Summer Again

Today is very possibly the last day in months if not years that I have absolutely nothing to do so why not update my blog?
Spawnfest was this past weekend so I'm still a little hazy while trying to readjust to regular life right now. Luke, Louie, and I were talking about how unique and fantastic ultimate is and just how difficult it would be for anyone else to believe the things that happen through this sport. After yesterday I would have to agree. Ultimate is unique and in my opinion a satisfying pastime. But it is so much more than just another sport like basketball or soccer. While playing Ultimate anything can happen. It's a place where someone you've never met before will trade you a unicorn horn and lei for a superman cape and become your best friend. It's a place where it doesn't matter who you are or what you do because you just skied a guy in the endzone and that was pretty freaking sick. It's a place where strangers will heckle you for eating pancakes in the beer garden at 8:30am but 20 yards away a team is already cracking open the pbrs. It's a place where my number gets disseminated (involuntarily) and I end up having an epic 2-hour texting showdown with a random team we played comprised entirely of ultimate pick-up lines. It's a place where a cat gets tied to a kite and almost becomes lunch. It's a place where massive on-field dance parties simply materialize. It's a place where the best teams in the world will be playing on one field and some total amateurs play the same game 5 yards over. It's a place where people who have never met each other, people who might not even speak the same language, come together and work hard for a common goal in a language which transcends words.
One of my absolute favorite parts of Ultimate, which is pretty difficult to single out because I pretty much love everything about playing, is what sets us apart from other sports: Spirit of the Game. It's a mix of self-officiating (Ultimate doesn't use referees and instead relies on players to settle our own disputes) and good sportsmanship. It means crashing into your defender and being helped up by the other team with a pat on the back. It means stopping play and clapping for a player who gets injured and has to step off the field. It means cheering for the other team after every game no matter how many poor sports they had or bs calls they made. It's a fraternity of friendship and comradery built around a shared love for an amazing game. Elitism is extremely rare and almost every single professional and club (elite) player I know specifically devotes time to mentoring programs, youth programs, and coaching because we all love to give back to our community. I've played games with some of the best players in the world because they simply happened to be throwing nearby, we needed extra players, and they love to play. Ok, that's enough about Ultimate for now: point being - I just really love my sport.

Other things I've done this summer include playing on 4 ultimate teams, winning the IMA ultimate championship, taking 10 credits (5 credits of Nursing School!!), working part-time, and getting my orchid to bloom again. Despite being extremely busy with school and work and having to turn down many really fun opportunities, I still managed to make some great memories. Whether I was canoeing and playing fliers up in Lake Washington with Swill and her roommates followed by a bbq and chalk twister on their driveway, or going skinnny-dipping off of a random person's houseboat at 1am after Bing and Greg's wedding with some crazy awesome people, or stargazing behind the shellhouse at UW after running through the drumheller sprinklers, or skying a riot player, or spending a week with my best friend in the entire world, or baking a beast mode raspberry tart, or making 38 cups of pesto from basil I picked myself (yes, that's about a 5 gallon bucket worth of basil) 2012 has been a great summer. I have 6 weeks of 'summer' (re: no school), a mini vacation down to Ocean Shores with my uncles and cousins this weekend and one of the biggest transitions of my entire life: moving out to fill these weeks. Then: Junior Year and starting Nursing School! I am so incredibly, unbelievably excited to start nursing, and even more excited for fall quarter since I took one class over the summer to lighten my course load. :)

I created my next 5 year plan a few weeks ago as well because my first 5 year plan I created when I was 15 and it ended with getting into UWSON. My next 5 year plan has me just as excited and I can't wait to see where I am and what life has in store for me in the next 5 years. Throughout everything I have placed my trust in God and my life has been so incredibly blessed through Him. With His guidance I know my next 5 years will be spectacular and no matter what big and life-changing (or little and sweet) moments He has in store I am absolutely positive it will be built of experiences I will remember for the rest of my life. It seems that each year I grow older I love life a little more, which I suppose is exactly as it should be. I can't wait to find out what turning 100 will be like. :)

Alleluia!

Springtime has finally arrived!!

I do not think it is possible for me to adequately describe how happy I am right now and how much I love this time of the year. So much is happening for me right now and it is resulting in the culmination of years of hard work finally paying off in ways that still seem to good to be true. God has always blessed me and I have always been a happy person, but right now I just have so much to be thankful for and so much to be happy about!! Ok...so you get it...I'm happy. :)
A few of the myriad of amazing things in my life right now include the fact that I received admission into the University of Washington's School of Nursing - the #1 School of Nursing in the nation. Out of 475 applicants this year, only 96 were admitted. You are reading the blog of one of those 96. :) My aunt gave me a nursing school regulation stethoscope at Easter along with a really beautiful card and those little things are what make this seem so real and exciting!! I just cannot believe after literally almost 6 years of hard work, careful planning, dedication, tough decisions and often times the neglect of more age-appropriate pasttimes, I finally am able to follow my dream. I realize the hard work has only just begun - nursing schools grueling and I don't forsee having much of a life outside of academia for the next two years, but I am so prepared to work hard at this. :)
The downside of receiving admittance on March 30th is that this quarter is basically BS for me. I'm only taking one class (and one summer quarter) and all I need is a 2.0 to retain my offer of admissions. Obviously I'll try for something higher than that, but I don't need to because my gpa is now irrelevant. Even for grad school - I've been told that graduating from UW SON is prestigious enough by itself that grades aren't really that important. I'll still try to get decent grades, but it's nice knowing that the school on my diploma will speak for itself. :)
On the heels of my nursing school admittance came my first layout in my ultimate-playing history. Technically speaking, a layout is when a player dives headfirst for the disc and it's pretty damn epic. However, the thought of diving headfirst for anything, especially when I know people who have broken bones, sustained concussions, or at the very least received BA turf burns, turned me off for years. However, I kept telling myself I would layout, and that conviction finally paid off at OnionFest 2012 in Walla Walla. I actually laid out twice and in full disclosure did not catch the disc either time, but now that I have overcome the mental block associated with laying out, I am confident that this summer will be a summer for the layout books. :)
In addition to laying out, I am really jelling with my UW team and can feel myself improving, even though the process is very gradual. It's the little things - like reaching out to catch something behind my back just out of instinct, or throwing a disc with exactly the right amount of spin exactly where I wanted it to go, or reading someone's hip positioning and poaching the hell out of their shoddy d. I even threw a hammer yesterday during scrimmage! (Again full disclosure: it was uncatchable. But I had the presence of mind and confidence to at least try it!)

I have always considered myself a confident person, and never really had an issue with self-image or insecurity or caring too much about other people judging me. When I started at UW, I got kind of a reality check because being 1 in 40,000 students leads to a very public sort of isolation. People kind of put on this hard, impersonal exterior and basically pretend like no one else exists. It's really weird, but I felt myself being sucked into that mindsent a little. I think part of it was my crippling insecurity and doubt about nursing school and what I would do with my life if I didn't get in. However, now that I'm in, and that it's Spring and that I am so happy, I just feel my self-confidence bubbling back and I am surprised at how contagious a good mood is! I know I won't be this happy forever, but I am loving life right now and damn well want to make the most of it.


Well, I think this post has gone on quite long enough. As always, I could write for pages more, but I will refrain out of respect for the time of anyone who chances to read this, although, let's be honest, probably no one does. :)

Alleluia! He is risen! He is risen indeed!!

I may have a vocabulary of 150,000 words but the only title I can come up with is the one you just read

In honor of this most holy and solemn season, I have decided to publish a list of my very favorite, inspiring quotes. These aren't simply phrases my friends accidentally uttered or witty sayings I poached from someone's facebook account, these are, in your author's humble opinion, the work of great minds who have summarized vast truths or concepts in one or two sentences. I love them so much because I think they are the product of wise minds with more knowledge than I may ever know. They are not necessarily religious, but all present food for thought.

Michelle's Lenten Quotes:

"To live without faith, without a patrimony to defend, without a steady struggle for the truth, that is not living, but existing."
- Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati


"You ask me whether I am in good spirits, how could I not be so? As long as faith gives me strength I will always be joyful."
- Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati


"Every time you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing." - Mother Teresa


"The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either - but right through every human heart."
-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn


"Great minds have purposes; little minds have wishes. Little minds are subdued by misfortunes; great minds rise above them."
-Washington Irving


"Nothing shows a man's character more than what he laughs at."
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


"...that they may arrive at their desires...not of inevitable necessity but of culpable will."
-St. Augustine, On Patience


"What benefits the body is called medicine; what benefits the soul, discipline."
-St. Augustine, Of the Morals of the Catholic Church


"I am happy because I am alive and now I know it."
-One of the most incredible women I've ever met


"When we were lost and could not find the way to You, You loved us more than ever."
- Eucharistic Prayer for Reconciliation I

#themayanswereright

It's 2012, Bitches! The world ends this year!

With that apocalyptic foresight fully disclosed, I now present my annual goals and aspirations for this year. I have a feeling this will be a great and amazing year full of new and exciting opportunities, lots of fun, and lots of hard work. Even though the world will be ending, I think it's going to be a year for adventure, a year for trying new things, pushing boundaries, and reaffirming everything that I think is great about life. So, without further ado, my list of goals for 2012:

• Get into Nursing School!!!!
• Start Nursing School
  
• Move out (I say this every year...it might actually happen this time)
• Get a job
• Cross something (or many things) off of my bucket list
• Layout
  
• Callahan? Bookends? Layout D? Anything and everything is possible!
  
• Potlatch with a kickass team
• Do lots more hiking and cross off a lot of trails off my list
• Kayaking with my dad
• Put in a Grand Canyon permit bid
• 21 & Over comes out - hopefully they kept some/all of the scenes I'm in!
  
• CLUB RUST
  
• And finally, complete my New Year's Dare
  

I'm sure I'll think of other things I wish I could have put on there, but right now that is my 2012 Goals List and I have 355 days and counting to accomplish it all! Let's go!

You know you're a frisbee player when...

Places I have found turf:

• Shoes (all pairs, regardless of whether I wear them to practice or not)
  
• Backpack
• Car
• Bedroom floor
• Hair
  
• Lip balm
• Under fingernails
• Eye

I'm quite sure there are more, but I've lost track. I'm sure I've ingested it as well multiple times. Point being: turf and I are tight.