We were out of town Friday into Saturday of this weekend. We got home late Saturday and then Sunday we went on this epic marathon hike on Turkey Mountain. Now, Turkey is next to Pyramid Mountain which is where we usually hike but we decided to mix it up a little. Now, we’ve hiked Turkey before but took a short hike and this time it was the world’s most glorious day out and we had nothing planned so we decided to just really go for it.

So we just picked a random path and every now and then we’d be like “You tired?” “No.” “Ok, then let’s keep going.”‘ This was cool because we got to see a lot of stuff on the mountain we’d never seen before but the downside was that when we did actually get tired we were in the middle of nowhere and still had an hour walk back to civilization. All told, the hike was a little over 4 hours, half of which was straight uphill.

We were so dead when we got home. I mean, literally, no part of my body worked and my head felt like it was going to explode. I was exhausted. But it was so worth it, we had a ton of fun. My husband picked out like 5 places on the hike he wants to go back for a picnic so I am confident we’ll be back. Hopefully next time with water.

He also wants us to join an orienteering team, which he was very good at doing when he was in high school. I am all for a scavenger hunt in the woods for fun but its usually a race and I am a slow damn beast with busted knees so I am not thrilled about that element of the plan. But I told him that as long as we do it for fun and don’t have to run, I’m all for it.

But since this is something totally random that I’m a little scared to do that I agreed to do for him, I told him that the exchange for this is that, if I join with him, he has to do either NaNoWriMo or Script Frenzy. Before you scoff that this is unreasonable, before my husband was an engineer, he was originally going to school to be a journalist so he can write and, on top of that, he has a story he’s been working on and it’s awesome. So just like I like to hike so orienteering is not that far of a stretch for me, its not an unreasonable request for him. We’ll see what happens there. He would prefer to do NaNo than Screnzy, he says, because the script format freaks him out.

So anyway, Monday we were going to see my grandparents and my father insisted we needed to leave at 9 AM. This meant that I had to get up before 7 AM so I could do my day job before we left for the day. There was some amusement where I told my mother to roll her eyes at him for me for this plan and she did so effectively that he changed it to 9:30 which was a small triumph.

It went kinda like this:
Mom: Dad wants to leave at 9 AM.
Me: Here’s what I want you to do. Walk into the room where Dad is and say, “This is a message from Hillary. Then roll your eyes as dramatically as you can and leave the room.”
*I hang up the phone. Time passes. Mom calls me back laughing hysterically.*
Mom: I gave your father your message and he gave you a half hour so its now 9:30 AM.
Me: Well, I thank you for your half an hour worth of eye rolling.
Mom: My eye sockets kinda hurt now.

Other gems? My grandmother referred to my grandfather as a “Bossy Ass.” That is my new catchphrase.

Either way, dead from the hike, I still had to get up at half past dawn.

It was very good to see my grandparents but…heavy, you know? Lots of stuff going on there and even when its a good day, it makes you worry about the big picture for everyone else and I came home that night a bit…out of it emotionally not to mention tired as hell. So I hid that evening and played a computer game for many hours which is a luxury that I haven’t really taken since college.

Of course, playing a computer game meant that I didn’t work at night like I usually do so I had this master plan of all the work I was going to do on Tuesday.

So I wake up at 10:30, sleeping in like a total slug because I can on Tuesdays. I literally stand up out of bed and, boom, the power goes out. I have breakfast, make the bed, generally putter around hoping the power will go on any minute now. It doesn’t. It is remarkable hard to do an online job with no power, let me tell you.

Finally I get out my laptop figuring surely there is something I can do without power. Of course, my laptop isn’t charged and it only has about 45 minutes of power left on it and no internet. So I decided to make this my own private version of Write or Die where I have to write as many words as possible before my laptop battery dies. This was kind of fun. I wrote 2K ish words, the exact number is on my laptop, but I outlined an entire new novel I have been thinking about lately so its good I got those ideas down if nothing else.

I also totally lucked out in that just when I was like, my laptop is going to die, I should shut it off, the power finally came back on some time after noon. So I tried to get as much work done as possible before husband came home but, of course, my mojo was all thrown off.

So then we were sitting there having dinner and discussing our theories for LOST which was going to be on at 9. We were reading our favorite theory sites and discussing and totally pumped for the new episode. So we sit down the watch it and the sound isn’t working (likely because of the morning’s power outage) but we can get the sound to kinda work so we are like whatever, let’s just watch it like this. Then, about 20 minutes into the program, the freakin’ power goes out again. Not only is it annoying to lose power, in the middle of a new episode of LOST is just freaking cruel.

We call the power company and they say it will be back on at midnight. So we decide that its a sign from God that we should go to bed early
and get all ready for bed. And, of course, once we have committed to sleep, the power comes back on at about 10 PM. Now, we can’t watch the rest of LOST until tomorrow when ABC posts the episode online and, while I was going to stay up and work, we are already in bed so we were just like, screw it, and went to sleep anyway. So an annoying evening, to say the least.

So, all in all, this week has totally messed me up. I am not only out of my routine, but I’m mentally all weird up since I don’t trust the power to not die at any moment. Also, rain is not my friend, I run on sunshine.

That said, today, I got up at 7 AM (my usual time) the power was on and it looks like the sun is coming out! Looks like today is already nearly back on track! 😉

Now I have to somehow avoid all discussion of LOST until we have an evening free to see the episode we missed.