Okay, so it's been a while since my last bloggity-blog, but I've got stories upon stories to tell, for the last part of October and the first part of November have been absolutely crazy.

First off, let me take you back in time to the day of ghouls and goblins of 2008. While most kids slept in, costumes picked out for later that night, I was wide awake, waiting for another human being to appear on the school's campus. As I bopped my head to a few songs on my trusty MP3 player, a bus pulled up to the side of the school. Only minutes later, my Astronomy teacher pulled into the parking lot and started loading up. I waited for a few more minutes to arrive before coming out of the shadows and claimed my lush, single seat (for our bus was not of the "yellow bus" type, but the rare - almost Greyhound variety). Eventually, our journey to West Texas began.
After hours of listening to The Once and Future King on audiobook and knitting a black and white knit hat, we arrived at the campsite. The four girls on the trip pitched their tent quickly and efficiently Once we had made our makeshift home and taken a bathroom break, the students began clamoring towards the mountain and its hiking trail. I followed in their footsteps, being careful on the rocky slope and paused about halfway up the mountain, out of breath but in complete awe of the clarity of the hills, sunset, and even the dead grass around me. Deer could be seen prancing about below and in that moment by myself, I knew it was good to be alive. Soon enough, I got bored of the mountain (there's only so much one can do with out falling down and dying) and headed back down to play on the playground located right next to our campsite. I promptly sat on the swing and began to think about nothing.
A griddle had been started beehind me as I swung, watching each person emerge from the trail. Tasty smells floated by my nose hinting at the tasty dinner of hamburgers and hotdogs. After eating and cleaning up, it was time for the learning to begin. The night was young, at only 7 o'clock, but the stars above were already shining like it was midnight. The small group of people gathered around, me with a pair of binoculars in hand, and began to look at the bright dots in the sky.

"Find Casseopeia," our teacher said. My eyes flitted to the 'W' shaped constellation almost instantly, althorugh I had to double-check myself because of the crazy amount of stars, not to mention the bright line of the rest of the Milky Way galaxy. With some difficulty, thanks to our teacher's broken green laser pointer, the class found the Etheopian queen.

"Now look for a big, bright box that the 'W' is pointing to." I found it quickly, but confused myself. After a round of explaining from my astro-advisor, the box was found. (I was right the first time.) But then...

SNKORTK.

A loud snort/squeal was heard and the lesson was lost. Weird, smelly pigs were attacking our trash and everyone, sans myself, went to see. (Really? Go towards the scary noise? How smart.) Apparently no one had taken our trash to a dumpster and the pigs, or Javalinas as we later learned, were happy to "clean up" for us. So Mr. M.C. Hammer settled the rest of the class down, or tried to, and begain pointing out stars once more.

"The corner of the box-"

"Oh my gosh, a fox!" Just like earlier, the class was lost. He continued teaching to the few who stayed and pointed out the Andomeda Galaxy, a small smudge in the sky. After setting up a telescope, rounding up children and feeling the temprature drop (to FREEZING as it would do every night) everyone retreated to their respectful tents to rest for the next day.

Yes. That was only ONE day. The second day began with a lovely breakfast of eggs, pancakes (That I so awesomely made), sasuage, hashbrowns (which were slightly horrible), toast and almost anything else your heart could desire. Then, the tour. We visited the McDonald Observatory (note the above sticker!) and its largest telescope. Various students got to "drive" the telescope and spun it around or opened the dome doors or, in my case, caused the floor to move up and down. A pretty awesome experience overall! Our group migrated down to a theatre where we proceeded to learn about the sun and its magnetic field and other various facts. Soon enough, dinner was had and it was time for the twilight viewing and star party. The first contained information that our class had already known (we answered every question) and was kind of silly. However, the latter was pretty cool. It still had info that we had already obtained, but then they broke out the telescopes. Andromeda, two clusters of stars, Jupiter (and the four Gallelian moons), and the Ring Nebula were the subjects for the night as I made my way past all five of the telescopes. I can't even explain how awesome it was.

Day three began with the packing of the tents and loading back onto the bus for a drive to the Carlsbad Caverns. Our decent began and about fifteen minutes in, I could feel my entire body shaking. Waves of fear and awe alternated through my body as we continued down into the dark, wet depths of the cave. Stalgmites and stalagtites littered the cave and there were even twizzle towers (Small towers that can be made out of especially damp sand at the beach that are stacks of crazy round-ish glops of sand). Shapes jumped out at me from all around. A dog, a platypus, Oklahoma (it was on the roof and totally next to a keyhole) and other shapes and sizes could be seen as I continued farther. Passing landmarks like the "Chinese Doll Theatre" and "Farieland" continued my fanciful dreaming. As we passed different areas, information was provided. Soda Straws and Popcorn could be found throughout the entire cave for they are types of rock formations as are draperies. A few hours later we emerged from over eight hundred stories below ground. A day to be remembered for sure. The last day wasn't all that interesting. We just drove for around 14 hours...

OKAY. Now with THAT out of the way... I manged to do some hardcore reminicing this week. First off, my old school's DI (Destination Imagination) team came to my mom's production of Seussical. Laughter and good times ensued. We talked about what had happened, what was going to happen, all the latest gossip and basically nothing at a Starbucks after we watched the show. I had forgotten how amazing the people are, but I was able to relive that and realize just how much I miss them all - even if some of them are crazy annoying but extremely hilarious. Just days after that, today actually, I was able to see another blast from a more recent past. STEEM, a nerd camp I went to over the summer had its reunion and I was able to reconnect with a large sum of people, but especially my roommate and another friend. We talked math jokes, figured out equations, did an experiment including tadpoles on ice and just chatted it up while bringing up some of the best times of my life. I'm pretty surprised I haven't cried yet.

So besides all of that, I've been working on college things. Utterly nuts. And it's 10 o'clock now. I'm going to head to bed. But I will leave you with a fortune that fits all of this utter rambling that is super long. Enjoy!