My Blog Brings All the Boys to the Yard

Anyone who works anywhere in the Hospitality industry will tell you that our vacation time is different than yours.

When you're gearing up to head back to school or work, riding high on the memories of sweet summer nights, family vacation, ball games, picnics, and that awesome trip to wherever it is you went, we're all rejoicing because now it's our turn.

Sept. 1 is a little bit like our New Year. It's a time to breathe and relax, to evaluate how the summer went and to have a little bit of respite before starting to gear up for next summer.

It's also the time to reboot our lives a little. We let ourselves get away with whatever during the summer. The hours are long and you gotta do what it takes to survive.

But now it's real life again and it's funny to see everyone ease back into routines and pick up the good habits that we worked so hard to form in the first place and somehow got lost along the way.

For some of my friends, that's going to the gym or getting up early to have some quiet time.

For me, that's reading, journalling, and, most importantly, blogging.

I'm back to my blog. It kind of defeats the purpose of the blog if I have to force myself to do it. So I'm not going to say I'm going to write on it every day or anything, but I am going to write on it more. Because I like to.

But before I get to it, I want you to understand what this blog is going to be about. I know it's been a little fuzzy for the last little while, so I'm going to get back to the basics of what my blog is. And then you can decide whether or not you want to read it.

Here are 10 things that my blog is NOT (nor will ever be, I promise):

1) A blog about babies.

2) A blog about cooking.

3) A blog about interior design.

4) A blog about Do-It-Yourself projects.

5) A blog about photography.

6) A blog about my inspirational world-view.

7) A blog about fashion.

8) A blog about sports.

9) A blog about any combination of the things above.

10) Really, a blog about any specific subject.

I subscribe to blogs about all of these things. And I like them. But I'm not going to write about them.

Here are 10 things that my blog is (and hopefully always will be):

1) A blog about things that I find funny.

2) A blog about TV shows that I find ridiculous.

3) A blog about life in my weird little corner of the world.

4) A blog about the occasional thing that makes me mad.

5) A blog about books that I love.

6) A blog about music that I play over and over on repeat.

7) A blog with ridiculous title posts. (See above.)

8) A blog about the job that I wake up wanting to go to every day.

9) A blog about how I live my life and how I hope to live my life.

10) Really, a blog about me. All about me.

I may be a raging narcissist. Or it might be that the only thing I really know about in this world is myself, but I'm going to be continuing to write about my life and how I see it, and that's about it.

I will attempt to be funny along the way. It might not work.

But if you like me, hopefully you'll enjoy.

So Long Sweet Summer (Once Again)

This week marked the unofficial end of our summer season here at Lost Canyon.

Praise the Lord: it's over.

Praise the Lord: it was good.

Here's the thing about sticking something out for more than a year: it gets easier. Because you figure out what you're doing. And you do the same thing again, but better.

It's pretty great.

And I don't remotely know how to recap it all for you, so I'll just caption some pictures that pretty much say it all.

First Session: Life is awesome and YL summer is in full gear. My job includes teaching the high school girls in the picture below how to clean things and dressing up with them in ridiculous costumes in order to make cleaning things fun. I'm in the parrot costume.

The weather is like this, pretty much always. Except ignore those clouds because they don't really happen here.

Once a week, there's a cabin clean-up competition and we award a prize to the cleanest cabin. Bribes are allowed. The bribes consist of pretty much this amount of candy every week.

Session Two: We got a little tired. This is Susie, Debbie, and Abigail (left to right) at the session start meeting. My instruction for this photo was "accurately represent how you feel about the fact that Session Two starts right now." I'm going to let you guess which two people in this picture work for me and which one works in the kitchen.

I did find some time to relax. When I did, it consisted of this:

4th of July: Capernaum (YL for kids with special needs) Week at Lost Canyon. We had a parade. It was awesome. See this post for video.

I also went to the Williams Parade. Which featured Lady Liberty and Uncle Sam. I love this town.

Also there: this cute baby. Whom I love.

And this one, who was really focused on his snow cone. And whom I also love. (This is before he ditched us to sit by himself on a curb.)

This summer was so awesome that I actually got to take a week off from working at Young Life camp to... take kids to Young Life camp! Yep, I got to hang out with these kids for a week at Woodleaf. They're real fun.

I spent the week laughing a lot like this:

And getting caked in head-to-toe mud like this:

And swinging in trees like this (yes, I'm a grown-up):

After that awesome week, I came back to work where I sometimes find things like this drawn on the bottom of Lost and Found shoes. High school kids are funny (and inappropriate).

And now summer has ended, so I get to do things like play in giant birthday softball games with my friends. Again, awesome.

So basically, I spent my summer hanging out with high school kids. And acting like a high school kid. And being awesome.

Such is my life.

So Close

At the end of this week, the summer craziness of Lost Canyon is ending. I will be writing a celebratory post all about it. And I'm going to get serious about writing on my blog again. I promise.

In the meantime, I just spent half of the $16 I have left in my checking account on James Vincent McMorrow's album. And I don't regret it at all.

(On a related note, my life choices make me really happy. Because I make no money, have a job I love, and can buy music even when I shouldn't completely guilt-free. It's pretty awesome.)

Song(s) of the Day: Old Dark Machine, Sparrow and the Wolf, Follow You Down to the Red Oak Tree, and Red Dust by James Vincent McMorrow (courtesy of NPR's Tiny Desk Concert Series which I love. A lot.)

Life.

I slept until noon today. Which was glorious and much needed.

And then I went to the coffee shop for 2 hours, where I was planning to post on my blog but ended up getting distracted by facebook and the 12 separate people who came in that I know and want to catch up with.

Such is life in a small town.

And now I'm a little late to the "team leader meeting" I'm having with my Area Director/friend Miriam and Wyld Life team leader/friend Christin. It will involve sangria.

Such is life when you're awesome.

So rather than a long post, I'll just tide you all over with my new musical obsession. Enjoy.

Song of the Day: Down in the Valley by The Head and the Heart

Bonus Song of the Day: Rivers and Roads by The Head and the Heart