Mountains and Meatballs.

Why hello there, my cow herd! I must really love you guys (or really love to procrastinate-you decide), because although I have not one, but TWO finals this Saturday...its been 2 weeks and I think I owe you some post-ige.

Where shall we begin? I face planted on the stairs this week. Whats better, is that I started to fall but caught myself. In a moment of pride, strutting up the stairs and grinning to myself that I had escaped embarrassment, I fell again; but this time, it was a full-on face plant. Don't worry guys, my body made up for it later this week by rewarding me with a nice couple days of illness! Yeah!! Wednesday morning I woke up with the intention to spend all day in the library studying epigenetics and DNA transversion. What a dream, right? But I promptly woke up with a nasty head cold and sore throat, leaving me bed-ridden for a day. As I told my mother, there's not much that reminds me I'm now a grown-up more than having to drive myself (in my sickly state) to the drugstore to pick up medicine. And then go home to an empty apartment and make myself my own food. And tuck myself into my own bed--sorry, this is getting weird. Of course, Eric eventually responded to my pathetic plea for company. I'm feeling better day by day, although my solo trip to Target yesterday left me absolutely pooped. Something that never happens; put me in a Target on any other occassion and I will literally run laps around the store all with a smile on my face. Its my happy place.

Sickness aside, I have managed to try and squeeze in some festivities during my last few weeks of school. Sunday afternoon all of my roommates ditched me to spend time with their families (lame) so I ever-so-humbly invited myself to crashed my two friends' pre-planned IKEA date. When I heard that they were really just going for the meatballs, I was completely on board and shouted, "I'm driving!!!" Who knew there could exist a place with cheap pieces of furniture, $1 picture frames and $4.95 meatballs?! Whatta business venture! Here's to hoping there will be a section of heaven devoted to IKEA-like showrooms and meatballs.

Memorial Day itself could warrant its own blog post. Quite the adventure was had. Playing mini golf a while back, our bet was that the loser had to plan a date. Though I lost by one point I decided Memorial Day would be the perfect opportunity to fulfill my end of the bargain. (Even though I'm still waiting for Eric's "homemade cookies"--game of pool). I had the idea to go on an easy daytime hike, you know, working off the meatballs and all. We figured Lake Berryessa would have the most trail variety and picked out which route we wanted to take. Naturally, we chose the path that was not only the longest, but was described as "EXTREMELY TREACHEROUS AND STRENUOUS". And naturally, we both figured the website was exaggerating.

The website was not exaggerating.

I must first mention a moment even before the hike started, when Eric showed up in kahki pants and a button down shirt.
"Umm, where are your hiking clothes?"
"These are my hiking clothes".
*cue an erruption of cackles from Cameron*
"Whats with the bags?"
"I brought us two Camelback backpacks".
*I peer into the backpacks* [There were about 10 Cliff Bars and Energy Jellies filling them.]
*Cue more laughter*
I gave Eric such a hard time for taking this hike so seriously but let me tell you, my words came back to bite me. In a big way.

I won't even talk about how we drove 45 minutes before realizing that we were driving in the completely wrong direction. Once we found the trail, we started off overly-ambitious and were practically sprinting up a steep incline. (that didn't last long). Out of breath and panting after 3 minutes, we trekked and we trekked, up and up, with no end in sight. Just when you thought you were going to turn a corner and see a beautiful view of the lake below, all you saw was another slope that was steeper than the rest. But let me tell you, the view was stunning. We took a little break and ate our thousandth power bar and drank from our strange water jug-backpack-contraptions. What really kept me going through the hike (aside from chanting the song, "The Climb" in my head), was the promise that the entire 5 miles back would all be glorious downhill. What we didn't realize, was that once you got to the top there was about a mile of uphill ridges on the tip of the mountain for us to tackle. Needless to say, Eric saw me at my worst. With the trail getting more and more narrow, we came to a point where we were literally rock-climbing with our bare hands and knees on an unmarked "trail" 1200 feet high on the the top of a mountain. Told you it was an adventure.

Now, rest assured, we are back in one peice (well, two peices). Overall it was quite the...bonding experience. Lesson learned: always trust a website. And always trust a man who hikes in kahkis.

It looks like my all too familiar hand cramp is creeping up once again, so I will end there. Things I need to include in my next, and perhaps final!, blog post for the quarter: Caila's visit <3, my new job, and whatever shennigans I get myself into while settling into the finals state of mind.