Mad Men, golf and Instagram.

When I woke up this morning at 5 a.m., the first thing I did was hit my alarm clock. Four times.

At 5:40 a.m., when I was finally up and peeing, I made a goal — do not read anything at all about last night’s season finale of Mad Men.

I failed before lunch.

Actually, if you count the Ghirardelli Sea Salt Soiree I at my desk first thing this morning as breakfast, then I think I technically failed during breakfast.

Sigh.

The show is amazing though and I’m fully confident that I will still have immense pleasure from watching it OnDemand tonight, even though I know that (spoiler alert) Don will run into Peggy at a theater.

I would have watched it live, but a. I only pay for basic cable, so I can’t watch AMC live, only OnDemand and b. I was too exhausted from my trying to beat my pastor (who has a master’s degree in the bible or God or something) at Bible Trivia and then trying to hit get my golf club to connect to golf balls at the driving range by my church during our first Youth Summer Sunday Night Golf Outing.

Considering my pastor is well, a pastor, I think my bible trivia team held its own. If only I had remember that  Bathsheba was Solomon’s mom. Oh well. Next time I guess.

As for the golf stuff, one of the youth gave me a tip to line up my left foot with the golf while using the driver, and I have to admit, it totally upped my club-to-ball connection stats by like 44% and I’m pretty proud of myself for knowing what a driver is.

The golf outings are extremely awesome. What happens is, we have a regular youth group time at the church on Sunday nights like we do all year, and then anyone who wants to hops in our cars and we go over the driving range and try to see who can hit golf balls the furthest.

It’s a great draw to get kids to come to youth group during the summer months, and best of all it’s cheap. A large basket of golf balls is like $17, but the guy at the course knows us so sometimes he’ll only charge $12.50.

As with all life events these days, I took plenty of Instagram pictures at the driving range last night to document all the fun we were having.

Instagram is awesome by the way because I can now make all my cell phone pictures look like they were taken under professional lighting. I do worry about the day someone comes up with Writeagram though, and everyone starts thinking their writing can be fixed with an app and a word filter. I’m sure that would be just as annoying as I am to all the “real” photographers out there when I use the x-pro filter. But I don’t care right this second, because like I said, my photos are BEAUTIFUL now!

Behold:

Our awesome youth-helper-out and one of the youth.

And this one, of our pastor with a master’s in God, and two youth.

And this one, where we see what I would look like without bangs.

And this one, which I caught on accident, of a youth trying to kill our youth-helper-out dude. Fun times.

And, what the heck, here’s one more for the road of me in my all-time favorite sunglasses. I’m posting it so that one day, I can look back on this and think, “Man, with the right bronzer, a pair of dangling earrings and purple sunglasses, I was totally decent looking at 28 years old.”

Also, I’m slated to go to Colombia a week from today for work. As in the country that Google Maps tells me is at the top of South America, and NOT some place in Missouri. I’ve been told that if I’m kidnapped, they’ll probably use my passport photo for the news stories about the “American reporter captured by drug cartel” stories. Instead though, can you tell them to use this one? I did the double french braids myself! Thanks!

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Wait, how old do you think I am?

It finally happened.

The day I’ve been waiting for since before forever finally arrived! The day I’d been told would eventually get here, came and it was just as glorious as everyone said it would be! It finally fantastically happened!

Someone thought I was 10 years younger than I currently am, and it was finally a compliment!

HOLLA!

I am one of those people who’s been haunted by a baby face since way past my toddler years. I’ve been carded for every single lottery ticket, bottle of alcohol and R-rated movie that I have ever attempted to purchase or attend. And I’ve been repeatedly judged as inexperienced by people who assumed I was a decade younger than whatever age I currently was at any given time.

And it has always been inconvenient at best and humiliating at worst.

The most traumatic of such experiences happened the summer before my freshman year of college. With a smile full of braces, I admit I didn’t exactly look like an adult, but at 17, I figured I could at least pull off “teenager.”

Alas, someone genuinely asked me, and I quote, “So, what junior high are you going to be attending in the fall?”

I cried. For real. Tears. Everything. It was horrible.

At 17 years old, the very last thing you want in the world is to be mistaken for12. It’s right there on the list with “being told you have to be home by 10 p.m.” or “having to put gas in your dad’s car when you borrow it.” Gawd. Right?

Anyway, ya, it didn’t get better with age. Being mistaken for an intern while working full-time hurts your credibility, being hit on by 21 year old when you’re 27 is creepy, and having people ask you where the youth group leader is when you are the youth group leader is embarrassing.

Everyone always told me, though ,that one day, I would like being mistaken for younger than I really was. That I would get excited when they carded me to buy a glass of wine and that I would smile when someone asked to see my ID.

I honestly just figured that with my luck, by the time I got to that magical age, I would somehow actually look older than I really was and the whole vicious cycle would continue.

Thank. You. Lord. That didn’t happen!

There I was entering a random contest at this random booth at a random conference last week, and as I was filling out the entry form, the dude was all, “Wait. Are you 18? Because you have to be over 18 to enter.”

He was dead serious.

And then I was, “Huh? Shut. Up.” And then I flirting-ly punched his shoulder and giggled.

“You are too kind.”

And he was all, “Umm, oh. How old are you?”

And I was all, “28. he he. giggle giggle”

That’s when I realized the day I had been dreaming about since I was 17 years old had finally arrived.

And it really was fabulous as everyone said it would be.

Now excuse while I go back to the car to get my licence so I can watch Act of Valor.

 

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New Year’s Eve, resolutions, etc.

I kind of hate New Year’s Eve. Way too much pressure to be awesome on the holiday.

Last year, for example, was pretty hellacious and also horribly cold.

I was totally in love with this one guy, but because the New Year’s Eve fates hate me, I couldn’t hang out with him. And I wasn’t about to sit at home wishing all night that I was with him, so instead I went out with one of my (amazing and awesome and loving) friends to a random bar club in Palatine.

And while I was there, I met a kind-of hot random dude, whom I properly kissed at mid-night just show that I could, and I thought everything was a success. Except, well, the New Year’s Eve fates hate me.

See, we had planned to grab a Metra Train to get home, except the stupid Metra train never came. Ever. Seriously. We didn’t miss it. It never came. I promise you that.

We kept hoping it would come down the rails though, so we waited in like -80 degree weather for an eternity. If I don’t get into to heaven, I promise you that right there will be my hell, expect it will also somehow include me covering a school board meeting that never ends. Anyway, I finally realized we were waiting for a train that was not coming, and I grabbed my friend, called another (amazing and awesome and loving) friend who lived nearby, hopped in a cab and the two of us ended up sleeping on her love seat while I called the guy I was actually in love with.

I vowed that night that sitting at home wishing I was with the guy I was in love with would always win out over going to a random club. Always.

And so, alas, it looks like that’s what I’ll be doing this year. I’m trying to justify it by telling everyone I have to be up über early for church, and seeing as how I’m on staff and stuff, it’s not like I can just skip like all the heathens do. (Note to people who don’t get me: I don’t actually think people who skip church are heathens. Not all of them anyway).

But really, I wish I had awesome plans this year. I wish I was going to hang out with a guy I’m in love with, and kiss him at mid-night and then live happily ever after. Instead, I’ll probably just sit at home, and maybe stay up late enough to watch the New York countdown on TV. And then I’ll say some prayers and go to sleep. I’m so cool.

Of course, all this doesn’t mean I can’t have some fun resolutions, like everyone else does. I admit that I don’t feel any real sense of commitment to New Year’s resolutions, because I much prefer changing my life for the better during Lent (when it’s for God), or at my birthday (when it’s actually the start of a new year in my life).

But I’m not going to let silly logic get in the way here. So, behold, my New Year’s Resolutions:

1. Give Up McDonald’s. OK, look, I KNOW that basically all the food there is made of lard and salt, but it’s the closest restaurant to my office and the coke has the addictive equivalent of Vicodin in it, so I have a hard time avoiding the place. This year, though, I want to just stop going there all together. Not even for a Cesar salad.

2. Stop judging my life based on other people’s Facebook posts. The problem with Facebook is that everyone’s life looks super freaking awesome all the time on there, because people don’t ever go around posting photos of themselves when they look fat, or when their boyfriend breaks up with them or when they lose their job. And I know that I have a habit of looking at how happy everyone else seems and then believing that my lame life sucks by comparison. I’ve thought about just completely giving up Facebook all together, but I really seriously do need it for my youth director duties and stuff, so instead, I’m just going to try harder to understand that Facebook profiles do not represent real life.

3. Stop buying things I don’t need. I do this too much. (See: Spray tans, pedicures, fast food, random crap from Target, $17 Clinique lip gloss, etc.) I need to stop doing this. I’m going to try harder to do better with this next year.

4. Get regular oil changes. You would think the fact that my car literally yells at me every time I need an oil change would be enough to get me to do this, but alas, I can’t get past the mindset that oil changes are really just a suggestion. I hope to be better about this next year.

5. Visit my dad. I actually don’t remember the last time I saw my dad in person. He lives like 2.5 hours away, and I just haven’t had the time and/or money to go down and visit him lately. I feel bad about that. I’m sorry for it. And I really do hope to see him soon.

Now excuse me while I go buy a bottle of sparkling grape juice and play Words with Friends while I countdown to 2012 — the year the world will most likely, probably end. HAPPY NEW YEAR!

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