This happens almost never, but it happened once to me.

Alright. It's time for a million updates on life. Things are starting to slow down, just a little, but I want to blog about my life before I start right back into Rocky Reads. So this post is intended to be written so that you don't have to go all at once. There's several things I want to hit on updating, and I'll make a heading for each of those, that way you can have a reasonable place to break if you need to.


Work
I just want to say that I love my job. I've almost worked at the rec center for a year! It was actually 11 months 3 days ago, which is the longest I've ever held a job. And I still love it. I still get to teach Climbing 101 on Thursdays, and I get to teach Parent/Tot on Saturdays. And until school starts up again, I'm also teaching a class for 7 and 8 year olds on Monday. It's a lot of fun, actually. This is the second session I've done, and I have 2 kids who were in the first session and wanted to stay for the second, and I also have a couple new kids this session. And it's really cool. They're all awesome and improving on climbing, and I'm slowly learning ways to help actually teach kids and adults how to climb and improve their skills. Plus, my bosses are all pretty bamf. I have a fantastic story about being stood up for climbing by a group of kids twice in a row. This actually something that's only happened twice, and both times I got to be the one working. And this story really highlights exactly how awesome my bosses are.

Alas, I started typing it, and it looses something if it's not told in person. Or maybe I'm just too lazy to type it all out. It's pretty long. Whichever reason you want to choose. :) But ask me about it sometime! It's awesome.


Climbing
CLIMBING! I miss climbing. Unfortunately, my friend that I was taking climbing all the time doesn't actually have the money anymore to be able to climb with me. So I haven't been able to go in a while. But I did take another friend climbing for the first time in her life, and you know, she did way better than I did my first time. :) Which isn't to say she's good (and I mean that with all the love in my heart), but she had a ton of fun. That's the first time I've ever taken anyone climbing and they just straight up wanted to climb more on a regular basis.

She made it probably 30 feet up the wall, which is almost to the top, and I think she could be really good at it. But we climbed for a while, and she was super impressed by my skills (which I think is funny, since I'm not super awesome at climbing. I'm pretty average, I'd say), and by "we climbed" I really mean that I climbed one route on the auto belay and she climbed two routes, about 1/4 the way up one, and almost to the top on the other. She did climb the one of them twice, and the second got up about 2/3 of the way. But she was so tired, he arm muscles were just not doing it anymore.

Getting tired from climbing is a weird experience. It's not that you're physically panting and can't continue or something, and it's not even that your arms feel too tired to pull you up the wall. There just hits a point where your muscles aren't doing it anymore. A move you literally made 5 minutes ago will not be a move you can make now because you don't have the grip strength. It's funny. But Christina-- the friend-- got super tired like that, so we stopped for the day. I go over and start putting away the equipment we borrowed from the rec center-- my tag, her harness-- and she comes over to give me her shoes, and glances at her phone to check the time and she just stops. "I've only been climbing a half hour?! That's terrible! I need to work out more before I come back." Haha. It was hilarious.

Then I got the usual slew of questions about what muscles should you work to strengthen your climbing muscles? And straight up, I have no idea. I built up my climbing muscles by climbing more. I worked myself to exhaustion the first week of my class, and after that I just had a lot more upper body strength. That said, I'm still pretty weak, but I improved, and I honestly don't know what exercises will help you with climbing, aside from just climbing more and letting that be your exercise. So sorry.


Weddings
Not mine, no worries. Haha. Though wouldn't that be a way to announce my engagement. (Side note: I had a marriage defined to me recently as betting someone half your stuff that you'll love them forever. I thought it was fantastic.)

A couple of my friends got married last Friday and their reception is this Saturday, which I'm going to. Now this is particularly exciting because I have found someone to be my plus one!

I've been to many weddings, all alone, and most of them have actually been kinda really sad and terrible? I mean, by nature, weddings are these giant celebrations of love and that's beautiful and everything, but it's all about couples. Primarily the one couple that's actually making the vows, but all the things you do at weddings are done better in pairs. Dancing, uh. Eating cake...

Hm. Alright, maybe weddings can be done as a single; maybe the reason I've never enjoyed them before is because I was never particularly close to the bride and groom nor the other people at the wedding. But the people I've always tried to hang out with before at weddings all had dates, so I was just the awkward 3rd wheel, there. And this wedding wouldn't have been a whole lot different. Almost 100% of my friends have a date. They all have boyfriends/husbands/girlfriends/wives, and though I love hanging out with them, it's always paired off. Alli and Trey. Sara and Brandon. Kayli and Billy. And that leaves me as an awkward 3rd wheel if I'm sitting there trying to talk to them. This is a problem all the time, but it's usually not terribly obvious. But weddings, being romantic in design, will most certainly aggravate the situation.

Now I do have one other friend who is boyfriend-less. So every time in the past that we've had everyone hanging out together, if everyone got too coupley, at least we would have each other. But I kinda always wanted that to be my last resort, and this friend almost sees it as a pride. She tries to make it like we're so awesome because we're single and we don't need someone else and it's actually incredibly obnoxious, and honestly I would rather just spend the evening alone than have to spend it with her. Thankfully, instead of having to bare a night being her "partner in crime" or whatever, I just found a date to go with me.

I'm excited. I had to buy shoes so that he can buy a tie to match them, because my dress is just plain black, so if he only has to match that, we're going to be boring. Haha. Hopefully I'll have pictures later.

ASL
So every Thursday, I go to Old Chicago in Superior to hang out with a group of Deaf people and ASL students and we all sit there signing to each other all night. And it's fantastic and I love it and I'm getting pretty good at ASL. There is still so much more for me to learn, but people always tell me that I'm really advanced for having only taken ASL 1. Like, it's not just students who tell me that, but also the Deaf people. Such a compliment. I love it.

One of the coolest things, actually, was last week when I was talking to some girl who I hadn't met before. I can't remember her name. I honestly thought she was Deaf from the way she was using her voice, but it turns out she can hear fine. Maybe she has a Deaf parent or something where she learned to voice herself like Deaf people do. Ooh, she might be a CODA [child of Deaf adults]. Anyway, she was talking to me asked how long I've been studying ASL, so I told her only one semester, and she said that she was really impressed because most ASL students always voice what they say. They speak a lot, especially if they don't know the sign for something, which is particularly bad for two reasons: 1- it's considered super rude in the Deaf culture, and 2- there's not a direct translation from English to ASL, so if you speak while you sign, then you probably aren't signing with good grammar.

But yes. It was a nice compliment. There's this other girl named RaVen who is Deaf, and she was telling a story a couple weeks ago and it just went 100% over my head. My reception is getting better, so I can follow more stories that people tell and tell more stories myself, but this was not one of those nights. I just had no idea what she was saying. And when she finished, she asked if I understood what she said, so I told her no, which she suspected, and then she told me not to worry, because back when she first learned sign language, she wasn't very good. And she improved to where she is now, so she said I can, too. :) It was cool. She and I are actually going to go camping in September. I'm really excited.


Writing
So I suppose I never actually wrote a whole lot, but I miss it anyway. I'm considering starting a blog where I write short stories that span over several posts. These stories wouldn't really be planned out, it would just be me taking maybe one day a week to write out a little bit of plot and seeing where the story goes. Actually, that's the way that Stephen King and Dean Koontz both write their books.

The only problem I see with this way of writing is that I wouldn't be going back to edit the earlier parts of my stories, so the plot might have some continuity errors (depending on how often I update the story) and my prose might not always be beautiful. But I still think it could be fun.

Would anyone be interested in reading that if I started it up? I'll start it up eventually regardless, because if I want to be a writer in the future, then I should start having a set schedule of writing now, right? Get into the habit? But I'll do it happier and sooner if anyone is interested in reading my writing.


Concerts
I need to go to more concerts. On my list:
Five Finger Death Punch
Volbeat
Flobots
Rise Against.

I'm willing go alone-- I've done it before-- but is anyone interested in joining me at any of these concerts next time the bands tour to Denver?


Random Numbers
I think this will be my last section. I've been getting so many texts from random numbers I don't know. It's a strange problem that I can't really say I've had before. It's really ridiculous how many texts I've gotten recently. Some from people I do apparently know, some from wrong numbers, some who never reply to me, and one who I didn't know, but I think they were texting me on purpose.

A couple highlights:
The other week, someone texted me, and all it said was, "I'm sorry" so I replied, "I forgive you. Who is this?" and never got an answer. Which might worry me a little haha.

There's this guy who started texting Sara pretending to be with the CBI and saying that she's in too deep, and she wasn't really playing along, so I texted them and we had a fun conversation about some fake victim and tests that were run on her and us being suspects and needing to get out now. It was random, but totally awesome. I suppose I was the random number in that situation, actually.

Today I got a text from someone saying, "Is this Phil? This is Newly." So I said, "Phil of the Future?" and they just replied with, "I must have the wrong #" haha. So I said, "Yeah, sorry." But I'm glad they replied at all. Made me laugh.

Such a strange problem.

Not that I would call it a problem problem, though. They are almost always either someone I know (like from church) and just don't have the number for, or they don't text me back. The one time they wouldn't say who they were, it was like two years ago and they were doing that Cat Facts thing. I think I won that, though, because the Cat Facts person gave up texting me before I freaked out on them.


Thus ends my giant update on life. I'mma try to read more of The Blade Itself tomorrow! Yay :)