My Epic Summer...Thus Far

So, as anyone who is following this blog (or was following this blog) can see, I haven't posted in awhile. Long story short, school kicked my butt at the end of the year and left me never wanting to formulate a coherent thought for the rest of my life. Once I came out of my school-induced coma, I hit the road for a nice little tour of the semi-midwest. In the past three weeks, I have done the following:

1. Participated in my mother's Relay for Life at Prairie Heights High School
2. Celebrated my grandfather's birthday with gut loads of pizza and ice cream
3. Seen a devastating Cubs game and survived a monsoon in the process
4. Attended my first DMB concert
5. Became Tina's B*tch at her campground behind the DMB concert- it wasn't as bad as one might think
6. Survived 4 days in Chicago with my aunts who range from conservative mennonite to completely awesome
7. Attended my cousin's Miss Indiana's Outstanding Teen Pageant
8. Rocked out at a totally beautiful wedding reception
9. Spent 8 hours in a movie theater next to the most annoying girl on the planet taking in the complete Twilight Saga
10. Spent time with my awesome family while my brother was home

As you can see, I have been quite busy and have been traveling more than I have been sitting by a computer. This blog is a catch-all for some of these events that are worth mentioning and will hopefully be followed by more frequent posts.

As any of my friends can tell you, my date book is pretty packed during the summer. Summers are reserved for spending quality time with my family and close friends that I don't see very much, and the Terrys log plenty of traveling miles. One of my favorite events of the summer thus far was traveling to Indy to take in my first ever Dave Matthews concert. My great friends Annie and Frank have an equally great group of friends that makes a weekend camping trip out of the DMB experience and John and I along with our friends Carrie and Rob decided to invite ourselves right along to enjoy the fun. Boy am I happy that we did! We had a blast! I will be the first to tell you that I am not exactly the camping type of girl. I can do it when needed, but I definitely don't strap on my tent and fishing pole every weekend to rough it with nature. For this special occasion, I thought it was worth a shot.

John and I arrived at the "campground" around 2:00 on the day of the concert. I use the term campground loosely because it was really just a bunch of tents set up on the land of some people who also happened to own horses and goats. They charged $10 a person and furnished four port-a-potties, so it definitely suited our needs. The campground happened to be owned by "Tina" whom I never had the pleasure of actually meeting, but decided that she was pretty awesome after being on her grounds for a night. Once our tents were assembled, we had to go find one of the "security" people (which were really Tina's redneck relatives wearing orange reflector vests and freely screaming at whomever they desired) in order to pay for our spot of land for the evening. The particular security gentleman that we ran into happened to be Tina's husband who hungrily took our money and strapped us with bracelets that read "Tina's Bitch" in black sharpie. Classy. He informed us that Tina was his wife and we were all her bitches. I was going to ask what that entailed but decided to keep my mouth shut and pray that Tina didn't come knocking on our tent for any reason during our luxurious stay.

Once we were paid up, we settled in to the camping circle with drinks and snacks. We were packed in very tight and I really couldn't tell where our group of friends ended and the next began. Dave makes people real friendly, I guess. Just as we started relaxing, I smelled a curious odor and immediately told John that it smelled like a skunk had wandered into the area and that I hoped that he didn't stick around all night. John promptly informed me that there was no skunk, people in the next circle were smoking pot. Huh. I guess that goes to show that I listened during sixth grade DARE and have never touched the stuff. Officer Russell would be proud.

The rest of the camping experience was pretty uneventful and super fun. Dave was awesome and I fully enjoyed my first experience. I only hope that there are more to come in the future and that I will get the hang of the whole camping thing by the next excursion. If I do decide to camp again, I can only hope that we will utilize Tina's facilities. Not only were the accommodations questionable, Tina herself moved cars with a forklift that were not parked correctly and placed them in the horse pasture. I feel bad for the owner of the white Saab covered in horse crap, but as Tina said, he shouldn't have F'in parked there. Who needs a concert when you have that kind of entertainment?

The rest of my summer details will have to wait...I can only think straight for short spurts of time in the summer and this is all I can do for tonight. John and I are headed to Vegas on Thursday to celebrate our second anniversary and I am sure there will be much to report once we return. Until then, if you see Tina, tell her I miss her...and her mad forklift skills.