Even though we stayed up later than we planned, we managed to get up on time on Sunday so that we could leave and make it to Disneyland before it opened.  It's even more impressive since the hotel wakeup call we left for 630am didn't happen till 7am.

Still, we were able to have a nice breakfast in the hotel before leaving to travel south to Anaheim.  Got there without any problems while making REALLY good time and was able to park really quickly.  Made our way to the trams and  was taken to the entrance to the parks (Disneyland and Disney's California Adventure).

We hit Disneyland first and then made our way over to California Adventure.  I have to admit, I think I enjoyed California Adventure more, but I loved them both.  From there we went back to Downtown Disney (which you go through before hitting the entrance to the parks) so that Jim could go to the ESPN Zone, which ended up not being that cool.  But it was good we got to go to it.  We went back to Disneyland and rode the Indiana Jones ride since we had missed it before, then came back out to Downtown Disney to eat dinner.  Then, completely exhausted and full, we took off for the hotel.

But we had a really good day!

My Disney observations:  God it's expensive!  Everything is!  There is food everywhere.  Gift shops everywhere!  What I like about the gift shops is that they are all really well designed.  If it's supposed to be an old garage it will look like one with lots of cool props.  I give them credit for that. 

The cool entrance to California Adventure.

Looking toward the entrance to Disneyland.  See the lines already forming?

We FINALLY make it in the park!  :D

Inside the "movie theatre"

I liked the Detective Agency for whatever reason.  :D

Right inside the door of the bathroom.

The Matterhorn

The Finding Nemo ride.  The ride with the longest line and it was TOTALLY not worth it.  Boring ride.

Word of advice about Splash Mountain.  Ride it early!  That way you have the rest of the day to dry off.  Now, it didn't help that there were 5 big people on the boat (I was the smallest if that gives you any idea) plus 2 children.  By the time we got off the boat at the end of the ride there was 3 inches of water on the bottom of the boat.  I pited the people who got on it after us.

Note: Pirate's Island.  Not that interesting.

Jim and his "booty"

I love the defibrillator in the middle of all the rustic.

The sign made me laugh.

Going to California Adventure now.

Where we ate lunch.  REALLY good onion rings!

They were filming something there.  Probably for the Disney Channel, but I have no real idea.  In the background is California Screamin' which was my favorite ride that day and probably the whole trip.

Jim and his new hat.

We had a really great ice cream float here!

You can't tell but this is the House of Blues at Downtown Disney.

This is where we ended up eating supper later on that evening.  It was REALLY good!

Jim's dinner.  Some sort of salmon dinner.

My steak.

And that is day 2.

On September 6th, my friend Jim Crawley and I took a week long (well, more like 8 days) trip to Los Angeles.  We had a great time and, of course, I took a bunch of pictures, so I thought I'd make a blog for the trip.  I'll be honest, most of the pictures are just documentary in nature, not works of art.  I had hoped to make art on the trip, but it didn't happen.  Oh well.

This blog actually starts the night before the trip since it was my friend, Lindsey's wedding.  Luckily she had it early in the evening since I had to get home early to wake up at 4am to be ready to leave for the airport by 530am.  The wedding was beautiful!  The sky looked like it was going to rain and it did in fact sprinkle on us a bit (the actual ceremony was outside) but it stopped quickly, thank God!

Right before the ceremony.  I got a chance to hang out with her before the wedding.  She didn't feel like taking serious pictures thus these two.  She's so beautiful!  :D

So, I had a really good time, but by 830pm, needed to take off so I could go home and go to bed.  I ended up taking a long way home though, but I did get to see parts of Wichita I would normally never see (the far west).

Got home, got all the stuff I was taking together and decided to go ahead and shut the water off in my kitchen because it was dripping water.  Turned the hot off fine but when I started to turn the cold off it started spurting water under the sink.  I kept turning the nozzle back and forth and finally found a spot where it stopped.  But that whole night (and the whole trip really) I was terrified that it would start spurting again and I could wake up or come home to an apartment ruined by water.  Thank God it didn't happen.  However, I did wake up to my apartment leaking because of the rain.  It hasn't leaked in a long time and I was hoping it wouldn't leak again, but of course, as is my luck, it started that morning.  I put a bucket underneath it hoped to God it would hold for my vacation (it didn't, it overflowed, but it was livable).  But both of those things were weighing on me when Jim and his sister picked me up around 5am.  Pretty much the whole trip I was a little sick to my stomach with worry but I was able to put it out of my mind some of the time.

Anyway, we get to the airport and check in (Jim's suitcase weighed 76 lbs and we had to get rid of some stuff.  Luckily mine only weighed 27.5 lbs, which was awesome because I had worried about that since I was over by 3 lbs coming back from Chicago and barely was accepted when leaving Wichita on the way there).  We were there early so we ate some breakfast and then went to our gate.  They finally let us get on and we found that our plane had propellers.  That made us a little nervous but it ended up being ok.  The trip to Denver was fine and we ran to our gate on the other end of the airport (naturally) to make our next flight.  That flight went great as well (on a MUCH bigger plan with jet engines and tv) and we landed in L.A. at 950am.  Got our luggage, took the shuttle to the Thrifty Car Rental and picked up our Chrysler Sebring convertible, which ended up being a really great car for our trip (even if it did end up costing us $150 more than we were told it would thanks to all sorts of mysterious taxes).

Took off in the car and drove from LAX to Burbank and our lovely hotel, the Marriott Courtyard.  Again, it was a beautiful hotel and ended up being the perfect place for us.  Welsby met us at the hotel and from there we headed out to Dodger Stadium because Jim's boss had gotten us tickets for the Dodgers game that started at 1245pm.  At the time we left we thought we only had two tickets but they ended up having 4 tickets until Jim's name so Welsby got in free as well.  Bonus!  And they were great seats as well!  The only negative was finding Will Call (and the correct Will Call since there was several) and we ended up walking almost completely around the stadium to find it.  And let me tell you, there are ALOT of stairs at Dodger's Stadium!

After the game, Jim and I went back to the hotel and got ready to have dinner with my sister and her family in Pasadena at a nice Mexican restaurant.

My brother-in-law Ron.

My great niece Nicole.

My other great niece, Danielle.

After dinner, we took a nice road trip with the top down back through Pasadena and Glendale to where my sister and her husband live and hung out with them for a while.

My niece, Heather and her two girls.  Hard to believe Heather is 31 and gave birth to two children, huh?  :D

My nephew, Cliff and his wife.

Vickie, my sister, and Ron, plus their new "baby".

After visiting with them for a while Jim and I took off for Bunbank to join Welsby and Cassiday (who was visiting for the weekend) at Dimples, a really weird bar that Welsby like to do karaoke at.  The inside of the bar as well as the people who were there were definitely unique, but I can't say I enjoyed paying $5 for the smallest diet coke I have ever drank. 

The generic Welsby shot, which we had to fake since he can't smoke in bars there.

We left Dimples (as well and Cassiday and Welsby) and headed back to the motel because we had been up for22 hours by that point and we needed to get to bed so we could make it through the next day which was...Disneyland!

Had a wonderful time celebrating Jeremy's birthday last night.  Dinner at Red Beans, drinks at the Alibi Room and hanging out at Liz and Jeremy's house till 2am.  With good conversation and good friend the whole night.  And really wonderful brownies!  Yeah.  It was a good night.

Jeremy gets the gift of brownies.

The balloon hat that Liz talked the balloon guy into making.  He didn't want to make it at first for insurance reasons.  Who knew?

Soon to be published author, Jason.

Jeremy's dinner

Liz's dinner.

The poor child was terrified!

When I found out that Holly wasn't doing anything for her birthday (ok, she's going to Vegas for her birthday to see LOVE, but she wasn't doing anything with US for her birthday!!!) I knew we needed to have a party.  So I emailed some friends, made a reservation at Abuelo's and off we went.

And I have to say, if you are going to have a birthday at a restaurant, Abuelo's is a good one.  The wait staff was great, we got our table on time (it was everyone else who was late!), the food came QUICK and, to my surprise, the waiter took the cake I got for Holly back to the cooler to sit during dinner and then, after dinner, he brought it out with plates and silverware and make a presentation out of it, which I thought was really cool!  So Abuelo's definitely rocks!  Even though they do have some of the strangest wall art possible.  Plus the statue that I called either the Ode to Child Abuse or the Ode to Inappropriate Touching.

Had a great time!  Then afterwards a bunch of us went to Magoo's and drank until 1am.  Which was also a great time!

Here's photographic evidence:

The birthday girl.

Jeremy pondering someone's death.

Liz and her uncomfortable smile.

Somehow all these salsas ended up in front of me.  Only one was mine, I swear!!!!

Amber with her normal expression.

I am going to miss these bitches when they move!!!!!

Oh Johnna!

She so did NOT want me taking her picture!

Oh Jim.

Ray will not smile!

And once again, I kill Jeremy.

Took a trip home to Greensburg.  It was day 2 of the 3 day event commemorating the 1 year anniversary of the tornado.  It was about showing what was new and being a community which included two nice free meals (a bbq lunch at the Carriage House and a spaghetti dinner at Davis Park).  Dinner was followed by a dance with a live band which I missed since I needed to get back to Wichita (and Wendy texted me this morning to tell me I didn't miss anything.  The band was bad and it was too cold to enjoy just hanging out).  My favorite part was one of the first places we went to.  Basically it was 2 events going on at the same time at the Brown Auction building.  The first event was called "Going to Town" which was a two rows of tables set up like main street used to be set up, which the people who owned the businesses sitting there for you to talk to.  Plus pictures of their stores.  The other event was a presentation by a meteorologist from Dodge City as well as some storm chasers.  They showed what conditions led up to creating such a huge tornado plus pictures and radar images from the storm.  It was really interesting.

Here's a few pictures from the day.

Sign near the school track showing the new design for the Greensburg School.

The covering on the well, which we are finally allowed to look down again.  Not that you can really see anything since there is no electricity down there right now.

Big Well Park, which was redone during the week by the CBS Early Show.

The ribbon cutting ceremony for the new Water Tower

The actual ribbon cutting part of the ceremony which I, of course, was too far away from to see.

The new design for the Big Well Museum.

The 5-4-7 Arts Building designed and built by KU Students.  It's the one thing I really wanted to see the inside of, but they were still working on it.  The actual open house for it is today (Sunday).  I'll just have to see it some other time I guess.

Craig and Brian.  Two elementary, junior high and high school classmates.

This was the sky on the way home.  Yes I snapped this out my driver's side window while driving 70 miles an hour.  Don't try this at home.  :D

My nephew, Chris and his family flew in Friday to spend a week in Greensburg seeing family.  I took off Saturday so I could spend a couple of days with them.  It was my first time meeting the new baby, Caiden, who is a little over a year now and my first time seeing Declan, the oldest boy, since he was a year old (he's over 3 now).  Had a great time with them.

Greensburg has changed as well...and stayed the same at the same time.  There are more houses being built, but at the same time there's still a TON of empty space.  Blocks with one house on it or a couple and then a block with nothing at all.  Most of the houses being built seem bigger than the ones that were there before.  There was one street that used to hold 4 houses and now, with the one house that's been built, it looks like it will hold 2 houses total.  The north part of town, especially the section that is west of Main Street, is pretty much empty.  There is one new house built.  That's it.  Otherwise it's an empty neighborhood.  It's freaky since my memory of that area is filled with houses. 

A lot has been done, but more hasn't.  There still isn't a Main Street.  One business has been built (the Care and Share, a secondhand store).  That's it.  While there are new homes up there is still tons of debris to be cleaned up. 

It's almost been a year and I had hoped more would be done by now.  But I understand it takes time.  But it's still frustrating.  There are positive things.  A bunch of new townhomes (I call them duplexes) are being built so there will be homes to be rented.  Mennonite Housing is getting ready to start building some new homes (including my sister's house which will be built on what was formerly my family home).  I'm excited for that...and for her.  It will help her feel a bit more normal I think.

And it was great to see her and the meet the great nephews.  Had a really great weekend.

The new watertower.  Not as cool as the old one, but you can't have everything.

The Care and Share

The new townhomes.

Looking across US 54.  Basically the only thing in the area is the new Farm Bureau office and the elevator.  Sad.

"Downtown"

Caiden

Declan

The rules are:

Once you have been tagged you have to write a blog with 8 weird or random things, facts, or habits about yourself. At the end, you choose 8 people to be tagged, list their names, and why you chose them to be tagged. Don't forget to leave a comment that says, "You are tagged" on their profile and to read your latest blog. Have fun!

1. I normally have two fantasy lifes going in my head.  They usually go for several years and then I change things up a little.  But anytime I'm driving or just sitting and have nothing else  to do, I go into one of those worlds.

2. For the first few years of elementary school I had to see a speech therapist because I had trouble saying S's correctly.

3. I'm colorblind.   It's not that I don't see color, it's that I can confuse different colors easily and I can't see subtle differences in color.  It's why most of my work is in b&w.

4. I've never had a boyfriend.

5. I have abnormally low self-esteem.  I know this probably isn't surprising to those who know me, but what they probably don't know is that my image of myself is so bad that I hate being out in public.  It's why I'm shy at parties and normally don't go because I'm afraid of having strangers see me.  Even more bizarre, I don't even like going out in public because I'm always assuming people are looking at me thinking "God, I can't believe how ugly he is" or "Jesus, look how odd looking he is" and if people walk past me and laugh, even though they are probably laughing at something else, I always imagine they are laughing at me.

6. My father was a milkman, as in, he delivered milk house to house and to some restaurants.  Probably my proudest moment was running his business the last summer of his life while he was in the hospital.  I wasn't old enough to drive the truck (I was 14) so someone else did that, but I did all the deliveries, did the ordering, unloaded the trucks, loaded our truck and did the billing.

7. I almost always have a book with me.  If it's not on me, it's in my car.  I love to read because I love to escape my life.  I was 23 before I ever read a novel that wasn't assigned for a class (and even then I normally didn't read it) but when I started my first diet I needed something else to do and distract me from hunger and reading was it.  I've been hooked ever since.

8. I have the most friends now that I have ever had.  Until a few years ago, I normally had one or two friends or no one. 

i tag:  no one.  Why put anyone else through this?

Well, tonight was not what I was expecting at all.  A couple of weeks ago, Jim and I made plans to go to Sumo and then see Cloverfield, Jim's treat.  See, my birthday is on the 29th and with a show coming up, this was the best time for him and I to celebrate my birthday.

He picked me up tonight and we headed off to Sumo.  Got there (after he missed the exit, which I later found out was on purpose to stall for time) and when we got up to the hostess and Jim said the name, the hostess said something about 18, but I was so oblivious, that I thought she had misunderstood our party size. Then, Jim led me to the room right off the lobby where a ton of my friends were.  SURPRISE!.  I had no idea.  No one's ever thrown a surprise party for me before and I was shocked. 

And it was such a blast tonight.  Good food, amazing friends.  Most definitely the best birthday ever!

Thank you to Jim and Terri and whoever else had a hand in planning it!  And thank you to everyone who showed up!  I am so blessed to have such wonderful friends!

The "surprise" moment, captured by Danzel.

Two more pictures taken by Danzel.

There was so many of us, it took two tables.  Here's one.

And the other.

Dan and Vonda

Terri and Diane

Phil and Jackie

Jeremy, Liz and Amber

Jason and Danzel

Jim, Justin and Holly

Our chef, flipping an egg.

The other tables chef, who was SO MUCH MORE of a showman.

Mmmmmmmmm.

Mmmmmmmmm, steak.

What'chu talkin' bout, Troy?

Beckie and John joined us later.

Danzel and her sherbert.

This was either, "Jason, show us your look for when the Packers win the Super Bowl" or "Jason, NO, NO NANETTE has been released on cd".  I forget.  :D

And, of course, the latest in the Troy Kills Jeremy series.

Thanks again to all my friends for the perfect birthday!  I LOVE YOU ALL!

New Year's Eve 2007 was a blast!  Good food.  Good friends.  Lots of laughs.  And, of course, good booze!

We started out at Kobe's for an excellent meal.  Our waitress wasn't very good.  It might help if she spoke a few more words of english, or at least, understood them.  Leslie's description of what a lime was ended up being the funniest moment of the night.  But it did help the waitress understand.  Our chef, however, was excellent!  Funny, clever and seemed to have a thing for our sweet, little Amber.  :D

After dinner we headed over to the Biltz's for more fun.  Mostly we laughed.  We laughed alot.  And we drank.  Alot.  I, of course, had my bottle of Lindeman's.  We drank champagne at midnight, because you're supposed to, and I have to admit, even though I normally don't care for champagne, whatever it was that Liz bought, was really good.  I thought about having a second glass, which I would NEVER normally do.

Holly and Quinn joined us at Jeremy and Liz's.  And a little later, Mike Bocovich and Mario stopped by.

And we had fun.

It wasn't anything elaborate.  Just friends getting together to celebrate the New Year.  But since that's what it's all about, it was more than enough.

Thanks to my friends for being such fun, witty, clever, intelligent people!  And for being my friends!!!!

Oh, and extra special thanks to Amber, for showing me Cherice's tickle spot!

Happy New Year everyone!  I hope you all had as much fun as I did!

Here's some pics.

Jeremy and Liz

Rine and Jason

Amber giving me the evil eye for taking her picture.

Right before Liz's favorite moment of a Kobe meal, the choo-choo.

Recie and her contribution to the booze.

Recie forcing Amber to look at the camera.

Holly and Quinn join us.

Leslie and Liz laughing at something funny.  I'll pretend I said it.

Amber offering us a banana she had in her purse.

Mike and Mario join in the fun.

Jeremy reading from a truly offensive book.  Don't believe me, ask any of the women who were there.

Playing a little game called "Making Rine Uncomfortable".

The requisite Troy Kills Jeremy photo.

WARNING:  There are a ton of pictures in the blog.  If you have dial up (and honestly why the hell do you not have cable or something faster yet?) then you might want to avoid this blog.

2007.  What a year.  It's had the highest high I've had in a really long time and the lowest low.  I've lost friends, made friends, taken my first vacation ever and nearly lost my home town.  This blog will cover the good and bad from this year.  Plus feature a bunch of pictures taken throughout 2007.

THE GOOD

There's no question that the trip to Chicago is the best thing I did this year.  Getting to spend time in a town I've never been to before (and which I fell in love with) was so much fun and so relaxing I can't tell you.  Thank you to Nathan and Christina for being such fabulous hosts!  It wouldn't have been as much fun without you, that's for sure.  And, to be honest, it wouldn't have happened without you both.  I had so much fun.  Got to see a TON of the city and ate some fabulous food.  Saw 3 different types of theatre.  And had a blast.  Thanks also to Jim and Lynne for some lifesaving things that you both did.

THE BAD

The Greensburg tornado.  Nothing can compete with an EF5 tornado that devestates my hometown and manages to destroy both the house that I grew up in and the home my sister was living in.  The week after the tornado hit was probably the most emotional week I have ever experienced.  Seven months later I can still barely believe it happened.  But life will go on.  But it will never be the same.

OTHER STUFF

So much other stuff happened.  I got kicked off the board of WCT.  I won't lie.  I'm still pissed about that.  To be honest, I'd been thinking about leaving the board for a while, but the way that it was handled bothers me.  First off, a friend who's on the board told me.  To this day I still haven't ever heard anything official from the board.  No note or letter telling me so or thanking me for all the hard work I've done for the theatre over the past 10 years.  No word from other people on the board that I know.  It hurts.  And it pisses me off.  So much so that I've debated about seeing the one show that I still have to see for the MJT committee and then making up not seeing shows there by seeing more Crown shows.  And anyone who knows how much I HATE seeing shows at the Crown can tell how pissed off I must be.  But I'll get over it.  Eventually.  But I won't have anything to do with WCT for a long time.  If ever.  Before I left the board, I had designed a new logo for the theatre.  Since it'll obviously never see the light of day again, I thought I'd share it since I'm rather proud of it.

Lost one of my closest friendships this year as well.  To be honest, I don't think it was as close as I thought it was because that's the only way to explain how easy I was to drop.  But I've learned some lessons from it.  I don't trust nearly as much as I did before.  I've learned to be happy to hang by myself and be all right if I go weeks without doing anything with anyone.  But the friendship gave me huge trust issues and those are things I'll have to work out.  But I doubt I'll ever completely trust anyone again.  Protecting myself is probably the most important thing I've learned from it.

Having said that, I've had a ton of fun with friends this year.  Some memorable ones are hanging with Holly, Sarah and Justin at J's and Fantasy, Thursday nights at My Room, All Star Sports with Justin, movies with Jim, going to the Cosmosphere with Jim, movies with Liz, Jeremy, MJ and Amber, my birthday with Lindsey and Kelsey, and numerous other times I'm sure I'm forgetting as I sit here typing this.  Plus, I'm sure that New Years Eve with the gang at Kobe's and the Biltz's is going to be on that list.

FAVORITE MOVIE: HAIRSPRAY (Runners-up are THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM and LIVE FREE AND DIE HARD).  Yeah,  I like escapist movies the best.

FAVORITE TV SHOWS: CHUCK, HEROES and PROJECT RUNWAY.

Ok, enough words.  It's time for the year in pictures:

PORTRAITS

STILL LIFES

THEATRE

THE GREENSBURG TORNADO

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McCONNELL AIR SHOW

CHICAGO