the authoritarian

i have survived week 1 (of 6) of my teacher training class and week 1 (of 4) of summer school. i highly favor the mornings at summer school to the afternoons being a student, because in the mornings i am totally in charge. well, not totally, because i'm just the student teacher, but for the most part, after 1st period, i was in charge of the 7th grade math classes.

the students we have, all 85 of them, are a little scary. but one must not let on that you realize they are scary. in fact, the first morning there i felt as if i was at a juvenile detention center, with all the teachers barking out orders demanding military straight lines, shirts tucked in, and no second chances. there is definitely a fine line of tension between quiet learning and utter chaos that i'm constantly praying will not snap, particularly during class periods on my watch.

i believe my finest teaching moment of the week actually came during the end of the week quiz. one young man was trying to recall the order of operations and i told him that all i could help him with was to try to remember the acronym and work through the problems using it (PEMDAS). he told me that he not only did not know what an acronym was but he had no idea what i was talking about, though the other student teacher had done a review on it 5 minutes prior to this conversation. i said, an acronym is where the letters in one word stand for letters in other words. scanning through my mind i came up with NBA...the national basketball association. the boy told me 'i have no idea what you are talking about'...his loss. the boys at a nearby table were apparently impressed with my NBA knowledge and tried to stump me with MLB...to which i answered major league baseball, and was met with stunned looks. yes, i had exerted my authority in not only math matters, but now also in sports. so sit down and listen to me students! ;)

in other news, ross and i celebrated his birthday last week with a trip to KOBE Japanese steakhouse, where they gave him some complimentary porcelain chopsticks since it was his birthday.

last night we cooked some kabobs on his birthday present (propane grill) and he even wore his cook-out apron, a bday present from nana.

also this week we had a little dinner party team awesome austin-style (will. lisa. summer plans??),participated in a small group from church, went sailing on lake LBJ, watched the spurs dominate with some friends, got a DVR and DishNetwork(!), and met up for lunch in downtown austin.

minnie is helping me write this post and wants you to know that she killed a very large lizard yesterday and is currently hoping i would share some tunafish sandwich with her as a reward.

a public service announcement is that summer has arrived. you should not go biking at 1pm on a saturday afternoon, as ross and i just did. it is simply waaaay too hot.

back to work

most of you know that i have decided to switch careers from IT to teaching. the process has included a hiatus from working for the past few months (march-may) which has been at times enjoyable and at times frustrating. last week i started back to work by attending a seminar with other teachers from the school district that i will be working at in the fall. we were working on creating a standardized district curriculum and common assessments for the upcoming school year. it was a good way to get introduced to the state objectives for 6th grade. it was also a time to see that some teachers are embittered and resistant to change, while others are motivated and excited to embrace whatever catalyst is needed to propel students toward achievement. today i started my classroom seminars and in the morning i will face my first day of student teaching. i guess its kind of easy to get caught in a 'grass is greener on the other side' mentality when facing the challenges of beginning to teach and remembering the certain comforts that come from being a professional in the corporate world. some days i wonder why i would leave a profession that allows me to wear whatever i want, show up whenever i want, and show up and only need to focus on what i need to be doing and where i need to be. but i try to remind myself that in some ways these are selfish ambitions. and i want to do something that when i look back on my life i will have made a difference in someone else's life, not just been successful in my own. so in some ways i'm super nervous about becoming a teacher and sometimes a little sad to have left something that i had learned to enjoy. but mostly i'm super excited! i can't wait to share with you the things that happen this summer during my training, and this fall in my 6th grade math portable classroom!

"Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight," declares the Lord.
--Jeremiah 9:23-24

interaction

you may have noticed that this month boasts more posts than any other month this year thus far. moreover, if you glance at the blog archives you will notice this month also has more posts than any month in 2004 or 2006! however, all this posting and so little commenting is very discouraging!! you guys suck!

just kidding. but seriously. come on. the video was funny. and impressive. so help me out.

identity theft

so ross and i had made up a budget in excel for the summer and we had set up quicken accounts. yesterday afternoon i spent some time transferring our budget information into quicken so we could better track how we are doing. it was while i was going back and re-categorizing expenditures into our budget categories that i noticed 2 charges to avis car rental. because neither ross nor i have rented a car from avis, this was rather disturbing. it was even more disturbing because we had recently lost a debit card and had to call the bank to cancel it and request a replacement. after talking with ross (actually we were IM'ing...we have a hi-tech marriage ;)) we were both up in arms ready to call usaa and demand justice. i decided to check the transactions online on the banks website so i would have it handy. funny thing was i couldn't find it anywhere. the only transactions with matching dollar amounts was to ACH W/D-TRAVIS COUNTY WC ONLINE PMT...our water bill. accidentally we had accepted quicken's suggested memorized payee as avis car rental(ACH W/D-TRAVIS COUNTY WC ONLINE PMT). oops! too bad...we had our hopes set on being on the next citibank commercial.

lost and found

i have returned from my vacation to portland to visit friends...i trust ross has kept you well entertained in my absence! i had a great week of sightseeing and catching up with friends. also i had my first experience drinking bubble tea...its rather interesting. i'd never heard of it but its apparently a phenomenon. i also got to play in a softball game, go to saturday market in downtown portland, see a play, go to church and youth group at ggbc, see a 10ft sturgeon and feed rainbow trout, count fish at bonneville dam, hang out with friends, have a picnic and 2 barbeques, share pictures, and eat lots of ice cream from DQ. it was most fun, but i'm definitely glad to be back with ross! he was at the airport to pick me up with flowers and then we went and got a drink and watched the spurs beat the suns. we are going to have a repeat evening tonite minus the flowers and airport.

today in the office closet i found something that had been frustratingly missing for the past couple months. yes, we managed to misplace this important document after only days of having it. there aren't many uses for the actual document it seems, but of course we managed to misplace it before i'd used it at the DMV, etc. thankfully, now i can officially become mrs. hytnen.

Creepy and Funny and Tragically True

The Creepy and Funny ...
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2457332

The Tragedy ...
http://www.amazon.com/Latawnya-Naughty-Horse-Learns-Drugs/dp/0533091020/ref=sr_1_2/103-7583323-5108611?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1179437744&sr=8-2

Double click the above link to highlight it for copy / paste.


Ross

What I do to Sharon's things when she's away...

Sorry Sharon - they had to come off so I could wire it for the trailer.
I think it still runs though but keep your fingers crossed anyway.


Ross

A call for recipes ...

Living in Austin has been great fun for me thus far. Typically, early Saturday morning, Charles and I set out on Lake Travis for a long morning of fishing ( I'm not sure Sharon enjoys the early wake up call though ). Having Charles as a fishing partner is especially useful for me because he doesn't actually eat fish. What I catch ... I keep. What Charles catches ... I keep.

By the way, being able to do this is exciting in and of itself because in San Antonio the only place available for fishing was on USAA grounds. I'm not making that up.

I've brought home fish 3 weekends running with each weekend being more fruitful than the last. Today we caught 18 fish. After throwing seven of them back after running out of space to keep them and giving four away to a neighbor, my personal stash looks like this:


If memory servers that's 3 white bass, 2 black bass, a crappie (the small fella on top) and a striper (the bigun taking up the length of the pan). Unfortunately for them, they have been turned into this ( spoon added for size reference ):


And have a destiny with this:


Thus, we need lots of fish recipes! So if you have a good one feel free to post it :)

Ross

Sail Day Photoblog ...

Here is a brief photographic addendum to the previous post.

Hoisting the mast in "dry dock". When fully extended the sail reaches the top of the mast. If you look closely, our other sail boat is under the awning of the shed in the background.

Sharon and I finally under way ... so far so good.
Uh Sharon.. the pulley just snapped...
Stranded at sea - making the best of things.
(The problem is the red rope in this photo...its broken off the travelers block and I am holding it by hand now.)

Slowly arriving at our destination ...
Ugh, finally back. I was exhuasted from holding the sail and fighting the rudder on a choppy lake. Sharon seemed quite rested however ...

C'mon pull this trailer out already!

Stolen Accounts and Finicky Cats...

I have sneakily guessed Sharon's password to this blog and can therefore post without her knowledge... So I thought I'd update you with a brief tale of our first sail on our very own finicky catamaran.

I'll leave it to Sharon to post pictures soon.

I spent Friday and part of today figuring out how to actually rig the cat correctly. It's tougher than you might imagine due to the awkwardness of maneuvering the very tall mast.

Oops, Sharon just walked in and caught me. So to continue...

We found a sail sport friendly park from which no motorized vehicles may be launched and decided it looked like a good place to put in. Rigging was a fairly routine event as was the launch itself. Actually the entire sailing experience was going relatively well until...

The sail suddenly burst from it rigging and flew out 90 degress to the boat at about mach 3. The hardware that holds my main sheet to the super-traveler had just snapped, fell into the water and plummeted about 200 feet into the deep channel of the river. Don't worry though - we do end up surviving this ordeal.

It turns out that holding a sail by hand on a sunfish and holding the sail of a catamaran by hand are night and day. There is just so much more sail for a catamaran that the amount of wind you need to hold onto is very much more formidable. We did manage to limp the boat back to the dock, unrig and pack up. Unfortunately in the process I fell off the trailer and cut my lower back and thigh on various metallic protrusions.

Over all, a very strong learning experience; next time will be much smoother.

For a video of our model boat in action see: http://www.sailingtexas.com/cboats99hobie14.html
Video is in upper right corner.

PS
Sharon finally got a working dishwasher - I had two spare dishwashers for some reason.

PPS
Sharon bought me a nice gas grill for my birthday. It's a little early but we have freshly caught fish (21" bass + 3x14" bass) to cook so I get to play with it already!

Goodbye for now. Sharon will probably be changing her password so who knows when you'll hear from me again.

Ross.

pillow talk? (v2)

every once in awhile when ross is sleeping on his back and head propped up on the pillow, then he will start to snore. if he turns over, this problem is quickly resolved. this weekend while camping, i was awakened from my not so deep and not so comfortable slumber by VERY loud snoring. i tried to turn him over to no avail. so he had to be awakened. this was not an easy task.

sharon:ross
sharon: rosss
sharon: ROSS
sharon: ROOOSSSS
ross: what
sharon: you need to turn over
ross: huh?
sharon: you're snoring
ross: i wasn't asleep
sharon: you weren't?
ross: no. i've just been laying here with my eyes closed.
sharon: you were? well you were snoring very loudly. it woke me up!
ross: it must have been someone else
sharon: you're right next to me.
ross: i'm just saying....i'm not the source.
sharon: ok.

i'm in trouble!

hopefully ross won't buy one of these:

The SnuzNLuz alarm clock connects to your online bank account via WiFi and donates your real money to an organization you hate every time you push the snooze button. Best you get out of bed when it tells ya to.

visitors!

i was a little worried that with no test to study for and the house clean and no thank you notes to write that i'd be a little bored this week. not so! for starters we were terrorized by this wolf that you can see ross had to fend off. just kidding. thats the neighbors german shepherd, and when he stands up ...he's taller than ross! he's an ocassional unwanted visitor (at least by me) on our porch. i guess he was a little excited that my mom and rachel came to visit for a few days, because he came to visit those days too! we checked out the texas history museum downtown and the hamilton greenbelt while they were here and had a really good time. the star of the show however was minnie the cat. i do believe she agrees with me that J-Jo the dog was unwelcome, as she spent about 2 days hiding under the bed after he surprised her one morning.this weekend evelyn and daniel came up and we all went camping at pace bend park, on the north side of lake travis. we had a really good time.




of course we took the texan obligatory bluebonnet pics.


one last visitor we had was a bunny rabbit! it was waiting for us the other night in the driveway. good thing we drove up and startled it because i'm pretty sure minnie was stalking it! and now we are preparing for one more set of visitors! ross' parents are coming in tonight to see us.

home living

well it turns out living in a home is quite different than an apartment. many evenings and a lot of time on weekends are spent working around the house...its high maintenance! we are very fortunate however that ross is quite the handy man and can handle most all the tasks himself...well maybe with a little help from home de pot. our back porch hangout/gym area is about 75% complete. we've worked out several times back there and now just need to get some bamboo blinds purchased and hung. the kitchen sink is a continual thorn in our side as it seems to have issues constantly. pictures and artwork are slowly making their way onto the walls. ross busted out the riding lawn mower last week and did a little work on our 'jungle' as i like to refer to it. he showed me how to drive it but i was promptly relieved of these duties. we've had 2 sets of visitors so far: jfer came into town for the Easter weekend. She and I went to the movies and of course the mall and worked on my wedding album. All of us went to church (where Chris Tomlin led worship!) and in general just had good times. Our outdoor adventures were postponed to her next visit due to the freezing (quite literally--sleet on Easter!) weather. Our other visitors you can see below: 5 deer that like to hang out in our yard sometimes! Our third set of visitors are due next week and we can't wait!

am i smarter than a 5th grader?

for whatever reason ross and i have watched this show 'are you smarter than a 5th grader' the past 2 weeks. aside from annoying theme music, overly dramatic people, awfully smug children, jeff foxworthy, and excessive commercial breaks...we find this show entertaining for some reason. i think we enjoy knowing so many more answers than the contestants that it makes us feel good about ourselves. i do think, however, that their selection of contestants in not equally weighted. we have yet to see a professional like a doctor, lawyer, computer programmer on the show...one could argue they don't need more money, but i'm just saying that i think they would do well. but mostly i would like to see a teacher on the show, like a 5th grade teacher, because i'm sure she would blast that game apart. but i guess it wouldn't be as 'entertaining' if the contestants were 'smarter' than a 5th grader. if, of course, you are silly enough to believe that answering random questions from a school textbook correctly makes you 'smarter' than another person.

i however have been engaging in my own reality show of 'am i smarter than a 5th grader' the past month as i've been studying to take the TExES exam to be 'highly qualified' to teach 4th-8th grade mathematics. this requires me to have mastery over certain competencies that i shall be required to teach students on the TAKS test. Some sample questions are provided, but not really enough to practice with. So I looked online and found that you can take released TAKS tests for all ages here. so beginning with 3rd grade and going up through 11th grade, i took all the TAKS math tests. i sighed with relief when the 3rd grade test was no problem and was somewhat pleased when i was able to complete all tests easily in less than 1 hour each. i'm not sure if the excitement was justifiable, as i am a college graduate, but nonetheless at least i do know how to do what i am to teach students to do. of course, doing it well and teaching it well are far from the same.

i also took the 8th grade social studies just to see, and was pleased to execute that one flawlessly as well. try them out! it will let you know if 'you're smarter than a 5th grader', according to the state of Texas.

home de pot

being married apparently requires lots of trips to the home depot(or as i affectionately refer to it: the home de pot), as i have been there more times this month than i think i have been in the rest of my entire life combined. this sunday afternoon found us in the hardware aisle finding numerous different sized bolts required to put together a weight set. it also included a trip to the pvc pipe aisle for parts for ross to install our dishwasher. the dishwasher that was supposed to be fun to go pick up in corpus christi because we were going to camp on the beach. but due to rainy weather (i refuse to call it bad weather, because i heart it) our dishwasher trip disintegrated into a boring marathon 12hr trip of a saturday. so while we were at the home depot buying things, then ross bought me something! a plant. the cashier appeared mortified while ringing it up and said 'what IS that?', it rang up as 'carnivorous.' haha, thats because we bought a venus fly trap! it is currently uninteresting looking, but as soon as it grows the characteristic 'trap' then i will post a picture of it.

pillow talk?

so a lot of times people ask me, sharon why are you so smart? and i always give credit to my parents. but seriously, i wonder the same? but i think i have discovered a possible answer to this question.

probably most people have generally the same amount of intelligence for 24hrs of each day, right? i mean, how smart you are is how smart you are, 24/7, barring periods of extreme fatigue or other odd things that can alter your brain functions. i, however, have an ability to concentrate alll of my intelligence to my waking hours. this has the effect of making me 2x as smart as i am genetically...which leaves me as pretty dang smart.

at least when i'm awake. apparently in the wee hours of the morning i'm a complete moron. you might be currently skeptical of my intelligence doubling theorem, but after you read these conversations that i have with ross at 5 or 6am, i think you will be sold!

sharon: you know who i havent seen all day? (this in itself is dumb. i spent all day by myself at the house)
ross: who?
sharon: minnie!
ross: i put her in the other bedroom.
sharon: with the cat?
ross: who?
sharon: minnie!
ross: minnie IS the cat. (and also the only 'person' i HAD seen all day)
sharon: oh.


phone rings at absurdly early hour
ross: whose is that??
sharon: i think its lingerie?
ross: what?
sharon: lin-ge-rie.
ross: i dont know what you mean.
sharon: <> its like bras and panties.
ross: i know what lingerie is. i think its a phone ringing.
sharon: it is?
ross: yes, is it mine or yours?
sharon: i dont know.

there goes another one

so while ross and i were in jamaica doing cool things (ATVs, zip lines, horseback riding, etc) my 2 water frogs and 1 betta fish were chilling at my mostly empty apartment in san antonio. i put a time delay feeding capsule in the aquarium that should last 20 fish for 10 days. 20 fish. 10 days. I was gone for 10 days. I have 2 frogs and 1 fish so i thought this should suffice. i'm not sure if it happened the moment i turned my back or if the last day they were just staaaarving because they hadn't had their normal diet of fish flakes AND dried shrimp. i also am not sure if it was a joint effort or what, but one or both of those stupid frogs ATE MY BETTA FISH. and when i say ate, i mean when you look in the aquarium you'd never know there ever WAS a betta fish because it is 100% eaten, bones and fins and eyes and all. so now i just have 2 albino african clawed frogs who have caught on to the american trend in obesity.

the homeless jobless bum i married is now working and we are living in our new house together in our new town. i don't really recommend it so much....that much change at one time that is. but i DO recommend taking about a month off of work, because it feels amazing. i also recommend getting married because its very nice.

new toys

wedding countdown:18days!

we took advantage of our 'wellness' dollars from work and invested in some mountain bikes from bike world. the past 2 weekends we've been able to go out for a few hours and test them out. 2 weeks ago we went up to austin with our friend todd and he took us on a 10mile expedition near town lake in downtown austin. this past weekend we went riding out at o.p. schnabel park here in san antonio. we've been having a blast with the bikes, and hope to continue making good use of them. if you want to come along, give us a shout!

also picture below is our other new toy that ross picked up in austin. it will be a nice addition to our new home. the other night i was watching tv, while he was playing video games...on the same tv. i find this to be very 'american', but also kinda cool!

the beans & rice idea

ross and i went out of town this weekend, down to kemah, tx where we are getting married. we met with our wedding lady and the baker and the florist and the candlestick maker. just kidding, we didnt meet with the candlestick maker. after our busy day friday, we at at ninfas mexican restaurant. i guess we were thinking about it because we ate out a lot this weekend, but it seems rather disgusting if you dwell on the amount of food wasted at restaurants. at mexican restaurants its seems there's the obligatory rice and beans on the side of the meal, not to mention the whole bucket of tortillas. this is not a bad idea except that your meal has so much other food that one could not possibly need also the rice, beans, and 4 extra tortillas! it seems sad that a large portion of the world actually lives on just the sides....rice & beans. therefore, i'd like to see what it'd look like for american restaurants to stop serving the sides. take that food saved and $1 per entree and give it to a distribution agency to get that food to africa or other places battling malnourishment. i haven't done any calculations, but just in texas alone, i'm thinking....thats a lot of rice & beans that are otherwise thrown away!

what? a post?

haha my blogging skills have deteriorated to the point that i have no earthly idea how to spell deteriorated. i shall blame it on my job and falling in love....both of which have kept me quite busy lately. we're currently at t-minus 5weeks to our wedding and each and every one of those weekends is jam-packed full of adventures all over texas. so should be fun!

meanwhile, i've been contemplating the changes i will have to go through to adjust to married life. i'm sure there are many things that i haven't even begun to think of that will come up, but i have already identified some areas that i will have to make adjustments in, some of which are listed below for your perusal.

1. because ross and i will be living together, i'm going to let the lease run out on my apartment and move somewhere else. this inevitably means that at some point between now and the end of march i will have to take down my christmas tree. :( this is sad because i am still enjoying my christmas tree and wish i could leave it up longer. also, i am wondering if ross will oppose leaving up our christmas tree so long. this could be my last february to have my christmas tree up!

2. also i assuming that ross will not enjoy my current habit of having the alarm clock go off at 6:51am, 7:00am, 7:09am, 7:18am, 7:27am, 7:36am(sometimes i get up here), 7:45am(i usually get up here), 7:54am(non hair-washing days) and 8:03am(oops!). some would point out that i could actually get another full hour of sleep if i would just set the alarm for 7:36am, but i like to have a little bit of warning (namely, 45minutes) that my precious sleep is about to end. i'm sure ross will understand?

3. no one tell my parents but since i live alone i find it an entirely useless exercise to make my bed unless i have company in town. i mean seriously whats the point. its not that i dislike a made bed, but there are just a whole lot of other things that take priority and that chore never seems to make it to the top of the queue. maybe that will change. but as they say, what does not kill us, makes us stronger. but i do like my snooze button, no matter what they say.

engaged :-)

last night ross came over to my house and gave me 2 roses: one yellow and one red, because "we are 2 very different people, both roses but 2 different kinds." and then we went to Milanos, a fancy little Italian restaurant near where we live. There was live music there and some people were dancing. We had a great dinner together and then we drove into downtown San Antonio (in ross's red camaro, which always boosts the mood!) to the Tower of Americas, where he mentioned that he'd like to spend the rest of his life with me and would i marry him. so i said yes.

yay for fall

the cool front that came through last nite for us here in san antonio was most welcomed by me. its been cool enough for me to turn off the a/c the last week or so and just have the windows open in the evening, but his morning when i got up it was downright chilly. translation: hi 50s. tonite we had volleyball game and flag football game and the weather was amazing to play in. vball team lost (no surprise there) and in my flag football game we managed to knockoff the previously undefeated 1st place team before we head into the playoffs next week.

monday nite ross and i both carved a jackolantern for the first time, it was pretty fun. on tuesday we drove up to meet his parents for dinner in austin. and i'm happy tomorrow is friday. i get to see lauren play volleyball this weekend against 2 san antonio schools and probably listen to a&m on the radio and hang out with some friends from work.

this one's for freda

well hello. it seems i've taken a hiatus from blogging. sincere apologies.

i've eclipsed my one year anniversary of working at USAA as of Sept 12th. i can remember as an elementary school and high school student and even to some extent a college student wishing that i could be older. not necessarily old, but just that my peer group would be more mature, less self absorbed. i had some sort of notion that adults stopped comparing themself to their friends and that adults didn't talk about each other behind their back and that adults knew who they wanted to be and what they wanted to do. oops.

additionally, i've decided that the greatest stifling of creativity seems to come from people who are 'experts' in any given field. i think this comes from the fact that 'experts' necessarily have spent a lot of time doing whatever it is that they do. meanwhile they have become jaded, bored, and content with the status quo. 'this is the way we've always done it.' oddly, this occurs while at the same time 'experts' are dictating that things must change, meanwhile holding onto certain 'sacred cows' that must remain the same, when in fact these are the very same things that need to change. corporations, churches, families--i think they all experience this.

i would venture to say this was the most difficult year of my life, except for perhaps my freshman year of high school. but i think 2006 wins out. also though 2006 has held some of the best memories of my life. so ya gotta take the tough times with the good i suppose. at any rate i learned alot about computers, God, people, business, myself, my faith, and a certain young man. i also learned how to park my car on a campus that holds 2x as many people as live in my parent's town and find it again, with minimal diversions.

in other news: a visit to College Station for one rainy football game and some good family times, a trip to Missouri for Labor Day to visit ross's family, an unvictorious volleyball team, a fun flag football team, an undefeated tennis league record, a new project at work, a new fall tv season, a great football season, a new condo to move in to, a night out on the riverwalk and at the san antonio symphony, an a&m game here in san antonio, trying to cook new things, a night out at the movies, 1 happy betta fish, 2 happy water frogs, and 1 happy sharon.

august visitors

i'm still here in case you were wondering.

i have had privilege of 2 sets of visitors to SA this month. the first was m&r & little L. we had grand fun, and L stayed the nite with me. ross came over and we ate pizza, played video games, and....watched dora the explorer. it was fun times. the next days we all hung out together, swimming, eating out, and such...i think little L was a little perturbed at his parents leaving him with me, because though he behaved extremely well, he gave them quite a stern talking to upon their return.

my other visitor came all the way from london...my brother matt. he was making the texas round and made his way down to SA for an evening. we went to texas land & cattle, celebrated matts bday, visited usaa, ate freebirds, and then made the long drive up to graham to see the fam. we ate good food, hung out, and played tennis. fun times fun times.

so those were the hi-lites of the month so far. in my normal boring life, kickball ended and the end of sand volleyball draws close. we are occasionally victorious and always competitive in sand volleyball, but we were just miserable at kickball, never winning a game. starting in september i will be playing tennis, court volleyball, and flag football. o, and working. thats about it.

sport humor

so this week during a hard fought, back-and-forth sand volleyball game this guy on the other team dove backwards for a ball and we all heard this awful noise that sounded like something in his body had just been crushed. i quickly turned around and saw his...well his shorts were ripped wiiiide open. we were all quite glad to know he was okay and that none of his bones were cracked, but it was .....slightly awkward.

geek humor

so ross was trying to help his friend in germany download this dvd. so ross broke the dvd files up into little pieces for the guy. ross thought he would make 60MB files so there'd be about 70 files. only problem is he set them up for 60KB and then took me to the movie. when he got home, he had 69,334 files on his desktop. nice.

new pet & a crazy evening

so last night i made one of those late night runs to walmart that are so prominent in college years and still fun to make even when in the working world. i decided i needed another frog to go with my water frog and betta. so the guy got one of them out for me and i noticed where one of its eyes should be was simply a gouged out socket. i asked for a different one. you may think i should have kept it and loved it, but i already have a frog with gimp arms so i opted for a healthy frog this time. the fun part is he is super tiny. he is about 1/8 the size of my current frog. i'm not sure i'm my frog has just grown that much....after all he is super fat now, or if this new guy is just ultra tiny. at any rate, there's a new frog in the hizzouse

tonite was the one night our kickball team should have won b/c we were playing the other worst team. oneproblem: not enough people bothered to show up for the game. most disappointing.

some friends came over after the game for burgers and swimming but in the meantime while they were on their way over from picking up their gear at their house, ross and i managed to catch my kitchen stove on fire and as i tried to open patio door to get smoke detectors to stop beeping a birds nest fell on my head because thats apparently how often i go out on my porch and then a wasp flew in my door and so i ran into the bathroom and hid while ross killed the thing like the man that he is.

summer happenings

work is going pretty ok right now...for work. keeping busy and leading a project effort, so fun times. meanwhile, usaa intramurals and other happenings are keeping me entertained.

monday nites-- chuck norris is awesome kickball games. chuck norris may be awesome, and indeed he is, but his kickball team sucks.

tuesday nites -- sand volleyball games. slightly better than chuck norris kickball in the winning games effort but only slightly so. at any rate its fun to get out in the sun and get...sandy.

wednesday nites -- golf nite. current best on 9 holes is 49. workin on it.

thursday nites -- backup golf nite should i need to run media screens at church on wednesday nites. otherwise, hang out at the pool nite.

weekends -- media screens at church, hanging out at the pool, additional fun with friends and trips to the beach, etc. last weekend i had ross and some other friends from work over to participant in the apartment pool luau and a rousing game of CSI: the board game. this game is nice if you have a bazillion hours and no idea what true fun is. otherwise its slightly boring. similar to Clue, but not quite as cool. currently looking forward to some august visitors and maybe some road trips.
additionally, we have seen pirates of the caribbean and you, me & dupree, both of which left something to be desired.

i hope your summer is going well and that the national heat wave will end soon. that is all.

the football incident: childhood revealed part 2

matt and i had a lot of fun playing outside when we were young. there was the time he fell out of the tree while my mom was gone and got in trouble for crying where the neighbors could hear. we had quite a few tournament basketball games, complete with brackets and championships. also there was our favorite imaginary baseball game, in which one person pitched and the other caught, and the rest was all in our heads. i think matt mostly won....always.

at any rate, when we were much younger i had a 'heavy coat' that i really enjoyed that was blue and pink. it had a detachable hood and a hidden pocket and was overall quite cool. matt and i were in the front yard in big spring enjoying a wonderful game of imaginary football when i went long for a pass and tripped and fell on my face in the grass near the curb. naturally, i feigned injury as this player was clearly going to need to come out of the game. it was rather cold outside so i had my hood on and so i just lay flat on my face staring at the ground. matt sauntered over to check on me, but meanwhile an older man drove by and felt compelled to stop. he saw matt leaning over me and me not budging and feared i'd been seriously injured. it took us nearly 5minutes to convince him that we really were just pretending and finally he drove off.

there was also that time matt and i picked milked weeds out of the backyard for several days for $2, a deal we'd made with our dad. i'm pretty sure matt complained because he'd gone out an extra time and picked for awhile and so he ended up getting $3.50. this of course made my $2 seem rather small so i was bitter. but thats a story for another day...

sea world adventure

my parents and bekah, jared, and rachel came down for a san antonio visit this weekend. friday was rachel's 10th bday so we went out to eat at clear springs cafe and had birthday cake and stuff. saturday my parents and bekah went to austin for a wedding (after watching portugal defeat england) so it was up to ross and me to entertain jared and rachel. we hit up barnes & noble, baskin robbins, church, my swimming pool, and blockbuster, all just biding the time for sunday morning to hit so we could go to....sea world. for my 5th or 6th bday my family made a well remembered trip to sea world which i still remember, with the sea lion show (still playing the same show) being my favorite. second time around, it is still the favorite, of everyone that went i think. rachel was quite determined to ride 'the steel eel', a roller coaster with 3700 ft of track, with speeds of up to 65miles per hour with a g-force of 3.5, and an initial 150ft drop. i was unsure of her dedication (and my own) but she never wavered, even as we buckled in. it was on the initial ascent that she whispered to jared her first signs of fear, and i began to regret my decision the minute our descent started as she began to scream things like 'make it stop! make it stop!' and i began to fear what my parents might do to me, as you can see below. but, props to the kid on her 10th bday, she did it and had a great time. though we did sit out the great white shark roller coaster, which is inverted, and left the boys to their own on that one. 2nd favorite was feeding and petting the atlantic bottlenose dolphins at dolphin cove. we also went to see the new shamu show, and rachel thought she might like to sit close enough to be splasehd. so we marched right on down to the front row (which didnt lead to very good viewing) and laughed as the other side was playfully splashed by shamu. when it was our side's turn to be splashed, much to our surprise, 4 killer whales were sent out to heave i dunno about 500 gallons of water over our heads. lets just say we were slightly wet. thunderstorms prevented us from enjoying the water park portion, but we did see the dolphin & beluga whale show, the sea lion show, the clydesdale horses, the sharks & sting rays, penguins, etc, and we also rode the log ride. at any rate, it was a fun day. best part is, ross and i opted to get season passes...whoop!happy 10th year, rachel!

the wood glue saga: childhood revealed part 1

there was this one time my brother matt got a little tool set with wood and nails and sand paper and such to create little crafts with. i was insanely jealous of this. and i'm not sure if he was coerced or just felt sorry for me, but at any rate he would let me build some stuff with it sometimes. but not too much stuff. and i was limited on which pieces of wood of i could use: if matt thought he might need that particular piece for a later project, i was forbidden to use it. also, i was only allowed to use small tiny pieces of sand paper (conservation people...lets not even get started on the easter candy issues), while i craved to use the entire big sheet. if only i'd had my own set, i could have done things my way. but as it is, i guess i'm pretty lucky he shared at all.

i dont remember the exact argument. i'm pretty sure it had something to do with either conserving particular pieces of wood or that darn sand paper, but one day matt infuriated me. and i apologize for not remembering the exact sequence of events but i do know they ended in me taking his wood glue and squirting it out viciously in a nice little decoration on our back patio concrete. muwahaha. if i couldnt be wasteful with the sand paper, i was going to waste as much of his kit as i could. matt was devastated, as i had planned. but he also threw a wrench in my plan by announcing (news to me) that this was not going to come off the concrete. i was just trying to show him what true wastefulness was so he could agree that i could use more parts of his tool kit, i didnt mean to permanently affix a whole bottle of wood glue to our porch.

matt assured me that i was going to be in great trouble because it would be impossible to get that up. my dad inevitably noticed my artwork and asked how it got there. i honestly can't remember if i said it was an accident and matt covered for me, or if i said it was an accident and my dad said that such a design could not have happened 'by accident', or if i confessed my belligerent act and got in trouble for it, or if this is complete news to my dad. at any rate, the wood glue, as matt foretold, was impossible to get up, though i think my dad tried several times, and probably can still be seen there on that porch on vicky street in big spring. i just wanted to make something out of wood, the way i wanted to make it, being as wasteful as i desired. instead i made a different kind of craft: concrete wood glue painting. sigh.

summertime

so far the summer has been pretty busy down here in s.a. now that there are no more tv shows to watch i've invested my time elsewhere. lots of tennis playing. the last lesson was yesterday evening, but they hope to start up a doubles league next month and also i play wednesdays at lunch with a group of friends. but kickball is just beginning. first game was last nite...and we got demolished. better luck next game i hope. sand volleyball starts next week. also trying to get some golfing in as well. that is all for those sorts of activities at work. also, sometimes, i actually work while i'm at work. that is going pretty well.

also sometimes i do things not at work, aka the compound. several wkends ago i went up to graham to watch jfer graduate. it was fun times, as lots of the family came up. the following weekend i went to team awesome reunion at markum's wedding. this was fun as i got to stay with m&r&l and eat wings n more and hang with lisa. also, team awesome was....awesome. hilite of the wedding: hearing 'lost' secrets from the bride's uncle who works for abc. if your nice i might fill you in.

also during that time ross had a bday. then i had a bday. for ross's bday i cooked dinner here and we had fun times celebrating.



for my bday we went a little crazy. friday ross and i had off work and we drove down to the beach at corpus (mustang island) and went swimming. we also made a campfire and cooked dinner. it was at this point we were attacked by vicious mosquito bug things as we rapidly loaded the car and got the heck out of there. saturday nite i had friends from work over and ross made fajitas for us and then we all swam at my apt. pool and had a blast. then, to close out the marathon weekend, sunday after church, ross, todd and i went tubing on the guadalupe and then ate bday dinner at the gristmill there in gruene.

and so it ends

stupid mavericks. the spurs season ended last night, but not without one huge battle. i think i will have a lot more free time in the evenings now because i will not be so busy watching the spurs. san antonio is really crazy like that, everyone is so intense about their spurs. it was kind of fun to get in the spirit though. went to several games and had fun at all of them. also enjoyed going out with friends to eat wings, play pool, and cheer with the crowd at hooligans, as well as watching the game at my place with friends too. basically spurs games are great excuses for way fun hang out times. summer is really a pretty lame time for sports.

also this week signals the very end of alias. saaaad day. and also the season finale of 24, and almost every other show i watch. i'm not entirely sure what to do with my evenings anymore. i AM still taking tennis lessons on monday nights which is, obviously, fun times.

i won a computer from work...occasionally they have PC giveaways from their inventory that they have upgraded from. last week i was delighted to see that i had indeed been selected a winner! this involved going to work to pick it up at 8am on saturday morning, so it was a mixed blessing, but we already had a great game of doubles tennis slated for 10am that same morning, so it worked out quite well. additionally, summertime at work means kickball league time. watch out, here comes one fun time of playing in a kickball league!

everyone is like graduating from high school or college, or going away for their summer plans, and i'm starting to get that 3 month itch. you know, the one where after one semester you get a month or 3 months off to revamp and try something different and probably live in a new place and enjoy a new schedule. then there's where i find myself now. where its just the same. my first summer without summer break. soooo sad. and so, just like the spurs and my tv shows, my love of the summertime has ended. no breaks, no oregonian fab-o times, just work. and its hot.

a spot of rain

earlier this month we had a couple big rain storms complete with hail, wind, and all that jazz. several car dealerships are trying to cut deals getting people to buy the hail damaged cars. the texaco station across the street from my apartment is painfully aware of the storm as you can see below. i dont feel particularly sorry for them because they were not customer friendly, nor did they ever seem to have any gas. what good is a gas station that runs out of gas?

how dare they

so on thursday nite ross and i decided to celebrate the almost weekend with the wonderful invention that is the $1.50 movie theatre. i wanted him to see the pink panther so we loaded up with soda and greasy popcorn and walked down the sticky hallway to the theatre with the hard seats and ancient wooden cupholders that are too small for todays gynormous cups....but the tix were only 1.50!! at any rate it was at this point that we were accosted by....her. she was probably about 67 or so and had large glasses with my favorite: the flip up sunglass shades. and they were flipped straight up looking pretty dang fancy.

crazy woman: excuse me, do you all have children in yalls familys that would see curious george?
ross: no.
sharon: takes 2 steps backwards
crazy woman: breathes heavily . well i saw it and there's this one part where he is looking at the sun and saying i cant see i cant see and then he looks away, rubs his eyes and opens them and then yells yay i can see again i can see. but thats not true! in real life if you do that then you cant see again because your retina's been fried. now why would they teach kids to do that its just crazy.
ross: yeah thats not good.
sharon: makes mental notes of nearest exits/escape routes
crazy woman: i'm just so upset right now. i cant believe they would try to teach kids to do this. dont let anyone you know see it.

after she walked to the front of our theatre and sat on the 2nd row i debated discussing with her the damage this might cause her ears due to the large number of decibels, but instead stayed a safe distance away, including hiding in a bathroom stall when i heard her approaching after the movie. so, readers, be advised: avoid curious george like the plague. and dont you dare look at the sun and expect to ever see again.

best quote of the week, from the food network's special on 'deep fried treats':
"corndogs. the perfect marriage between haste and taste."

and from our expedition to double daves last nite for pizza and spurs game:

"the refs should call a foul on his hair...for being foul." --thesharester

"o my ugly" --dj

say what?

perhaps you didnt know (or have forgotten) that this blog, a day from the eighties, started out as an avenue for me to post quotes from my professors which i found humorous in their original context, or made them humorous by taking them absurdly out of context. i thought of returning to this line of posting, but it is much harder as i don't listen to professors lecture daily (those of you who know me well are probably thinking that i didn't listen to professors lecture daily in college either, but this is beside the point) and much of what is said at work is either A. not able to be repeated B. not funny to the general public without a lot of background information or C. incredibly nerdy. however i think its a worth a shot. i shall begin to retrain my mind to listen for excellent quotes that are blog worthy. so beware.

a small sampling:

slightly bald guy: ah wow if this works i will wash you guys feet with my hair
the brit: well that would take a long time

slightly bald guy: dont make me open up a can of chuck norris.
the brit: thats absurd. chuck norris cant be fit in a caaan.

hey listen, i've had a lot of time to think over the last 15yrs


ooo i wish i could help you but......... i dont want to.

the numbers

2- spurs playoff games i went to this past week.
2-playoff games the spurs have won.
8-months i've been in san antonio.
1-girl on my team at work
5-contestants left on american idol...here's hoping for katharine mcphee
24-best show on tv
7-times i've read the Bible thru
4-times i've left the country this century
4-of my upstream freshmen who are engaged
10-blogs i read
3-dvds i owned when i moved to san antonio
10-dvds i own
78-books on my shelf
17-books i've read in 2006
0-doctor visits in 2005
7-doctor visits in 2006
340-songs in my itunes
8-hours of sleep i'm gonna get tonite
1-more day of work til the weekend
9-times i tried to think of something better to post
9-times i failed to think of something better to post

better to have posted poorly than not to have posted at all. or is it?

truthfully, all i wanted to say is that i've gone to both the spurs home playoff games thus far. the first one was amazing in that they scored 73 points in the first half. insane. the second game was amazing because things weren't looking pretty and then barry hit a 3 that bounced insanely high off the rim and dropped in to send it to overtime, and then we crushed them. the only uncool part of that game was the playing poorly the whole game and that it didnt start till 9 and went into overtime and i had to be at work the next morning. i shall endeavor to consider more interesting blog topics to share with you shortly.

i hate daily writing

i'm not sure which is the most daunting, a blank piece of notebook paper, an empty Word document, or a blank create post page on blogger.

my sophomore year of high school i had the privilege of having mrs. woods as my honors english teacher. this was a privilege because one could see firsthand that the legends were true. you could indeed watch in a real time a perfectly good pencil disappear into her fro never to be seen again. you could also see the veins in her throat and wonder if you would be the lucky class in which they burst once for all as she emphatically encouraged us to discuss a separate peace, catcher & the rye, lord of the flies, and whatever else one reads during sophomore english class.

one of the aspects that separated mrs. wood's honors class from the regular class was the dreaded, the awful, "daily writing". this is where for the first 15minutes of class there was no talking and you were forced to write continuously, no stopping for thought or breathing, until time was up about whatever topic mrs. woods happened to pull out of her fro. generally it related to the chapter of the book that you didn't read the night before even though you were directed to do so. every fifth time or so, (or 2 days in a row to keep you on your toes) she would collect the daily writing and grade them. other times the efforts were just swallowed up into one's personal daily writing folder.

dreadful as this honors english class may or may not be sounding, it was actually one of my breaking out moments that defined my high school career. it was in this class that i fashioned my ever popular "I hate daily writing" sign that would become well known and admired throughout the rest of my tenure at mhs. it was a simple piece of notebook paper on which i'd scratched, rather carved the words, I hate daily writing, so largely that this one sentence took up the whole paper. i know the words were carved because if you turned the paper over you could see the paper pushed up where i'd applied so much pressure with the pen due to the intense emotions i had towards daily writing. each day i'd pull out the sign, gleefully really, and put it on my desk, next to my normal actual paper. if i could think of nothing to write, but still needing to appear as though i was writing something, i would trace over the letters "I hate daily writing" over and over again. when mrs. wood's came around monitoring i would slyly slide it under my essay. sometimes i would forget or mrs. woods would sneak up on me and everyone would begin to look at me wondering if this was going to be the last of my I hate daily writing sign. but she never saw it. and i became quite popular in my sophomore honors english class.

sometimes i wonder if she did see it and really didn't care. or maybe she too, secretly hated daily writing. or maybe she knew inside, and laughed secretly to herself, that i would one day engage in voluntary daily writing hoping somehow to entertain my friends in a more positive way than an I hate daily writing sign. or maybe, just maybe, she never noticed because of all those pencils in her hair weighed her head down so much that she was afraid to look down and try to read what i was writing. perhaps she'd be pleasantly surprised at all the things i've written since then.