Two weeks away from home, and a neti pot

I'm back from my two week trip out of town. I got back Sunday, actually. I've been too lazy to write about it all until now. Instead of writing a big long explaination of each week I'm just going to lay down the simplistics of each week.

My first week was spent in the Bay Area. I was at my aunt's house the first day because I was invited to a going away party for my older cousin's girlfriend (she lives in Brazil). That was fun, and I got to meet my (favorite) cousin Adrian's friend Gavin. We messed around and I watched them practice skateboarding. I went home with my cousin Adrian, and I did crazy things with him until I went back to my aunt's on Thursday. Thursday was the day my mom took me out shopping to get ready for my cousin Lindsay's wedding. My aunt Kimi cut my hair for free at her hair salon and I got some awesome shoes and a nice $6 vest that no one bothered to pick up at a dry cleaner. Then the wedding day came and I did a lot of dancing and had fun. Finally it was time to leave.

After a 3 hour drive, my mom dropped me off at a market near my friend's house and then I met up with some other friends and we went to his house. It was late so I got some sleep. In the morning I was ready for the great adventure that we were going to go on. That adventure was camping at Salt Point (north of Mendicino). There's not a whole lot to say. We had to put up our tent that ended up literally being held up by a single branch and a stake, we played a lot of board and card games (Risk, poker, Go, Clue, and some other stuff (I won poker once by playing blind, BTW)), we ate a lot of food, my friend Matt got drunk on his birthday, we went walking a lot, messed around with crabs by the ocean. Yeah, most of the time it was very cold and windy. Also the nearby bathrooms were violated. Some guy peed all over the toilet paper and threw all the paper towels in the toilets. I think he even did some nasty things to the sink. It was disgusting.

Overall both weeks were incredibly fun and both had their relaxing and exausting qualities.

In other news. I was browsing around Instructables.com last night when I stumbled upon this.

Interested, I asked my mom (who was heading out to do her Raley's night shift) to pick up one of those Neti Pots that the guy was using. She did and I ended up getting this one.

I used it almost immediately after getting it. I was a little intimidated by the thought of water traveling through one nostril and out the other but I decided to give it a shot. Let me tell you, it didn't hurt at all. For the first two seconds I had that feeling you get when water goes up your nose when you're swimming, but that was it. After that it was really easy and almost calming. My nose isn't completely cleared up yet but I definately feel less congested than I used to be. Apparently it takes about three days of use to feel a huge difference. So I'm hoping that I'll feel far less congested than I used to be and hopefully I can concentrate more.