August Recap

Haven't blogged in a while, so my apologies to my co-#1 fans (you know who you two are).  Almost a whole month has passed since my lost blog so I'll just go ahead and recap what I did in August so far:

Mt. Lemmon Camping (8/4):

I went camping with Wes, Teqas, Dori, Ryan, and Ann at the Rose Canyon Lake campgrounds near the top of Mt. Lemmon in Tucson.  The name is very misleading.  Rose Canyon Lake is more of a lagoon, you can't take any boats in it nor would you want to jump in this murky, swampy water.  It's still very pretty to look at and the weather was awesome: about a 75 degree high and maybe 50 at night.  It did end up raining overnight, which is fun to listen to the drops falling onto your tent, although it usually sounds worse than it really is.  We only went camping for a night, but it was fun to just switch things up for a weekend.

IBM 2012 Golf Classic (8/10):

I'm not much of a golfer really.  In fact, I kind of really suck.  But when I heard IBM was holding a tournament in Tucson at the Ventana Canyon resort, I couldn't pass this opportunity up.  It's a beautiful course, we were getting a great rate, and it included lunch.  Several IBMers from Phoenix come to Tucson every year and they apparently play a round of golf each time their in town.  This year, they decided to invite the Tucson site to join them and it ended up being a 23-team tournament.  I played with Mike and Chris from IBM and my non-IBM friend Colleen was our 4th.  We started at 8am on a Friday (yep, nothing like taking a day off work for golf, but sucks to have to get up so damn early!) and the 23-teams took on the course for the next 5 hours.  The format of the tournament was 4-player scramble (otherwise known as "best ball"), so it's really favorable for any team just trying to have fun out there.  Having Colleen was huge by the way, since she got to tee off from the copper tees, which on average were about 90 yards closer to the pin.  I'm pretty sure we played off her drive for at least half of the holes.  Our team ended up getting a 77 on the day (par 72), which we were pretty happy with.  We didn't finish in last place at least!  The winning score for the tournament was a 60, so we know we didn't have a chance of winning going into this thing.  It was all for fun and that's exactly what we had. :)

Saguaro Lake Wakeboarding (8/11):

I felt like getting out of Tucson for a weekend and I'm really fortunate to have friends in Phoenix to visit.  Matt wanted to take me out for my birthday since he couldn't come to my Tucson celebration the following weekend, so I traveled to Phoenix to enjoy happy hour at Sandbar in Chandler with him and the next day we went wakeboarding on Doug's boat out on Saguaro Lake.  This was now the 4th time I've been wakeboarding (2nd time this year) and I am seeing some small improvements!  Honestly, I'm a slow learner and it takes me several practice attempts before I start becoming good at something.  This time out, I was able to stay up on the wakeboard and start maneuvering left and right.  Towards the end I tried to travel outside of the wake, but I never really successfully got over, I'd end up crashing shortly after.  Nonetheless it was a fun time out on the lake as always!

I will also mention that later that night in Phoenix, I hung out with Jeff and we hit up the Talking Stick casino around midnight.  Jeff and I love to gamble (we also hate it too sometimes) and we ended up playing Blackjack until 4 in the morning.  I was down for most of the night, down to my last $100 at 3 in the morning.  I was ready to just lose the rest of my money, so I kept playing and I'm glad I did!  I ended up hitting a huge streak and winning about $400 in just a matter of minutes to put me up about $95 for the night. :) We went home shortly after and I ended up getting up 2 hours later to watch the USA-Spain gold medal game, even though I was passing in and out of sleep while watching it. :P Needless to say, I was very tired when I got back home to Tucson and ended up sleeping for several hours.

Birthday (8/16):

I try not to advertise my birthday anywhere but I guess the word is out now what day it falls on.  This year I turned 29 (this just reminded me to update my Blog profile to the right).  For my birthday I went to Carrabba's for dinner and got the shrimp scampi tossed with angel hair.  It's something I had been craving for a long while.  Many of my great friends came out for my birthday, and many great friends I am fortunate to have!

This year was interesting because my friend Cesar actually has the same exact birthdate as me, he's just a year older.  So we had a co-celebration at dinner and with cake.  Afterwards I made it out to 4th avenue where several other friends made it out to celebrate with me.  I'm really happy everyone made it out!  Towards the end of the night I was super-hammered and I actually don't remember most of the last hour.

Somewhat funny story I had the next morning: I woke up with a bad hangover and couldn't find my phone anywhere.  I tried calling it with my landline but no one picked up nor did I hear it ringing in the house.  I figured I left it Mr Head the previous night and was hoping that someone turned it in.  I drove over at 11:30am but the bar was closed.  I was in a tough situation because I needed to fly out to New Mexico later that evening and couldn't risk not having a phone for the weekend.  I didn't want to go to Apple and buy another iPhone since I figured that I could ask someone in Tucson to go to Mr Head in the evening for me and look for my phone.  So while I was still out and about, so I stopped by a Cricket store and got a cheap pay-as-you-go phone for $20 and 15 days of unlimited calling for $15 (that's the minimum).    When I got back to my house and started packing for my trip, I decided to call my phone and leave a message on it in case someone found it.  When I called, I heard vibrating sounds in my room!  This time I had all the fans off and I wasn't as hungover, which is probably why I could hear it now.  Low and behold, I found my phone under my bed of all places!  How it got there I will never know, but I was super happy to have it back!  Unfortunately, my irresponsibleness cost me $35 and now I have this cheap "burner" that I'll probably never use except to make prank calls on my friends. :P

Brian and Kelly's Wedding in Albuquerque (8/18):

So as I mentioned, I flew out to New Mexico Friday evening to attend Brian and Kelly's wedding in Albuquerque.  It was really annoying getting there however.  A 1 hour flight was delayed 90 minutes before even taking off and then when we got to Albuquerque, we had to circle around for 30 minutes to let a storm clear and for other planes to get off the landing runway.  I finally got in and met up with everyone and we ended up going to a Fox and the Hound for Brian's bachelor party.  The Fox was super close to our hotel (within walking distance) and Brian didn't want a super-crazy bachelor party anyway, so a chill one was exactly what he got.  Although Jeff and I did hit the strip club at 3am until 5am lol.  It was fun, but probably not worth it...them Albuquerque strippers are not very hot. :/ I got a lap dance from the best-looking one there, but even then it was horrible because she didn't take her top off for me or anyone else at any point in the night. LAME! She claims she was 18 and just started stripping, but still, that's not a good enough excuse!

The next day, Brian and Kelly had their wedding ceremony at the BioPark Botanic Garden and it was a beautiful environment.  Great choice you two!  The entire garden was closed off for our private party, so after the ceremony we were able to look around the gardens freely, which was kind of a neat perk.  Afterwards we headed to Boston's for food and drinks and that pretty much rounded out the wedding day.  While on this trip I did get a chance to sample New Mexican cooking, which apparently utilizes green chiles as a key ingredient.  Jeff, Ashley, Brian, and I went to Cecilia's Cafe, which was featured on "Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives".  I got the firemen's burrito, which is a massive breakfast burrito that I definitely couldn't finish in one sitting.  I will say that I honestly prefer Arizona mexican over New Mexico mexican, but it was definitely fun to try that different style of mexican food!

Congratulations to Brian and Kelly!  Like so many of my friends, you two are a great couple and I'm really happy for both of you!

That's pretty much it for what I've been up to in August!  Labor Day weekend is just around the corner and will be a very busy weekend.  I already have plans everyday and night that weekend, so I hope to be able to share it with you shortly after!