Black Friday 2008

My "day" started way earlier than it needed to and ended way later than I intended it to.  I'll start from the beginning.  

The night before, on Thanksgiving, I just got out of the shower and my sister told me that we were going to the movies at 10:30 to see Twilight.  I was like…okay, let me go put some clothes on and dry my hair.  On the way to the movie theater in Lacey, Erika gave me a little background about the book because I had no idea what we were going to go see.  The movie was two plus hours so we didn't get out of there until 12:45 and got home around 1ish.  The movie was better than I thought it would be.  We got out of the car and literally passed out in bed then it seemed like 10 minutes later I heard my mom, "Valerie…Valerie…you told me you would go with me." 

It was 4:40 and I had only gotten 3 hours of sleep.  I zombied out of my bed, washed my face, brushed my hair and I was going to wear what I wore to bed.  Erika had stayed up the entire night playing WOW and went with us to town for the greediest day of the year.  We went to Walmart in Yelm first, followed by going into Lacey, waiting in line for an HOUR to pay for our stuff at Sears, went next door to Target, ate donuts at Fred Meyer while did some minor shopping (mom wanted to kill the lady in front of us at the checkout stand), got some great deals at Shopko, Erika wanted Baja Blast at Taco Bell, made our way over to the West Side to get a phone charger at the AT&T store, mom stopped into the Goodwill, we talked mom out of going to Joanne's because it was packed and we didn't want to be there for three hours, drove to the Fred Meyers in Tumwater because Erika got the last Wall*E at the one in Lacey and then finally going home and passing out for about four hours.

I got up and started making phone calls because last week me, Barlow and Nicole decided we wanted to go out the day after Thanksgiving.  We got it all situated and waited until 8:00 came around.  I got ready and went and picked up Barlow in Hawks Prairie.  We then went and got Nicole and met Megan and Chaise at Pints and Quarts.  As we walked into the pub, I heard my name, I thought to myself...I've never been here before, who the heck is calling out my name?  We look to our left and there's Kristina Fittinger and Cassie Maddux, who are really excited to see us.  It was weird to see them out at a bar because the last time I saw these guys they had just graduated high school, so in my mind they were 18-19 years old.  Brandon came about an hour later.  Barlow wanted to go dance so we crammed 6 people into my car and headed towards downtown Olympia.  We parked about a block away from Jake's.  I hate paying a cover to get into a bar…I was so use to Pullman, where there aren't any covers.  Oh well, it was just 3 bucks.  We use the bathroom, order drinks, sit at one of the tables and chatted away for a bit.  Megan got tired and her mom came and picked up her and Chaise while Barlow and Nicole hit the dance floor.  I went and got another drink, while in line; I looked down at the ground and saw that someone had dropped some money.  I figured it was a dollar; I picked it up and saw that it was a 20!  I left the bar with more money than I had come with.  We stayed until closing.   We chugged some water, walked down 4^th Avenue for a while and decided that we were hungry.  We got into the car and headed to Sharis off of Martin Way and College.  We get there and we get a booth by our hostess Bianca, she gave us crayons and placemats at the request of Brandon.  Everyone leaves to pee while I sit there looking at the menu.  They all come back and I take my turn.  When I returned, there was water and ice all over the table.  Brandon was opening his crayons and hit one of the waters with his elbow getting it all over Nicole.  Bianca cleaned it up, gave us new waters and placemats to color on.  We all ordered breakfast and talked for almost 3 hours.  We left, dropped Brandon off at his car, he followed us to drop Nicole off, went back to Rainier, dropped off Lindsay and I went home and crashed in my bed.  

Definitely an awesome night out with friends.

November 28 was the longest day ever.

Mariners 2008

My friend Starrla, who I met at WSU through Spmgt. classes, did her internship with the Seattle Mariners last year. She sat at a desk and answered phones all day long at the ticket office. She asked me one day if I wanted to go to a Mariner game before she moved to Vancouver. So she set me up with four club level tickets the day before Father's day. I took my mom, grandma Karen (she has never been to a Mariner's game ever) and Slurs. We drove up there, ate at Ivar's near the waterfront and then walked back to Safeco. We had some time to spare so we took pictures in front of one of the gates. Everyone but mom took a picture with the huge mitt. The Mariners lost that game but we did get some of those stinky garlic fries and had a great time spending it with my family and my good friend Slurs.

The Great Prank War of 2006-2007

Haha, where to start. Around January 2006, I started opening up myself to my softball team. They got to know who I was because I was shy, quiet and kept to myself most of the time. When they found out who I really was, I got invited to do a lot of things outside the softball diamond. I was invited to parties, played intramural sports and even was invited to dinners. One of those people really stood out to me the most. Nickey is one of the most coolest people I met while I was at WSU. She was fun, outspoken, smart and fun to make jokes about because she had a great sense of humor.
I had always wanted to have a prank war with someone. Nickey was the right person to do this with. Usually when I would start something, that's where it ended because they never tried to get me back. It all started with pinecones and writing obscenities on her van windows and it just progressed from there. It lasted about a year.
The prank in this photo took me a close to a year to complete. Around June, 2006, I was at home and noticed that my family drank a lot of pop, therefore...we had a lot of pop boxes laying around. I started collecting them as I saw them. During my fifth year, which pranks were really on the down-low because Nickey got herself a boyfriend and had no time to get me back. That really made me sad, but I got over it.
Dead week of 2007, I had a perfect opportunity to do this prank because I had one final to study for, so I had lots of time on my hands. It took me 104 pop boxes to cover Nickey's car with. I started earlier that day measuring and taping them together. I had Ashlee, Lizzy and Kari help me tape it to her car. We got lucky that evening at 2 a.m. because if we were off by even 10 minutes we would have gotten caught. Minutes before, Nick and Nickey had just gotten back from Jack in the Box...yikes. The prank gods were definitely on my side.
The next morning, I got a phone call from Nickey. When she first saw it, she thought there were pop boxes stacked behind her car...then she realized that that WAS her car! I was laughing hysterically over the phone. She really liked this prank even though it made her late to work. That was the last and final prank of the Nickey-Val prank war. I truly enjoyed every minute of it.