Photos from yesterday

I liked how the blue car stood out up on the hill:



































Apparently yesterday, while I did get shoe sopping wet, and had to deal with little bugs that kept flying into my eyelashes, I missed all the excitement at home. The excitement of my grandpa going missing...what's new, right, relatives? ;)

There has been something wrong with the air conditioner in their car, and it apparently quit completely yesterday. At which point Grandma got really upset about it and said she couldn't ride in the car when it was that hot, so they came home and Grandpa went back out. Somewhere. Presumably to get the AC fixed. Well...I guess it was about three hours later Grandma came over here wanting Mom and Dad to "go find him". Mmm...okay. They didn't have the car, nor any idea where he actually was! To make a long story short they finally got her to call the place that had been fixing the car and see if he was there, and if he wasn't they would go look for him. He was there, I don't remember if they got the car fixed or not. So...just another story to add to the stories of Grandpa disappearing. :P

Summer plans

BIG plans. No...not really. Not at all in fact. Actually, it's a good thing that in my family we haven't ever made big summer plans and gone on multiple vacations and stuff like that...cause I don't get the summer off from my job. In fact, I'm working more days this summer, and working on all the Fridays too I believe. That's a bit of a bummer perhaps. I don't really do much on Fridays at least, but sometimes it's nice to have them free. Oh well. :)

Anyway, I went letterboxing today at Reynolda Gardens with my friend Jess. I think I've explained letterboxing before? People hide rubber stamps in various places and you follow the clues to find them, and stamp the stamps in your notebook, then stamp your personal stamp in the logbook that's in the box. It's quite fun. :)

We were looking at the logbooks to see when some stamps had last been found and the last entry was dated 6/13/09 (today!) at which point we kind of went "ooooh..." and looked around (like the people were really going to be anywhere nearby). :D Chances are they'd been there early in the morning and were long gone, but it was cool.

I brought my camera with me (of course) and took pictures until my battery went dead on me. Very sad. So...one of my plans is that I need to round up a friend and go back to Reynolda Gardens sometime this summer and take a bunch of photos, because it's a great place for photos. Or I'll just go and wander around taking pictures, if my dad doesn't mind me going by myself. It sounds peaceful. Or maybe I'll do both.

Jess and I also decided that sometime before she leaves for the summer we need to go up to Hanging Rock and hike to the waterfalls and stand under them. I haven't done that for years! (Hiked up there, yes, gotten soaking wet, no.) I think we decided that after we were leaning over the bridge watching the waterfall at the gardens and thinking it looked so nice and refreshing. However, it also looked like they built it and keep it fairly hard to get into...I have a feeling they'd discourage people climbing up the rocks to the bridge...kinda dangerous, you know. However, considering the proximity to Wake, we decided that most probably there have been oh, just a few expeditions into there by some frat boys. :p I think we'll stick with the legally entered waterfalls up in the mountains. ;)

I did manage to get wet though while we were looking for one letterbox. I was looking around by the creek and stepped onto something I thought was solid. It wasn't...it was a rather non-solid mass of brush and such and my foot went right through up to my knee. So I had a shoe full of water and crud the rest of the afternoon. Ugh.

We also need to have a sleepover and watch a cheesy (but apparently funny and worth-watching) eighties movie she was telling me about, called "Short Circuit". But...I'll need to um, work out the details for that and see if it will work because it'll have to be at my house since her roommates have already moved out of her apartment and, well, took their TV and couch. Which they had every right to do, but it's hard to have a sleepover and watch a movie with no couch or TV. :D

So...there's a few plans for summer, most of which will have to be done before Jessica moves away to college. *sniffle* :(

I've also been thinking about school and whether I should be doing some more school. I actually still have some geometry workbooks I need to just dig out and finish one of these days. It's not that they're hard...if they were I might actually be more motivated to get them done, but they're going to be really easy, so I just need to take the time to get them finished. Urgh. And then think about what else I should or shouldn't be doing. But that'll take some serious thinking and prayer before I make any decisions. Oh...and fighting my antipathy to schoolwork. :/

Oh, and I need to figure out what I want to enter in the fair. I'm sewing a skirt right now, so I'm trying to do it really carefully so I can enter it. I've sewn a couple other things recently, and sewn them as neatly as I'm happy with, but I don't think they'd win any prizes. :)

I also have a bunch of books I want to read. So I'll be wading through those this summer. Wading? Did I just say wading? Wow...I can't believe I have too many books to read! Maybe just too many I want to read all at once.

Um...I have no idea if that post was at all interesting to anyone else? Oh dear. My brain needed sorting out though and this helped. More rambling like the last post. Wait...didn't I use to always blog like this? Didn't I use to blog even? That's becoming rare. Maybe I'll resurrect that habit this summer. My summer that has no more time than the rest of the year. I'm looking forward to it. :)

I think work is going to be pretty fun this summer too. The baby is oh, a few weeks to a month away from walking. And I think I'll be taking her down to the kiddie pool when her parents join the neighborhood pool/tennis/playground thingy. Also, oddly enough, the heat isn't bothering me too much this summer. Okay...I need to shut up and go to bed now. Tomorrow I'll post some of the pictures I took today.

Oh...feel free to throw something at me if you think I used WAY too many smiley faces in this post, because I did.

Random stuff to check out

Hey there! Nope, no long post. Truth be told, I'm rethinking it. I'm afraid it was coming out kind of mean, and that's not really what I was going for.

First of all, I'm listening to this: I Need Thee Every Hour ~Jars of Clay As I told my cousin, it makes me want to pick up a guitar and play that song and sing really loudly. If...I could play guitar and the song was in the right key for me. (Actually...if I was singing by myself, and not along with the recording, it might be the right key. I sing fairly low.) Great song. Really good.

I have a cold...yet again. I got through the winter with only one cold I think, and now I'm getting all sorts of stuff. What's up with that? Fortunately colds don't completely flatten me like they used to. I felt rather miserable this time, but I still made it to work and all. Hot tea is your friend. Along with Google...but that's for research and the tea is for colds. And I'm in a rather odd mood...perhaps because I've been drinking caffeinated tea all day. Although...that reminds me that last Friday I drank a whole quart of iced tea and it didn't keep me awake at all. Odd.

What else I've been listening to this week is a CD by The Avett Brothers. They're a North Carolina-based group. I'm not sure how to describe their music, except that it's sort of bluegrass, alt. rock, etc. all combined. Non-whiny bluegrass with hints of Coldplay/Keane, and dashes of pop music. And if that sounds atrocious, give it a chance and listen to some songs, cause it really is good. One of very few CDs that I've listened to and enjoyed first time through. I usually have to listen to most songs a couple times before I really like them. Check it out, you can listen to all the songs online!

Dad and Colin and I went to Greensboro Saturday so I could get my laptop fixed at the Apple store. It was cracking along the edge of the keyboard...which was a problem with the first generation of these Macbooks. So anyway, Apple is fixing them even if they're not under warranty anymore. So I called Applecare and got that all sorted out, then called the Apple store to make an appointment and make sure they had the part in stock. Very helpful service both times.
When I got there it turns out they didn't have the exact part for my computer, because it's apparently the very first generation of black Macbooks. So after some debate between two of the Mac geniuses, they decided the newer one would work, because the only thing they changed was something about the contacts (???) and the plastic was improved (which it needed to be obviously, right?) so that was better anyway. It ended up taking longer than I thought it was going to, but they replaced the whole keyboard/trackpad assembly. That's a major plus because since I bought this new USED, it had already had the oomph taken out of the keys and a shiny spot worn on the trackpad. Now the trackpad is nicely textured, and the keys click quite satisfactorily. Plus they cleaned all the dust off it. When the guy was opening it and looking at it, I gasped and rather apologetically said I had no idea it was that dusty! And I didn't...they have good light in those stores and I was shocked to see how much dust was on it. I'll have to make sure I dust it more regularly. :/

Hmm...oh, I bought a new camera! A splendid digital SLR camera. And quite frankly, I don't understand how to use it all yet, but already I can tell the difference between it and my little 4 mega pixel point-and-shoot camera. 10.1 mega-pixels. It's a Canon Rebel XTi. I got it on eBay for about $470, plus it had a 2g CF card and Apple Aperture software with it. Now I just need to find a camera bag...something fairly small, but with some compartments for lenses, but they cost what seems like way too much! Bleh.

So, yeah. I've been thinking about a ton of different things, but nothing I either want to blog about, or am ready to blog about yet. But, that's what I've been busy with recently...lots of thinking. Oh, and doing some sewing. And sometimes both at once....ouch. I did run the needle halfway through my fingernail the other day.

Napkins!








Oh, and the Boundless webzine is awesome. Hehe...that was random, I have it linked in my sidebar and have been reading it for a while, but I've been reading some old articles on there, and really loving it. So yeah...check it out. "Extreme conversation starters for 20somethings" it says on there somewhere. Well....yeah, okay. That makes me laugh for some reason...the "20somethings" part I guess. Anyway, it also says "Boundless is a ministry for those in the transitional years between high school graduation and parenthood." That makes more sense to me.