First post of 2010

I entered a headline contest. The Texas Associated Press Managing Editors contest is a statewide contest. I entered six headlines, which constituted an entry. I wish I would have kept track of my headlines better, but I think I did an OK job. But for next year's contest, I've already got two saved.

I think I've gotten pretty good at writing headlines. I can relax a little and write something I think is clever, captures the story and can get the reader's attention. And it's really fun.

Our slot's going to be learning design for a couple of weeks, so I'll be doing nothing but slotting that whole time. I really like that.

That's all. Sorry I don't have anything else to write about. Nothing else happens to me.

The 2000s: A decade in whatever

For my last post in December, I'm going to write about the highlights of the past 10 years of my life. I've bolded the really cool stuff to break up the wall of text.

2000 was fairly uninteresting. I only remember going to Cedar Point for the first time. That was pretty sweet. I got to ride Millennium Force, which was the tallest, fastest coaster in the world when it opened. That coaster and Cedar Point helped elevate my love of coasters from sort of liking them to me going a little insane. Also that summer, I attended a program at the University of Arizona and made some great friends.

2001 was crazy. My dad died at the beginning of the year, I graduated from high school, and I started college. College was terrifying at first. I'd never been away from home. I'd never been around that many white people, so it was total culture shock. But I got accustomed to school and Tucson, and I had some friends I met the previous summer who helped me through.

2002 was more school and another roller coaster trip. My friend, my brother, Mom and I drove across the country to visit family and ride coasters. We visited her stepdad in Pennsylvania. We visited five amusement parks on that trip: Dorney Park, Cedar Point, Kings Island, Holiday World and LeSourdsville Lake. The Holiday World visit made me fall in love with good wooden coasters, and I got to see that bigger isn't always better. LeSourdsville Lake only was open for a few months that year, and it's been closed since, so we totally lucked out in visiting.

2003 was the first summer I worked at Cedar Point. I was a sweep. I walked around and picked up trash and lost a lot of weight and had a stronger left arm because of the dust pan. But I also got to ride coasters all the time. I fell in love with Raptor there and rode it 246 times that year.

2004 was another summer at Cedar Point. I was the assistant team leader of a sweep crew, and we did so well, our crew was named to operations excellence. That is an award that goes to the best crew of any division at the park. We were the best. I also got 303 rides on Raptor, including my 500th ride on it. I started working at the school newspaper as a copy editor. I quickly became the copy editingest copy editor there. My nana died, which was really upsetting. I still find myself missing her.

2005 was my last summer working at Cedar Point. I got 151 rides on Raptor. I also cleaned up the worst mess ever ever: a freaking ton of blood. Soooo gross. Also in 2005, I graduated from college in the fall semester. I had spent two semesters as the head copy editor, and I also landed an internship with the prestigious Dow Jones Newspaper Fund.

2006 might have been one of the best years of my life. I was fresh off graduating from college. My internship at The Denver Post was starting in June. I had five months to kick back and do nothing. So I did. I felt like I deserved to do nothing before really venturing out in the so-called real world. That was fantastic. I trained for my internship in Austin for two weeks in May. In June, I started my internship. Denver was a great place to live, and my internship was extended. Then I landed my first job out of college in Ohio at The News-Messenger and News Herald. A huge triumph was I learned how to drive and got over my fear of driving. I took driving lessons from an old man named Roger. He was awesome. He'd say "gee-ma-nilly" at things that amazed him. My mom got me a car when I moved to Ohio, and I was forced to drive to work and to the store and stuff. So I finally learned how to drive.

2007 was fun because I got to get a season pass to Cedar Point and ride the heck out of my favorite rides. I got 312 rides on Raptor, including my 1,000th ride on it. I also went on a lot of trips and visited amusement parks. I went to seven parks that year and rode two roller coasters a man built in his backyard. One of those parks, Holiday World, ended up having what became the best roller coaster I'd ever been on. Voyage is still my favorite coaster, and I can't even imagine what a coaster would have to do to be better than that. It's unbelievable.

2008 was a little rough. I quit my job at The News-Messenger in February and had a heck of a time finding a job as the economy plummeted. I was jobless for six months, but I had a lot of money saved up. I still visited Cedar Point weekly because it kept me sane. I also visited Holiday World again and got more rides on Voyage. But I found a job in Amarillo, and things were great. I loved it, and I found myself learning a lot and doing a lot.

2009 was great way to end the second decade I got to live through. I did a lot of slotting at the paper, and I think I greatly improved my headlines and editing. I made some good friends at the paper. I visited the small amusement park in Amarillo twice, which is pretty good for the size of the city. I visited Cedar Point by the skin of my teeth. I got there on closing day as a side trip to some friends' wedding. Speaking of which, I went to two weddings. Tons of fun. I bought a digital SLR camera and freaking love it. I bought a nice suit for the weddings.

2010 and beyond should be cool. I plan on visiting a few amusement parks next summer. One of the trips I plan on taking is to Holiday World for its annual coaster enthusiast event, HoliWood Nights. I would love to ride Voyage at night. And it's getting new trains, so it should run even better. I can't wait. I'm going to my best friend's wedding in Colorado in May. I miss Denver, so maybe I can hang out for an extra day and just wander around the city. Maybe I could pop in and say hi to my friends at The Post.

I'm looking forward to things. Though I don't really measure things in years or decades, I figured I'd do a wrap-up. The end. Words, words, words.

Tucson was fun

I was in Tucson for my cousin Alison's wedding. It was really fun, and it was great seeing my family again. I got to see my aunt, all us grandkids/cousins, my mom, my brother and Grandpa. So cool.

Highlights from my trip:

• Amarillo's airport isn't big or a destination, so it's hard to get flights anywhere. I had to fly from Amarillo to Denver (stayed on the plane) to Las Vegas (three-hour layover) to Tucson. The flight from Denver to Vegas was annoying because a woman was sitting next to me and kissing her finger to turn the pages of a magazine. Not licking it. Kissing it. Annoying.
• But also on that flight was a woman heading to Vegas for her 40th birthday. She was surrounded by her annoying, loud, stupid friends. Once we got over Nevada, they walked around the plane asking people to put a dollar in a bag. They'd draw the seats of people who put money in from a hat and give the number they drew to that person. Gotta gamble once you get to/over Nevada!
• The flight from Vegas to Tucson was annoying because I was surrounded by high school girls apparently going to some synchronized swimming competition in Tucson. Loud, annoying girls.
• Tim and I went to a store Friday night to get the last stuff for our mom's Christmas present. When we went to pay, a woman in front of us bought something like $60 of stuff and paid with singles. ALL ONES! Ahhh! Who does that? Why does she have so many ones? I made a joke about her working in a strip club because everyone tells that one. But she was old too. Dumb.
• I had In-N-Out my first night there. Yes! I love that food. And the fries well done are so good.
• When I was waiting in Tucson's airport for my flight out of there (to Denver and a four-hour layover!), the UA men's basketball team walked off the plane I was to board. I saw the team! And coach Miller! I only recognized him. I've been out of school for so long, I don't really know anyone. I just know names, not faces. Though I did look up their roster later and put some names to faces. Pretty cool.
• Once again, a decent-sized city makes me realize how small Amarillo is and how I really want to live in a larger city.
  

It friggin' snowed today

I woke up around 10 a.m. and heard cars driving around in the parking lot. It sounded wet, so I figured it rained overnight. You know, like we were expecting.

Nope. Temperature plummet plus wet equals snow. Boo. I'm staying indoors today.

Cadillac Ranch

Tim and I went to Cadillac Ranch a couple of days ago. We bought some spray paint and drove out there. With no idea of what to write, we just came up with the first things that came to our mind. See what we did below:

10 Cadillacs buried halfway in the ground sit in a field off the interstate just west of town.

The first thing Tim wrote was "Buy war bonds." All righty.

It was a little messy out there. We cleaned up after ourselves. Our two spray cans had some paint left, so we left them there for some high schoolers who showed up.

Some women were finishing up their work as we showed up. Pretty cool.

Oh no. It's ruined.

Tim runs to another car.

Artsy shot.

Cool face. Tim painted the eyes.

Ah, yes. The giraffe conspiracy.

Gotta nuke something.

It was pretty cool. Yeah, I waited more than a year to visit it, but I'm glad I finally got around to going. And it was fun going with my brother.

Tim visited

My brother came to visit for a few days. We went to the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, which is the largest history museum in Texas. We also went to Cadillac Ranch and drew on some cars. I'll post some pictures after work. I have to resize them and hope my Internet doesn't cut out.

I'm back from vacation

I went to two friends' wedding over the weekend (they married each other). It was a great experience. I got to see lots of friends again, I got to travel, I got to take a vacation, I saw pretty trees changing colors, I got to go to Cedar Point and ride my favorite roller coasters, and I had an all around great time.

I also got to play around with my SLR camera. Oooooh. It was amazing. Between my two cameras, I took more than 1,000 pictures of the wedding, friends, hanging out and Cedar Point. Some of the pictures looked really good. I might upload some here, but I'd have to resize them from gigantic.

But I really needed this vacation. It was fantastic. I love my friends.

Speaking of friends, my plans to get back to the Cleveland airport fell apart. But a friend of mine who lives in greater Cleveland offered to give me a lift to a motel near Cleveland and drive me to the airport the next morning. What a great guy.

Being in Cleveland made me realize how much I love big cities. He drove me around a little bit. We visited another friend, who was totally surprised to see me. That was so fun. But I also enjoyed driving around the roads and seeing all the businesses. We drove by downtown Cleveland. I like it because the tall buildings are pretty cool.

And it made me realize how small Amarillo really is. This city's got about 200,000 people, but that's it. There are no suburbs. There are two interstates, but they just pass through the city. Not much of a loop. Downtown's small and not too lively.

Don't get me wrong, I like Amarillo. Anything larger than Kayenta is cool. But Amarillo's not big enough for me. Ever since I lived in Tucson and Denver, I've been an urbanite. I love cities. That's all there is to it.

This was pretty corny

A co-worker, Brittani, and I went to a corn maze yesterday. I got to really try out my new camera. There were two parts of the maze. The first part took us about 40 minutes, and the second took us about an hour. We got so lost a few times in the second part.

But it was fun. The skies were clear, and it was in the 80s. What great weather for mid-October.


There was a slide. The view above the corn was no help.


It was pretty fun. I'd never been to a corn maze before, and I had a good time.