Brush with Death.

The past few days havc been touch and go, folks. Mild brush with death, I would even venture to say. But don't worry-I have emerged from my trip into darkness virtually unscathed, although I feel certain that I used up two or three of my alleged nine lives. (Oh wait, that's just cats. I'm superhuman so I'm sure I have more.)

I began to develop this awesome headache on Thursday morning as I was sitting in Tracy's office having a brainstorming meeting. I could feel this one muscle on the left side of my neck tensing, and by 2pm I couldn't turn my head at all, to which I excused myself from the office to go lay in a dark room and fight the impending migraine that invariably was developing. And as I lay in my bed so miserable I couldn't move or function, I decided that I probably needed a massage. Why not? It's not like things could get any worse...

And so I put on dark sunglasses, sweats, and ventured to Massage Envy in Cherry Creek where I had a delightful massage therapist work on my back and neck. There were lots of "ooohs" and "hmmmms" and "uh oh... am I hurting you?" Honestly, people, it's a good thing that my arms were under the covers because otherwise I was truly frightened that I would come up swinging. It was maybe the most painful experience of my life (aside from the appendix experience, of course) and at the end she closed with, "Yeah, you're going to need more than one massage to get through all of that tension..." I laughed, paid, and left. Good luck, lady.

Over the weekend I was essentially sore to the touch, and had a slight headache that just lingered, and I still couldn't turn my head too well, but it was bearable. Until Sunday afternoon, that is.

I went to bed at 6:30 Sunday night- that's how obnoxiously painful my head was feeling. All was well until I woke up at 1am with my head splitting, the kind of pain that makes you want to climb the walls, or hurt yourself so as to detract from the pain you are already feeling. So I clasped my head in my arms, rolled around, and tried not to scream and wake up my roommates. After rolling around for an hour I eventually went downstairs where I turned on a season of Grey's Anatomy and hid my head under my comforter because the light from the TV was too bright. I also had one eye that wouldn't stop watering- it was out of control.

I managed to dose for two separate hours, during which I had a dream about committing a pre-meditated murder with a steak knife (which, by the way, scared me to death and I woke up ni a full sweat, shaking) and another where I was getting an Alpha Phi tattoo and I kept intentionally moving my body so the needle would break off under my skin. Pleasant, I agree.

Anyway, by 5:30am I had decided... I was going to the doctor. ASAP. This is a big breakthrough for me because I NEVER go to the doctor, unless I have gangrene or something is internally exploding. But so I called my fabulous doctor's office... the marvelous Dr. Davidson... and shockingly enough, when their office opened at 8:30am someone actually called me back! I'm pretty sure that no one from a doctor's office has ever returned my call before, so I was overjoyed. And 10:30 it was.

So I went to Dr. Davidson's and she's so fabulous. She's one of those doctors who actually listens to you and is very interested in actually fixing the problem. So I was overjoyed when she turned out the lights, told me to lay down, gave me a shot of toradol, one of steroids, and hooked me to an oxygen tank and told me to lay there for forty minutes. Amazingly enough, it helped! The headache was probably 65% gone by the time I left! And then she wrote me prescriptions for Darvocet (JMU girls, you remember how well I tolerate that!) and a muscle relaxer. Geez, why coudln't I have met this woman years ago? Could have saved me a LOT of time, money, and pain!

So anyway, after the injections and a dose of Darvocet, I was thankfully able to work all day yesterday. That was great news. Things are very busy at CAMPUSPEAK right now- lots of changes and adjustments, and excitement! I'm just glad I made it through to the other side. To all of my friends, I give my love. It was a close one.

Hokie Love

The past two days have just been absolutely surreal. My heart is heavy, and I think that I speak for everyone around me. After a gunman stormed the Virginia Tech campus, killing over 30 people and wounding over 20 more, the entire country has stood by with our mouths hanging open. As someone who grew up in southern Virginia, although I chose not to attend the school, Virginia Tech has been around me my entire life. So many of my friends were- are- Hokies. My uncle played football at Tech. It was one of the few colleges I actually toured, and it was where I sat in on my first college course, my first college party. And in Blacksburg, it feels it's in my backyard. JMU grew to love (in a quite bittersweet way..haha) those years when we faced VT in football, because despite the inevitable slaughter, the Hokies were our closest friends and we relished the chance to party and celebrate together before... and during...... oh yeah, and after the game, as well. Hokies were undoubtedly our closest friends, and when our communities came together it felt we were an unstoppable force.

The concept that a student was so filled with depression, and anger, and hatred... and disregard for human life... is terrifying and saddening. The lives that were senselessly lost yesterday overwhelm me, and my heart absolutely aches- throbs- for the Virginia Tech community. I can't image picking up the pieces of a 26000+ student community and moving along in the face of such tragedy, but at the same time I am so inspired by the closeness of the students, the ability of the community to pull together, the love and support everyone has shown for one another. Maybe Nikki Giovanni put it best in today's convocation- they will carry on, and they will stand strong in the face of adversity. Strong enough to hold their heads high with strength and pride, brave enough to cry for those lost and hurting... They are HOKIES.

Blacksburg is behind you. So are JMU, UVA, Mason, VCU, and the entire state of Virginia. And although I am feeling secluded and rather lonely out here in Denver, and would give anything to hug my Tech friends and hold their hands, I can attest to the fact that Colorado, and the rest of the nation, support VT as well. Be strong and know that you are in thoughts and prayers nationally. As we've all heard countless times today, and I couldn't put it better myself... today, we are all Hokies.

SEPC madness!

Last weekend I made the trek to sunny Atlanta, GA for the Southeastern Panhellenic Conference, where I was surrounded by close to 1000 sorority women from the southeastern region. It was a great conference- so much fun and so many awesome sorority women. It made me very proud to be among them!

We had a whole bunch of speakers there presenting, so I stayed pretty busy at the booth and running from room to room seeing their programs and handing out promotional materials. We also got some play time in, which was awesome.

My soul sista from way back in the day, Meg, lives in Atlanta now, so it was great that I got to see her, even if only for an hour or two. She came by on Friday and we went and grabbed lunch and then she sat with me at the booth and ate, and got to meet a few of our speakers and see what CAMPUSPEAK is about. I was so happy to see her and hated to leave, but things were crazy busy!

I loved the conference, the hotel was great, all of our speakers rocked the house! It was totally absolutely 100% exhausting, and by the time I flew out at 7:15 Sunday morning, I was so tired I could hardly walk. My flight was delayed, thereby shortening my layover in Kansas City considerably, and resulting in a mad dash across the airport during which of course my luggage was lost, and I got back to Denver around 11:00am with no suitcase. Ah well, eventually it turned up, so all is well. I seriously slept most of Sunday afternoon, through the night, and then a large portion of Monday as well. I was SO tired. Travel is exhausting and I have a newfound respect for our speakers. I can't imagine maintaining that pace on a regular basis.

The only picture I took the entire time was compliments of the fabulous Mr. Erle Morring and is posted here. This is myself, Christine Hassler, and Stacey Prussman, two incredible speakers and friends of mine, in the hotel lobby on our way to dinner. I am very bad about taking pictures and since there were so many folks from the CAMPUSPEAK family there, I'm bummed that I only took one picture! Ha. Ah well. Next time.

Only other new thing in my world is that one of my favorite Alpha Phis, Erin Weed (CAMPUSPEAKer and Girls Fight Back founder) has moved to Colorado! I'm super excited to have her nearby and am looking forward to seeing her tonight. It will be great to have her here.

That's about all in my world! Sending hugs, xoxo!

Poconos Recap

Well, I'm trying to update the blog from the one place in the townhouse where I sometimes sort-of kind-of get internet, so I am curious as to how long this will take me to do. Let's hope for the best.

As predicted, the Poconos was an absolute blast!! We seriously had so much fun. I started the trip at DIA with a three hour flight delay for winds in Chicago. Seriously?! So I sat. And read an entire book. It was great. But once I got into Newark after 9pm, I was so stoked to see Noelle, my grandbig. It felt so good to see her. So we fought people to get to my luggage and we got on the road! After a long, windy, dark drive through the Poconos and the gorillas in the mist environment (highly foggy), we eventually found Chrissy in the cabin. It was in a very woody, Blair Witch like area so quite frankly we were very impressed that Chrissy was there alone and not huddled in the corner crying. So we chilled that night and just relaxed. It felt so good to be back with those girls.

Friday morning we got up early and it was still just the three of us, as everyone else was working and traveling. We found a fabulous little hole in the wall place for breakfast- those are the best kinds- and then found a Wegman's 40 miles awak on Noelle's GPS. So we took off for nearby Wilkes-Barre to hit up the grocery store, liquor store, and Starbucks. It was a great way to kill the afternoon and we laughed so much. Then we headed back home and the others started showing up. Rayray and Christina Manz rolled in around 8 or so and we fixed stuffed shells and salads and stuff for dinner, and drank a LOT of wine. Eventually Ang and Becky showed up around 11pm and the whole party was there!

Saturday we literally did nothing. We laid around, played games, spent time in the hot tub, ate a LOT, and played this icebreaker game that Chrissy put together that was lotws of Q&A catching up type stuff. It was a blast, I loved just chilling with everybody. The original plan was to go out for dinner that night but we were all tired and lazy and didn't feel like climbing out of sweats and PJ's, so we wound up just picking up a pizza and chillin. Drank lots of beer and then late night we decided to watch "The Sixth Sense", one of those movies that no matter how many times you watch it, still scares you, especially when you are in the middle of the woods as we were. We scared the shit out of ourselves and Noelle and I wound up sleeping on the couch together in the living room. Pathetic. Haha.

Oh. And we built a fire. In the living room. Without any help. We rock.

Now, I didn't take many pictures at all, so I had very few decent ones to pick from. What I've posted, thugh, are myself and my grandbig, Noelle, whom I miss majorly. She is a teacher in New Jersey where she lives with her fabulous husband Dave. We were several adult beverages in when this photo was taken, so it's not so beautiful. The other pic is the view out of the back door of the cabin through the wood with the snow andfrozen lake. We spent several hours of our time here in the hot tub. Beautiful!

The trip was a blast, even witht he screaming child two rows ahead of me the entire plane ride home, it was so worth it. I miss those girls like you wouldn't believe and a girls' weekend was exactly what I needed. :)