Hey everyone! Today I really, truly begin my blogging adventures, and unfortunately, all the things I said I was going to write about in my first post will probably not be written about at all. Now that I'm not at NewsBank anymore, I don't have the time, and I highly doubt you guys care about all that stuff anyway :) So mostly, I'll just try to document my experiences out here in the mountains.

Saturday evening the family (plus Zack, minus Ian) came over for cards and drinks and food and it was loud and crazy and slightly dramatic but mostly fun. (Although someone at some point needs to realize that it's unrealistic to expect 18 people to be coherantly involved in a single game. We try to get everyone involved so no one is left out of the smaller games, but honestly, it never works and we should just develop some sort of rotating system instead.) Anyway, then I was up until 3:30 am packing, and had even more packing to do and goodbyes to say the next morning, and then at 1pm on Sunday, Jay and I left for Providence. It was a beautiful sunny day and we listened to Hundred Year Hall (one of my all time favorite Dead shows) and I was very excited. So excited, in fact, that I decided to engage in one of my favorite activities: picking my cousins' noses...

But then I spent 8 hours sitting on the same plane, and the excitement waned until it was whittled into a tiny splinter wedged in between giant chunks of boredom, tiredness and hunger. On the plus side, though, once we got past our first stop in Chicago, the plane was blissfully empty and I had a whole row to myself. I read a wierd Japanese book, Piercing, by Ryu Murakami that I picked up at the Book Mill and which I don't recommend unless you like incest and stabbing people with ice picks. But the cover art was really cool...

Anyway, finally landed in Boise at 10:50 pm Mountain Time and all my bags made it through except for my $200 tent that had been strapped to the outside of my backpack. The woman at baggage claims told me that they're not responsible for anything strapped to the outside of a bag, and that she's surprised they had even allowed me to check my backpack with the tent on it. And (stupid, stupid, stupid!!), I hadn't put any separate ID on the tent. Why did I not think to at least scribble my name on it in a sharpie?! So now all they have is a nondescript description of a lone, tiny tent that some unscruptulous baggage guy has probably already snagged and brought home and set up in his backyard for his kids to play in. Goddamn it. I don't need the tent for my SCA work--they provide one--but I reeeeeeeeally wanted it for my time off. Not to mention for the next few years of my life. It was such an incredibly awesome tent. :(

(note: this guy, Ben, that I met today from the SCA said that his friend lost a $230 guitar in a similar situation and managed to get $500 back from the airline for it simply for being an insuffrable pain in the ass. So I'll keep trying.)

So I took a shuttle to a motel 6 and bunked up for the night with this girl Kasey, who is from Saxton's River, VT--about 20 mins south of Chester. She was the girl that Bryan Blankenstein, our project director, had initially told me about when I'd mentioned driving out here, but he never put me in contact with her so I thought she wasn't coming. If I'd known, I would've loved to have carpooled with her. And then I'd still have my tent... and I'd have a definite ride to the airport to come home for Leigh's wedding... and I'd have been able to bring my bike and snowboard... and I would've been able to drive to shows and see some live music this summer.

Complaining will get me nowhere.

Other than those two bumps in the road, things are good. I'm now in the new hotel (Spring Hill Suites Marriot in Boise) and it's way nicer than I would have ever expected. Plus, I only have one roommate (everyone else has two) and she's cool... and I have a huge flatscreen and an iPod player...

And now it's approximately 10 hours later than when I first started writing this, and I've met everyone in the group and it's generally an awesome group of people. We had baked ziti with elk meat for dinner tonight and then we all went downtown for drinks in some very cool bars and we get free shuttles from the hotel. I came back a little early (very responsible of me, I know, given my tendancy for ridiculous hangovers) and am going to hit the sack for a very, very busy next few weeks. Blogging will probably be sporadic at best. But I love you all!

Krista

PS - my address is:

Krista Langlois

SCA Training Center

HC82 Box 4090

Challis, ID 83226

And I waS mistaken before.. Challis is the town closest to us, not Salmon, but the road to Challis doesn't get plowed in the winter so we have to arrive to our base camp via Salmon. Also, our mail will be arriving on MWF, and via snowmobile for the next few weeks :)