first day with a kick...

thursday was my first day of work at the church... i decided to take it (really) easy on tuesday and wednesday... sleeping in, watching movies, reading... doing nothing, really...

on wednesday afternoon, i get a call from matt (high school/college minister) asking what i'm doing friday, thursday night and saturday morning... somewhere in my life i learned to ask questions fast and not to commit to anything before knowing the full story... yes, i'm still adventurous, but i'd like to know what the adventure is (or the rough outline of the adventure)...

he had a trip planned starting thursday night at 10:00 called "24 hours of madness" - and that's exactly what it was... so i told him if it was okay with john (my supervisor) that i'd go... and it was okay... so i got up thursday morning at 6:45 in order to get ready to go to work and be there by 8:00... worked until 4:00 (i was supposed to leave at 1:00 to go take a nap, but i rarely ever leave work when i'm supposed to if it's early)... went home and ran errands with amy, got back to the church at 8:45...

we got back about 9:30 friday night... i probably got about an hour worth of sleep total on the bus on the way home... and then i got home and went to sleep about 11:30 last night and definitely slept until 4:30 this afternoon...

here's what we did...

10:30 - left the church and made our way (only getting lost a couple of times) to climb nashville - over 20,000 square feet of rock-wall climbing...
1:00 (or so) - left climb nashville and went to laserquest in downtown nashville
4:00 - left laserquest and headed to cracker barrel somewhere near owensboro, kentucky...
8:30 (i think) - left cracker barrel and went to holiday world/splashin' safari... (theme and water park in santa claus, indiana)
4:30 - left holiday world and went to eat at ryan's in owensboro
9:30 - arrived back at the church (a little early)

so that's the rough outline of what we did... but it doesn't really do it justice... it was a ton of fun... here are the highlights:

*got to meet and hang out with a bunch of the high school kids... they are incredible... there were 47 members and visitors on the trip... and 5 "adults" - no one over 30 - 2 were college students...
*at laserquest, my name was laserqueen... someone said it sounded like a chat room name...
*holiday world is the best theme park ever... it really is amazing... it's not super expensive like every other theme park... they give out free sunscreen and soft drinks are unlimited and free all over the park... and the food is cheap... we gave each student $5 and it was enough for them to eat lunch on with money left over, usually... and it's clean and all the people that work there are nice...
*the raven, the legend and the voyage are the three roller coasters... the raven was awesome and then we went on the legend... and it was better... then... i had the experience that changed my life... the voyage is the second best roller coaster i've ever been on... and the 1st was 5 years ago... the magnum at cedar point and it barely beat out the voyage... and the voyage could be considered better because their dimensions are so close and it's wooden (the other was steel)... and wooden is awesome... i went three times in a row... and i was such a spaz about it... but it was awesome!!!
*we went into the glass blowing shop where there was definitely a sign that said, "we encourage intelligent touching" which could end up having it's own entry on my site because it made me laugh so much...
*all the way around it was just one of those experiences much like an mastercard commercial... it was priceless... a great experience...

on a completely random side note... at about hour 27 of me being awake, 16 of the trip - i found out that two of the students (twin brothers) are cousins of lindsey and beth little and jacob smythe... it was pretty cool...

i guess they know how to really "break people in" at clearview... :)