Sleigh Ride! Sleigh Ride!

Just hear those sleigh bells jingling,
ring ting tingling too
Come on, it's lovely weather
for a sleigh ride together with you,
Outside the snow is falling
and friends are calling "Yoo hoo,"
Come on, it's lovely weather
for a sleigh ride together with you.

As redunkulous as that song is, I was able to experience its true meaning today when I went for my first ever sleigh ride. Unlike this picture, we were essentially on what is used for a hayride.... so i was actually just sitting on hay holding on for dear life while two HUGE belgian horses pulled us and it was AMAZING! The snow slowly was falling to the ground as we went on this one hour ride, and it was incredible cold out but all of us on the ride sat together and got warm. It was just amazing, year the bells on the horses ring ting tingling...haha it just seemed like a perfect christmas season activity that made me almost EXCITED and happy to be living in a place with snow and the ability to have sleigh rides such as this...

OH what a perfect day. I recommend a sleigh ride in the near future. It is a very well worth it adventure.

What can make my glass half empty

and....BAM I am gonna talk about sports, because that's what i do. Sorry roommate! I just wanted to say something I am going to put OUT THERE. Okay, and I also think you would like to hear this, roommate.
I have a problem. We all have problems, but mine is HUGE! haha actually, not so much...
I am a VERY positive person. Like, I could be really REALLY tired going through the worst day ever with a HUGE SMILE on my face, still singing High School Musical songs. It's FUN! It makes me very upset to admit that I do have a negitive attitude about one thing. That is.....
DRUM ROLL......................................

Yes. This lovely organization. I am going to admit some things right now:
-I rarely get through an entire twins game on TV without leaving the room in disgust, or because I'm too nervous, thinking Joe Nathan or someone like Delmon Young is going to completely blow it for us.
-I did not pay attention to Twins Baseball this summer while at camp. YIKES. I didn't want to experience heartbreak.
-I have a list of twins players I want to leave, to make my team better.
-When I go to actual games, I watch the whole thing, but I am always waiting for them to lose.

OKAY, this is a serious issue. I know. I decided that for the new year, I am going to start actually being POSITIVE about my team that I LOVE almost too much. Okay, not enough. I am just gonna get what I don't like out there, and you know what, my reasons for not liking these MN Twins things are redunkulous. HAHA. Just getting it out there. HERE:

TC The Bear: Stood infront of my locker in High School, and could not move. I got late to a test becuase he couldn't move. This grudge is rediculous.

Jesse Crain: Oh Jesse...he always seems to screw things up, and shoulda left with Juan Rincon. I will give him a chance this season.

Joe Nathan: Gives me heart attacks. Blows saves....BUT RARELY. It just feels like it is all the time. He always has a low ERA and high save count. This should not be a real grudge.

Delmon Young: I think I just don't like him because he has SOOOOOOOO MUCH POTENTIAL! I actually liked him when I found out he was traded to the Twins! He was runner up for Rookie of the Year...and then he has not been that good since becoming a Twin. Hey, I will root for him, hoping he gets better.

The New York Yankees: Okay, they are seriously the one thing that really makes my blood boil, and they are on this list because they twins CAN'T BEAT THEM! OOO they went what... 0 and 7 against them last season? WHOOOOO HOOOOOOOOOOOOO! They just need to stop looking at the pinstripes and Derek Jeter's beautiful eyes and then they will be SOLID! :D

Okay, this was rediculous, but hey, had to get it out there. If I can look past these things, things will be EXCELLENT in 2010! I always have this feeling the twins are not going to do well, but NOT THIS YEAR! They will be amazing! I will NOT STOP BELIEVING! I will ALWAYS BE THERE FOR THEM! I will ROOT FOR THE TEAM that will SAVE BASEBALL!

Just had to put that out there.

ROCK ON!

I wanna wash my hands, my feet and hair in snow...gah.

Today was a very long day. Didn't get much sleep, got in to work at 8:15 am, left work at 9:40 pm...so i'm pretty tired, as I sit here eating rice with a slice of American Cheese on top. Apparently when you're that tired, you can only think of really weird things to eat! Also because I'm this tired I'm kinda weirdo loopy, so BE PREPARED!
Thanks to my roommate that shares my wall, I apparently am not going to talk about sports. WAH? That's my life, right? Oh yeah, and High School Musical, Twilight and being LOUD! hahahha No, I'm going to talk about something that stresses us midwesterners...us CRAZY PEOPLE every day...and actually those poor people in the east coast and omg ALABAMA as well!

SNOW!

Here I am in February of 2007, awkwardly sitting on a pile of snow at lovely Luther College. I was crazy. I was SMILING. WHA? I had just spent 3.5 weeks on the beaches of Hawaii, tanning and being super lazy and happy in the sun while all the crazy people in the midwest got PUMMELED with snow. I get back and I miss the snow. Oh yeah, and 2 weeks later, I had to go from Demoines Iowa to Decorah in the most horrific snow storm I have ever seen. It took a normal 3 hour drive 8 HOURS...At one point I couldn't see the road very well, so I asked a friend to look out the window. The response: "Uh, you're actually almost in a cornfield." Yeah, snow does not agree with me AT ALL, even though I am crazy and decide to drive through storms!
But that's what we are like, us Midwesterners. We like to put ourselves through pain. We like it when a HUGE storm comes in. Hey, if an inch of snow fell in...let's say Florida, everything would be shut down for a week! Here, we maybe will have school cancelled one day if a foot of snow falls. We are TOUGH. And we have this positive spirit that alot of people just don't have. Hey, I gotta say I like it.
Even though, i would LOVE for the snow to only stick around two weeks before Christmas and maybe a week after, I can live with it. It makes things exciting. Hey, I would much rather have crazy snow storms than a hurricane. We can get through this snow...it will be around for 4 more months at LEAST, but hey we will have fun.
We are CRAZY, but hey we have fun. Now, I'm going to go look out at the cold, miserable, bare and dead looking scenery and just think: HEY, the sun will come back in JUNE, and it will be okay! :)

The Curse of the Gary Anderson

Last night, I was sitting on my couch with my brother, marveling at this thing called Cable TV, which I have only seen once in the last month. Marveling at the moving pictures, we started watching ESPN, in which our lady Gopher Volleyball team was playing against the Texas Longhorns in the NATIONAL semi-finals. We are talking BIG TIMES. As a 11 seed, it was amazing that minnesota got this far. I was getting excited, thinking, "WOW a minnesota team might actually get to a CHAMPIONSHIP!" And then...reality set in. Miss 10 foot 1 on the Longhorns started swinging, making the gophers look like confused 5 year olds on their first day of kindergarten. Then they lost, of course, killing any hope that minnesota can play sports. We are very unfortunate, like boston did, to have a curse. We just can't win anything with this curse intact. This is called the Gary Anderson curse.

On that wonderful crisp January day in 1999, I was in the middle of an eventful and glorious skiing vacation with my family. On that Sunday, the Vikings were playing for the NFC Championship against the Falcons. We had a decision to make: go skiing on this sunny day, or watch the 15-1 Vikings CRUSH the falcons. Of course we chose to watch the game! We had nothing to lose, because we were GOOD and we were going to win! I mean, we already had a "Going to Miami" song based on Will Smith's song, and we knew we were a SHOE-IN for the superbowl. Well, Gary Anderson decided that "Hey, I suck" and missed a VITAL field goal, his first of the season. And thus, the minnesota curse began.
We are a state in which our last championship occured in 1991, thanks to my lovely minnesota twins. We have come so close, yet FALLEN, disgracefully too many times since. 1998-1999 season of football was a time in which we had the chance to be amazing, yet we FELL, and the curse into the 2000s began. During the 2000s, we had had a ALOT of hope. This is what happened in the decade:
Minnesota Twins: After almost a decade of losing seasons, the twins bounced back, with a great 2001 season and new coach, ron gardenhire. After gardy took charge with his feisty attitude(that gets him ejected from games sometimes!), the twins won 5 AL central titles, getting to the AL championship series only once, and losing HORRIBLY in the first round of the playoff every other time...huh.
Minnesota Vikings: The decade brought perhaps the most embarrassing moments for the state of minnesota, thanks to the ridiculous vikings. YIKES. The 2005 boat incident, and randy moss' antics made this an interesting time after them being good in 1998-9...now that there is a new coach, and good people such as Jared Allen, Adrian Peterson and Brett Favre, the team has turned around, but could the team ever win a superbowl after starting the curse? AND, they have lost 4! WHOO HOO!
Minneosta Timberwolves: Yikes. After losing Kevin Garnett and having Kevin McHale ruin EVERYTHING that the team had, they could perhaps become the worst NBA team in history this season. WHOOO HOOOOOOO!
Minnesota Wild: They got rid of everyone and are attempting to come back this season. They have yet to make it to a Stanley Cup.

And so, our sports teams have bad luck. Thank you Gary Anderson! Who is going to stop this curse? My bet is on this guy:

You can't really tell from this picture of him stretching, but Minnesota native Joe Mauer is everything that greatness should be. Missing the first month of the season, he came back ready to go with a BLAST of a homerun(that i witnessed!!) and was unstoppable the rest of the season, winning the AL Batting title with .365 average and helping the mediocre twins become amazing in September(of course!) and win the AL Central Title!!! He has received awards in the postseason such as AL MVP, gold glove and silver slugger. He also has one year left in his contract. He wants to go to the world series, and if he doesn't, he may just go to the dark side to get it. It is VERY crucial then for him to win a championship with this team, and he and every twins player is going to do whatever it takes to win this title, and keep him in Minnesota for years to come, because in the end the curse will be BROKEN!!!!!!!!!

The Beginning of the very Enthusiastic Randomness...

Heya everyone!
As my title dictates, I am very enthusiastic...about ALOT of things that I will detail in this blog. This could become a blog about Minnesota Sports, but I don't want to bore people. Also, this blog could also become something to do during the sad, dark, cold time I like to call: THE OFFSEASON. This is a time I bet that exists for a lot of people in which america's past time is on a hiatus. It is unfortunately a time in which the HORRIBLE artic cold of Minnesota comes out and bites us! It is a time with no sun, nothing going on except for those Minnesota sports teams that try SO HARD...yet fail alot of times....With this, this is how my life goes year after year, starting with january of course:

JANUARY: No sun, no baseball, times inside, no fun. The Superbowl usually adds some excitement. And snowball fights and forts.
FEBRUARY-MARCH: The TRANSITION period begins! This is when the twins players get together again and begin training and the beloved spring training takes place! The timberwolves usually end their season, two months before most, thus ending a season of PAIN. Also, this is a time in which i am able to escape the minnesota cold and travel to California! HEY HEY HEY!
APRIL: The BEGINNING of HAPPY TIMES: THE REGULAR SEASON!!!!!!!!!!! Regular season is always exciting, yet it always puts me and all of minnesota into a sometimes horrible life of extreme UPS and DOWNS. The twins lose a game and you know the day is going to be bad. The twins win, and you know it could become the best day of your life!!!

MAY-JUNE: Time that school/work ends. A time of excitement and the final change of the artic season: Minnesota finally BLOOMS and becomes beautiful again. This beauty lasts usually until September...yay. This is also when baseball season is new and fresh, and especially with the twins, you still have NO idea how the rest of the season will go. This is opening to the great summer of twins, hiking, camping, boating, sun...

JULY-AUGUST: Summer times. Baseball, sun tans, lakes...Minnesota is truly what it is. GREAT.
SEPTEMBER: This is CRUNCH time. This is a time when i am constantly nervous. A time in which all of us in Minnesota are on the edge of our seats. This is when the minnesota twins decide if they are good or bad. 2009 they decided they were amazing in the last full of month of the season and won 17 of their last 21 games, including an amazing, nail biting tiebreaker win vs. the collapsing detriot tigers... SWEET! 2008, they decided to completely give up, and then have a HEARTBREAKING game 163 loss...thus proving coin tosses are LAME.

OCTOBER-NOVEMBER: The cold usually begins. This year, Minnesota was weird and it snowed during October. What? And THEN it became October in November!! This is also the horrible time in which the baseball season ends. OFFSEASON TIME. October always brings a horrible time in which the twins ALWAYS realize that they are in WAY over their head by being in the playoffs and then have a heartbreaking loss outta the playoffs,even though they are trying so hard.........which then starts a week or two week long period of mourning. THEN the award season begins later and we are happy! AND THEN there is nothing for awhile....
DECEMBER: One word: CHRISTMAS! This is a great break from the nothingness that is the offseason. And then we begin all over again!

Now that I got everything I wanted to about baseball...FOR NOW(hahah)....time to discuss nature.
At my internship at the Audubon Center, I have the privilege of hanging out with a long section of land...aka a Transect, and then documenting what happens there every week. My friend, the land(which still needs to be named!), is located in a very woodsy area off of a cross country skiing trail. Yesterday, there were SO many signs of animals!! We were "fortunate" to get 2 inches of snow this week, and so i could see many tracks! There must have been a deer party at the transect, because there were SO many deer tracks! THEN there was a cute little tree stump with a hole in it. In that hole, there is a pile of acorn, with small animal tracks into the hole! I can only imagine that a cute lil chipmunk/squirrel is perhaps living there? But after finding that, I also found something even more exciting: BIG paw tracks that HAVE to be from a wolf!! The tracks are a little bigger than my fist...so I am only assuming this! EXCITING! I will give updates with anything else I may find observing my friend the land!