I'm Back :)

Hopefully I can start posting on a more regular basis now...I have computer access all the time (first time, ever, lol), and I do have extra time on my hands so we'll see if I'm able to keep it up or not.

Since my last post, I've moved to Florida. Pretty much anyone who's reading knows this, but oh well, I'm updating. Jay (my boyfriend of 8 months) and I now live together in Bradenton, FL.

I work for a cute little coffee/sandwich shop as a dishwasher, and I really like it :) I've got a good boss and co-workers, the pay isn't bad, and I'm progressively getting more hours each week, so I can't complain. Jay works for Del Monte, at the port where their ships bring fruit in from South America and it gets loaded onto trucks to be transported inland. He works in their check-in and out office, and likes it pretty well there. We're really happy together, and have just been enjoying our time together, which is still very precious to us after doing the long-distance relationship thing for so long.

We're not pregnant, or engaged, and don't plan to be for a while, so don't ask. Lol.

Other than that, life continues on as usual. There isn't a whole lot else new, but I'll come up with stuff to write about :) Please leave comments to help encourage me along the way!

I'm Slacking Again

I completely ruined my daily posting streak. Oh well. Random:

-Not much new to report on, I'm still working (only day shifts now, no nights! WOOHOO!!!!).

-I've been walking the dog twice a day, after missing her walks for an entire week (pure laziness), I've kept it up for quite a while now so I'm proud of myself.

-In related news, I lost ten pounds, which is always good! I'd given up on weighing myself for quite a long time, so I'm not exactly sure when this occured, but it was very much an encouragement to keep up with the exercise :)

-Official announcement, although I'm not sure who (if anyone) reads this...I'm going to see my boyfriend, Jay, in Florida, in October! I'm completely psyched. It's a much-needed vacation, and is sure to be an awesome visit. I know I haven't shared much about him, for multiple reasons, but inquire if you're curious and I'll email about it. I just don't want to post details on here. Again, many reasons.

-Getting a new cell phone! By far the nicest one I've ever had it's the Gravity 2, and I should be getting it this Wednesday or Thursday. I'm super excited.

That's pretty much it, in a nutshell! Please leave a comment if you actually read this, I want to know how many people do :) Thanks!

Short and Sweet

Tonight I'm heading down to Phoenix to hang out with friends...I got off work a little bit ago, and I'm almost done straightening my hair, but I didn't want to ruin my (tiny) streak of posting daily, so here I am. No long stories today, just a pic...

I'm going back in time today, so hang on tight...ME! at approx. two years old :)

Awesome Weather, Bad Timing

I'm trying to keep my word with how I'll supposedly be posting regularly, although today all I feel qualifies as "news" is negative. I don't like posting about negative stuff (also, it's about work, which I also try to avoid), but once in a great while I guess it's okay. I'll keep it short and sweet, since I really need to get to bed (I should've been asleep about an hour ago, but the internet eats time up like a...idk, hungry teenager or something, lol).

Today I worked with someone I'm not particularly fond of, but I won't go into detail on that...what happened is that I just learned to drive the work van on Wednesday (it's one of those huge, oversized vans that has a bus-style door with steps, along with a wheelchair lift...I can't emphasize enough how big it is). I worked 12 hours today, 8 of it with this person. To make a long story short, I got roped into driving on two separate round trips transporting ladies, and of course today turned out to be the rainiest day we've had since I've been up here. The brunt of the storm hit during the second trip, when I had two of the ladies, along with my (critical) co-worker, in the van and several things happened: the windows fogged up and the defroster took forever to clear the windshield, leaving me driving blind and scared sh*tless for several minutes; the rain (which turned into hail at one point) was coming down so hard it was very difficult to see anyways, the lightning/thunder was frighteningly close, which doesn't normally scare me but freaked me out since I was already very nervous; and said lightning had apparently struck some power lines, screwing up multiple (busy) traffic lights directly on my route, unavoidable, thus multiplying our trip time by 2 or 3x (in the worst of it, I think we got about 2 miles in half an hour). It was not the fun, stress-free day I would've liked...wouldn't have been so bad if I'd only been working 8 hours, but as that's not the case with my new "12 hours each, every Sat. and Sun." schedule (which I don't normally mind, as I enjoy the extra days off it gives me), it made life difficult, and gave me a migraine halfway through the day. I can only hope tomorrow goes better.

ANYWAYS...to end on a good note: it's cool outside!!!! Hopefully it'll stay that way now!! :)

I do have more good news for later, so please don't be discouraged by my negativity today. Sorry if it was too depressing, I just had to get it off my chest. Utter frustration.

And for today's pic, the product of my boredom/insomnia last night (drawing on myself while watching That 70's Show):

Yes, I'm alive

Hi! I know it's been forever since I've blogged, but I have my reasons. Mostly laziness, but I promise there are others (such as trying to finish writing up posts about the road trip, so that when I start posting those, they'll already be done, so I can keep up with posting them until I'm all the way through...it's been slow going, though, considering there's 19 days to write about, and each day takes up an average of one page, minimum). And really, with only like a two-reader following, it didn't seem that important. Although, maybe my following is so small because I don't post on a regular basis?? It's possible. Anyways, I really am going to try to post more regularly, regardless of how soon I finish typing up stuff about the road trip.

So, the latest at the A.T. (Ashley/Travis) Crib is a full-on conspiracy of the electric appliances. If the bread machine stopped working, or the toaster died, or something else miniscule took a turn for the worse, I could handle that. Even buying a new one, $20-30 isn't that bad. However, those things are perfectly fine, they're not the ones that decided to break. Yes, ones, with an "S" on the end. Multiple mutiny. Exactly two weeks ago yesterday, the water heater stopped working, out of the blue. It's not old, our dad just bought it last year, but it quit. I went to take a shower, and waited the usual 45-ish seconds for the water to warm up, but it never did. Five minutes later, I finally gave up and tried the kitchen faucet, just to be sure it wasn't some weird problem only affecting the shower. Not a single faucet in the house would give me anything but freezing cold water, so I gave up and took a cold shower, hoping Trav would know what to do when he got home a couple days later. He got home and had a few ideas, which made me hopeful, but he's tried multiple things and made several trips to the store for new parts (four, maybe five??)...it's still broken. Rather than spend upwards of $100-200 on a repairman, we're waiting for our dad to get home (in "a few" weeks, who knows how long that is) and we hope he'll be able to figure it out without a repairman. Anyway, while this was going on, other appliances got ideas from it, too. The water heater's in the laundry room, so we think they were conspiring together, as about a week ago, the dryer joined the revolution. We're waiting for our dad on that one as well. Luckily, the washer still functions, so now whenever we do laundry, the house looks like a giant clothesline, with garments/sheets/etc. draped over every piece of (clean) furniture possible. This also adds to the humidity in the air (already high, due to rainy weather), making the swamp cooler practically useless, so we're having fun living in a hot, humid house. There's also a refrigerator in the laundry room, which isn't our primary one but we definitely use it plenty, so hopefully it doesn't start rebelling, too.

Cold showers and air-drying clothes...it feels like the pioneer days or something. At least we still have TV and the microwave! Although I probably shouldn't say that, or I'll start jinxing things, haha.

I'll keep updating on our dire situation, and more new stuff with us, so keep checking back!

Today's pix=my new (purple) hair! Check it out...

CURLY:


STRAIGHT:

Road Trip Itinerary

This is a rough itinerary, that I just put together, based on my entries in the journal I brought (Travis and I each had one, and wrote in it daily). If not for that journal, I'd have forgotten half the things we did by now. It's a bit complicated, as I tried to peg all the major stops, but not minor ones (there's a fine line on some of them), and for each one I separated it with a comma if it was just moving around in the same general area, and a dash if we were going to a different area. Hope it's not too confusing. I'll be starting my posts about the trip soon, but as you can see, there's a lot to write about, so bear with me as far as time goes. We got back this past Sunday, but just finished organizing and loading pictures last night. So, now that I have those ready, I'm going to begin to tackle the million blog posts it's going to take to explain everything we did and everywhere we went. Enjoy!
-Day 1, 05/12- Packed, Dewey-Mom & Step Dad’s in Black Canyon City, AZ
-Day 2, 05/13- B.C.C., AZ-Matt’s in Phoenix, AZ-Aunt, Uncle, and Cousins’ in Big Bear Lake, CA
(Following are all in CA, from 05/14-05/25)
-Day 3, 05/14- B.B. Lake-New Brighton Beach Campground, N of Monterey Bay
-Day 4, 05/15- N.B.B. Campground-Near/in Monterey Bay: China Beach, Rosine’s (restaurant), Monterey Bay Aquarium-Sunset Beach Campground
-Day 5, 05/16- S.B. Campground-Near/in Monterey Bay: 17 Mile Drive-Motel in Salinas-Gino’s Pizza-back to motel
-Day 6, 05/17- Motel in Salinas-San Jose Beach-Big Sur-Pfeiffer Beach-Mcway Fall(s?)-New Brighton Beach Campground
-Day 7, 05/18- N.B.B. Campground-Near/in Santa Cruz: Fisherman’s Wharf, Boardwalk, Natural Bridges Beach-N.B.B. Campground
-Day 8, 05/19- N.B.B. Campground-nearby laundromat-Dry Gulch Campground, outside Yosemite National Park
-Day 9, 05/20- D.G. Campground-Near/in Yosemite Nat’l Park: Bridalveil Fall(s?), Gift Shop, Mist Trail (Vernal Falls), Public Showers, Bear eating on the side of the road-D.G. Campground
-Day 10, 05/21- D.G. Campground-Near/in Yosemite Nat’l Park: Museum, Ansel Adams Gallery, Lower Yosemite Falls, Mirror Lake, Bridalveil Falls, Swinging Bridge, Sentinel Bridge, Village Store-D.G. Campground
-Day 11, 05/22- D.G. Campground-Near/in Yosemite Nat’l Park: Tunnel View, Glacier Point, Mariposa Sequoia Grove-Step dad’s friends Paula and Jerry, in Fresno
-Day 12, 05/23- Lazy at Paula and Jerry’s
-Day 13, 05/24- Lazy at Paula and Jerry’s
-Day 14, 05/25- Fresno-Motel in Las Vegas, NV-motel restaurant, Treasure Island Pirate Show, Mirage Volcano, Venetian-Back to motel
-Day 15, 05/26- L.V. Motel-Ceasar’s Palace Forum Shops, Cheesecake Factory, Bellagio Botanical Garden, MGM lion(s), M&M’s World, P.F. Chang’s, Paris Shops, Eiffel Tower, Stuck in parking garage for half an hour due to Obama being there-Back to motel
-Day 16, 05/27- L.V. Motel-Whiptail Café in Springdale, UT-Quick drive through Zion National Park-Step dad’s friends Wayne and Stacy in Kanab, UT
-Day 17, 05/28- Kanab-Zion (shuttle): Emerald Pools, Weeping Rock, Court of Patriarchs, Big Bend, and last shuttle stop (I don’t remember the name), back to the car-Kanab
-Day 18, 05/29- Kanab-Bryce Canyon: stopped at a bunch of “points” looking out over canyon-Best Friends Animal Sanctuary-Kanab
-Day 19, 05/30- Kanab, UT-Aunt and Uncle’s in Flagstaff, AZ-Grandmother’s cabin outside Flagstaff, AZ
-Day 20, 05/31- Flagstaff, AZ-Dewey, AZ…HOME!

Even the Best-Laid Plans...

So remember how back in March (on the 18th, to be exact), I went into detail about our road trip? The one that Travis (my brother), Matt (his best friend), and I were going on?? Well, I think God's enjoying messing with us. I can see it now..."You silly humans think that just because you say something's going to happen like 'this, this, and this,' it'll just magically turn out that way? Ha, let me show you how little control you actually have over even the tiniest of details! Hey, St. Peter, come watch what I'm about to do!" Yea. I doubt that's quite how it's going down, but you get the picture. Here's how it's gone:
-Me, Travis, and Matt? It's now just Travis and I. Matt can't get out of work.
-Driving through Yosemite (versus around it)? Now, due to snow causing road closures on the only paved road that goes the route we need it to, we're actually going through Fresno (AFTER camping out at Yosemite for several days-so we're not actually missing the entire Yosemite experience, just the "driving through it" part).
-Taking Trav's car? Something about driving a vehicle through 4 states (that's if you count AZ) while it's got a cracked radiator and a severe oil leak just doesn't seem like a good idea. New plan: We're taking my car instead (thank goodness we had it for back-up, or we'd be SOL).
That's it (so far). Just found out about the car thing today, and seriously feel like taking bets on what'll go wrong next. Not that anything's gone seriously wrong (i.e. Travis breaking his leg-not like that would ever happen, and being the loving sister I am, I definitely wouldn't laugh about it if it did [haha, Travis...haha]), but it should be interesting to see how things end up panning out.
The good side:
-Matt not coming means we have more room in the car for luxuries (including a camp stove for cooking) that we definitely couldn't have fit in there had all three of us been going.
-The detour around Yosemite means that we'll get to stay at our stepdad's friends' house in Fresno (queue fanfare in celebration of hot showers and warm beds).
-And my car instead of Trav's...well, I haven't found the silver lining in that one, other than how happy I am that we (he) discovered this now, rather than mid-trip (the repairs are about $650 total, minimum). It saddens me, as the Zune can connect to a cassette tape to play music on the car stereo (would've worked in Trav's car), however my car only plays CD's, it doesn't have a tape deck. So that's out the window. I suggested to Trav that we could each take one headphone and keep the Zune on the console between the driver and passenger seats...but we'll probably end up just bringing a bunch of CD's (not terribly bad, but that means less space for packing other stuff, since CD's do take a lot more room than the Zune).
Anyways, there's the update on our road trip plans. I probably won't be able to blog for most of the trip (except the first night-when I won't have much to tell about yet). But believe me, when we get back (May 31st), I'll probably have at least 5 posts dedicated to it (I'm thinking one post per site we visit). So, again, brace yourselves! I'm gonna go picture crazy. :)

Zunerooni

I got a Zune a few weeks ago, and I love it! It makes me feel a little old that I don’t really know anything about MP3 players, but that’s only because I’ve never had one. I would’ve bought a cheap one long ago, if I’d had a computer to use for loading songs onto it. So I have (access to) a computer now, and I’d wanted to buy an MP3 player sometime anyway, but decided now was the time since we’re preparing for the road trip. Two weeks, two/three people (as Matt may or may not be coming), and many miles means we’ll definitely need some musical entertainment. And, since I broke Trav’s MP3 player a couple of years ago (and he hasn’t bought another one), I went on a quest for one. It was pretty easy, though, Travis said “Get a Zune,” so I did! It was more expensive than I expected, but I’m very happy with it, so I think it was worth the price. It also has several games on it (including sudoku), which is awesome. I loaded a bunch of music (emo and country, mostly), and Trav put a bunch on as well (techno, of course). We have a pretty good mixture, and tried to keep it even between stuff that I like (but Trav doesn't), stuff Trav likes (but I don't), and stuff that we both like (neutral).
Anyway, I'm so very, very excited! There's less than a week to go (we leave the 13th, and will be returning the 31st). When we get back, you'll have to brace yourselves for large doses of scenery pictures. Travis even bought an extra memory card for his digital camera, as I expect to fill up the card he already has pretty quickly. Hopefully I'll be able to keep it to a maximum of 100 pictures per day, as that will work out almost perfectly with the amount of memory his two cards have. I'm very much looking forward to it! :)
A pic to get you ready for the onslaught of photos I'll be posting:

Yosemite Falls, at Yosemite National Park

Seriously?

(seen at the grocery store)

Things I love about living up north, versus in Phx:

-Looking forward to any time spent outside rather than dreading it.
-Taking walks whenever I want.
-The way my whole body will be warm, but my face (esp. cheeks and nose) is cold…I LOVE that!
-Never hearing “high pollution advisory” on the news.
-How everything moves slower.
-The abundance of plants that aren’t dead.
-Being able to wear beanies!
-The sound of the wind in the trees (my whole life, I think my favorite place in the world has always been my grandparents’ cabin outside of Flagstaff, in the middle of the forest where all you can hear are the animals and the wind in the trees).
-How it can be raining/storming and cold, but there’s tumbleweeds rolling along the ground.
-How you can totally see a million stars in the sky at night!
-The people are nicer (drawback: this is because they're older...which also means they drive well under the speed limit on a regular basis).

That's it for now, but when I think of more, I'll let you know!