Got back from Boise

So I went on an annual trip to Boise, Idaho, that my newspaper and yearbook classes in my highschool jointly take. A bunch of schools compete on who's the best in writing, graphic design, layout, etc.

And, as usual, since Teton is such a small school, we won only a handful of awards, but the plus side is all the received ones were 3rd or 2nd place. And I think in the raffle a friend of mine won a folding laundry bin. She plans to burn it.

I myself entered the graphic competition, but due to a fuckup on behalf of my newspaper teacher, I received the assingment half an hour before we got on the bus to go to Boise. And it was a do-ahead design. So I ended up turning it in mega late, which meant that they judged it extremely harshly, which means I had a .0001% chance of getting even an honorable mention, which didn't happen.

But as to the actual experience, since nobody at the conference who was in high school really gave a shit about the awards, it was great. We all went to the mall after the competition and walked around, doing whatever seemed fun. Then we headed to a place called the Boondocks, which is like a Boise version of Dave & Buster's. I did fantastically terrible on the Go-Karts when I failed to accomodate the drift on turns, which meant that I did complete 180 degress swings that made me drive the wrong way around the track.

Then we went to the Imax theater nearby (after the bus driver finally found it after about twenty minutes of looking at a map), where I saw Max Payne, which, since I've never played the game, came across as a artistic action movie that was trying a little bit too hard to be a hard-boiled detective movie. But I enjoyed it while it lasted.

When we got back at around one in morning after the driver once again got lost and drove around for about an hour trying to find the hotel, we all trooped off to our room, which I was sharing with three other guys from my newspaper class. We then hooked up my 360 to the hotel TV, turned off the lights, and absolutely shit our pants playing Dead Space, which is probably one of the greatest third person horror shooter games I've ever played. Scratch that, it is. We switched off on deaths and checkpoints, usually switching every other time we encountered one of the mutants since we'd freak out whenever they'd even get close and panic. I know we switched three times in two minutes in the area where you first see the tiny ones with the medusa-like tentacles.

Finally, on the way back, we stopped at ihop, got terrible service but awesome food, and amused ourselves with stupid games like ten fingers and truth or dare for the six hour drive back. The chick across gave me the eye every now and then, but I regret that it didn't amount to anything past a quick dare kiss.

It was fun.

Current Song: Mute Mate - You Are Mine