First off, I want to say sorry to the victims of the Orlando shootings. And sorry to the family and friends to the ones who were murdered. I won’t say killed, they were murdered. This was cold-blooded and planned. Premeditated. You don’t do something like that on a whim. But I am sorry for everyone and the impact that this has and will have on their lives.

On to lighter things.

So yesterday we went to California’s Great America for my boyfriends birthday. We managed to get there before the park opened, so we got a pretty close parking spot. We met up with our friends and waited in line to gain entrance and even saw Snoopy sing.

We managed to be on the first ride of Flight Deck, formerly known as Top Gun. I had never been on this roller coaster before. The only thing that I knew about it was that it was short enough that my sister could scream through it all in one breath. But my sister also has incredible lung capacity so maybe that it’s not the best way to judge the length of the ride. But I was brave and went on it with everyone else. And it was fun. I usually avoid rides with loops and corkscrews but that one wasn’t so bad. But I didn’t know how to ride through the loops and corkscrews (FYI: use your core going into them), so I kind of got pushed around.

After that we went to the new Mass Effect ride. It was like a mix of Star Tours and A Bugs Life at Disneyland. You go into a big theater and take a seat. The seats then move in accordance to what is going on on the big screen. There is an actor who is down in front of the big screen who talks and cracks some bad jokes as everyone gets settled in. Then the screen turns on and you go for your adventure. But I won’t spoil it for everyone, go and experience it for yourself.

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After that the guys went on the drop tower. Its one of those rides that you sit on and then it lifts you like 100 feet in the air and then it drops you. Not my kind of ride. I can barely do the small one at the boardwalk. But the birthday boy and a couple of friends went on it with him, so they had a blast. And I stood and watched them plummet towards the ground.

Once they were back on the ground we made our way over to the next roller coaster, The Grizzly. It’s an old style wooden coaster filled with “Rugged hills and bumps.” The coaster goes so fast and expands so much force on some of the turns that there are cables attached to the turn to help with supporting, and they really move when the coaster goes around the turn.

From the Grizzly to the Demon. The Demon is a metal coaster that goes as soon as you go up you drop down into two loops and then you do some corkscrews. Again with the loops and the corkscrews. Now experienced with loops and corkscrews I knew to use my core before heading in, so I didn’t get pushed around nearly as much.

But the hardest coaster for me was Vertigo. Its one where you stand up and straddle yourself over a bicycle like seat and then have a harness come down over your shoulders. I was fine until I saw that this also had loops and corkscrews. These were getting to be a bit much for a newbie to them such as myself. And remaining standing for the whole thing was just weird. I didn’t like it, so I only went on it once.

Then we went on Goldrush. The new coaster. It’s a wooden coaster again and it goes fast. Really fast.

But it is so much fun! I mean, yes, I was terrified and only let go of the handle/lap bar once (for the photo), but yeah, it was good. So good I went on it twice, while I only hit up the other coasters once. But we did Mass Effect twice as well, so that was good.

After leaving the park we went to Rock Bottom Brewery. We met up with my boyfriend’s brother and his girlfriend, who is awesome, and all had dinner. I would love to say that it was amazing and awesome, but it wasn’t, which made me really sad. It took forever to get our food, some of which they forgot like our ball park style pretzels, and the second order of pretzels came out cold. It almost felt like we were ignored, and we were a party of 7.

So between the park for the day and dinner I started to get fried. I needed to get out of the restaurant bad. I had been dealing all day with too many things to watch and knowing that I couldn’t see everything. Let alone control everything, with the other people. I just needed to get to a safe zone where I could relax, which was home. Once I got there everything was fine.

Day 24 and 25:

Okay, so doing this challenge is a challenge in itself. But its been good because it forces me to be active about it and talk about things that I normally wouldn’t think about.

My favorite childhood book. It was a hard cover horse book. Shock, I know. It was brown and to me it seemed huge and heavy. It talked about everything, the breeds, the different styles of riding, the history of the horse. There are so many photos of me with this book. I think that I probably even slept with it.

My 5 favorite blogs. I read one of my friends blog. True, she lives close to me, but I still like reading her blog. And I read Will Wheaton’s blog. But otherwise, I haven’t found any other blogs that I read on a regular basis. I’ll read ones when my boyfriend thinks that the topic is something relevant to me or that will help me out. I guess that means I need to start finding other blogs to read.

Back to everyday life…

I had a doctor’s appointment this morning, and we talked about how I need to be kinder to myself. I’m very mean to myself when it comes to self talk. I’m nice to others but not to me. Apparently this is a common thing, always being hard on yourself. But we did an exercise where I moved around in 3 chairs, one was the harsh voice, one was the encouraging kind voice, and the other was the recipient of both of them. It felt strange speaking out loud on what I say to myself, I felt very self-conscious about it even though it was just me and the doctor. She also gave me a guide so that I can have help when it comes to being more gentle with myself.

I also spent the morning grooming Gucci. He was a dirt ball, again. But he also had found his long-lost shoe, so I guess I can’t be too mad at him.

I’m going to spend the night working on a tail. I’m going to try something new so I’ll have to see how it turns out. I’ll probably post it either way.

Just keep swimming.