an addendum...

So let me just continue the story of Sunday's post...

I'm at work on Monday, it's a little after three, and the kids are trickling in as their different schools get out, showing up for the afterschool program. Mike and I are greeting them all, asking how school went, how much homework they have, blah blah blah. Mike begins the following conversation with first-grader J:

Mike: So J, how was your weekend?

J: Awesome! I got to go to the place with the skateborders and bikes and motorcycles and they flipped and stuff!!

Mike: You did?! ... Hey Christina, so J made it to go to XGames thing ... how come you didn't again?

Me: What?! Where did you go, J?

J: To the place with the bikes and the skateboards and the motorcycles and they flipped!

Me: OOOhh!! I'm jealous. Who did you see?

J: Everybody.

Me: Everybody? Like Tony Hawk? Was he there?

J: Yes

D (third-grader, overhearing the conversation): I know what you're going to say next, you're going to say "why didn't you get Tony Hawk's autograph for me?"

Me: Hey J, why didn't you get Tony Hawk's autograph for me?

D: See! I'm psychic.

J: I don't know. (he goes back to his math homework)

End Scene

Of course, I learned two things from this experience:

1) Ironic Humor doesn't meet with much success on 1st and 3rd graders...

2) Apparently I should be checking with these kids before I make my weekend plans...

no!!!

So today, after church, Priscilla and I stopped by Chipotle, since I was craving a veggie fajita burrito. Mmmmmm, tasty. At Chipotle, I picked up a copy of the Dallas Observer -- a weekly publication with a section telling all of the entertainment events (concerts, plays, movies, etc) going on in the city. Unfortunately, I didn't bother to open in until about 6 or 7 this evening. I spent the afternoon grocery shopping, trying to figure out how to get a replacement cell phone, washing the minivan, sorting papers and dusting in my room, doing the dishes -- stuff like that (crazy, I know!!) When I finally remembered I had picked up the Observer, and started flipping through it, I made a terrible discovery. Apparently the LG Action Sports World Championship was this weekend in Dallas, a matter of miles from my house. And the final session was tonight (Sunday), starting at 5 ... about an hour after I discovered it was happening. No!!! I'm still trying to recover from my shock and disappointment -- by watching Home Makeover ... you know, those uplifting human compassion stories can really pull you outta a funk (hopefully). If not, maybe laughing at the desperate housewives will help. Anyway, for those of you who don't realize just how big a deal it is for me to be this close to the Action Sports World Championship, and yet MISS IT ... go back to my August post after watching the X Games. I'm obsessed.

I love southwest!!

...the airline, not the geographical region!! Well, maybe I could love the geographical region also, but I can't say for certain, because I've never really been there. But that may very well be all about to change. Why, you ask? Because southwestern airline just expanded all of their services (in particular, there are now many more flights to many new destinations out of Love Field airport, roughly 15 minutes from where I'm living), and all their flights are offered at incredibly affordable -- no, downright CHEAP prices. Well, the CHEAP is probably just because of this 2 day sale I happened to notice right in the nick of time, which means .... drumroll ... I'LL BE IN NYC FOR NEW YEAR'S EVE!!!! That's right, it's official. There had been some discussion amongst my old roommates and other close friends and I as to where we might possibly be able to get together for the holidays. We had it narrowed down to Chicago or New York. Since Chicago would have been closer for most people, and therefore perhaps a bit more affordable, New York was, sadly, was starting to look like merely a pipe dream. Until I discovered Southwest's sale, and the $36 plane tickets from Chicago to Long Island!! (I'm taking the $1 MegaBus from Detroit to Chicago to fly out with Anne and Baby). New York for less than $100!!! I still can't believe it!! So my holiday plans are (almost) set. But suffice it to say, come January 1st, 2007 ... I'll be in Times Square, someplace I've always wanted to spend New Year's, along with some of my best friends, and thousands of others!!

In other news, the San Antonio/Trinity college trip was a blast! I have some pictures on my camera, and Sheenna has some great pictures on hers, and eventually they will end up here, as will more details of the day. But for now, the gritty details: we had 8 highschool students who went, they were given lots of information and a great tour at Trinity, I saw a (dead) armadillo, the Alamo, and the RiverWalk (a full load of all-that-is-Texan), and we even stopped an Southwestern on the way home because Sheenna's old volleyball team from Hendrix University was playing in a tournament there, and she wanted to see her coach. Turns out DePauw was playing in that tournament as well, so I think I sufficiently shocked the ...poo outta a friend from AXO by randomly showing up at the end of her volleyball match all the way in Texas. It was great to see her, though, if even for all of a 95 seconds (Christina Dickerson).

And oh yes, one other noteworthy happening since my last post. It's been a couple of weeks ago now, but I met up with a couple, friends of our family, originally from Michigan, who moved to Dallas about 3 years ago. Actually, Rev. Gordon Nusz was the pastor who officiated(right word?) at my parents wedding, and who baptised me. He and his wife took me out for dinner, the Thursday before the San Antonio trip. When they picked me up, they didn't tell me where we were going. Halfway to downtown Dallas, they asked me if I was afraid of heights... Of course, after that, I knew immediately where we were going -- Reunion Tower. If anyone has ever seen a picture of the Dallas skyline, it's this great big ball. Yes, you heard (read) me. A ball on the skyline, all lit up, bright and glowing at night. In the ball there is a restaraunt. The floor layout is set up in a giant circle, with tables all along the circumfrence of the outter walls, which are all glass -- so I guess they're not walls at all, but windows. The floor rotates, so in the course of an hour, as you're eating, you can lookout over the city in every direction. First time I drove through Dallas with Priscilla, she pointed it out to me (well, the ball's a little hard to miss) and told me it was a restaraunt. From then on, I thought it would be cool to see it and eat there, but never actually though I'd get to -- or at least not so soon. But it was really nice. And not just the restaraunt, but reconnecting with the Nuszs as well. They invited me to come spend a weekend with them whenever I'd like, and asked if I would ever want to speak to the youth at their church about the US-2 program. So hopefully all of that will be able to happen before too long...

So that's about it for now.


sorry, stole this pic from the web. in the interest of not getting sued or whatever, it's from http://users2.ev1.net/~egrayfox/cyber/cyberlinks.html

Oops!!

So this past weekend I was fully prepared to post a blog with pictures of my apartment, along with some pictures and from the Plano balloon festival that I went to last Sunday (or rather, two Sundays ago, now that it's Monday). But sadly, on Sunday, when I logged onto my blog site, grabbed my digital camera, and then attempted to find the cord to attatch my camera to my computer and upload the pictures ... the cord was nowhere to be found!! Sad, sad day. I guess I left in Michigan, so pictures will have to wait until a) someone at home finds my cord and mails it to me, or 2) (and let's be honest -- this is the more likely option!) I go home next month for Thanksgiving and find the cord myself.

So pictures are going to have to wait even longer!!

Speaking of going home for Thanksgiving, I have my travel plans all worked out, tickets purchased, the whole nine yards!! Very excited about that, but of course I couldn't do it the easy way. Oh no, it's me -- so that means I managed to plan for myself some kind of adventure. In looking up plane tickets online (haha, one of my favorite pasttimes -- even if I have nowhere to go, or no money to buy the tickets, I like to look for good prices and pretend ... :D) I discovered that it was nearly $150 cheaper for me to fly into Chicago rather than Detroit. And, as I learned last summer, Amtrak has some fairly inexpensive train tickets to get me from Chicago to Ann Arbor. So here is the adventure I have planned: on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, I'm planning for a funfilled (ha!) day of traveling ... flying from Dallas to Chicago, rushing to the bus station, hopping on a Metra bus to take me from the airport to Union Station, then catching a 5 hour train ride back to Ann Arbor -- which is now so convieniently close to my family's new home! After Thansgiving, I'm being a bit smarter, and spreading my travel time out. I'm taking the train back to Chicago Saturday evening, meeting up with Anne Forde, one of my best friends and roommates from college, spending Sunday with her in Chicago, and flying back to Dallas early Monday morning. Yeehaw!! (to quote the Texans -- and yes, I actually did hear someone do that, although it was at a comedy show, and he was just trying to be funny... who does that?!!) So there you have it. Me and another one of my adventures. And again, it's happening around Thanksgiving. That's apparently a good holiday for me. Three years ago I went to St. Louis, 2 years ago I split the holiday between NYC and LA(Burbank), last year I actually made it home... and I think that's when the massive pumpkin-pie-baking-extravaganza was taking place, organized by my little brother Joel, the future restraunteer ... Ah, such good memories all around!! Allright, enough of that. So here's to another good week, and the weekend roadtrip to San Antonio fast approaching!!