~ that which I have lost ~

Life has been rather eventful the last several days.

On Friday, Josh, Josh's Mom, Carla, and I went to the YMCA after I got off work and played some basketball. It was quite hot outside, so some athletic recreation in the airconditioning was lovely. We played some game called "knockout" - - I'm not sure if this is a pre-existing b-ball game or if they made it up, but it was a lot of fun. I, however, was not very good at it - - that whole "hand-eye-ball-hoop coordination" thing. I did arbitrarily win - - at some point, someone decided that the next person to get a shot would be the winner - - and that was me, the winner, even though I was well behind everyone else in terms of total shots.

Afterwards, we all made the trek over to someplace south of Nampa to attend a Mormon singles dance. Occasionally, I have noted that sometimes a person can have unrealistic expectations of a particular situation. On this particular occasion, Josh's Mom was rather consumed with the notion of meeting a Mormon cowboy...specifically, a Mormon Sam Elliott. I'm not prone to bursting anyone's bubble, so I went along with the scheme as though meeting the Mormon version of Sam Elliott was a realistic endeavor. When we arrived, we were all disappointed. I am at a loss as to how to describe the scene without coming off as an ass, but since I normally come off as an ass and since I don't care if you think I'm an ass for how I felt about the attendees at the Mormon singles dance, I'll just spit it out. Ugly, everyone was butt ass ugly. Even Josh's Mom, who I have the sense is not someone to riducule someone else's appearance, pointed out an ugly person with a terrible haircut. Another problem with the dance was that it was misleading as a dance. By "dance" everyone has assumed that WE would be the ones dancing. Instead, they had two Hawaiian women dancing and everyone else watching them dance. It was odd. We hung out long enough to watch a full Hawaiian dance and for the women to introduce their children and tell everyone what ward they belong to, and then we began our escape to the car. We did sit in the car in the parking lot for several minutes just in case Sam Elliott were to swagger by. Eventually, we left and went to a motorcycle bar in Melba.

On Saturday, we all piled into the car (with the addition of Eric, so it was a very full car) and went to Blue Lake. Blue Lake has become the standard place to take out-of-towners to show off the wilderness glory of Idaho. Even though the water in the lake was freezing (indeed, we later learned that a week ago, there was still ice on the lake), Josh was determined to get his swimming on. Now, when opting to go swimming in freezing water, some people employ the tactic of jumping in the water immediately to get it over with. Not Josh. Josh prefers to slowly inch is way into the freezing water, to really prolong what would be a relatively short freezing shock to the system into about a half hour ordeal of shocking his body one inch at a time. Me, I waded in the water a bit, and then just relaxed on the shore.

One point worth noting about the trip was that I had failed to bring appropriate footwear for the quarter mile hike down to the lake and back. As you all know, that hike, while short, is decently steep and has lots of rocks and loose sand. And I hiked up and down it in my flip flops.

Incidentally, I've been wanting to update everyone on my flip flop situation. Several months ago, I mentioned that I had opted to purchase a rather expensive pair of Ugg flip flips, only because the salesperson assured me over and over that they "would last forever." You may recall that I was skeptical but gullible. So, this was back in April, which is not exactly flip flop wearing weather. For roughly one month, I had barely worn them at all. And then one warm day, I wore them to my place of employment, and at some point during the course of the day, they broke. So much for "lasting forever." Lucky for me they broke before the month was up and I was able to return them for a full refund. I then procured a much more affordable pair of flip flops that I have been wearing ragged, have held up remarkably, and that have proven to be the best pair of flops I have ever had the privilege of wearing under my feet.

It was this pair of flip flops in which I hiked over the weekend. I was very impressed with their performance as hiking flops. The only drawback to them was that after I had tromped across the various streams and they were all wet, the material under my feet became ridiculously slippery and it was a bit problemmatic to hike back up to the car in my slippery flops.

That evening, Josh, Carla, and I got really smashed and went dancing at a local club.

Posted by jennifer at 8:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)