Clifftop

Clifftop

Friday, August 26, 2011

woop woop woop

So where did I leave off?  Oh yeah, pissing off tent city boys, otherwise known as friendship.

After ladies' night, I ventured back up to Elkins for around round of square dancing and absurdity at Augusta.  Saturday was surprisingly more laid back than Thursday, but that was perfectly fine with me.  Came back to next day and the weather was freaking beautiful.  The bluest skies, the puffiest clouds.  Perfect.  A drive, and picnic, along the scenic highway was just lovely. 
Last week I worked a crap ton at the restaurant.  Bleh.  Luckily, I just got a call that they are closing the restaurant until Labor Day weekend, because they're actually losing money by being open right now.  For the holiday weekend though, all the cabins are booked up, so they'll get a lot of business.  Lucky for me, I told them I was done on the 1st.  So I only have to work one more day at the restaurant!  Tuesday I made $7 in tips in 7 hours.  Yeah...definitely not worth my time.

I've been running a lot recently.  I'm sore as shit, but I feel awesome.  On September 24, Marlinton is hosting the Roadkill Cookoff.  It's gonna be AWESOME.  In the morning there is a 5k called the Possum Trot, and you better believe I'm doing that shit.  I cannot wait to wear that tshirt.  It'll be my first 5k, so I'm a little worried since I'm painfully slow, but seriously, how can I pass up the Possum Trot?  I plan on coming in last place.

It's become habit to just drive to Tent City when I'm bored.  I think the newness of me has worn off, so the boys don't ever invite me to do anything anymore.  You think that's gonna stop me from hanging out with them?!  mwahahahah never!  I just show up and they're never doing anything, so I guess it works out.  I went there Friday after (gasp!) both Corey and Josh told me they were burning some couches.  I don't know what is with these West Virginians, but they love to burn couches.  I guess it's the hillbilly in them, who knows.  They start a fire at Tent City, then realize that the couches are at the neighbors.   What to do, what to do.  Well we can't bring the couches over here.  That would just be absurd.  And starting a new fire?  Idiotic.  We should just carry the fire down the road to the couches!  Genius!  That's right.  We carried a freaking fire pit down the road.  And when I mean we, I mean I actually participated.  Jesus, these boys have rubbed off on me too much.
coolest people I know...

Saturday night was a bit of a drag.  After working at PSBB and the restaurant, I went home, had two sips of beer, and fell asleep on my living room floor.  This whole being an adult, having two jobs, being a productive member of society thing is such a bummer. 

Nothing much else going on.  But here's some more pictures from Clifftop and other random pics from the last month.
you can get this on an ice cream cake at DQ.  I might do it for my birthday

favorite things: breakfast and books

typical Clifftop dweller

hoopin' was such a hit


swimming hole at clifftop.  pictures don't do it justice
we caught a groundhog at the PSBB garden.  it had a heart attack in the cage and died :(
fuck dudes.  I buy this shit for myself.
no, they did not pose for this picture. 
Droop Mountain Tunnel, along the Greenbriar River Trail.  It's creepy as hell.
silly pup.  his form of swimming is laying down in the water.

this crazy asshole tried to get into my house

I believe that I forgot to mention the greatest story of all time.  Or at least of Clifftop.  Saturday night.  scratch that.  Sunday morning.  6AM.  Still haven't gone to sleep yet.  People are slowly getting up and packing their things to leave.  Except our group, who has been frying catfish, drinking beer, and playing music all morning.  This dude with a red fiddle has been with us most of the evening.  We should have known that with a red fiddle, this dude was the devil, but we were oblivious.  

He realizes it's Sunday morning and suggests we have a gospel preacher jam.  Everyone is into it.  It's funny, and ironic.  Josh starts a little diddle on his guitar and Red Fiddle Devil Man starts preaching some story from the bible.  Well he gets going and going and he starts getting into it and getting louder.  The Holy Spirit is filling him up with the word of God!  As he gets louder, Josh is forced to get louder on the guitar.  He gets to yelling about some dude with eleven brothers.  Clay is totally eating this up and he starts yelling too. Red Fiddle: "He had eleven brothers!"  Clay: "HOW MANY BROTHAS!!" Josh jamming harder than ever.  Everyone laughing.  Pause.  

Some dude sticks his head around the Corey Mobile.  "Ummmm excuse me.  It's 7 AM.  People are trying to sleep and you guys have been pretty loud for a while.   Maybe you could keep it down until like....9 or 10.  Try to be courteous to your neighbors." (aka Shut. The fuck. Up.  we've all been drinking for 36 straight hours and we're hungover and pissed as hell)   Red Fiddle Devil Man responds with "You can't quiet the word of God!"  or some shit but the rest of us feel bad and eventually the Devil leaves, as does everyone else because now its 730 and its time for bed.  So, blog readers, if you ever get really excited about something, just yell "HOW MANY BROTHAS!"  We're gonna start a trend.  
(PS this story is much more effective in person when I can actually yell these things as loud as they actually were.  Ask me to tell you this story next time you see me.)

Another story I forgot.  
After Clifftop, I decided maybe I should take a break from the boys and socializing and drinking.  HA!  good one.  The day after leaving Clifftop, there was a concert at the Schoolhouse.  I usually like the bands that come through there, and they're pretty laid back so no crazy partying.  I didn't know anything about the band except their name - Little Country Giants.  I pull in the parking lot and there are a couple people I don't know standing around.  After seeing my car, they walk over and ask who's from GA?   I tell them I'm from the Albany area.  "We're from GA.  And we have a song about Albany."
No. Shit.  And guess we're they're from.  Athens.  We got into a big discussion about the reopening of the GA Theater and talked about our favorite bars.  Blah blah blah.  Awesomeness.  
Lately I had been feeling really homesick.  I didn't feel like the boys wanted me around and I was missing my college friends like no other.   I also just wanted to be able to hang out on my couch and chill out with my parents.  So it was a wonderful surprise to show up to the Schoolhouse and have a little dose of Georgia.  It could not have been a more pleasant evening.   







Saturday, August 20, 2011

back in the saddle

Hello strangers!  I haven't posted in quite awhile.  I assure you, I am alive and well, just super busy.  I started a couple of posts last week and the week before, but I realized that I was just bitching and ranting about random crap and that is not the purpose of the blog.  Emotions and feelings and blah blah blah, whine whine whine.  The purpose is to entertain you with my adventures and hopefully, possibly, maybe not make you laugh. 

I've been hella busy lately.  I got a second job, like other than the AmeriCorps job.  I'm working at the Pretty Penny in Watoga State Park.  I told Blair, the owner, the first day that I moved here that I would be willing to work for her.  3 months later she calls me up.  And the restaurant closes on Labor Day, so I'm only working a couple weeks.  For those of you who knew me during my Harvest Moon days, or even my UGA Food Services days, I said I would never work as a waitress or do anything in the food industry again.  HA.  Life's a bitch.  It's not a terrible job and I'm making extra money, so all is well.

The first weekend in August was the Appalachian String Band Festival, also known as Clifftop.  I had heard about this music festival since I first moved here.  Everyone kept saying it was the highlight of the summer.  I went Friday - Sunday and slept about 6 hours.  Friday night went to bed at 6 AM, Saturday 730.  Needless to say, it lived up to the hype.  It takes place in a state park, so everyone is camping out in tents.  Of course the Coreymobile was there surrounded by tailgating tents.  We had a whole compound of Pocahontas County people.  Different areas of the camp had different types of music.  Bluegrass, old timey, traditional, non-traditional, and my personal favorite - cajun.  The cajun tent was definitely the place to be - awesome music, everyone dancing, fresh beignets.  Friday night was the night of a million vests.  Not really sure how it happened, but we had a festival of vests.  A vestival if you will. 
gasp!  I'm actually smiling!  Must be the vest that's making me so happy.

Andrew and Clay were having their own leather vestival.
I got to jam on the mandolin for a couple of songs and it was totally kick ass.  Everywhere you turned, there were people jamming out.  People were still playing at 6AM when I went to bed.  It's hard to describe the overwhelming amount of music that is played at Clifftop.  To burn off all the beers we drank, we started hoopin'.  And awesome pictures ensued.

Try not to look awkward in a hoopin picture.  It's impossible. 

Of course there was square dancing and a flat footing competition.   More music.  More beer.  Less sleep.  The festival lasts a week.  I don't know how people do it.  This was two weeks ago and I'm still trying to catch up on sleep. 

There's another festival called Augusta that takes place in Elkins, on the campus of Davis and Elkins College.  It lasts all summer and there are classes each week that focus on different types of music.  http://www.augustaheritage.com/  Bluegrass week, celtic week, cajun week, swing week, dance week.  Anything and everything.  And last week was the big finale week.  I went on Thursday night, not knowing what to expect, and I was completely blown away.  Every night they have a concert and on Thursday there was a bad ass fiddler and at the very end were group of flat footers.  Watch this guy's videos.   He's awesome in ways that I didn't know existed.  It made me miss dance a lot.  I can't wait to move to Lewisburg and talk to the dance studio down there so I can start dancing again.
After the concert, I went into the chapel to see/hear/feel the crystal meditation bowls.  Sounds weird as shit right?  Right.  Here's a video to help explain: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMWgmV-w6SE&feature=related
In the chapel they had about 6 different bowls and anyone could go up and use them.  It was mesmerizing.  I sat in the back, but the reverberation and sounds just pulled me in.  I had no concept of time or space.  It was totally bizarre and awesome in every way.
After coming back to reality, I swung over the to square dance.  Personally, I don't much like square dancing.  I'm really bad at it and you have to interact with other people, which as you know really annoys me.  But people don't normally let you just sit on the sidelines and watch, so I got roped into a couple dances.  I think watching square dances is way more fun. 

Friday night, I decided to have a ladies' night at Tent City.  I got wind that the boys wouldn't be there, so it was perfect timing.  We went swimming in the pond, cooked up some burgers on the fire pit, drank lotsa beer, and crashed in the luxury tent (have I mentioned Josh's tent has carpet?).  It was quite a lovely evening.  I usually get along better with dudes, but every so often I need an injection of some estrogen.  I can only take so much of the boys before I want to get some pruning shears and start cutting off some appendages.  The boys heard about my little party later and they were a little less than enthused.  But since one of my favorite past times is to piss people off, I just laughed in their faces. 

Well, I'm tired of typing, but I still haven't caught up to present day.  More to come soon.  I've been informed that the Tent City boys have begun to read this.  To that, I say bugger off!  I will make you regret this decision!  To the rest of you, I hope all is well!