growing up i wasn't super athletic; i played soccer for a couple of years, but who didn't? i wasn't good, by any stretch of the imagination. in fact, i was the joker near the goal box who would run up to kick the ball and watch the ball sail past me towards the goal. it was a disaster. i only played a couple of seasons before realizing that it was a waste of everyone's time. i was much more suited to running. i didn't need hand-eye coordination, something i clearly lacked, all i needed was a pair of shoes and a road. now as i've grown up, i've gotten lazy and developed asthma, so i don't run nearly as much as i should. but i do still enjoy being outdoors and getting the blood pumping, so we decided to play kickball (plus we wanted to make friends). we started in the fall and met such great people that we came back for the spring season, and have already signed up for the summer season too. and this season we're actually starting to get good, it's kind of exciting. (check out plan b!)
maybe one the best nights of my life was two summers ago in oaxaca. it was the day after i met rcg, and we went to a lagoon to swim with bio luminescent algae. swimming and shimmering in this lagoon was a once in a lifetime experience. but the night was made so much better, for me anyways, because you could see every star in the sky. you could make out constellations that you rarely could find and you could see both bands of the milky way. it was spectacular. and i got to share it with rcg. it was kind of like our first date. ever since that night, whenever the night is clear and the stars are out, we try and take a minute to enjoy the beauty of the night sky. so it seemed only fitting that we go to kitt peak national observatory, a mountain in the sonoran desert that hosts the world's largest collection of telescopes, for a date night.
kitt peak has a nightly observing program ($50/person) where you show up before sunset and stay until well into the night to look at and learn about the stars, planets, moon, and the telescopes. we learned so much! and we got to see some of the coolest stuff ever -- the banding on jupiter, saturn's rings, and the craters on the moon. when we looked at saturn it was like a picture out of a magazine or a textbook; when rcg looked at it, his first words were, "holy shit". it was that amazing. and the telescope was powerful enough to show both saturn and jupiter's moons. it was crazy. but the night only got crazier -- after we drove down the mountain (the first mile with no headlights!), rcg pulled over and asked me to marry him! i'm still a little shocked, but in a deliciously happy kind of way.
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