.

We were talking, and all of a sudden she goes "you know, I normally don't think too deeply about our friendship, but I realized that you have given me some of the best advice I've ever gotten, when I asked you how to passive aggressively handle someone who is annoying you". I sort of laughed and sat there hoping she would continue, because I couldn't actually remember what advice I had given her. Luckily, she then said "I encounter a lot of stupid people at the cafe, and I just look at them like they're stupid when they're talking or only give them one word answers. Its so weird, but it makes everyone be so nice to me!!!" Hahaha I love it. That is exactly how I handle interactions with people that are annoying me and it always works.

From this conversation I learned two things:

1. Clearly I give the best advice on the planet.
2. Something you think is silly can be the best advice someone has ever gotten.

Saturday, April 5, 2014

Hannah's a Flagstaff hood rat.

Oh Flagstaff. Thank you for greeting this happy little hood rat the only way you know how, with a night of friends, Electric Kingdom, face paint, an awkward cab ride, and a slightly sketchy walk in the dark. Full on magic.

For those of you who don't know, Electric Kingdom is held at a bar in town called the Green Room on the first Friday of every month. Its full of drink specials, really loud electronic music and face paint. It also happens to be one of my favorite things in the entire world, and I was way too excited when I figured out I would be in town for it. Before heading down to EK, I met up with one of my very best friends at a party so I could meet her boyfriend. He and I are now BFFs. He's basically the male version of me, and I hope he and Lorraine get married because he is fabulous. Anyway. After the party Lorraine dropped Alex and I off at the Green Room, and then she headed home.

In his desire to impress his lady friend's bestie (me), Alex paid for everything. Cover charge, coat check, drinks, he even tipped the face painters. This detail will be very important later on in this story. After grabbing something to drink, our first stop was the face paint. In all the times I've been to EK, I have never been disappointed with the artists. I always get a dinosaur, and it is always the coolest thing in the entire world. Not so much last night. The chick started painting on my arm, and I was like "as long as the dinosaur has sharp teeth, I'm good". She stops painting and goes "well I was going to do a brontosaurus, but we can add some teeth". Bitch are you kidding me. For starters, a brontosaurus never actually existed. Second, you can't just be adding sharp teeth to everything. So the dinosaur ended up being a hot mess. One person thought it was a fish, another person thought it was a bird…….Lord have mercy it was terrible. I don't care how cool your space dress was, face paint lady, you should be ashamed. There was even a picture of a dinosaur on the hat I was wearing, so she literally had no excuse. Alex decided that he wanted to be Captain America, and his face paint was hilarious. Electric Kingdom also has a photo area, so you best believe a lot of pictures were taken. I also got a picture with one of my other homies, and I am way too excited for those babies to be uploaded to Facebook.

Then we went to the dance floor, and it was a hoot. We are terrible dancers, and Alex's dance lessons involved him telling me to "dance like a basketball player. Dribble, dribble, dribble, SHOOT!!!" There was also a lot of forceful backing up into unsuspecting dancers, which I don't think they appreciated very much, but long hair don't care. Alex then decided that he needed to set me up with someone, and I mentioned that a guy from the party earlier that night was pretty cute. An attempt was made to get him to EK, but the line was very long and it didn't work out. He did say that I was cute though, so that was a bit of an ego boost. Around 1:00 am, I was so full of PBR I was about to explode, and I decided to call it a night.

Its been a hot second since I had to get a cab in Flagstaff, and I forgot how big of a pain in the ass it is. I  finally flagged one down, and was a happy camper. I get a little paranoid about cabs because one time I got locked in one in Paris because my friend and I didn't have enough money, so I always check to make sure I have the dollars as soon as I get in. So I'm looking through my clutch and……………..NO DEBIT CARD, NO CASH. Whomp whomp. Yeah, turns out I left it at home, so thank goodness Alex had paid for everything. I had been in the cab for about 2 minutes when I made this discovery, and I was like "uhhhhh………….so it turns out I don't have my debit card. If you want to let me out I can walk" (its not a terrible walk to my mom's, but it's not my favorite, and it was cold outside). Luckily for me, I had the nicest cab driver in the entire world, and he agreed to drop me off at the top of Cherry Hill. It was about a 10 minute walk from where the cab stopped to my mom's, but I made it in 5 because I am scared of the dark so I pretty much ran the entire way.

And that was my first night back home. Flagstaff, I so heart you.



Thursday, April 3, 2014

South Dakota

I fly back to Arizona tomorrow, and because packing is one of the things I hate most in the world, I have decided to take a break and reflect on the three months I have spent in the Mount Rushmore State.

First, I have been sort of unfair to the state of South Dakota. If you have talked to me at all while I've been here, you have probably heard me say something along the lines of "I HATE THIS STATE ITS REALLY COLD AND I'M REALLY COLD AND THERE'S NO BEACH AND I HATE IT AND ITS DUMB AND I HATE IT". For that, I would like to apologize. It was not South Dakota's fault that I was in such a bad mood. When I first got here, I was angrier than I have ever been in my entire life. I was so mad about how Hawaii turned out, and since I didn't have anyone but myself to blame, I took out all of my anger on South Dakota as a whole. I refused to make friends, and was basically the angriest person on the planet. It was not good, and I want everyone to know that South Dakota does have its good points. Summers here are beautiful, and the motorcycle rally certainly something to be seen.

Second, part of me is actually kind of glad that I came here. The time of year was absolute shit, but coming here was one of the best things that could have happened for the relationship that I have with my dad. We've never been very close, and before this I hadn't seen him in over a year. Neither of us are very good at talking on the phone, so it was a year and a half of talking about the classes he was teaching and the weather. I was pretty surprised when he asked me to come out here, but I'm glad that he did. We have gotten a lot closer, and tonight when he gave me the last hug goodbye (my grandma is driving me to the airport) he was like "Hannah, you'll be OK". It sounds weird, but that is a huge step for us. I was also able to get a lot closer to my dad's wife and her parents, and that has been really nice.

I'm bad at ending things and I really need to finish packing, so I'll leave you with this: South Dakota was not the worst thing that could have happened to me. Surprised? Me too.