Just a little warning...

It is that time of year again! What time of year, you may ask... well, it is early fall, so that can only mean one thing. Football? Well, yah... but more importantly, MARCHING BAND! Yay! I am a gigantic band geek and I am aware of that, but I am so excited to have marching band start again.

This week we have practice W,Th,F from 6:30-9:30 for the San Jose game on Saturday. Since the season hasn't officially started, it is most of the varsity members and some alumni who felt like coming back. It is good times since, #1: Every one knows how to march and it is assumed that they are a fairly competent marcher and, #2: Only people who really want to do it are there, none of those people who thought it would be cool but then decided half way through the season that they hated it and walked around making every one else miserable. Plus the show is a 80s show, which makes me pretty happy. Here are the songs, just so you can feel special and included:

Theme from MTV

Video Killed the Radio Star

Take On Me

I'll Be There For You (The theme from Friends)

Tubthumping (Reminds me of middle school, I don't really know why)

Come On Eileen

Good times. I confess that I had to check some of them out cause I didn't know all of them. I can pretty much guarantee that Video will get stuck in your head if you just listen to like 15 seconds of it. Amazingly enough, I'm not too sore.... yet. I have three ideas about this, #1: I'm not working hard enough, which I know is not the case cause I'm exhausted right now. #2: I'm just really cool and in shape and everything, but some how I'm thinking that isn't totally the case either. #3: I was in good enough shape that one night of marching was okay, but tomorrow I will wake up after 2 solid nights of marching and I won't really be able to move, a delayed reaction sort of deal. We will see.

1 year together!

Happy Birthday to you,

Happy Birthday to you,

Happy Birthday dear JSN,

Happy Birthday to you!!!

My car and I have officially been together for a whole year today. It has been a great car, which I grow to love more everyday. Times were a tad rocky at first since I didn't know how to drive stick. This meant that I had a new car that I couldn't drive. But I QUICKLY learned and it has been smooth sailing ever since. To commemorate the occasion, I will give you a selection of pictures showcasing our happy times together...

Getting to know each other:

Playing in the Snow:

The view as an insider:

Going for Chinese Takeout:

*sigh*

I miss this: What is "this"... a map of the London Underground, or the tube. Pretty sad when a map can make you nostalgic, isn't it?

Maybe I should go find this guy...

The Novelty of Non-Cooking Sluts Soon Wears Off

Idealist: I just want to meet an old-fashioned girl who will make omelets and won't sleep with my friends.

--7th & Ave A

via Overheard in New York, Aug 22, 2006

Ain't she a beaut?

Today my dad and I went down to the Center for Wooden Boats on the south end of Lake Union to see The Lady Washington. What is The Lady Washington, you might ask? The Lady Washington is a tall ship ("a large, traditionally rigged sailing vessel"... definition stolen straight from Wikipedia). She also, drum roll please....... played the Interceptor in Pirates of the Caribbean!! Loving the movies (and anything to do with Pirates of the Caribbean, really), I was very excited to get to see her up close. Although I am not an insane Johnny Depp/Orlando Bloom fan, it does beg the question of whether or not they ever set foot on the boat. I am betting that the answer is "Yes", so that is fairly exciting.

She really wasn't that big, and once again, I amazed at the bravery of people who willingly go out to sea in one of those things. I was sort of sad because I couldn't get a picture of her with her sails unfurled, but I guess I will live. Having read enough books where they try to explain boat rigging, I am also amazed at how intricate it all is and I have come to the conclusion that I am too stupid to ever be a sailor on a tall ship. But the boats are BEAUTIFUL and they do provide for some wonderful picture taking opportunities.

Roosevelt High School 2003

Last night I was looking for something and I tore my entire room apart because I could NOT find it. Finally, on a last whim, I checked my year book from my senior year, and I had just happened to have stuck it in there between two of the pages. But since I had the year book out, I decided to read through it. Next time I complain about the fact that I had to move to Seattle my senior year, tell me to go read my year book. Quite frankly, I was AMAZED by the number of people I met at Roosevelt and the number of friends I made. I guess I just sort of blocked it out because it wasn't the happiest year for me. But looking back from where I am now, I realize that I did have a pretty good year and I had friends. I know that sounds weird to say, but being the sort of social person that I am, not having friends my senior year would have really sucked. And somehow I managed to maintain a positive attitude through it all (at least at school), cause that is something almost everyone commented on. I know that was only through the Lord giving me the strength to deal with it all. True, it wasn't the senior year that I had planned out for myself, but the Lord knew what he was doing and he has worked it all out way better than I would have ever imagined. He never ceases to amaze me!

This also raises lots of scary questions about the fact that in less than a year, I will be graduating once again. But if the Lord worked out the first graduation so well, I know that he will take care of this one too!

Wanna know the best snack ever??

Ritz crackers and peanut butter!! MMMMmmmmmm... that is what I am eating right now.

In other news, on Monday, my family minus Alex and plus Erik and Jamie (My family - Alex + Erik + Jamie, for you math types) went on the Underground Tour of Seattle. It was pretty awesome. I have wanted to do this since I moved here, and seeing as how I am now going on my 5th year here, I think that it was way past time to do this. The tour started out in Pioneer Square in an old tavern (which was way cool cause of the decorations) where they told us some Seattle history about the pioneers and what they did... blah blah blah. Then we went down and looked at the underground part. It wasn't really what I was expecting, it just sort of looked like someone's very, very dirty basement (and in fact, you get into it from the basements of the buildings in the area), but it was cool nonetheless.


Why do we have an underground, might you ask? Well, they had these things called toilets (crappers, they called them, because the guy who invented them... his last name was Crapper). Anyhow, when Seattle was a young pup, the city area as a whole was a lot lower (about 10 feet), which meant that basically it was built on the tidal flats. This was okay, but the plumbing for all of these new fangled crappers was hooked up so that the force of gravity pushed the expelled contents out of the toilet and out into Elliot Bay. This was all well and good (other than the polluting the bay with human waste part) until the tide came in, when the in-rushing of water would fill the pipes up BACKWARDS so that you had, what the tour fondly referred to as "Exploding Crappers". I am serious... they would explode sea water and raw sewage and other delightful things. So this was a big problem, and as I see it, the main reason that they decided to basically raise the city another level.


And then they got lucky...there was a fire that burned down a lot of Seattle in 1907 (?) and the city officials decided that when they rebuilt, they should bring in soil and rock to raise the streets about 10 feet or so. But the merchants wanted to get back to business, so they began building right away on the old level. This meant that there were shops and sidewalks that were 10 feet below the raised street and they had to put ladders on the corners so that people could get down! (There was also a frightening statistic that they quoted us about people being smashed and killed by things falling off of passing trucks up above on the streets.) Eventually, the merchants let the city raise the sidewalks too. They did this by putting a beam from the street to the building, and covering it with brick and cement to make the new sidewalk. So a lot of what the underground is are these covered sidewalks flanked on one side by the mooring for the street and the other side by what used to be the front of an old building and is now the basement. They put skylights in some of these sidewalks and actually used the underground as a kind of shopping district until they suspected bubonic plague down there. Why it is okay for us to go down there now, I'm not sure, but apparently it's okay! One building they showed us was built with two main entrances, one on the lower level and one on the upper level for when they knew the street would be raised. I wish I could find a picture of a door floating in midair on the second story before the street was raised.



Anyhow, I really, really enjoyed it... lots of history! Although it is kind of confusing to think about, it's cool to see how they effectively raised the entire city by an entire story! If you come to Seattle anytime soon, you should really consider going on this... (and visiting me while you are at it)!!

Hmmm... I must use my great thinking ability for this one!

So wanna know what is disturbing me of late? The fact that my bed smells like cologne, and I have absolutely NO clue why. Now if I were the kind to go out, get drunk, bring a guy home, have a one night stand and wake up so hung over that I couldn't remember anything that happened the night before, I guess this could make sense. But that is not me. I don't do that. I repeat, I DON'T DO THAT! So why, then, can't I figure out why my bed smells like cologne. The only thing I can think of is that when Jamie stayed the night on Sunday, she must have had a teddy bear sprayed with DJ's cologne and set it on my bed and the smell got transferred. That's it, that is the only thing that makes sense. Either that or I am just going crazy. Which is always a possibility...

I almost forgot!

I just wanted to inform you all that I am now the proud new owner of a pack of 24 color, ultra-fine tip Sharpies. They went on sale for $10 at Target a couple of weeks ago and I said, "How can I resist?!? That is less than $.50 a Sharpie!" But sadly, when I got to Target, they were all out so I had to get a rain check. Everytime I was there I checked, but they were still out...until tonight! I am victorious with my glorious 24 color, ultra-fine tip Sharpies!

Youth Camp '06

Okay okay okay!! I'm posting. Since I have had multiple people ask me to post this, that means that theoretically I can make this as long as I want and you will still read it, right??? Hehehe... I'll try and be nice and keep it manageable!

So, youth camp... I was counselor to the 4th grade girls with Lindsey as my co-counselor/kitchen help (mainly kitchen help). My week basically consisted of dealing with little girl sagas over and over and over and over and over... you get my drift! I had a total of 5 girls, 3 of which had recently graduated from the Primary department in Seattle, so I already knew them EXTREMELY well. Dynamics in my cabin were interesting, in that one of the girls was bossy and a know-it-all and she would try to boss the other girls around so none of them wanted to be with her. She would then come to me and say that the other girls were being mean and ignoring her, conveniently forgetting to tell me about how she had been bossing them around. Needless to say, by the end of the week whenever someone would come to tattle to me, my first question was always "What did you do to them first?" and then, being the cold-hearted person that I am, I would say that they probably deserved whatever ill they were currently bemoaning. *Insert here that I DID pay attention if it was something serious, I'm not THAT dumb!*


Getting them to go to sleep was insanely hard, especially for one girl. The first night, I honestly am not sure if she slept at all. To make matters worse, our cabin had new, super crinkly mattresses, so that whenever you even moved everyone else could hear it. This girl laid on her top bunk and everytime she rolled over she would give a little bounce, you know like you would do when you were little and trying to bounce in your bed, that, coupled with the squeaky mattress and our cabin, which was like 80 degrees, I barely slept the first night. By the third night, I had managed to track down some "Adventures in Odyssey" which didn't put them right to sleep, but at least meant that they had to be quiet so that they could listen to the story. I also told noisy-non-sleep-girl that if she kept making noise when I had asked her to stop and go to sleep, I was going to make her sleep on the concrete floor with no mattress.

It was insanely hot in our cabin, which would have been a good thing, except that we all had sleeping bags and were prepared for the cold. What's that you say? Turn down the heat? No way.. the thermostat was in a little box that was screwed to the wall with no opening whatsoever... I finally had to get my dad to unscrew it so we could get the cabin comfortable to be in. The cabin also had showers in it, which was a blessing, except that in the morning my girls would lay in bed and call "first shower" but they wouldn't get up and take it. I explained that I didn't care who called "first shower" but whoever actually got their butt up and went and TOOK it got the first shower. (See, wasn't I just so mean!?!) They also took like 3 showers a day, which I wouldn't have minded, except that they always yelled at me to get out cause I was "taking too long" because they all needed to take their third shower of the day. (Just for the record, 10 minutes isn't too long and I, as a counselor, can take as long of a shower as I want and also invite any of my fellow counselors to utilize our much nicer showers if I choose... both were concepts lost on my girls).

One of my girls (the bossy one) kept complaining that she wasn't having any fun... hmm, I wonder why... but she told me the only fun thing she had done at camp was floss cause flossing was her favorite thing to do. This is the same girl whose flip-flop broke so she left it sitting in the gravel parking lot and kept on running. When she came back for it an hour later, Bro. Joe and Bro. Chet had cut off the bottom half (because it was broken, duh!!) and used it to help hold the pressure on the bottle-rocket launcher. When she found out, boy was she mad... nevermind the fact that she had abandoned it in the parking lot... no no no, they CUT her flip-flop!!!! ... said the drama queen.

Another great problem of the week were the slugs. My girls HATED slugs, so they found these two slugs that they thought looked like they were mating. Were they actually? I have no idea, I don't know much about slugs myself, but they didn't want "baby slugs" so they broke them up. I thought it was pretty hilarious. Needless to say, my cabin was fairly intense. By the end of the week, someone came up to me and was like, "Good thing camp ends today, cause you may need a straightjacket if it were to go on any longer." I still am not sure if she intended the straightjacket for me or for my girls.


I also had a screamer in my cabin. She screamed when she was happy, she screamed when she was mad, she screamed when she was excited, she probably would have screamed when she was sad too, but I don't know for sure. This was blood-curdling, heart-stopping, someone-MUST-have-just-fallen-over-dead-to-warrant-this-kind-of-scream screaming. It finally got so bad during the middle of the week that I announced to the cabin in general that if I heard any more screaming of the previously described variety, unless there was blood involved, I was going to take away their concession card for one concession time. That made her stop screaming =).

And did I mention the great exploding suitcases? Each morning I would be the drill sergeant and make my girls clean up the cabin for inspection. By 1 in the afternoon, each and every girl's bag would have exploded all over the floor yet again. I kept telling them that clean up would be easier if they kept their clothing in their suitcases, but no, why would you believe me? I've only been to youth camp going on 15 times now. This pile, coupled with the rocks they collected from the beach (complete with sand!), left over drawings and wet/stinky towels that they NEVER hung up, was enough to drive me insane. A couple of times I stopped to ask myself if I was getting frustrated by this because I was 21 and they were 9, but then I came to the conclusion that no, my 4th grade self would have been mad at her cabin mates if they were doing this as well. I guess that is the price I pay for being anal. Although I don't call not wanting my pillow to be grabbed from my bed and thrown in a dirty pile on the floor to provide a "safe landing" should their jumping from bunk to bunk go awry being anal. I call that being normal. Once I figured out what they were doing, I quickly put a stop to it, but I think that those sneaky little girls did it even after I told them to stop. I wouldn't know for sure because unlike them, I don't particularly enjoy hanging out in my cabin when there are things to do outside. How did I guess? I walked in one day and my pillow was yet again missing. I checked the mass pile of junk on the floor, located said pillow and noticed a row of dirty little toe prints on my white pillow case. I just sighed, turned the pillow over and put it back on my bed, figuring there wasn't much that I could do about my now dirty pillow case.
Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy myself and had a good time... it was just one of the more memorable youth camps. And I'm assuming that my girls didn't hate me even though I was "mean", seeing as how on the last day as they were getting ready to leave, they kept running at me full tilt from across the fielding and almost toppling me over with their hugs. *sigh* Yup... youth camp sure is fun! =)

Update!

In our developing news story... the air conditioning vent by my desk got closed somehow. I am much happier now that I figured that out and fixed it!

I WANT OUT!!!!!!!!!!

My office is hot and stuffy, my brain is fried, my eyes hurt and I am falling asleep. If someone were to bring me coffee, I would seriously love them forever. Even if they were a "reaper" in a blue van.

What is going ON?!?!

Do you ever have days were the entire world seems like it has come unglued and needs to be admitted to the mental hospital? It is on days like this that I am always careful to stop and ask myself if, perhaps, it is I who has come unglued. After all, if EVERYone around you is acting strangely, it seems more likely that you are just overreacting. But after carefully evaluating myself and coming to the realization that I am doing great today, I have deduced that all of Seattle is going crazy.

I had about the strangest day ever at work today: clients worried about the whereabouts of their clothes, someone yelling at me when I tried to help them because I "Didn't know who they were" but they hadn't even given me their name yet, my coworkers (about 10 of them) taking way too much time to put together a couch, an eventful trip to Ikea, my coworker shopping online at Abercrombie cause she had no work to do. *Sigh* Yes, it is safe to say that my day has been eventful... but boring nonetheless.

Oh, and on a fun side note, just for future reference, nectarines are NOT a very good fruit to attempt to eat while typing at a keyboard. I tried that at work today, it didn't go over so well.

Don't you just love...

...CDs that you randomly buy on a whim, but quickly turn out to be your new favorite? I do!

In other news, I think I have an addiction. Today I was at Target buying new crayons for the Primary department (VERY important purchase, you see) and since I was in the school supplies section, I ran across a package of Sharpies. But this wasn't just your average red-green-blue-black package, this had like 25 different colors. I seriously almost started drooling, right there in the middle of the store. I LOVE sharpies, especially the ultra-fine tip ones. I am not sure why, but they call to me everytime I see them. The only thing that saved me today was the fact that I didn't have $14.99 to randomly throw away on a package of Sharpies that I probably didn't really need. *Sigh* Hopefully I will be able to go on living...
P.S. No Chris (or Matt or Bryan), I don't like Sharpies because I enjoy sniffing them. I just wanted to clarify before one of you asked...

Campmeeting '06

So I am very aware of the fact that I haven't posted in a long time. And logically, it would seem that I should post about campmeeting, as I really haven't been doing much else with my time over the last 2.5 weeks. But when I sit down to actually write about it, I am not really sure what to say. I had an awesome time, although it was one of the more strange campmeetings in my remembrance. Partially because of all of the people, and partially because the two weeks felt totally different to me. They were both fun and enjoyable, but I hung out with two very different groups of people in the two different weeks, mainly because that was when they were there. So I have decided that I will list out key inside jokes or things that I remember the most about campmeeting. If they make sense to you, consider yourself lucky, if they don't, I am very sorry. Maybe you need to hang out with me more often! =)

-"Sitting" with Mandy and Zach in church
-Zach, I think I have your goat
-"Your brain is flatlined"
-Quality Kitchenette time
-Going to see Pirates
-Going to Shari's (both times)
-Walmart and how I went there more times during campmeeting than I do during an entire typical year!!
-Going to the zoo and eating animal fries
-Quality mall time!
-"Caution Kids" ... enough said
-My promised 3 Christmas presents: Beverly Hill Billies DVDs, a jungle gym and a Honda Element
-Angel Food/Devil's Food cake discussion
-Various discussions on words, including, but not limited to:
*Nautical
*Ominous (Omnious!!)
*Animosity
*Tumultuous
*Indubitably
*Copious
*Maniacally
-"Hiking" in flip-flops and a jeanskirt
-That crazy scary Alice in Wonderland play at the park
-Melina, the marriage wrecker
-Doing guard duty with Angela
-Hey Thomas, I secretly hate you =)
-How do you get an elephant in the subway?
-Apparently, I am now a dictator (and I have a co-dictator to boot!)
-There was this guy named Jay...

The other dancing guy

I haven't posted in a long time... I'm sorry... yada yada yada. But, I found this for all ya'll's enjoyment -- how was that for correct grammar?!?! You should check it, he sounds like my kinda guy!! (I apologize in advance for the bad word in the title, sorry... consider yourself warned.)

And just in case you miss it, I thought I should copy and paste this from the website:

Less Frequently Asked Questions
Why is the world so screwed up? Men.
How do we fix it? Women.

Yup... that is all I have to say about that. Enjoy!

That deaf, dumb and blind boy sure plays a mean pinball!

I am noticing a rather disturbing pattern around my house. I turn on music, my dad sticks his head into my room, and he tells me to turn it off. Why? Well it isn't because he disapproves... that is for sure. It is because it is "his" music and I am not allowed to listen to it! I have a list of about 5 or 6 groups that I am no longer "allowed" to listen to because it is the music of his youth, not mine. I think secretly he is flattered that I would like the music that he liked when he was growing up, so he makes fun of me for it. So yes, I will admit that I stole his Chicago CD, but he freaked out when I asked (and got) an Earth, Wind & Fire CD for Christmas. And a couple of months ago, I went to a rock opera/musical thing at UW that my friend was stage managing. I was trying to explain it to my parents, thinking that they would never know what it was. I said that it was written by The Who, as well as something about it being about this boy that grows up in WWII London and the musical follows him throughout his life. That is seriously all it took for my dad to be like, "You went and saw Tommy?!?" and break out into a chorus of "Pinball Wizard". Yah, so basically, I am doomed to share my love of music with my father if it is older than about 1980, and even then, he is familiar with some of that stuff too. I have just resolved myself to the fact that any cool group from the 1960s/1970s, my dad will be right there telling me that I can't listen to it. And don't even get me started on the songs that we play in marching band... he can sing along with most of those too! (Not so cool to have your parents start singing "You Can Call Me Al" at the top of their lungs along with your marching band CD!) But I don't really mind, I think it is sort of fun... he just doesn't like it when I try to sing with his Chicago CD!

P.S. Tommy is AWESOME! You should see it if you ever get the chance. A rock band on stage playing all of the music for a musical, you can't get much better than that! It combines two of my great loves... =)

Peggy Sue...

is systematically carrying all of her food from the little food cup on the second floor of her cage down to the bottom of her cage and hiding it in her little house. I am not sure why, since the only one with access to the food is her, but I guess she wants it to be safe. It is cracking me up... there are about 20 food pellets buried in the sawdust now and this has been going on for like 3 days. Silly Peggy Sue.

Introductions

Note how Tucker appears to have only a head! He isn't very tall, so that is all that he could get on the table to look at Peggy Sue.

The end is near!

For me, this definitely is NOT a bad thing! Tomorrow is my last day of classes, finals next week... and then I am free for the whole summer! *And there was great rejoicing because I have no more homework to do and I can do other fun things, like posting to my blog whenever I feel like it!*

In other exciting news, Peggy Sue comes home tomorrow. Don't know who Peggy Sue is? Maybe you should read my blog more often =)

And I learned my life lesson #68 today: Don't wear flip-flops if they are forecasting rain and you know that you have to walk across red square. Red square = big square/plaza thing on campus made of, what else, red brick. But they designed it special so that it would be slick when wet so that they could knock down all of the protestors if they got out of hand (No kidding... it was designed in the 60s with all of that college demonstrating going down everywhere). Anyway, I learned the hard way that flip-flops and wet, slippery red brick do not mix very well. It is bad enough walking across it when you have tennis shoes with traction, shoes with no traction are next to impossible. *Sigh* If the stupid muggy weather would go away, then I wouldn't have to worry about wanting to wear flip-flops even though it is raining. Muggy weather is the bane of my existence.