Extremely long weekend

I haven't blogged much about what I've been up to the past, er, month or so, but just last weekend will require a whole blog post to itself. A whole...long...blog post.

The homeschool conference was Thursday through Saturday and there were several things I wanted to go to there, plus Mom and Dad and Colin actually ended up going this year too. I think Colin was a little disappointed in the conference; I'm not really quite sure what he expected, but he seemed a bit surprised about what it was. We all went two years ago, but apparently it was somehow much more exciting that year.

I also got to meet Lizzie and Sarah from The Random Digressors! We've been online friends for...what, two years or so? and finally got to meet in person, so that was fun! We went out for supper together Thursday evening. (I'm obviously terribly attached to my computer...and phone...and camera...)

 












Thursday night at the conference was the teen and alumni dance, which I went to last year and enjoyed despite the fact that I was older than a lot of the kids there. This year I think I was older than most of the kids there even though they split it up so that there was nobody younger than fifteen in that group. I don't have any problem hanging out with any age group, but it wasn't a whole lot of fun having hardly anyone my age to dance with. Plus I think I slightly freaked out a seventeen year old when I told him my age. We were talking some and I asked how old he was, because I thought maybe he was a little older.
Him: *cheerfully* "I'm seventeen"
Me: "Oh, I'm twenty..."
Him: *awkward silence* "Oh...! I see..." *awkward silence resumes until I get a new partner*

Um, okay then. Well, I complain about people saying I'm young, but that just made me feel old and creepy. :D Sheesh, only a three year difference (and I usually get along well with anyone younger than me!) but apparently this guy had a problem with that. At any rate, it didn't improve my feeling that I was older than just about everybody there and didn't exactly belong.

The dance was okay, but nobody ever really got a chance to figure out what they were supposed to be doing, so it was all a bit chaotic and not really in a fun way, at least not for me. It was supposed to be line dancing and swing dancing, but my friends who have gone swing dancing before said it wasn't the usual type, and that I need to try real swing dancing sometime. :D Comparing notes later, my we came to the conclusion that we had all three been thinking "This is making my legs hurt and isn't really that fun...why am I doing this?" So, no dance next year, I think.

What amused me was that after dancing, standing around talking, taking my friends home (Laura to the house she was house-sitting and her little brother back to their house), I didn't get home myself until nearly midnight I think. Whoo, I was out late after a....homeschool conference? Isn't that supposed to be all conservative and sedate, etc.? Well, maybe not...homeschoolers, ya know...unpredictable.

Friday I went to several sessions, bought books in the bookfair, and went to the talent show in the evening. Decided once again that I do not understand worship/liturgical dance at all, and that the videographers they had taping the show were going to have a very cheesy finished product if it looked like it did on the screens. :P I was lucky to be sitting by Laura's younger brother though, so we were able to make faces at each other about the acts that were...sarcasm-inducing, shall we say? Nah, there were some really good ones too. Some little kids who played the piano wonderfully, a group of girls who did fancy jump-rope tricks, and some guys who played guitar.

Saturday was busy: I went to one session with my brother, walked around the bookfair with the rest of my family, got lunch on the way home, got home, changed clothes, turned around and went back to meet up with Laura for the graduation. Our friend Lauren was graduating, as was Lizzie. Anyway, we sat through that and it was very, very long! It was amazing how many people were graduating, and that was only half of the group in that room because they divided it up. Then we all squished into the crowd in the hall afterward and took photos.

After the graduation Laura and I met up with her brothers and a group of college students/alumni that they hang out with and we had supper at Wendy's (I ate entirely too much fast food this past weekend. Bleah.) then went and hung out at Laura's house for a while.
One of the girls who was there is an osteopathic medicine student and she was able to do something to my neck/shoulder to make it feel a whole lot better. I'm not sure what the technical term is, but she moved my arm so that the muscles could go back to where they were supposed to be, and held it there long enough for them to relax. My back felt great after that! Laura was a little worried though...she walked in and decided it looked more like I was being tortured. "Ahh, why did I ask my friend to come over with all of you here?! Maybe that was a bad idea!" I assured her that Kim was by no means torturing me and that I was perfectly fine. :D

After we relaxed for a while and drank tea we went to play ultimate frisbee by the light of parking lot lights at Reynolda Gardens. The frisbees had lights in them too, like these: LED discs (maybe they weren't those exact ones, but something similar.) Pretty awesome!

Now, I enjoy throwing frisbees and ultimate frisbee even though I'm not very good at it, so I was having fun until I reached up (to actually catch one, surprise, surprise) and it hit my fingernails instead, bending my right ring finger fingernail back about a 1/4 inch. Not fun. At all. So after yelling in pain as it hit, and trying not to use any very bad language, I managed to tell everybody what had happened and a couple people took charge since I couldn't think straight to know what to do. Oh, and since the usual male reaction to injuries seems to be "SOMEONE'S BLEEDING?! Let me see!" several of the guys had to see my finger. :D

Stop reading if you get grossed out easily......but Laura had to bend my fingernail back for me. It hadn't broken, just bent backwards and stayed there, and there was no way I could make myself endure the pain and push it back myself. Thank goodness she's not grossed out by stuff like that. I'd been fine up until that point (I mean, apart from being in pain and bleeding!), but after that I started feeling faint. I don't pass out right away from a painful injury, but if it keeps up it's too much for me. So I sat down in the grass with my head down while Laura and our friend Rachael went to find something to wrap my finger with. Anyway, after all that I was still feeling sick and light-headed, so I didn't think I could drive home. So someone helped me to the car and Rachael and Laura took me home, although once I got sitting down I was starting to feel a little bit better. Anyway, they were all so nice about it, but I hated to ruin the game and all. Last thing I wanted was to be the drama queen getting injured and passing out. Ugh, me and my freak hand injuries. A broken finger from volleyball and now this. Yet I've played volleyball and ultimate both several times without injury, so it's not that I can't play sports or something.

So that was Saturday, I got home late, Sunday was church, a nap in the afternoon, and then Monday I pretty much sat around all day. Well, no, I made waffles for breakfast and brownies sometime in the afternoon, but other than that I think I sat around editing photos from the past few weeks. Not, however, 365 photos, because I've sadly stalled on that. I may start up again the beginning of next month, but I'm not sure. I hate to not finish that, but it seems like I've been busy with lots of little things and had hardly even taken any photos at all until the past few weeks.

To top it all off I woke up Tuesday morning a half hour after my alarm was set for, and had to rush to get ready for work, sniffling and sneezing multiple times in the process. At some point last weekend I managed to pick up a nice cold, so now I have an annoying summer cold. :D *cough, cough*

And that, was last weekend. All in all an awesome weekend.