Some projects

I made a skirt yesterday...I got this dress from Goodwill a couple months ago planning to make a skirt out of it. I didn't get around to it till yesterday though.












I basically cut the top part of the dress off and made a waistband on the bottom half, so it's sort of halfway home-sewn. :p

It has a neat diagonal stripe sort of thing, and it's really full:











So it swirls!:












And since it's black and white I should be able to wear almost any color of shirt with it, which is nice! The one I'm wearing in the picture is perhaps not the best choice, but it's just what I had on. :)

Now I'm trying to decide what to work on for a knitting project...I have two sweaters in progress, but they both need some messing with to work, and I don't feel like dealing with that right now. So I'm thinking of starting on a pair of fingerless gloves or a hat. For some reason I want to knit a beret, but I have trouble with hats, so while it may look really cute in the picture, I may get it done and it'll look dorky on me. So I'm not sure about that...I guess it's worth a try. I guess... :p

I'm planning on sewing myself some ballet-slipper type flats, because I found a pattern for some and if I sew them, I might be able to make them so they stay on my feet! I'm going to try making a pair with what I've got on hand, like denim for the soles, and if they work I'll get a piece of leather or vinyl from the fabric store for the soles on another pair.

I was supposed to be working today, but I'll be working tomorrow instead, so I've got today to get some things done. And I should get a knitting project going to take to work with me tomorrow.

Oh yes, I'm working tomorrow, but I'm going to take Colin trick-or-treating, so Friday night or Saturday, I will post pictures of our costumes. :) *snicker, snicker, giggle* Okay, so they're probably very popular costumes, but they're scary...especially mine. ;) Of course, I didn't have to dress up to take him around...but I couldn't resist.

Okay...

...you know it's cold in the house if the two cats are sleeping on the same bed, with their fur touching even!!!

These two will usually never cuddle up next to each other, and they don't much like to be sleeping on the same surface most of the time...so yesterday when I was shivering and turned around to see this on my bed, I knew that it was in fact very cold in the house! :p

We try not to turn the heat on before Thanksgiving, in case you were wondering.

Gracie & Petunia:

Ten things Tuesday and some music

Well, I just remembered the "Ten Things Tuesday" that my cousin Rebecca was doing every Tuesday for a while, so I thought I'd do one. (Now you have a blog post for today, Rebecca...*hint, hint*) ;)

Ten things that make me smile. I had a hard time coming up with just ten! Maybe I'll do another ten next week...

1. A crisp fall day
2. A good book
3. Dancing
4. Music
5. Completely unexpected presents
6. Going to Starbucks on a cold day
7. Jane Austen movies...and books
8. Happy babies
9. A letter or email from a friend
10. A finished project

And now, music...

Beaker from the Muppets "sings" Coldplay's song "Yellow":


Also, so that Mom can actually hear this song: Viva la vida by Coldplay...note: Coldplay do not sound anywhere near as good live, and the lead singer Chris Martin never holds still so it's very annoying to watch on TV. :p

Square Dance!

Okay, I'm going to try to blog...we'll see how it goes. I'm sick, so my head's not necessarily very clear! :p Anyway...

When did I blog last?...Oh, Thursday. Okay.

So we went to a square dance Friday night! It was in Butner, NC, which is sort of north of Durham. It really didn't take us too long to get there, we managed to hit the traffic through Greensboro at the right time I guess, so that didn't slow us down. And it's a good thing we had plenty of time, because it took a while to find something to eat.

Butner is in the middle of nowhere. As is Creedmoor, but I thought that there was supposed to be food in Creedmoor. Which there is, but it's on the next exit, even though there's a sign for Creedmoor at the top of the exit for Butner. *sigh* Okay...

So we drove to Creedmoor (apparently the wrong part) and just got further and further out in the country with no signs of restaurants anywhere. At one point Mom suddenly said "Oh, there's a woodchuck!"...."Do you want to eat him!?" I asked. :p Of course we had no way to kill or cook said woodchuck, so we had to leave him there, minding his own business. ;)

Dad finally turned around and got back on the highway and we found all the restaurants at the next exit which was also for Creedmoor. And by this point I was getting pretty tired of Creedmoor... So we ate at a Hardees that had a 100% health rating, but didn't look like it should have. But the food was good, so maybe it was just so old they couldn't have cleaned the building up any more...I hope. I'll go with that.

Then we went back to Butner and found the hall for the square dance. Wait, I don't think they call it a hall in square dancing...hmm. It was a very neat building: Soldier's Memorial Arena Anyway, we got there in enough time for me to get my clothes changed and meet a few people before the dance started. Oh, and the light in the ladies room didn't work...so that was interesting. :p

I had a lot of fun! It was neat to get to meet people I know online. The dance was organized by the H.'s church...the H.'s perhaps known better on here as the Life from the Toaster people :p (Will, Sarah, and Annabeth, plus their brother Nick who blogs on Tunnel Vision with Neil who was also there). So I got to meet all of them and their family, and also Abigail and Allison. And various other people who I'd heard of or seen pictures of, but didn't know as well, which was cool! (Wow, that was a confusing few sentences...)

Plus, one of the guys I know from contra, Peter, was there too, which was nice because that way there was someone I'd actually met in person before! And he gave me a 45-second swing lesson, which will be very helpful next time I go contra dancing, but I didn't have any use for it Friday night because apparently you don't do that in square dancing. :( Which is a shame because it's really, really fun. But now I'll be better at it next time...and I found that it helped greatly that I put masking tape on the bottoms of my shoes...makes it a whole lot easier.

The dance was a lot of fun... although to be honest I'd have to say contra is more fun, partially because we kind of kept doing the same thing every dance on Friday. But it was cool anyway! And I managed to leave a few of my partners going "Wait, what? I'm sorry!!!" by throwing in contra moves...oops. ;) No, you did know what you were doing, I was the one messing it up! *grins sheepishly* Sorry about that...

Now, pictures! Dad took some pictures, although they came out kind of blurry...I'm not sure if using the "sport" setting on the camera would have helped any or not...but I'll post a few of the slightly less blurry ones. Dad said he got dizzy from trying to focus to take pictures of people spinning around. :(

I'm the one in the bright pink skirt, if you couldn't tell.

Circle left:








Find your partner, promenade home: ...I seem to have my eyes closed.








I'm blanking on what this square thing was called....?








Right and left through:








Another right and left through...no wait, the end of a ladies chain:









Do-si-do and promenade...and I'm wondering why the square I was in seems to be the only one still moving...everyone else is just standing there.








Men star left, ladies stand still:








All four ladies chain across:...we seem to be missing a lady...








Circle left:








Do-si-do:








I'm not sure what that is...








Another circle left:








They must have been explaining a dance at this point:









Okay, so unless you were there, you probably don't know who any of those people are...hmm... I could put a public link to my Facebook album, but I don't think that would show the tags on the photos, so it wouldn't help much. Ask if you want to know, I guess! Here's the link anyway.

I had the song "Mountain Music" by Alabama stuck in my head all weekend, because they played it at the dance. :p

And after looking that up, I realized how many songs by Alabama I used to listen to when I listened to country more...
The Closer You Get
I'm In A Hurry (and don't know why)
Song of the South
If You're Gonna Play in Texas

Um, anyway...if you can't stand country music, just ignore all that... :p I hadn't heard those songs in years though...wow...

Colin had a lot of fun at the dance too, although he didn't dance. He ran around with a bunch of other little boys and got so tired he actually fell asleep on the way home! Right before we left we rounded him up and he flopped down on the bleachers and I didn't think we were going to be able to get him going again. :p

On the way home Dad was getting tired, so I drove instead, and Mom kept asking me if I was awake, and I kept telling her that YES, I was awake! ;) I'd been moving all night, I was wide awake!

Okay, I think that's everything... and now I'll see if I can get to sleep. I slept a lot yesterday, which is why I'm posting this at 2-something in the morning! :D

It was nice to actually meet you all! *waves to blog readers she met* :)

Finished chairs

Well, I got the chairs done! Recovered, refinished, re-upholstered, whatever makes the most sense. I took the old fabric and foam off and replaced it with new foam, batting, and fabric...oh and piping! As I promised Rebecca, I have step-by-step photos...well, several anyway.

I refinished the chairs with some Minwax Polyshades, which is universally despised and not recommended and doesn't really work the way it should, which is why we still had 7/8 of a can in the garage. Because if you actually put two coats on something, sanding in between, it will all peel off when you sand, or it won't come off, but won't absorb any more color because it's already sealed with the polyurethane. BUT, it worked for this, because I just wanted to make the chairs look a smidge better, they didn't have to look new (they'd look newer than the table then!).

Also, try not to get the Polyshades on your hands if you use it...it's weird stuff. I'm fine, but it really dried out my hands that day and made them all red.

Chairs before:








Seat cushions before...they didn't really look that nasty:








Supplies:








Layered:








Piping:








Finished:








Chairs after:









So not quite step-by-step, but I only have two hands and I needed both of them.

The chairs had way more staples in them than I thought they would...that was actually the hardest part of the job, pulling all those staples out! I managed to jab my hand a couple times with the flat screwdriver...ouch. But I got them all pulled out, got the foam, batting, and fabric cut, and got it all stapled back on. And by the last one, realized that I had been putting the stuff on the wrong side, which is why when I screwed them back onto the chairs, the metal things for the screws on some of them came out. *bangs head on wall....gets out caulk gun and tube of adhesive to glue metal things to chairs* At least one of the chairs is the right way around...and the glue seems to be holding on the others. One of them must have been wrong though to begin with, or I wouldn't have thought that was the way they went. Oh well.

I went contra dancing Tuesday night, and I took a few pictures of the building right before we left...I need to get some more next time, but I didn't have time Tuesday.
It's at the Vintage Theatre, which used to be a church, so it's a neat building.























I didn't get any pictures of the actual dancing because I was...you guessed it, dancing! We're going to a square dance tomorrow night and I think I'll give Dad the camera. He was surprised I didn't take pictures Tuesday...sorry. :( They would have been blurry! :p

I think that's all...oh wait, no, Dad and I were late getting home because of the Democrats! lol Well, not the whole Democratic party, just Biden. He was at Wake today I guess, and after Dad picked me up from work we were at the traffic light trying to pull out onto the main road when a police officer on a motorcycle showed up and started directing traffic...against the lights. We finally figured out that he was just letting the south-bound traffic through (as quickly as possible) but we didn't know why. The officer was really getting mad too, he was standing there forever waving the traffic through, switching arms every once in a while and yelling at the traffic to hurry up!

"Is the president in town or something?" Dad said jokingly.

Well, finally a bunch more police cars, ambulances, and various other vehicles like that came by, and then three buses, one with a discreet "Obama/Biden" bumper sticker taped to the window, and then two more with signs that said "staff" and "press". So that's what was going on! They had to get back to the highway. I don't know how long we sat there though! Sheesh.

Some Sunday hiking :)

Today we had a fellowship lunch after church (and no evening service), and then just as we were leaving my friend Jess asked me if I wanted to go hiking.

"Um....right now?"
"Yes, and G.'s coming too!"
"Ah, yeah... you'll go by my house, so can I go home and change shoes real quick?!"

So my family went home and I speedily changed my shoes, clothes, washed my makeup off, grabbed a sweatshirt, water, and lip balm and headed out the door!

We went up to Hanging Rock state park and hiked one of the trails...it was a lot of fun. It was cool enough outside to be able to cool off when you got warm after a big hill, but it wasn't too cold. Some of the trees were starting to turn, but not as much as I would have expected.

A big rock tower!












Me and G....Jess also took a picture after I took my sunglasses off but I had my eyes closed (as usual)...












All three of us...and if you're wondering why I look ready to kill someone, the sun was in my eyes...I really was enjoying myself! :p Actually we all look a little strange...in fact, that's a very scary picture...









Anyway, that was lots of fun; I love hiking! :)

Hmm...not bad!! :)

I did a bit of shopping today! Successful shopping, thus the exclamation point. Well, in the long run it was successful, but there were still plenty of the usual "Who on earth can wear these clothes?!!" moments as well....I have trouble finding clothes that fit right.

I needed some jeans, because both of my old pairs are about to wear out, and I only have one pair that looks nice enough to wear out somewhere. So I looked at Eddie Bauer online, because usually theirs are the only jeans that fit me properly...well, they're $40-$50 or so full price, and the only size they had left in clearance was a 20. Bother. Seriously, bother.

Why do I have to be only able to wear expensive jeans? All the boot-cut, low-rise, skinny jeans, tight jeans, and whatever various other styles there are that either aren't modest or just don't work for me can be found for ten dollars or so, or twenty even!

Well, Mom said I'd probably just have to go to the store and try on a bunch of jeans and see if I could find some other (cheaper) brand that would work. *sigh* I decided I'd at least try Goodwill first...so I went there this morning and tried on who knows how many pairs of pants and jeans, but I did find some that worked!! Two pairs of jeans, and one pair of khakis... the khakis and one of the jeans are Old Navy (hmm...wouldn't have thought those would work, but apparently they have an "at the waist" style line) and the other pair of jeans are...Eddie Bauer. And of course they fit me best. :) BUT, the Old Navy ones fit too, along with the khakis, and at least I was able to find one pair of EB jeans for oh, 10% of the new price!

So I was pretty happy about that, and after I got done at Goodwill I went to Goodys. (I'm not sure of they have Goodys stores anywhere other than North Carolina, or not...anyway, it's a clothing store and they have a few home items too).

I needed to return something and then I had a gift card from my birthday to spend. So I tried on some more jeans there, and a pair of corduroys (I would like to be able to find a nice pair of tan corduroy pants), just so I could see if there were any readily available brands that would work for me. I did find two different pairs of jeans that worked, and wrote down what they were. But the corduroys didn't fit. :( Then I wandered around the rest of the store looking for clearance racks and sale stuff. I found a really cute knit top in the juniors section, picked up the XL, and went to try it on...and it didn't fit. Um...I'm not really that big...who can fit into the small? I mean, it fit alright, except for the shoulders, so maybe someone with narrower shoulders would have been able to fit into it, but I couldn't hardly move! I don't know if the juniors section is starting to be for little girls too (thus the small sizes), or what; although I wouldn't think the majority of teenagers would wear the clothes in the "Misses" department. I ended up buying one of the pairs of jeans, because I wasn't really sure what else to buy with my gift card, but when I tried them on again at home, I realized they don't really fit very well, they're sort of cut funny or something. SO, I guess I'll be taking those back tomorrow. Then I think I'll wait until I've pulled out my winter clothes and see if I need any more long-sleeved tops for this winter or anything.

I also bought seven salad plates on ebay this morning for about $20 including shipping! So altogether a successful shopping day and I didn't spend too much. :)

And when I got home I was very talkative because I was so happy I found some pants that fit and Mom was sitting there looking slightly overwhelmed. Dad took today off to paint next door at Grandma and Grandpa's house, so everyone slept in this morning, except that I got up at 8:15 to bid on the salad plates, so I was up and dressed and had eaten breakfast by the time everyone else got up about 9:00. Mom didn't have her contacts in yet, and asked me if it was 9:00 or a quarter-to-12?? Because surely it must be late if I was up... :)

Oh, and gas was $2.98!!! Woo-hoo! :D

Ha...yep.

The Other Coast

Sorry, I don't have much to say

Whoo...I'm back! :) I worked Thursday and Friday, yesterday and today, and then the weekend was busy-ish as usual...though I did have time for a nice nap on Sunday, and if I hadn't had that nap I think I'd be crawling in bed right now.

As it is, I'm fine, I don't really have much to blog about, and I'm not working until next Thursday. Eight days off!!! I think I'll recover the dining room chairs.

No really, I am going to recover them. :) I know that was really random, but we got all the materials to redo them and then were busy with the fair and everything, so it's been on a mental to-do list to get them done "after the fair" (along with a bunch of other stuff!) and since I've got time, I'll do them now.

Dad jokingly said today when he saw me knitting, that it was only 50 weeks until the fair. Ack, if you put it that way, it doesn't sound very far away! For instance, if I assume I can get on average one item done per week, that's only 50...which is twice as many as this year, so that's not a problem by any means, I'd be okay with that. But I wouldn't really be able to get one thing done per week, and there will be some weeks where I don't get anything done, so fifty weeks doesn't sound like much time. It also explains why the year goes by so fast..."a year" sounds like an awfully long time, but if you put in weeks, fifty-two weeks doesn't sound like so much. Or maybe it's just me...

ANYWAY! It just amazes me how fast time goes sometimes.

Oh, and just to, I don't know, clarify? Prove a point? I'm not sure... My "Battleship" game has five boats:

Carrier: 5
Battleship: 4
Destroyer: 3
Submarine: 3
Patrol Boat: 2

(This is in response to all the comments on this post!!) ;)

My game says 1996 on the bottom of it, so I don't know if maybe they went back to the way they originally made it or what. According to this Wikipedia article, there was a set of boats with the names Uncle Jim said, but my new game has the other set, so maybe it's just a random choice as to what they call the boats in each version of the game? Do any of my readers have a version of this game with different boats? There's at least one game with a newer box, but I don't know if the game itself is any different.

I think I'll go see if Dad wants to play a game of "Battleship".

Random Wednesday

How about a random post?

What? All my posts are random?...hmmm.... :)

Well, my grandparents are off to Oregon to visit my aunt and uncle and cousin...they left this morning at 7 (excuse me: 8) for a 1:00 (1:30 even??) flight from Charlotte. It only takes a little under two hours to get to Charlotte, so they'll certainly have plenty of time! Mom and Colin went over to say bye to them before they left and Mom came back looking slightly amused. "They've become hobbits," she said, "they wanted to get down there with enough time to have their second-breakfast." :p

A couple weeks ago, one of the days I was working I took the baby out for a walk and ran into (not literally) a couple Jehovah's Witness ladies. I'm not sure whether I was better off to have the baby with me, or not. Since I had the baby with me, they just handed me a tract and then went on and on about the baby and how cute she was. One of the ladies just kept talking and talking about how much she liked babies and about when she was a new mother. They seriously didn't give me a chance to get a word in edgewise and explain that this was not my baby! :p Good grief...and if they happened to notice that of course I have no ring on my left hand, they probably thought I was all the more desperately in need of their "gospel" tract! I wonder how old they thought I was...maybe they assumed I must be older than I look, but I don't know.
When I was up at camp I was telling a lady that I have one little brother who's twelve years younger than me... "So, he's about 3 or 4, right?" "Noo...he's 7" "Oh, honey, you're older than you look then!" *sigh* Yes.

Mom's birthday was a couple weeks ago and we went out to eat with Grandma and Grandpa. I'm not sure how the subject came up I think Grandma must have been talking about shopping or something, but at some point in the conversation, Grandma says that she wants to get a nice white blouse (which isn't unusual, she's usually looking for the perfect "white blouse") and she'll wear it with her jacket and spread the collar over the lapels like Sarah Palin wears her shirts. Cue silence while everyone chews slowly and digests this fact. "Oh! Hmmm..." I can't find a picture of Sarah Palin with that sort of outfit on, but I know what she means, because I think that's a common style with female news anchors as well. Not that Grandma fits into either of those categories...

So, my fair entries. I got the baby afghan I was working on finished and the apron.











The sweater and the paper mache pear didn't do so well! The sweater is going to take a lot more messing around and figuring out than I had time for before the fair. And the pear kind of, well, something happened to it. Plus I wouldn't have had time to get it painted nicely.

The sweater I was going to add sleeves to, but I need to wash it first and see if it will shrink any, because the way it is now, the sleeves are going to have to be huge, and that will look funny. I'm looking for another sweater pattern at the moment because I got some nice burgundy, bulky yarn on sale and I'd like to take a break on the pink sweater and work on something else for a while!

The pear had problems. The good thing is, I know exactly how I'll make it next time. I started out with a balloon and I shaped it with masking tape. So it had pieces of masking tape all over it, which made the layers of newspaper strips bumpy. So I ended up making a paper pulp to put all over it and smooth it out. And it did smooth it out, unfortunately the balloon had already deflated, so when the wet pulp got through to the newspaper, the hard newspaper which was the only support at that point got all soggy and crumpled.

From this angle it doesn't look too bad...












But this side doesn't look so good:












Oh well, when I try again I'm going to use the same base, except I'll use the really cheap masking tape that's more papery, and I'll start with the pulp, and that should work. Because the pulp dried really hard, it just smooshed the newspaper.

Here's the apron I made, it's reversible:




















Here's what happens to your shirt if you don't wear an apron while pan-frying pork chops!:











The smudgy spots up at the top are where I started putting stain-remover on it. It certainly looked polka-dotted though!

We had a church fellowship this past Sunday at the Beasleys' house and they have a new puppy. I'm not much of a dog person, and I prefer big dogs like German Shepherds or something, but this little puppy was awfully sweet. He didn't want to hold still for a photo:










He's obviously part basset hound and so cute! And I didn't realize dogs did this too, I thought it was just cats, but I didn't really want him on my lap all over my nice dress, so of course he came running over to the couch and hopped up in my lap and settled right down. :)

Finally, here's a video I took a couple weeks ago. It's awful quality, but I wanted you to see the weird cackling sheep baby toy. I don't know why it doesn't scare babies!



Now I need to go find a sweater pattern. :)

Cool T-shirts!

Threadless has some neat t-shirts...although some of them are a bit strange.

Here are some cool ones.

This t-shirt is called "A Voyage to Lilliput".











Voyage To Lilliput T

And $12 isn't a bad price for a Threadless T...but goodness they're small! I'd have to get an XL for it to fit after allowing for shrinking!

These are also cool...


















You Sank My Battleship (that reminds me, I haven't played Battleship for a long time!)


















What Makes It Go?














The Day The Fire Brigade Went On Strike (aw, look at the little elephants!!)

The girls shirts are on sale until the 12th...I thought it said until the end of Oct., but I must have read it wrong. Hmm...now I just have to decide whether I really want to pay $12 for a t-shirt. :)

I need to update my blogroll...

Oh, look, mandolinartist aka Amanda has a blog now!!

Check it out: Forte' & Motif

Dixie Classic Fair

Umm... Oh great. Ah-ha! The fair! That's what I was going to blog about...I knew I had something I was going to blog about, but it got pushed aside by a bunch of other blog ideas. Okay, the fair.

We got there about 12:30 or so and made our way to one of the shows, "The Rhinestone Ropers" I believe was the name. That was fun to watch, they did rope tricks, and whip-cracking, and things with a horse and stuff like that. And they asked the little kids to come up if they wanted to try to twirl a rope, and Colin went right up there and did it...while I gaped at him and then rummaged for my camera. I don't think when I was his age I ever would have just walked up there and done something like that...I wouldn't mind now, but not back then!!












After the show was over we ran into some friends of ours (the family that has the farm up in Pinnacle...I've mentioned them before). So we talked to them for a while, and fixed this sign:












They were asking us which shows we'd gone to, and were wondering whether they should try to go to the show across from the Rhinestone Ropers. And in the process we realized that the printed sign said 1:30, but the hands on that clock were mixed up so it looked like 6:05!

"Oh, that needs to be fixed!" says the dad. "Helena," he says to the oldest girl, "go fix that!" But she just stood there and shook her head...finally the dad ran over there and fixed it himself. "Okay! Now I can go on without that bothering me all day!!" :p We were all laughing about that!

After that they went off to find some lunch and we went and looked at the chickens. What a LOT of chickens!

Dr. Seuss chickens:









Pine cone patterned chickens (these are so neat-looking!):









More patterned chickens:









And chickens that looked like those fuzzy marionette things (if you've ever been to a homeschool convention you probably know what I'm talking about! Otherwise, you're out of luck because I simply can't find a picture of one...):









Dad started sneezing while we were in there and decided he's allergic to chickens...Mom and I think it was probably the cedar bedding they were in, but I don't know. I suppose you could be allergic to chickens...

After that I think we ate lunch, and then we went and looked at the exhibits. I entered 25 things and got ribbons on 11 of them...which considering that I didn't have as much time this year to work on stuff isn't too bad I guess. :) And I think I'll enter a pound cake next year, because I didn't see any entered in the "cream cheese pound cake" category. Oh, and there was quite an upset in the scones category... *cough, cough* That's a bit of an inside joke, so if you don't know what I'm talking about don't worry about it. :) I didn't enter scones this year though, so it's not my fault...

And we had a funnel cake...or two actually, between the four of us:









Okay, so I don't like people dressed up in those costumes (like mascots) where you can't see the person at all...because you can't tell what sort of creep could be inside. So anyway, at the fair they have these people dressed as the characters from the comic strip B.C. wandering around...which is fine, as long as they stay away from me. But Mom and I were sitting and talking about our entries and stuff when I looked around and found one of those things hovering right by my shoulder!! I shrieked of course, and it pretended to be scared by me, but I was not happy. :( I'm not scared by much, but I don't like those things...and I know it's just a person in there, but they shouldn't go sneaking up on people like that!

Anyway...

There was this neat dragon made out of heating and air components:







So, that was the fair...no rides, although Colin said he wanted to ride on some ride. He would have been scared when he got up there though! :)

I don't think this post is very interesting...I just realized I'm really tired!

In the year 2043...

Okay, so this is pretty much what's going to happen to my uncle Jim... ;)

Bluetooth Headset Cyborg Song



You should check out their other videos on YouTube. What's especially nice is that they can actually sing well! Mom posted one of their videos on her blog too...

Right now I have bits of about 4-5 of their songs going through my head! :p

Here are a couple other good ones:
Gas Prices Song (that one's my dad's favorite...it's pretty funny!)
Wales and Badgers Song (also good...basically they're all pretty good.)

Oh yeah, I'm actually at the fair right now...and I was at work yesterday when my post posted...yay for scheduled posting! :p

Weekend retreat pt.2

There were new ropes courses since the last time I was at camp... so that was neat to figure out how to do the new ones. Oh yes, you're roped in the whole time for all of these things. You put a harness thing on that goes around your waist and legs and then you're clipped to various belaying ropes at different points and people down on the ground control them. But the ropes don't help you at all, you can't hold onto them for stability...if you do that, the people belaying will usually give you some slack so that it doesn't help any! :p I was telling my grandma about this and she was looking terribly worried, and then I realized I hadn't told her that I was roped in! There's no way I would do any of these things (and no way they'd be safe) if I wasn't roped in! :D

There was a zip-line, but to get to it you had to go across two stretches of metal cable. I got stuck at the point on the second run where the cable comes down and meets the bottom one, because you can't hold much of the top one anymore, so you have to inch over and grab onto the rope that hanging down. Well, I had my feet as far apart as they would go and still couldn't get my foot on the other side of the cable which is what I needed to get a hold on the rope. The guy who was on the second platform to clip me into the zipline was trying to be encouraging, telling me I could do it, he'd gone across it and if he could do it I probably could, I was probably more flexible so I should be able to get it... "NO! I'm probably NOT!" I snapped as I about fell off. He was right though, I did finally manage to inch my right foot over so I could get my left foot on the other side of the cable and grab the rope. That one was almost the hardest one to do!

I didn't get any pictures of the ropes course, so I've tried to sketch the things so you can tell what I'm talking about...maybe. I've mentioned I can't draw very well, right? :p

(click to enlarge)









Then there was a great big swing where you climb a rope ladder, somersault into a cargo net, climb up the cargo net to get to the platform where they hook you into the swing and then you jump off the platform. That was fairly easy, once you struggle your way up the rope ladder it's a matter of falling into the net (without your head going through the holes!) and then getting facing the right way to climb up the net...and remembering to not use your knees to help you climb because you'll just get stuck. Then when you drop off the platform there's about a split-second where you think you're never going to stop because at that point you're just flying through the air and the harness and ropes aren't offering any resistance (it's basically a big sling shot to start out!) then you get to the end of the ropes and you're sitting in your harness and swinging. And at some point your stomach finally feels like it's back where it belongs. :p












Then the last one you climb another rope ladder (a little more stable than the last one), get up to the top and go across a bridge made of steps about three planks across with a big gap between each of them. They're not really that far apart, but the whole thing wobbles...I was intending to stop on each one, but once you I got going and too much momentum to stop without falling so I just ran across all of them! When you get across that you climb up a swinging rock-climbing wall (you know with the little hand and foot hold things screwed into a board). Above that is a horizontal telephone pole and you walk across that and then walk back across it half-way and then you can jump off. The trick to the pole across the top is to just look at the pole, plus I have pretty good balance so since it didn't swing and I tried to ignore the fact that I was 30-something feet off the ground it wasn't too bad. What really amused me was that people kept saying I looked like a ballerina when I was balancing on the various things! :p I guess just because I have good balance and on the telephone pole I just walked right across it instead of shuffling or putting each foot right in front of the other and I went fairly fast really. I don't know, that's just how it works for me...keep moving and get to the end before I start wobbling was what I was thinking!









Our speaker, Ray, did that one also, right before I did it...it was really funny. The guys talked him into doing it, and he was talking the whole time, "I think I'll take my Bible up with me!" "I can't believe I'm doing this!" "This is just insane, why am I doing this?!" and then when he got to the top and had to walk across the telephone pole he looked down and then he looked back up real quickly and said very quietly and matter-of-factly "I think you'll need a new speaker". :p

So anyway, the ropes courses were fun, and it wasn't raining by then, so there was only the residual dampness from the past two days. Saturday morning we did one of the low elements that they call "walk on water" and it was just a little too realistic! :p It's cables strung between trees (about a foot off the ground) and the idea is that there is an imaginary river running underneath them and you have to get your whole team across without losing anyone in the water. Everyone had the option to stay inside, or play disc golf, or do the low elements. Everyone who did something outside was soaked by the time they were done!

Friday night I didn't get to sleep until almost 2 because I stayed up playing carpetball until my arm got tired. Then Saturday night I got to bed closer to 1:30 or so because a group of us were up at the lodge playing "signs", which was a lot of fun. I took some random pictures while we were playing but most of them are pretty blurry because no one was holding still! :)

The guy in the green shirt is our speaker:









Mary's in the middle:









Oops, Charity (blue&white shirt) must have bounced just as I took that picture!









Everyone looks bemused while Ray spazzs about something:









When it's too wet outside to go rock-climbing what do you do? Why climb the chimney in the lodge of course! :p












That's the littlest Hylton kid, the four-year-old...he just climbed right up there while his mom held her breath and looked very worried. He got higher than that on one try, but I didn't get a picture.

There was a little cat up at camp and he just loved for me to carry him around and hold him.

Milo asleep on my lap:









Milo with another girl's hoodie over him...that was the most patient cat I've ever seen!









I held him through the whole evening service Saturday night, and then he sat next to me on the couch during the first service on Sunday. At one point on Saturday the other girl who liked to carry him around was walking around holding him over her shoulder and supporting his feet with her hand and he just stretched out and went to sleep!

Well, I think that's everything about camp. :) I'm not sure that I'd go again...if there were more people I knew then I might go, but otherwise I could find something else to spend the $25 on! :D