Killer Queens at Questival

Monday November 7

Monday was purely a day where I just didn't want to do anything but go home. McKenzie, Rory and I are all registered to vote in Maricopa County and McKenzie really wanted her first time to vote to be on Tuesday in person at the polls, so we did what I did two years ago and drove up Monday, spent the night and voted in the morning and then left. Usually on Mondays I have class until 8... but I just wasn't feeling that so I made the decision to not go to my last class. And then I thought about how I wasn't really going to be doing anything in my capstone and I had never missed a class up until that point, so I decided I just wouldn't go to that class either. Then I was texting McKenzie about what time to leave and we decided to skip our institute class and leave at 12 after I got off work (much earlier than leaving at 8 pm). The main reason I wanted to go home so early, and the reason I was able to justify skipping so many classes, is that I missed my moms birthday celebration on Sunday and I really wanted to take her out to do something fun and get her a present. So that's what we did when we got home! McKenzie, Avery,  Zach and I took my mom to Chandler Mall for a birthday fun celebration. Before we left I made sure to tell Avery that this was moms day and that we couldn't have bad attitudes when we went to the mall, and apparently the only way she couldn't have a bad attitude was if we bought her takis and sprite... she's not addicted at all.

She did manage to stay in a relatively good mood while we shopped. We ended up getting my mom a nice fancy little lipstick at Sephora. I honestly felt so awful for missing her birthday on Sunday (it was a big deal because none of the older kids could be there) so this little adventure made up for it.

When we got back to my house I had to do some Wildcat work, because even though I can escape Tucson, doesn't mean I can escape my responsibilities. Then we ate some dinner as a family and all said what we loved about my mom. Then I went to sleep relatively early because I knew Tuesday was going to be a long day.

Tuesday November 8

I woke up at 5:30 so I could be ready to be at the polls at 6 am when they opened. Everyone in my family got ready super quick, Zach surprised me at my house to say goodbye, and then we were on our way to the polling place that we have gone to for years. My dad confirmed to me the night before that this would be our polling place once again... this is an important piece of information for a lesson that I learned later. 

The line was incredibly long at our polling place. This brought me some mixed feelings. 1: I was very happy that so many people were coming out to vote. 2: POd because a long line = long time and I needed to get on the road to make it back in time for my 9 am shift with Project FOCUS. 

We stood in line for about 2 hours and when we finally got to the front to get our ballots the nice lady told me that we were at the wrong polling place and that I either needed to go to the correct polling place or cast a provisional ballot. You see at this point it was 9 am and I had a shift in an hour and so I had zero time to go wait in another line at another polling place, so I casted a provisional ballot. McKenzie and my Dad ran over there and were just going to figure a way to get McKenzie back home. Right when I was on my way out of Mesa I get a call from my Dad to come pick McKenzie up because there was no line at our actual polling place. You can imagine how I was feeling at that point after waiting in the wrong line for two hours, causing me to be late for work, and then hearing the right polling place had no line at all. Not my best morning. I did not make it on time to my shift... but I still had a sliver of happiness because I was about to vote... provisionally (I will find out in a few days if it actually counted) but still a little bit happy. 

My RPA class was cancelled because we had to report on the election night later in the evening, so I instead took Jenny to vote at her correct polling place up in North Tucson. I may have done some illegal things and taken a picture of Jenny casting her ballot, but she was just so excited, she even clapped for herself with all the polling ladies before she got her ballot.

Imagine Steph's face in this picture and then you will see the faces of the 1320 Beezies who proudly voted for HRC... our faces looked a little bit different later in the evening.

When we got back home, Steph and Derrick were just leaving to go run an errand and then go to the free Cane's from Zonazoo event, the three of us hopped on in and joined the party. While we were walking to the Zonazoo event we found Rudy along the way and he joined us and then we saw Jacob along the way and he joined us as well, then we saw Andy and Queston at the event... so much friendship. Apparently we arrived too late because they ran out of the delicious Cane's, so instead Andy, Question, the beezies, Rudy and Derrick went to Time Market for some pizza. 

Afterwards we went to the Democrats election party at the Marriott on campus so I could do some reporting, the rest of them just came for the fun of it. I followed up on my primary election story and reported on Dustin Williams who was running for Superintendent of schools (and is also mentoring Steph right now so she could get his job if he won the race. Spoiler alert: he won and now Steph has a job wooooohooooo!). Derrick was keeping me updated on the national election, while I was focusing in on the local stuff and writing my article. The whole time I was just waiting for HRC to pull ahead with a big lead and leave Trump in the dust... well that never happened. I wanted to stay up after I finished my article to watch the election results come to a close, but it was just a little too heart breaking for me so I decided to go to sleep instead, just hoping and praying for some sort of miracle to pull through.

Wednesday November 9

Well... I woke up to no miracle. I did feel a sliver of happiness when I checked up on the results and saw that HRC won the popular vote... not that that would change anything because y'know an Electoral College is a thing in this country... but it made me feel like the people of the US weren't as insane as I thought they were. Now I do want to say that yes I am disappointed in the results of this election, and I truly do get why people are so upset about it and are rioting (also to my more conservative friends who have been posting about how liberals are the worst for rioting... go look at the riots when Obama won in 2012 and then talk to me about how liberals are just sore losers.... AND don't even pretend that there wouldn't be riots if HRC had won. These were two of some of the most disliked candidates in our nation's history, OF COURSE there were going to be riots with either win)... but I am much more in the boat of complaining for a day, and then sucking it up and praying for our next president. Now I might question your judgement for a hot second if you voted for Trump, but that's really not going to change how I feel about you. Politics brings out the worst in people, and I prefer not to make judgements based on people's worst.

In my own silent way of protest I wore my Canada 2016 olympics shirt to work today, but that was the extent of it.

My class on Wednesday was cancelled so we could have a reporting day. I was just exhausted from thinking so much about all the different election results that I did very little (actually no) reporting at all. I just sat up in my room and relaxed for the rest of the day and worked for the rest of the day. 

Thursday November 10

Thursday was another exciting day at work because I got to hang out with AJ and Tim! And you already know when I hang out with AJ there is going to be at least one photo taken on snapchat:

It was quite exciting getting to hang out with Tim because I see so little of him this semester, and he is always so excited to hang out with me which makes my day so much better.

After work I went and picked up press passes for my photographers for the football game and then made my way home and waited for Zach to arrive! He was pretty funny when he got to my house, he just wanted to look at everything... I mean it has been almost 6 months since he has been to my house in Tucson. 

We hung out with Jenny for the afternoon (this was Jenny's first time actually meeting Zach [or David as she lives to call him] in person, so it was quite the exciting time). We went to the store to pick up some snacks for Trivia Night later in the evening, and then Steph and Kenzie joined us for Jenny's missionary lesson at the institute. After her lesson Jenny had to go to work so the rest of us went to Target, and got back in time to pick Jenny up from work... and then it was trivia time.

This was Rory's first trivia night of the semester (maybe last, I'm not sure). It wasn't quite as big as it has been in the past, but that was a good thing because it was taking place in Rory's house and we just barely had enough space for everyone. 

My team consisted of: me, Zach, Abby and Caroline. And our team name was "Oy with the poodles already" as an homage to Gilmore Girls (which was one of the categories for the trivia night). As usual the questions are always a little bit obscure, but we really did own the Gilmore Girls portion of the evening (all thanks to Abby). I think we ended up coming in 3rd place... which is not as good as my usual first place, but it's not last so I will take that.

We all hung out for awhile after the trivia night discussing various normal things like giving birth... and then everyone eventually cleared out and I passed out. 

Friday November 11

Happy veteran's day!

Happy no school.

Zach and I left in the morning to go back to Mesa, and Steph, Kenzie, Jenny and Andrew followed a little bit later. Zach dropped me off at my house, and I hung out with my family for a little bit before the rest of the crew arrived and then went to lunch. 

After they all got lunch Zach came back over and then we all went out to buy our outfits for Questival that evening and any last minute snacks we may have needed. 

For those of you who have no idea was Questival is, it's a 24 hour scavenger hunt that sends you all over the place to do totally cool things, totally random things, and totally nice things. Certain tasks are worth more points than others, and then all your points add up in an app that gives you your rank. 

I am not going to go through every single thing we did in this blog post so if you want to check that out you can go to our team's page here (I highly recommend because some of them are really just hilarious and my words will not do the tasks justice).

The official scavenger hunt started at 7 pm (but really 7:30 pm) but we went to the pre-party for registration and to get some pre-Questival points for our team. One of the coolest things about doing Questival is that you get this awesome backpack to do it all with... that was honestly such a big selling point for me when I was trying to decide to do this or not. 

My team was the Killer Queens which consisted of Steph, Jenny, Kenzie and Andrew (and Zach as our honorary member who tagged along for the fun of it).

And we tag teamed quite a few tasks with the Ninja Turtles which consisted of Rory, Caroline, Spencer and Melissa. 

Once the Questival officially kicked off, our first stop was to a mural in Phoenix. Then we made our way to Arizona Falls. 

(The most genius idea I had when I was packing this was bringing my LED camera light with me on these adventures because it made many of our photos and videos possible, especially during the dark hours of the Questival.)

Afterward our two teams went to Scottsdale to get quite a few tasks done including giving a review of the Jack Knife sculpture, and posing with some saguaros. Then we got split up from our tag team, and went to a bridge in Scottsdale where Andrew and Kenzie learned how to tandem kartwheel (if there is only one video you watch out of all of them, it should be that one), we sang itsy bitsy spider and I like big thoraxes to a spider, did some wall sits and some planks, and other things.

Then we made our way to Andrew's house in Mesa to get some camping stuff and complete some other tasks like tandem longboard while singing unchained melody. Jacob and Hailey met up with us at Andrew's house while we waited for the Ninja Turtles to join in so we could go camp, but they ended up just meeting us at the campsite and Jacob and Hailey weren't about the cold camp so they went off and partied on their own.

We set up camp at Bulldog Canyon near Usery Pass and completed challenges like: howling at the moon at midnight, sing a pop song around a camp fire, recite a Cotapaxi (the sponsor of Questival) rap, and tell a scary story around a campfire. You also really have to watch those videos on our team page, they're too funny. Jenny's scary story was the highlight of the evening.

Saturday November 12

 The app shut down from 1-5 am so people could sleep. People had the option of just continuing on, they just wouldn't be able to upload anything to the app until 5 am. We decided that we would try and sleep at our campsite for a couple hours. I just could not sleep at all... I would wake up periodically thinking I had slept for awhile, and at one point I had to wake up to pee with Jenny and Steph and I found out only an hour had passed by.... so not my best night in the world.

We woke up at 4:30, packed up our campsite and then Andrew took the early morning driving shift and took us to Payson. The main tasks in Payson involved going to Tonto State Park, but that didn't open until 9 am... and we were there at 7 am, so we filled our team doing other tasks like watching the sun rise, taking fall pictures (please go look at Andy's pinterest fall photo), doing the mannequin challenge, carpool karaoking, sharing a doughnut with no hands and throwing doughnuts at each others faces. We did attempt to find another hike in Payson that was on the list but it was impossible to locate and apparently a very difficult hike that most of us weren't willing to do that early in the morning.

Then eventually we made our way to Tonto State Park and found the Ninja Turtles as well as Ty and Rylie's group!

We did the little hike to the natural bridge, completed a few more challenges like taking 5 minutes to enjoy nature, and of course took a lot of pictures.

Afterwards we hiked back out and then we sent Andy to run the other really short hike in the park. He did it in like 20 minutes, it's a world record. While he did it Caroline, Melissa, and Spencer went and did the hike as well so the remainder of the Killer Queens and Ninja Turtles hung out at a bench. When Andy got back we completed some more challenges, like brushing another person's teeth. 

Then we made our way out of Payson towards Saguaro Lake to jump into a natural body of water and to skip a rock 7 times. Andy was the brave soul that went into the water, and Zach is the pro that skipped the rock 7 times.

Then we dropped into Mesa to eat some lunch and we found a stranger who loves hugs so much, she helped us complete the hug a random stranger for 15 seconds challenge.

Then we went to the Walton household to complete challenges such as: serenading someone, parkour at a park, hold your breath as long as you can under water, ride a unicycle and dunk a ball at regulation height (Zach sat on Andy's shoulders who was standing on a board... that's how it's possible with us shorties). Steph took a little nap while we were at the Walton household to complete those challenges, and then she was energized for the remainder of the day.

We then made our way to Riverview park where we climbed the giant tower thing, gave 15 high fives in 15 seconds, picked up 100 pieces of trash, challenged a stranger to a foot race and other random things (seriously go watch our videos, you won't regret it). 

Then we went to Tempe to find this super cool structure called "Air Apparent" on the ASU campus... probably the only cool thing about the campus amirite?

While in Tempe, Jenny wrote this hilarious list of 20 things she loves about Phoenix as one of the challenges, please do your best to read it because it's absolutely hilarious (I think it is important to note that Jenny is actually a very smart girl, you just don't get that from this list and all the videos. She's also the world's most hilarious person):

Then we went back towards Mesa for the conclusion of the Questival. We went to a park near Andy's house where we laid on the ground motionless, ate two crickets and a beetle (okay you have to watch that video too so you can hear the freaking disgusting crunch), and walked like zombies. Then we ended our adventure at Andy's house where we scrambled to get a lot of last second challenges in (those ones are funny too just because of how lazy we were about them, especially Jenny's heat stroke video).

Here is an accurate depiction of how we felt at the end of the 24 hours:

Honestly it was such a crazy 24 hours and I don't think I could have done it with anyone else than the people that were on my team. Everyone was relatively calm the entire time and none of us really cared about winning the whole thing, just having a good time AND BOY did we have a good time. I don't think I have ever laughed so much in a 24 hour time frame before in my entire life. Seriously people if you ever get the opportunity to do Questival, DO IT and make sure you pick a good group to do it with you, I really lucked out with my team (and by lucked out I mean I chose my people well hahaha). ALSO such a HUGE shout out to the people who were following us along on the Llama judge app and voting for us... we did a lot of things and you guys are truly the real MVPs.

After all the adventures I still had to do Wildcat work... and it was quite the stressful time because sometimes my photographers are just not on their game. But thank goodness for Zach who accompanied me late into the night while I worked and tried to stay awake. The second I was done with it I just crashed on my bed and never wanted to wake up.

Sunday November 13

We drove back to Tucson in the morning because I had to work at noon at the Wildcat. It was a fairly easy day with no night time turn arounds (holy hallelujah). I didn't get a nap in on Sunday, but I did eat some hot dogs, work on an assignment, watch the Lizzie McGuire movie and watch home videos of Derrick's childhood, so it was an all around good... but very tiring... day. And that's just about all I can write about it.

THIS WEEK IS MY 21ST BIRTHDAY! Get ready for another great blog post where me and my Tucson friends mob in Moab to visit TWO national parks. It's going to be wild.