Here is a promise...

I have this wonderful story that I so love to tell, its called 'how I got engaged'. It really is a terrific tale including a castle, a prince, and... video baseball!? Here I make a promise to blog more often. The next year and what... 3 weeks, are probably going to crawl as we count down to 'Wedding 11/11/11' and I really want to be better about writing down what is going on in my life. So here in this public forum I promise you, my 1 (Baker) maybe 2 blog readers, that I will be back shortly to tell the tale of my amazing engagement, bore you with all the gushy details of how I am marrying one helluva sailor and document all of the adventures (some might call misadventures) through this last year as a single lady. Here is just a sneak peek of that amazing story I have to tell you all about...

SaSQuatch 2010

The Gorge at George, Washington (Columbia River Gorge in the back)

This Memorial Day I really celebrated and went to the Sasquatch Music Festival in George, Washington. Its a 3 day music celebration with a wide variety of artists and is camping style just like your typical Woodstock type adventure. I went with one of my best friends Shand and his really good friend (my new friend) Lance. This is where I have to plug how I have an awesome boyfriend who doesn't even question that I'm taking off for 5 days with 2 guys camping in 1 tent. Now yes, you should all know me well enough to know that even if he did say something about it, I would still go... No one tells me no, ha ha but his support and lack of questioning me was just another reason for me to think he's the best! But anyways, this was a pretty exciting adventure for me because I was only familiar with 5-10 of the 35+ bands performing at the festival. Now granted some bands I REALLY LOVE (i.e. Minus the Bear and Drive-By Truckers) were going to be there, but I was almost more excited about all the potential music I was going to find. And that I did. I came home with a long lists of artists and bands that I was dying to download or steal from Shands iTunes ha ha. Its been almost a month since we've been back and I'm still spending way too much on iTunes buying random songs and creating Sasquatch playlists.
The camping was a real treat I must say. I'm a camper, I've never had a problem with sleeping in a tent or squatting in the woods... but this was different. They had a diesel trailer full of showers (I'm sad I didn't take pictures of this from the outside to did it better justice.) Now I am fine with squatting in the woods and all that, but showering with other women has NEVER been something I'm okay with. I am the most private of individuals and I would NEVER get naked in front of strangers and just walk into a stall. So needless to say I was the freak show in the trailer undressing/dressing in the very small stall while all her clothes are getting wet and walking in and out of the trailer with her eyes closed in order to avoid seeing more of anyone else than I would prefer (which would be NOTHING!)

That there on the hill is the tent city aka our camp ground.

Other than the very uncomfortable showering situation and a ridiculously pompous and annoying tent neighbor, the camping was pretty great. We had a pretty good thing going on in our tent with Lance and I on air mattresses and Shand on an old futon mattress he had. It was an experience to say the least. The one nice thing though was camping with a gay guy, I was definitely not the diva there... I was thankful for that! ha ha

Each day we had a photo competition, whoever took the best picture in the group won for the day....

Day 1.... Goes to Lance (the one in the hat)

And how couldn't it, doesn't he look adorable!

Day 2 we branched out and took TWO pictures... Pic 1 went to Shand.

Day 2 Pic 2 Went to Lance again. Whatever inspired that grin deserves to be recognized.

Day 3 is where I was FINALLY victorious, well sort of at least, we all voted that this one goes to my boobs! As if there is even any where else to look! ha ha (Note spiderman in the corner, that sly spidey slipped right into our picture!)

Sunset at the Gorge. Each night was beautiful like this, I even got a little jealous of all the people that were out boating in the amazing water!

A picture of the top half of the amphitheater and the crowd we shared the hill with. There was an insane amount of people out here in BFE aka George.

So like I said there were a couple of bands that I was really excited to see, the most of which being The Drive-By Truckers, a southern rock group that Colten introduced me to when we started dating and I've been addicted to ever since. Being that Colten and I are both big music fans, we (as corny as it is) have a bunch of "our songs", and most of them come from this band. I had already seen them once earlier that month and Colten had seen them twice already in California so it was nice to have the chance to catch up and see them in such an amazing venue. They were amazing as always and I even met some new folks that loved them probably as much as I did.

Drive-By Truckers (John, Patterson, Cooley, Shonna)

Me watching the Truckers

But what made this even COOLER and propelled me into being the COOLEST girlfriend ever is what I did following the show. I found out that an hour after they were done performing they were going to be signing autographs over at this CD tent! I knew a signed album would seriously make Coltens whole world and totally make me the best possible girlfriend. So I started a mad text session with his best friend (also a huge DBT fan) to find out what album he thought Colten would like to have signed most. After getting his approval of which one to buy I bought an actual album, old school vinyl, of his favorite record of theirs "Decoration Day." I sat there in line freaking out and getting all excited, I was even shaking. I think it was more due to the fact of how pumped he was going to be, however meeting the band was going to be awesome. SOO the entire time we've dated Colten has always told me how much he loved Shonna Tucker the bass player of the band. When he went to the shows in California he kept telling me that he could possibly end up proposing to her tonight and apologized if that ended up happening (I of course being the smart ass that I am, wished him the best of luck, "hope she accepts" ha ha). So I knew a personalized message from Shonna would just throw this whole thing over the edge ha ha and so I did. When I got up to meet the band I explained to Shonna that my boyfriend was completely obsessed with her and the only reason he wont marry me someday is if you end up saying yes to one of his desperate proposals. She and some of the other guys from the band busted up laughing and she told me I was adorable! (YEAH, I am!) She asked his name and personalized the album "To Colten, See you soon! Love, Shonna." I was so excited because she was so cool about it. After she signed it she told me to tell him to marry me, that I was cute! Yep she approves of our relationship ha ha! So I continued on and got the rest of the bands signatures and went on my way. Now the real question was should I tell him or keep it a secret and give it to him the next time I see him, which probably wont be until September:( I was already acting suspicious in text messaging and he was onto me that something was going on. So I gave in, made him tell me how much he loved me in order to hear my secret and then I totally spilled the beans. HE FREAKED! Seriously, went nuts and had to call and tell everyone how awesome his girl was! He even made some corny facebook comment where he changed lyrics of a song to tell everyone he had a signed album in Washington and a great girl who made it happen! ha ha It was perfect!

Me informing Shonna of Coltens obsession!

Me and Patterson Hood the lead singer.



Me and Mike "the Stroker Ace" Cooley. He was all about coming across the counter to give me a big hug, I loved it!


Me and my competition, Shonna Tucker. She was so awesome how could I even try to compete with her!?! Okay yeah, I'm competitive, I will fight to the death! ha ha

Needless to say my trip to Eastern Washington was AMAZING. I had so much with Shand and Lance. My friendship with Shand only got stronger, and Lance is now someone I'm really happy to be friends with. They were perfect travel companions, we have every intention to make this a tradition from here on out! Found some amazing new music, fell even more in love with some I came to see and to top it all off, did the ultimate in cool girlfriend trick and hooked the boyfriend up real well. It was a terrific Memorial Day for sure! LET THERE BE ROCK!

New glasses, new hair, new love... does this mean I have a life now?

So there has been a lot of new developments for this girl, however, most of them are superficial ha ha.
I finally after 9 months cut and colored my hair. I have a huge girl crush of the amazing Zooey Daschanel and love love love her hair so I went out on a limb and did some bangs and went back to black ... I'm a week in and loving the change. For the first time in a very long time, I feel like I actually have a "hair style" that I have to maintain versus always just dealing with the inconvenient length that it was.

In addition to the new hair I am rocking some new glasses. I let the rockin' style of WW2 vets influence me, along with some serious push from Todd, and went with some old man lookin' Ray Bans. I am getting the craziest reactions to the new frames but I love them! I think the new hair and glasses combo is PERFECT! I have pretty much channeled Claire's dad from Heroes for these frames...

The third "new thing" is a new romantic interest... I know, can you believe it? It seems like its been forever! ha ha and lets be serious, anything that has happened in the last little while hasn't been so good so this is a big deal! I'm not really sure its time to divulge to much information just yet, don't really want to jinx anything, but this is something pretty amazing. They aren't lying when they say "distance makes the heart grow fonder" so we will see how I handle long distance and long term separation... its one of the most vulnerable situations I've put myself in romantically, but at this point it really seems to be worth. As time goes on, I'm sure I will have more to blog about.

Last "new" thing is my new years resolution. Yeah, I should have mentioned this earlier but this is my first post of 2010. My new years resolution is to give up candy... AH, I know! So far I'm 27 days strong and if I can make it through Valentines and Easter strong then I know nothing will stop me! ha ha wish me luck!