Two of my most favorite boys are coming to see me soon! I'm so excited!
Tonight my brother Tanner flies in to see me. He's one of my best ever friends. I can't wait to see that boy!
Tomorrow night Keith will be here! Haven't seen him in almost two weeks, and he's coming, and I get to see him all weekend, starting Thursday!
And the best thing is they're going to be here together! And so Keith will finally get to meet some more of my family. Which is fun.
And, I will be getting lots of really good hugs!
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Sunday, September 27, 2009
I Did It!
I've accomplished my photo-taking goal for September!
I actually sort of photographed two events... if you count 2 photos with Steph at the CSU football game last night as adequate documentation of an event. But mostly I just captured our room remodel.
It looks great in there, people!
And, since a picture is worth a thousand words, and I actually took some pictures, I'll just post a few...
Measuring
Taping
Painting
I actually sort of photographed two events... if you count 2 photos with Steph at the CSU football game last night as adequate documentation of an event. But mostly I just captured our room remodel.
It looks great in there, people!
And, since a picture is worth a thousand words, and I actually took some pictures, I'll just post a few...
Measuring
Taping
Painting
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Conundrum
FACT: I do not want a Master's degree
FACT: I do not want to start grown-up life
PROBLEM: If I do not go to grad school, and do not get a grown-up job, I will be a floundering, useless individual without a place in society or an excuse for my existence.
So I suppose I'll have to figure that out in the next little while here, huh?
Because I will graduate in April from one of the top Landscape programs in the nation, hopefully as a Certified Landscape Professional, and have to figure out then what's next. Talk about daunting.
FACT: I do not want to start grown-up life
PROBLEM: If I do not go to grad school, and do not get a grown-up job, I will be a floundering, useless individual without a place in society or an excuse for my existence.
So I suppose I'll have to figure that out in the next little while here, huh?
Because I will graduate in April from one of the top Landscape programs in the nation, hopefully as a Certified Landscape Professional, and have to figure out then what's next. Talk about daunting.
Impatient
I am very much having patience issues.
I just miss my sweetheart too too much, that's all.
So Friday, October 2nd, is being very slow in coming.
Also, we have horribly opposite schedules that make quality phone conversations difficult. We talk several times a day, but usually just stealing a few minutes here and a few minutes there. I haven't talked to him for more than 15 minutes straight in quite a while.
I just want to be graduated so that I can follow him around wherever he is, whether it's Anchorage or Logan or Hong Kong or Baghdad... I don't really think I'll be needing to go to either of those last two places, though. But the point is that if I had already graduated and if he happened to be going to Madagascar or Indonesia or anywhere else, I could go, too.
Is that what it means to be in love? To just want to follow someone around for the rest of eternity, so that you can be with them, and help them, and love them forever and ever? Because if that's what it means to be in love, then I am in love.
But I'd really rather not travel to Baghdad. Lucky for me, Keith isn't a huge traveler, either!
I just miss my sweetheart too too much, that's all.
So Friday, October 2nd, is being very slow in coming.
Also, we have horribly opposite schedules that make quality phone conversations difficult. We talk several times a day, but usually just stealing a few minutes here and a few minutes there. I haven't talked to him for more than 15 minutes straight in quite a while.
I just want to be graduated so that I can follow him around wherever he is, whether it's Anchorage or Logan or Hong Kong or Baghdad... I don't really think I'll be needing to go to either of those last two places, though. But the point is that if I had already graduated and if he happened to be going to Madagascar or Indonesia or anywhere else, I could go, too.
Is that what it means to be in love? To just want to follow someone around for the rest of eternity, so that you can be with them, and help them, and love them forever and ever? Because if that's what it means to be in love, then I am in love.
But I'd really rather not travel to Baghdad. Lucky for me, Keith isn't a huge traveler, either!
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Photography
I am very bad at documenting my life. Case in point: I spent 4 months in Alaska, on the biggest adventure of my lifetime to this period in time. And I pulled out my camera maybe 3 times. Also, I'm not sure if I took a single photograph of my entire Junior year of college. Also, Keith and I have been dating for about 4 months, and I still have only one photo of us together. 1. Not a very big number. Yikes, no wonder my family gets frustrated at me for not sharing my life with them! I'm going to be old one day, and won't even be able to look back through photos to jog my senile memory or remind myself of my college years.
So I am setting a goal.
GOAL: Be a photo-taker. Drag my camera out of my bag at least once every month for some event or another, and take pictures. Photograph the things I am doing, the people I am doing them with. Pass my camera around and have other people take pictures; after all, it never hurts to see life from someone else's perspective. And if no one else ever takes pictures, I won't ever be in them.
That's another issue I have. I'm really good at photographing nature. It's gorgeous, and I love it, so I take pictures of it. But I'm not so great at photographing people, and I'm really bad at getting myself in my pictures. Really, really bad at it, people.
Anyway. Goals are good. Hopefully I'll stick to this one. I think I'll start this weekend. My roommates and I are going to be redecorating our apartment a bit, hoping to make it more homey and less dumpy. Right now, it's kind of a sporadic mess of all sorts of hodgepodge pieces, and since we don't like the way it looks, we tend to dump things all over the place. So roommate paint and DI shopping, and painting and decorating pictures will be a good starting place.
So I am setting a goal.
GOAL: Be a photo-taker. Drag my camera out of my bag at least once every month for some event or another, and take pictures. Photograph the things I am doing, the people I am doing them with. Pass my camera around and have other people take pictures; after all, it never hurts to see life from someone else's perspective. And if no one else ever takes pictures, I won't ever be in them.
That's another issue I have. I'm really good at photographing nature. It's gorgeous, and I love it, so I take pictures of it. But I'm not so great at photographing people, and I'm really bad at getting myself in my pictures. Really, really bad at it, people.
Anyway. Goals are good. Hopefully I'll stick to this one. I think I'll start this weekend. My roommates and I are going to be redecorating our apartment a bit, hoping to make it more homey and less dumpy. Right now, it's kind of a sporadic mess of all sorts of hodgepodge pieces, and since we don't like the way it looks, we tend to dump things all over the place. So roommate paint and DI shopping, and painting and decorating pictures will be a good starting place.
Statistics
Definitely my least favorite class of the semester, STAT 221 is a three hour long block of monotone slide reading and corny jokes once every week. It's also ridiculously easy for me; math always has been, so these concepts are coming quickly to my mind, and it's a 200 level course, taken by a lot of freshmen. As a senior, I've already figured out how to do college, so I'm a bit ahead of that curve. No wonder I find it so difficult to convince myself that it is worth it to actually attend class...
You see, I can read the slides to myself much more quickly than my professor can read them to us all.
And patience while waiting for other people to catch up with the class has never been my strongest trait.
And Tuesdays are already horribly long- I'm at work or class from 8 am to 7 pm, and then have to go home to do more studying.
Plus, I learned what the mean and median are in 2nd grade. These are concepts that I've understood for about 2/3 of my lifetime.
So I struggle convincing myself that it's worth my time to go to class. There are open TA office hours and labs if I get into a sticky spot where I don't understand anything. And I know lots of smart people who have passed basic statistics classes who I could go to for help if I needed to.
That is all. Not a great attitude to have toward a class so early in the semester (by the way, can you believe that school has been back in session for almost a month? I can't.) But that's life. Sometimes I just have a pessimistic, impatient sort of attitude.
You see, I can read the slides to myself much more quickly than my professor can read them to us all.
And patience while waiting for other people to catch up with the class has never been my strongest trait.
And Tuesdays are already horribly long- I'm at work or class from 8 am to 7 pm, and then have to go home to do more studying.
Plus, I learned what the mean and median are in 2nd grade. These are concepts that I've understood for about 2/3 of my lifetime.
So I struggle convincing myself that it's worth my time to go to class. There are open TA office hours and labs if I get into a sticky spot where I don't understand anything. And I know lots of smart people who have passed basic statistics classes who I could go to for help if I needed to.
That is all. Not a great attitude to have toward a class so early in the semester (by the way, can you believe that school has been back in session for almost a month? I can't.) But that's life. Sometimes I just have a pessimistic, impatient sort of attitude.
Friday, September 18, 2009
I-Tunes and Eye Tears...
I cry to music more often than not.
Ok, so that's a bit of an exaggeration. But I do cry to certain types of music more often than not. Like, the sad kind. Think Phantom of the Opera or Les Miserables here. Also, the Hymn kinds.
This week I've used up most of the last few dollars of Christmas I-Tunes money I had on my account to buy a few songs from Les Mis. I have read that book (yes, the super-long unabridged version), and have heard the songs, but it's not a score that I'm incredibly familiar with. I wanted to get to know the music a bit better so I bought some of it. And it makes me cry.
Also, how pathetic and horrible is the story of the Phantom? He's creepy, and terribly depressing.
But most of the music I cry to causes tears of pure joy. Hymns especially get me going. The bliss of knowing that I have a Savior, that He understands my struggles and fears. The gratitude at this knowledge. Just gets me teary-eyed. I guess I tend to put a lot of classical music into this group, too. How can you not get teary at the Moonlight Sonata? The struggle and triumph that I feel in the melancholy of that melody is just too much for my weak tear ducts. Perhaps it's that I know that, were I the one playing these pieces, I would be playing with my whole heart, offering up thanks to my God for the gift of music in my life.
It's got to be an interesting experience for my neighbors, though, who often observe me walking home, earbuds in, with tears streaming down my smiling face.
Ok, so that's a bit of an exaggeration. But I do cry to certain types of music more often than not. Like, the sad kind. Think Phantom of the Opera or Les Miserables here. Also, the Hymn kinds.
This week I've used up most of the last few dollars of Christmas I-Tunes money I had on my account to buy a few songs from Les Mis. I have read that book (yes, the super-long unabridged version), and have heard the songs, but it's not a score that I'm incredibly familiar with. I wanted to get to know the music a bit better so I bought some of it. And it makes me cry.
Also, how pathetic and horrible is the story of the Phantom? He's creepy, and terribly depressing.
But most of the music I cry to causes tears of pure joy. Hymns especially get me going. The bliss of knowing that I have a Savior, that He understands my struggles and fears. The gratitude at this knowledge. Just gets me teary-eyed. I guess I tend to put a lot of classical music into this group, too. How can you not get teary at the Moonlight Sonata? The struggle and triumph that I feel in the melancholy of that melody is just too much for my weak tear ducts. Perhaps it's that I know that, were I the one playing these pieces, I would be playing with my whole heart, offering up thanks to my God for the gift of music in my life.
It's got to be an interesting experience for my neighbors, though, who often observe me walking home, earbuds in, with tears streaming down my smiling face.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Thank You, Alexander Graham Bell
Today's post is on the topic of the telephone. A marvel of the 19th century, the telephone was first patented on 14 February 1876 by Alexander Graham Bell. Bell was one of many inventors of his time who worked on the idea of being able to transmit sound waves across great distances, and in fact there are claims that Elisha Grey reached the patent office earlier to submit his idea for using water as the transmitting medium for a telephone. However, we quite clearly use wires and electricity to transmit our voices across the world today (imagine a cell phone full of water- convenient for when you leave it in your pocket and run it through the wash, I guess) as Bell's idea quickly became the accepted model for telephone communication everywhere.
Imagine using one of these first telephones. The building suspense as you wait for your call to be answered, the thrill when someone on the other end of the line picks up and- to the wonder and amazement of all those who have gathered to see this modern marvel at work- you are connected, talking to someone far away, saying words to them, and then hearing their response with only seconds of delay! What a world, folks!
Over the past 133 years, telephones have changed quite a bit from Bell's original design. We no longer rely on wires and switchboard operators, but instead bounce our voices off of satellites and back down to earth with reckless abandon, hastily making calls and sending messages and hardly ever thinking about what an amazing tool we have at our fingertips. And yet sometimes I think I catch a glimpse of some of the anxiousness and anticipation of a 1800's phone call.
I'm living in a lot of long-distance relationships currently. Thank gracious sakes for the telephone! I spend hours a week talking to my family back home, telling them I love them and catching up with their lives. Another great thing about the phone is that I can pick it up at any time and call Keith and just remind him that I love him, or whatever such nonsense I feel compelled to share. And so I call, and I wait with bated breath as it rings once... and in the pause that follows my heart stops, hoping beyond all hope that Keith will pick up. It rings again, and once more my world stops. No, a second pause passes, a third ring comes through... and I become tense and anxious again, wondering at each pause if this will be the time he picks up, and becoming more and more despondent as each ring goes by with no answer.
"Hey, this is Keith. Um... leave a message if you want." The disappointment of reaching voice mail is momentarily crushing. And then I pick myself up while the automated lady voice tells me how to leave a message, to blurt out a quick, quirky message to Keith usually along the lines of "Hey, baby! I love you lots, and just miss you like crazy... um... call me!" or "Fred! You are being naughty and not answering the phone." And then I return to my life, content in the knowledge that within the next few hours he'll call me back.
But joy of all joys- sometimes after one or two or three rings, waiting with my heart all knotted up and anxious, he'll pick up with a "hey, cutie face!" And conversation begins, and I am reminded of just how dizzy I get with love for this boy. Just talking on the phone with him makes my day all sunshiney and brilliant. Honestly, just thinking about him puts me into a ridiculously good mood most of the time. It helps that I'm in a good mood most of the time anyways, but Keith just heightens and strengthens that emotion, bringing me to a new level of bliss.
And so I take the opportunity today to say "Thank you, Alexander Graham Bell. Thank you for making my life just a bit more blissful."
Imagine using one of these first telephones. The building suspense as you wait for your call to be answered, the thrill when someone on the other end of the line picks up and- to the wonder and amazement of all those who have gathered to see this modern marvel at work- you are connected, talking to someone far away, saying words to them, and then hearing their response with only seconds of delay! What a world, folks!
Over the past 133 years, telephones have changed quite a bit from Bell's original design. We no longer rely on wires and switchboard operators, but instead bounce our voices off of satellites and back down to earth with reckless abandon, hastily making calls and sending messages and hardly ever thinking about what an amazing tool we have at our fingertips. And yet sometimes I think I catch a glimpse of some of the anxiousness and anticipation of a 1800's phone call.
I'm living in a lot of long-distance relationships currently. Thank gracious sakes for the telephone! I spend hours a week talking to my family back home, telling them I love them and catching up with their lives. Another great thing about the phone is that I can pick it up at any time and call Keith and just remind him that I love him, or whatever such nonsense I feel compelled to share. And so I call, and I wait with bated breath as it rings once... and in the pause that follows my heart stops, hoping beyond all hope that Keith will pick up. It rings again, and once more my world stops. No, a second pause passes, a third ring comes through... and I become tense and anxious again, wondering at each pause if this will be the time he picks up, and becoming more and more despondent as each ring goes by with no answer.
"Hey, this is Keith. Um... leave a message if you want." The disappointment of reaching voice mail is momentarily crushing. And then I pick myself up while the automated lady voice tells me how to leave a message, to blurt out a quick, quirky message to Keith usually along the lines of "Hey, baby! I love you lots, and just miss you like crazy... um... call me!" or "Fred! You are being naughty and not answering the phone." And then I return to my life, content in the knowledge that within the next few hours he'll call me back.
But joy of all joys- sometimes after one or two or three rings, waiting with my heart all knotted up and anxious, he'll pick up with a "hey, cutie face!" And conversation begins, and I am reminded of just how dizzy I get with love for this boy. Just talking on the phone with him makes my day all sunshiney and brilliant. Honestly, just thinking about him puts me into a ridiculously good mood most of the time. It helps that I'm in a good mood most of the time anyways, but Keith just heightens and strengthens that emotion, bringing me to a new level of bliss.
And so I take the opportunity today to say "Thank you, Alexander Graham Bell. Thank you for making my life just a bit more blissful."
Friday, September 11, 2009
Preying Mantis
For my "Integrated Management of Plant Pests" class this semester, I have to have a bug collection.
This means literal insects, dead and dried out and pinned in neat rows and categories on a sheet of styrofoam.
And how am I to get these insects all nice and neat on my board? Well, I am supposed to catch them and dunk them in alcohol, of course! How else? Now, bug catching is a fairly simple affair. It involves running around like a crazy person after insects, swinging a net, and then looking in, hoping beyond all hope that you've got something worth pinning. Then you fish 'em out and dump 'em in your killing jar (technical term, you know. I'm a real scientist.) After being plunged into a pool of 90% pure alcohol, none of them last long. And that's when the real fun begins. Carefully holding your dead bug up by his fairly delicate body, you find the thorax. That's the middle section: head-thorax-abdomen, you see. Just slightly right off of center, you hold your pin perpendicular to the pathetic little thing. And then you apply just the gentlest of pressure... and nothing happens. So, take a deep breath, and try again. A little more pressure this time... possibly some turning of the pin to get a drill-sort of action out of it... just a bit harder... and you're in! You've stuck your first bug! Slide him halfway up the pin, stick it into some spare foam and repeat the process, lining up your kill as though they're puzzle pieces trying to be pieced together. Once your scrap of foam is full, or you're out of bugs, it's time for more alcohol. Just float those little beauties upside down in more of the strong stuff for about two weeks and they'll be as dead as dead can be! You breathe a sigh of relief...ahh! And then you remember. The grasshoppers. And the moths. These lovely gems in your collection aren't as easy as the beetle and assassin bug were. These need to be spread wing for your collection. Go to the butterflies and moths first- they're easy. Just pin their furry little bodies (it's amazing how many insects are furry) into the center of a spreading board, pull their wings down flat and pin a scrap of paper down over them. Done. Easy. The grasshoppers, not so easy. Them, you have to convince to be spread. Once they're pinned in between the boards, you ever so gently peel back their forewing... and then, even more gently the back wing... and then you very, very carefully pull the back wing out, so it extends as fully as possible, mimicking flight. Get the wings to both, simultaneously, lie down on your board and pin a paper scrap very tightly over top of them, and hopefully by next week they'll have dried that way, so that at that point you can float them upside down in a jar of alcohol until they're dead and dry and staying that way. Eventually, everyone will be ready, perfectly preserved, and you can pin their carcassas in neat rows, with smart labels, down the length of your bug box. And there they will be asked a question: was your untimely demise worth it? Are you a high enough quality bug to get the grade? Because missing legs, feet, antennae, etc. are unacceptable. Order Thysonoptera: check. Order Hemiptera: check. Order Lepidoptera: check.
So far, I have bugs from 8 different orders. Some of them might not pass inspection, though. I think I'm all set on Coleoptera, the beetles, but every one of my Orthoptera bugs is missing something; one of my grasshoppers has 1 1/2 antenna, the other is without a foot. My gorgeous 3 1/2 inch long preying mantis has no left antenna. Oh, but he's a beautiful bug!
I caught him rather on accident. Just walking up the stairs to campus, minding my own business, when there he was, sitting regal and majestic on the branch of some juniper. As soon as I tried to catch him, he started scrambling, of course, but one can only be stately in some situations. Anyway, some boy walking down the stairs had a good laugh at me as I tried to simultaneously catch my mantis and explain to him why I was attempting to catch him in the first place. Well, we cornered him, scooped him up and dumped him into a tupperware container with an alcohol-soaked cotton ball in it polluting the air, where he struggled for life until, always royalty, he succumbed nobly, folding his legs neatly beneath him in a beautiful show of the appreciation of symmetry. He truly is a beautiful bug. I've studied him, you see. All of them, in fact. And the details are astounding. These insects are beautiful! Intricate and delicate and potentially very scary, were you smaller than them. We've got a lovely world here. Even in the frightful things, there is beauty.
This means literal insects, dead and dried out and pinned in neat rows and categories on a sheet of styrofoam.
And how am I to get these insects all nice and neat on my board? Well, I am supposed to catch them and dunk them in alcohol, of course! How else? Now, bug catching is a fairly simple affair. It involves running around like a crazy person after insects, swinging a net, and then looking in, hoping beyond all hope that you've got something worth pinning. Then you fish 'em out and dump 'em in your killing jar (technical term, you know. I'm a real scientist.) After being plunged into a pool of 90% pure alcohol, none of them last long. And that's when the real fun begins. Carefully holding your dead bug up by his fairly delicate body, you find the thorax. That's the middle section: head-thorax-abdomen, you see. Just slightly right off of center, you hold your pin perpendicular to the pathetic little thing. And then you apply just the gentlest of pressure... and nothing happens. So, take a deep breath, and try again. A little more pressure this time... possibly some turning of the pin to get a drill-sort of action out of it... just a bit harder... and you're in! You've stuck your first bug! Slide him halfway up the pin, stick it into some spare foam and repeat the process, lining up your kill as though they're puzzle pieces trying to be pieced together. Once your scrap of foam is full, or you're out of bugs, it's time for more alcohol. Just float those little beauties upside down in more of the strong stuff for about two weeks and they'll be as dead as dead can be! You breathe a sigh of relief...ahh! And then you remember. The grasshoppers. And the moths. These lovely gems in your collection aren't as easy as the beetle and assassin bug were. These need to be spread wing for your collection. Go to the butterflies and moths first- they're easy. Just pin their furry little bodies (it's amazing how many insects are furry) into the center of a spreading board, pull their wings down flat and pin a scrap of paper down over them. Done. Easy. The grasshoppers, not so easy. Them, you have to convince to be spread. Once they're pinned in between the boards, you ever so gently peel back their forewing... and then, even more gently the back wing... and then you very, very carefully pull the back wing out, so it extends as fully as possible, mimicking flight. Get the wings to both, simultaneously, lie down on your board and pin a paper scrap very tightly over top of them, and hopefully by next week they'll have dried that way, so that at that point you can float them upside down in a jar of alcohol until they're dead and dry and staying that way. Eventually, everyone will be ready, perfectly preserved, and you can pin their carcassas in neat rows, with smart labels, down the length of your bug box. And there they will be asked a question: was your untimely demise worth it? Are you a high enough quality bug to get the grade? Because missing legs, feet, antennae, etc. are unacceptable. Order Thysonoptera: check. Order Hemiptera: check. Order Lepidoptera: check.
So far, I have bugs from 8 different orders. Some of them might not pass inspection, though. I think I'm all set on Coleoptera, the beetles, but every one of my Orthoptera bugs is missing something; one of my grasshoppers has 1 1/2 antenna, the other is without a foot. My gorgeous 3 1/2 inch long preying mantis has no left antenna. Oh, but he's a beautiful bug!
I caught him rather on accident. Just walking up the stairs to campus, minding my own business, when there he was, sitting regal and majestic on the branch of some juniper. As soon as I tried to catch him, he started scrambling, of course, but one can only be stately in some situations. Anyway, some boy walking down the stairs had a good laugh at me as I tried to simultaneously catch my mantis and explain to him why I was attempting to catch him in the first place. Well, we cornered him, scooped him up and dumped him into a tupperware container with an alcohol-soaked cotton ball in it polluting the air, where he struggled for life until, always royalty, he succumbed nobly, folding his legs neatly beneath him in a beautiful show of the appreciation of symmetry. He truly is a beautiful bug. I've studied him, you see. All of them, in fact. And the details are astounding. These insects are beautiful! Intricate and delicate and potentially very scary, were you smaller than them. We've got a lovely world here. Even in the frightful things, there is beauty.
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